Kenya and Uganda Move to Tear Down Trade Barriers. Can the Northern Corridor Finally Breathe?
At dawn on the Malaba border, the hiss of air brakes is as constant as birdsong. Truck drivers brew tea on camp stoves beside long queues of lorries, waiting for stamps, scans, and weighbridge ticks that can eat full days of their lives. On Saturday in Mbale, Uganda, ministers from Kenya and Uganda said they want to change that—fast.
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In a joint communique, Kenya’s Investments, Trade and Industry Cabinet Secretary Lee Kinyanjui and Uganda’s Trade chief, General Wilson Mbasu, pledged to eliminate “all existing tariff and non-tariff barriers,” align their policies with East African Community (EAC) rules, and unclog the region’s most famous bottlenecks. They ordered border agencies to clear truck backlogs within 24 hours, cap queues at Malaba to four kilometers and at Busia to just 500 meters, and keep key services running 24/7. The two sides also promised to remove discriminatory excise duties and charges, tame delays tied to multiple checkpoints, and fix the friction around the Malaba weighbridge—often a sore point for haulers on the heavily used Northern Corridor from Mombasa to Kampala.
What’s actually changing
The communique sketched out a practical to-do list that, if implemented, would be felt in cargo cabins and marketplace stalls alike:
- Clear border congestion within a day and enforce maximum queue lengths at Malaba and Busia.
- Run continuous operations by revenue, standards, and border control agencies, reducing night-time and weekend pileups.
- Prioritize road and bridge upgrades at critical crossings and complete long-stalled facilities like the Suam One Stop Border Post on the Kenyan side.
- Acquire a cargo scanner for Kenya’s side of the smaller Lwakhakha border point, an often-overlooked outlet that could ease pressure on Malaba and Busia.
- Stand up Joint Border Committees to solve daily snags on-site and escalate unresolved matters quickly.
- Convene a standing joint technical committee to monitor and remove trade barriers as they arise.
- Sit regularly with private sector players—truckers, shippers, traders—to ensure policies match reality on the tarmac.
The Ugandan government also specifically committed to addressing “Malaba weighbridge operations,” a phrase truckers will parse closely. In a region where an extra weighbridge stop or inconsistent axle limits can spell another night in a cab, these are not small tweaks.
Why this matters beyond Malaba
Kenya and Uganda are the twin engines of the EAC’s original customs union. Uganda remains one of Kenya’s top export markets; Kenyan ports, in turn, serve as lifelines for Ugandan imports and for cargo bound for Rwanda, eastern DRC, and South Sudan. The Northern Corridor handles the bulk of that flow. Every hour shaved off a border wait nudges down food prices in Kisumu, cement costs in Gulu, and the shelf life of vaccines bound for Juba.
Industry groups in East Africa have long warned that non-tariff barriers—duplicate inspections, surprise levies, ad-hoc bans—add costs that can dwarf official tariffs. A day lost to a queue can add hundreds of dollars to a truck’s operating costs; for perishables, it’s the difference between profit and spoilage. Business councils estimate that every extra day in transit can push up the final price of goods by 1 percent or more. Multiply that across thousands of trucks and millions of consumers, and you get a drag on regional growth that’s felt from fishing beaches on Lake Victoria to construction sites in Kampala’s burgeoning suburbs.
Globally, this moment also fits a pattern. As supply chains recalibrate after pandemic disruptions and geopolitical shocks—from Red Sea shipping risks to surging insurance premiums—regions are racing to shore up their internal arteries. Africa’s continental free-trade pact (AfCFTA) is inching forward, but its promise hinges on the sort of nuts-and-bolts fixes Kenya and Uganda just sketched: open borders, harmonized standards, predictable rules, and working scanners.
The politics behind the pledge
This bilateral push follows a directive by Presidents William Ruto and Yoweri Museveni after their July 2025 meeting in Nairobi. That top-level nod matters. East Africa’s integration is more often tripped by politics than by engineering. Over the years, the two neighbors have traded barbs over milk, sugar, poultry, and fuel licensing—wrenching disputes that left truckers stranded and traders bewildered. This time, the ministers say they’ll stay ahead of such flare-ups, swapping lists of affected products, tasking technical teams to meet, and walking the borders to find and fix the chokepoints.
In interviews over the years, drivers at Busia have described the bureaucracy as “the invisible hill.” You crest it today and it rises again tomorrow. The new promise, if kept, would level that hill. Standardizing checks, minimizing weighbridge disputes, and limiting the scope for arbitrary fees would leave fewer places for uncertainty—and graft—to thrive. It would also provide cover for civil servants on the ground to say “no” to new hurdles, pointing upstream to a political directive to facilitate trade.
A test of institutions, not just intentions
Still, execution is everything. The EAC already boasts Single Customs Territory procedures and regional cargo tracking. One-Stop Border Posts at Malaba and Busia are not new. And yet: lines. Paper files get lost, networks drop, an inspector goes off shift and a convoy sits idle. When one scanner breaks, an entire day can unravel. Promised roadworks can take years to materialize. The danger here is not lack of vision; it’s administrative fatigue.
The communique’s emphasis on Joint Border Committees hints at a realistic approach—solve today’s problems today. If the teams meet under the roof of the border posts themselves, with traders and truckers at the table, practical fixes can happen quickly: a roster adjusted, a scanner serviced, a lane re-marked. The pledge to keep operations running 24/7 is also significant. A border is a system; it only moves as fast as its slowest function. If standards officials knock off at 5 p.m. while customs stays open, midnight promises collapse at the first missing stamp.
The human arc of a smoother border
For the men and women who live off this corridor, the benefits would be immediate and personal. A driver who gets cleared at 2 a.m. instead of 2 p.m. sleeps in a bed rather than a cab. A maize trader sees her grain arrive fresh in Eldoret’s market instead of baked in a trailer. Parents sending remittances home from Mombasa find a little more left in the wallet at month’s end. These are the quiet dividends of predictable policy.
There’s also a wider development prize. Efficient borders encourage formal trade, broaden the tax base without raising rates, and make it harder for counterfeit goods to slip through gaps created by chaos. Investors pay attention to such things. So do neighboring countries who must choose routes: Tanzania’s Central Corridor has been wooing some Ugandan cargo southward. If Malaba and Busia move trucks like airport queues, Kenya and Uganda make a stronger case to remain the region’s default artery.
What to watch next
- Are queues actually shorter within the next two weeks? Satellite images and dash-cam videos have a way of telling the truth.
- Does the Suam One Stop Border Post on the Kenyan side get the funding and timeline it needs? Suam could be a pressure valve if it’s properly equipped.
- How quickly does Kenya deploy a scanner at Lwakhakha, and are officers trained to use it efficiently?
- Do weighbridge disputes at Malaba taper off, with clearer axle-load enforcement and fewer duplicate stops?
- Are private-sector forums held regularly, and do their recommendations show up in policy tweaks within a month or two?
In Mbale, the two delegations—drawn from finance, foreign affairs, agriculture, standards bodies, and revenue authorities—looked the part of a whole-of-government push. That’s encouraging. But borders respond to rhythms, not press releases. The next few weeks will show whether the North’s great convoy, from Mombasa through Eldoret to Kampala, can finally trade the soundtrack of idling engines for something closer to flow.
In the end, trade integration is a trust exercise. When neighbors promise to open doors, the real question is who walks through first—and whether the hinges will squeak. East Africa, and the families who depend on its goods and jobs, are listening for the answer.
By Ali Musa
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
