Ever since the 1996 Singapore WTO meeting, trade facilitation has attracted major attention in international trade discussions and negotiations as a powerful way, together with policies that reduce trade barriers, to help countries to better integrate into the world economy and thus enhance their growth prospects. Singapore was an early adopter of trade facilitation and developed Tradenet, an IT tool to speed up trade transactions and connect most members of the trading community into a single data network. This paper briefly describes the achievements of Singapore's TradeNet, how it came about and what lessons it contains for other countries. Then the genesis of a similar Tradenet initiative and the approach adopted in Ghana are discussed.