Many years ago, Juliana Mtenga worked as a simple tailor in Tanzania's city of Dodoma. She earned a small income, which she didn't mind because she considered her real full time job as that of taking care of her children and the house. As any caring mother, Juliana was concerned about her children’s nutrition – more so for her youngest who was a toddler in 2010.  It bothered her that quality baby formula was expensive and unavailable. At one point, like other women in her village, she resigned to this fate, until one day when she decided that she had had enough. Juliana embarked on a very ambitious mission: that of making her own baby formula. She scored text books and magazines, reading about recipes and soon enough, she had a game plan. She began taking various dried grains such as millet and sorghum to local grinding mills. Afterwards, she would mix them into proportions that ensured nutritious meal for her child. As time passed, her neighbors noticed her product. Increased interest and demand convinced her to start stocking a few packets in her small tailoring shop. A worker at Juliana Mtenga's factory making a sale By 2012, Juliana had increased her monthly production from 5kgs to 200kgs. And, it seemed that she had hit the ceiling, because up to this point, she had exhausted the market that was in close proximity to her. That, and the fact that she viewed the baby formula business as a side activity, not a main source of income. And then, Juliana met officials from Tanzania Women Chambers...

They are as much a feature of Africa’s borders as immigration officials, barbed wire and bureaucracy. They are the service stations of Africa’s highways and the pit stops of commerce from Cape Town to Cairo. They gravitate to the frontiers where trucks stop, truckers break and travelers take on food and water for their journeys. Their shop fronts are brimming baskets and their cash registers are pockets and purses. They are the women traders who make a living by selling wares at Africa’s myriad borders and TradeMark Africa (TMA) is helping them to get organized, to know their rights and to reap the fruits of East African (EA) integration. “As cross border traders we carry the ignition key to transform our communities,” said Hadijja Sserwanga, a champion of the rights of Uganda’s border traders, regional Chairperson of the East African Women Cross Borders Traders Association (EAWCBTA). She describes herself as a politician, activist, teacher and community development worker fighting to overturn the sexual harassment, exploitation and marginalization by the (largely male) people who run and operate EA borders. She’s been a border trader herself since 1987, operating on the Uganda-Tanzania frontier at Mutukula, and has seen and experienced the problems women traders run into by not knowing their rights under EA integration or being bamboozled into paying unnecessary fines, taxes and bribes because they don’t know better. “I have a lot of passion for women’s empowerment and being a cross border trader. I feel we can transform ourselves from being...

There are huge gaps at the border between Uganda and Rwanda. They are not the tortuous hilltop roads smugglers pass to avoid customs officers and police. They are not the holes in the chain-link fencing between the two Partner States. They are the blind spots in the knowledge of ordinary people in how the East African Community (EAC) is changing their lives. But with active support of officials on both sides of the frontier, and the Dutch NGO Microjustice4All and TradeMark Africa’s (TMA) US$ 500,000 backing, those gaps are being filled in. Simon Tumwesigye of the Uganda Revenue Authority comes face to face with the gaps every working day and he is grateful that Microjustice4All is working both sides of the Katuna/Gatuna border to enlighten ordinary people as to their rights and obligations. “Ordinary people believe what their Presidents say on Radio or TV; they say there will be freedom of movement for goods and people thanks to the (East African) Community. So people turn up here expecting to pay nothing in taxes or customs duties at all.” “They have no idea that they have to pay VAT or withholding tax or whatever applies. But thanks to Microjustice4All, we have people on the ground to explain to them, and they do a great job,” he says. It’s a year-long pilot project, for now, to ensure that “people understand how the EAC affects them, especially people who live at the border, the small traders, the border communities who were here long...