Kenya and Uganda order rapid fix to border logjams, vow to align trade with EAC rules
Kenya and Uganda moved to ease persistent friction along their busy frontier on Friday, ordering a rapid clean-up of congested crossings and pledging to strip away barriers to commerce that have frustrated truckers and traders for months.
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After a meeting in Mbale, eastern Uganda, Kenya’s Trade Minister Lee Kinyanjui and Uganda’s Minister Wilson Mbasu said they would bring operations at key crossings—Malaba, Busia, Suam and Lwakhakha—into line with East African Community (EAC) rules and cut the queues that have become a weary ritual on the region’s most vital trade artery.
The move follows a directive from Kenyan President William Ruto and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni after their late-July talks in Nairobi, instructing their trade ministers to defuse the bottlenecks and remove non-tariff barriers that have quietly grown into major irritants for two countries that depend on each other’s markets.
What the ministers ordered
- Immediate decongestion: Border agencies were told to clear the existing truck backlog within 24 hours and keep queues to no more than four kilometers.
- 24/7 operations: All border management agencies are to operate around the clock to ensure the “seamless flow of goods, services and people.”
- OSBP checks: Joint, on-the-spot assessments of One-Stop Border Posts (OSBPs) to verify that the model is working as intended under the EAC framework.
- Elimination of barriers: A renewed commitment to remove non-tariff barriers (NTBs) and scrap discriminatory excise duties, levies and charges that have the same effect.
- Full compliance: A pledge to fully implement trade-related commitments under the EAC Treaty and its protocols.
“It is a serious concern to receive numerous complaints affecting business at the border points. We are committed to restoring normalcy at all cross-border points,” said Kinyanjui. Uganda’s Mbasu added that follow-up inspections would confirm whether the OSBPs are functioning as envisioned—one queue, one inspection, one clearance—rather than a patchwork of agencies acting at crossed purposes.
Why it matters
The Kenya–Uganda frontier is the beating heart of the Northern Corridor, the road-and-rail lifeline from the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa through Nairobi and on to Kampala, Kigali, Juba and eastern DR Congo. When Malaba and Busia snarl up, the ripple effects are felt from factory floors in Nairobi to market stalls in Kampala. Fuel deliveries slow, food prices tick up and regional manufacturers lose time they cannot bill.
The two economies are entwined. Uganda consistently ranks among Kenya’s top export destinations, while Kenya is a critical buyer of Ugandan agricultural products. Bilateral trade has in recent years topped $1 billion, according to regional economic data, with everything from petroleum products and pharmaceuticals to maize, steel and dairy crossing the border daily. In a continent where intra-African trade remains a stubbornly small slice of overall commerce, the EAC has been a relative bright spot—proof that regional integration can work when the rules are clear and the lanes are open.
And yet, those lanes have narrowed. In the wake of pandemic-era health checks and intermittent disputes over product standards and taxes, queues of trucks—headlights glowing through the night, engines idling—have become a familiar sight. The human costs mount quietly: drivers sleeping in their cabs, small-scale traders watching perishable goods go bad, businesses budgeting for delays that should be exceptions, not the norm.
The choke points—and the fix
Malaba and Busia carry the bulk of the traffic, and both were redesigned over the last decade as one-stop border posts, a model meant to knit together customs, immigration, standards and police from both sides under one roof. When the OSBP model functions, a truck should be cleared once, not twice, saving hours and—over an entire corridor—days.
Friday’s joint communiqué suggests the system has slipped, or at least been stretched by workload and inconsistent application of rules. The order to clear the backlog within 24 hours is an ambitious target; keeping queues under four kilometers, an attempt to set a new normal in a region where a 10-kilometer line can arrive like bad weather and linger for days.
Directing all agencies to operate 24/7 is more than a symbolic gesture. Night operations cost money and require coordination—lighting, security, staffing—yet without them, the corridor loses a third of its capacity every day. If that instruction holds and is enforced, the impact on transit times could be immediate.
Beyond the bottleneck: the NTB problem
Underneath the traffic jams lies a harder question: how to curb the proliferation of non-tariff barriers. Across East Africa, governments have leaned on inspections, permits and product standards—sometimes legitimately, sometimes as quiet protectionism—to regulate what crosses the border. Dairy, eggs, sugar and grain have all sparked disputes in recent years. Excise regimes can change faster than traders can adjust. Even when tariffs are harmonized, a new levy or license can have the same chilling effect on trade.
By promising to eliminate discriminatory charges and align fully with the EAC’s common market rules, Nairobi and Kampala are taking aim at this pattern. But promises have been made before. The difference now may be the directive from the top—two presidents linking political goodwill to measurable improvements on the ground—and the tools at hand. The EAC’s NTB monitoring mechanism exists; the OSBPs exist. What’s often missing is the will to tackle small frictions that, multiplied by thousands of trucks, become big problems.
What to watch next
The next few days will show whether the 24-hour clearance order sticks. Are queues shrinking at Malaba and Busia? Are nighttime operations actually continuous, or do they thin out at the first hiccup? Are agencies from both countries making joint decisions inside the OSBPs rather than sending drivers back and forth?
Longer term, traders will look for signs that the NTB clean-up is real: fewer surprise inspections; standards that are recognized reciprocally; excise rules that don’t penalize one side’s products. If those changes begin to bite, the gains could be meaningful—lower freight costs, more predictable delivery times, better prices in shops and markets on both sides.
There’s a continental backdrop here too. As the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) tries to nudge countries toward bigger, borderless markets, blocs like the EAC are the laboratories where those aspirations are tested. If Kenya and Uganda can restore a smooth flow through their busiest gates—and keep it that way—it won’t just be a win for two neighbors. It will be a signal to the region that integration is not a speech or a slogan, but a queue that moves.
For now, the orders are clear. The test is in the follow-through.
By Ali Musa
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.
