Evelyne Munyeti, Jade Fresh MD, shares the journey of navigating the world of horticultural exports. Exporting food from East Africa is not for the faint-hearted. Strict international standards, limited access to capital, and inconsistent production quality make it nearly impossible for most small businesses to break into international markets. Rejection rates are usually high, and financing is scarce, making the cost of failure punitive. To put this into perspective, Kenya’s Economic Survey 2025 reports that EU pesticide regulation halved the value of Kenya's fresh vegetable exports in 2024 to KSh23.4 billion ($180.7 million) from KSh50.9 billion ($393 million) in 2023, while volumes dropped by almost 55%. A separate 2024 report by Genesis Analytics confirmed what exporters already know: that market requirements are both technical and commercially fatal for undercapitalised micro and small enterprises, particularly those led by women. Certification costs and compliance failures mean that a single mistake can wipe out months of earnings. Between 2017 and 2023, TradeMark Africa’s (TMA) Export Capability Programme supported businesses to navigate these challenges. For instance, the Horticulture Market Access Programme (HMAP) linked 1,198 farmers in Tanzania and 7,854 small and medium-scale farmers in Kenya to markets and assisted farmers with selling around 50,000 tons of produce (Genesis Analytics, 2024). The Rwanda Export Development Programme was successful in increasing the export readiness of supported businesses and significantly increased new export transactions from $1 million in 2018 to $2 million in 2023. “The goal was to build export capacity and help businesses identify viable markets...

Context: The Republic of Rwanda acceded to the EAC Treaty on 18th June 2007 and became full Members of the Community with effect from 1st July 2007. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is a central engine to driving Rwanda’s transformation to a knowledge-based economy, a fact Rwanda has acknowledged by allocating a budget to ICT as a percentage of its GDP that is at par with OECD countries. Rwanda continues to be one of the fastest-growing African countries in ICT and there are several avenues for growth for the ICT sector from e-commerce and e-services, mobile technologies, applications development and automation to becoming a regional center for the training of top quality ICT professionals and research as a robust ICT industry can create wealth, jobs and entrepreneurs. Rwanda is the most improved economy worldwide since 2005 (World Bank Doing Business Report, 2014). The report further reflects Rwanda the 2nd easiest to do business in Africa after Mauritius. Business environment reforms focusing on trade facilitation endeavor to reduce the cost associated with importing and exporting products. Many factors affect the cost of trade, including poor infrastructure, slow and cumbersome border regulatory and operating processes and non-tariff measures. Reforms targeted to these factors vary depending on the local contexts and problems yet overall they broadly seek to achieve more efficient, transparent, predictable and rule-based import and export processes. Reforms may include new or upgraded trade-related infrastructure, such as roads, ports and border posts; reviewing and (re)drafting the policies, laws and regulations governing...

The five Partner States of the East African Community (EAC) are currently involved in activities related to the conformity of products traded within the region. The process which includes the preparation, approval and adoption of the standards related to those products is undertaken by the different national standards bodies in each one of the partner states. A common definition of a standard is a document approved by a recognized body that provides for common and repeated use rules, guidelines or characteristics for products or related processes and production methods, for which compliance may or may not be mandatory. Standards play an important role in regional integration. “Standards are vital to integration,” says José Maciel, Director of Non-Tariff Barriers (NTBs) and Standards at TradeMark Africa (TMA). “In addition to safeguarding the health and safety of the consumers and the environment, standards can cut the cost and time of doing business by huge amounts. In that sense, they are central to the future wealth of the EAC.” All across the five-nation regional economic bloc, TMA is helping national partners harmonize the standards of the most commonly traded goods in the region so that they can cross borders unimpeded by questions about their authenticity or reliability or origin. These include some of the most-traded goods in the EAC such as tea, coffee, iron, petroleum and edible fats and oils. TMA is assisting the EAC national bureaus of standards, the private sector and the EAC Secretariat on two levels: national and regional. At the...