The case for Africa as a global trade powerhouse is no longer in doubt. What remains unresolved is how quickly the continent’s leaders will act to remove barriers holding back growth. According to the East African Business Council (2023) report, East Africa loses an estimated $9–10 billion a year to non-tariff barriers, restrictions that continue to constrain trade despite existing agreements designed to eliminate them.
“We have the foundations in place. What we are asking leaders is to make this work,” Allen Asiimwe, Deputy CEO and Chief of Programmes at TradeMark Africa, said in an interview on Spice FM on Thursday, 26 March.
She added that the challenge is not a lack of policy or resources, but the need for political leadership to drive these changes.
Ms Asiimwe indicated that trade activity across the continent shows what is possible when systems function. She noted that in several countries, reforms are improving efficiency and reducing costs. “We work across the continent, and we see the potential. In some countries, this potential is already being realised,” she said.
The gains are most visible along transport corridors. A decade ago, moving a container of fuel from the port of Mombasa to Kigali, Rwanda, a journey of about 1,500 kilometres, took up to 21 days. Today, it takes five.
Ms Asiimwe disclosed that coordinated customs reforms, digital cargo tracking, and clearing-house agreements between national authorities drove this shift, enabling faster and more predictable movement of goods. However, she warned that these gains are under pressure. “What we are seeing is the resurgence of non-tariff barriers,” Ms Asiimwe added.
She noted that delays at border points, duplicative inspections, and administrative bottlenecks have re-emerged, causing congestion at major crossings where traders face daily delays. She revealed that this is happening despite the region operating under a customs union and a common external tariff designed to facilitate seamless trade.
At the continental level, Ms Asiimwe highlighted that the African Continental Free Trade Area brings together 54 countries under a single framework and places the elimination of non-tariff barriers at the centre of its agenda. She flagged that implementation remains uneven.
A World Bank report (2020) estimates that removing these barriers could increase intra-African exports by more than 80% and raise incomes by up to $292 billion by 2035. Ms Asiimwe outlined that the impact is most pronounced in landlocked countries such as Uganda, South Sudan, the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi, where delays increase the cost of goods and slow economic growth.
She underpinned that TradeMark Africa has installed smart scanning gates at the port of Mombasa, allowing cargo clearance at the point of origin and reducing repeated inspections along transit routes. The organisation is working with the Government of Kenya and the East African Community to deploy similar systems at the Busia border. “We are using digital systems across trade processes to move towards no-stop borders. This will allow goods to move without stopping at borders such as Busia and Namanga,” Ms Asiimwe said.
The gap between policy and practice remains.