Nairobi – IOM, the International Organization for Migration, is providing COVID-19 testing to thousands of truck drivers on Kenya’s borders. It’s part of a regional and national effort to fight the global COVID-19 pandemic and reopen trade across the East and Horn of Africa. Over 4,500 truck drivers and crews are being tested for the infection in Malaba and Busia on Kenya’s border with Uganda, where border closures had them waiting for weeks to get moving again. It’s also part of a global effort by IOM. The COVID-19 pandemic control measures put in place around the world are having an unprecedented impact on human mobility. More than 52,000 extraordinary restrictions to mobility have been put into effect by governments and authorities worldwide, while millions of internal migrants have lost their livelihoods in cities where they had been working and now are returning to their places of origin. At the same time—across 10 countries in the East and Horn of Africa—tens of thousands of truck drivers have been unable to transport lifesaving and essential goods, including food, water, medicine, medical equipment and supplies—the very items required to meet the needs of vulnerable communities such as Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). Since the pandemic, governments in the region have struggled to test truck drivers and reduce the spread of the disease, mainly due to inadequate testing capacity. As of 15 July, more than 2,000 truck drivers in the East and Horn of Africa have tested positive for the disease. “The border points have...

Nairobi – IOM, the International Organization for Migration, is providing COVID-19 testing to thousands of truck drivers on Kenya’s borders. It’s part of a regional and national effort to fight the global COVID-19 pandemic and reopen trade across the East and Horn of Africa. Over 4,500 truck drivers and crews are being tested for the infection in Malaba and Busia on Kenya’s border with Uganda, where border closures had them waiting for weeks to get moving again. It’s also part of a global effort by IOM. The COVID-19 pandemic control measures put in place around the world are having an unprecedented impact on human mobility. More than 52,000 extraordinary restrictions to mobility have been put into effect by governments and authorities worldwide, while millions of internal migrants have lost their livelihoods in cities where they had been working and now are returning to their places of origin. At the same time—across 10 countries in the East and Horn of Africa—tens of thousands of truck drivers have been unable to transport lifesaving and essential goods, including food, water, medicine, medical equipment and supplies—the very items required to meet the needs of vulnerable communities such as Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). Since the pandemic, governments in the region have struggled to test truck drivers and reduce the spread of the disease, mainly due to inadequate testing capacity. As of 15 July, more than 2,000 truck drivers in the East and Horn of Africa have tested positive for the disease. “The border points have...

This paper uses Kenyan trade data published up through May 2020 to provide a preliminary evaluation of the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on regional trade in the East African Community (EAC). Paradoxically, given the prevailing pessimism surrounding the prospects for global trade, Kenya actually experienced a significant improvement in exports in the first quarter of the year, together with a moderation of imports, leading to a marked decline in the trade deficit. While the initial shock to Kenyan trade caused by the COVID-19 crisis initially looked dramatic in terms of the declines registered, this paper reveals that i) the shock is not so alarming when seasonality is taken into account; ii) re-exports and imports have been the primary foci of impact; and iii) domestic exports have actually performed extraordinarily well under the circumstances, with incremental growth since 2019. Notably, not all supply chains were disrupted by the crisis, with some Kenyan exports like tea and fruit surpassing levels of years past. Rather, imports have been the principle victim of the crisis, declining by a quarter over the three months since the crisis began (between March and May 2020). Capital goods imports have declined markedly—a trend which, if sustained, could have implications for long-term economic growth. However, the fall in imports of consumer goods could also set the scene for a revitalization of national and regional industry, as local producers step up to fill the void created by the sharp lull in imports. At the same time, Kenya’s EAC neighbors—especially...

It took a traffic jam of a couple thousand trucks at the Malaba border between Kenya and Uganda to fully visualize both the health and trade issues at stake when borders operate at optimum. The COVID-19 crisis has revealed both hairline fractures along borders in East Africa and the potential to solve them through better regional coordination. The East African Community (EAC) to date has been a grand experiment in more than just free trade between Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda. It also seeks to transform the region into a single market that allows free movement of goods, people, services, labour and capital, and create a single investment area. The coronavirus pandemic has curtailed this dream in the short-term but the experience has been a learning curve, and UNCTAD, TradeMark Africa (TMA) and other regional partners have used the moment to help the region’s national trade facilitation committees (NTFCs) improve their skills and work more effectively by offering them ground-breaking online training. “It’s a complicated situation due to the necessity of imposing health controls and measures to manage COVID-19 on one hand, while still ensuring trade flows, especially of essential goods, on the other,” said Shamika N. Sirimanne, UNCTAD’s director of technology and logistics. “The situation has been extremely challenging for everyone from policymakers to customs officials; truck drivers to traders,” she added. “Training is one of the solutions to this challenge.”   [caption id="attachment_54331" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Trade facilitation in East Africa is critical during COVID-19[/caption] Trade...

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is one of the greatest examples of Pan-Africanism since the creation of the African Union (AU). The agreement has acquired the signatures of 54 of the AU’s 55 member-states, bringing together an impressive domestic market of more than 1.2 billion people with a collective GDP of $2.6tn. The logic behind the deal is sound. Africa is, by most standards, the least integrated continent, where internal trade currently accounts for just 16 percent of its total trade volumes. The potential benefits of liberalised trade across the continent, from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, Cape Town to Cairo, could be substantial. Evidence suggests the removal of tariffs, supplemented by trade facilitation initiatives, could boost intra-African trade by 52.3% or $34.6bn by 2022. However, the benefits are far from guaranteed, and the continent now faces the task of implementing the agreement. The deal stipulates signatories eliminate tariffs on 90% of goods and address a plethora of non-tariff barriers (NTBs), which will in turn tackle the comparatively high cost of trade across the continent. High cost of trade in Africa This latter point is crucial to Africa’s success. Recent studies published by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)   and the World Bank suggest that NTBs prove more of an impediment to trade than tariffs do. In fact, the UNCTAD says that by tackling NTBs, African countries as a group could see gains of $20bn each year. Higher levels of internal trade will help wean Africa off its reliance on...