I am thrown into my zone of discomfort from time to time in meetings, and I enjoy the struggle for clarity.
I spent a week in Jinja town, approximately 220 km from Kampala, attending a meeting with close to 140 participants from seven East African countries.
The participants included traders (mainly women), researchers, government officials, parliamentarians, CSOs, and border authorities. I had very little understanding of the reality and challenges of border trade, or what trading in agroecological food means for these people.
After a morning of opening ceremonies and in-depth discussions about agroecology, we went to a border town between Uganda and Kenya called Busia. We arrived around lunchtime, the air thick with voices and barter. We were divided into three groups: one met with border officials, another with transport operators, and the third with traders.
There were lines of trucks waiting for their turn to be cleared by border officials. From a distance, we could see women traders carrying baskets of millet, cassava, or maize, lining up to cross with their goods.
As I later understood, they are the silent backbone of East Africa’s food system, moving tonnes of fresh produce daily through formal and informal corridors that connect the two countries more intimately than any official treaty.
Local trade
It was evident from our discussions that for these traders, every crossing is a negotiation, not just of prices, but of power. The infrastructure of trade in Africa remains designed for big traders, not communities. Border posts and regional trade policies privilege bulk exports over the local trade in food that actually feeds local people.
The irony is painful: while Africa imports over $40 billion worth of food annually, the women feeding their neighbours across borders face harassment, arbitrary fees, and indifference.
One can see that the future of East Africa’s food system, produced agroecologically, is being written not in boardrooms but in the crowded queues of cross-border traders. Here, a small-scale farmer from Uganda might wait for hours, her basket of organic vegetables wilting in the sun while officials from multiple agencies conduct separate inspections.
We were told during the meeting that hundreds of voluntary standards for organic produce exist, but no one seems to care, except the local community that buys her food, trusting its quality and safety.
This scene, repeated across East Africa’s borders, captures both the immense potential and the frustrating barriers to a transformative opportunity: regional trade in agroecological (AE) goods.
The Regional Multi-Stakeholder Conference in Jinja produced the powerful Jinja Declaration on Advancing Agroecological Trade. The meeting heard these stories directly from traders, farmers, and officials.
Their testimonies, captured in stark bullet points, reveal a system in crisis but ripe for change. The path forward requires us to listen to these on-the-ground realities and act on the Jinja Declaration’s bold vision.
The stark reality at the border
The challenges are not abstract. They are daily hurdles that stifle livelihoods and weaken our region’s ecological resilience.
- A porosity of problems: porous borders don’t just hinder trade; they encourage smuggling and the lax control of chemicals, undermining both markets and ecosystems. As one Ugandan trader noted, the rampant use of a chemical called NOVA from Kenya to dry maize is a direct threat to health and soil.
- A bureaucratic maze: Traders face multiple taxations, informal levies, excessive bureaucracy, and slow customs clearance. The capacity of the people working at the border is often limited, and communication across nations is problematic.
- The invisible product: A fundamental issue is the gap in identifying agroecological products. There is very little understanding of what agroecology is. In addition, with no standard for agroecology, these goods are invisible to the formal system. This leads to a tragic irony: when a consignment fails to meet conventional standards, it is quarantined simply because there is no mechanism to verify its quality.
- The human cost: The human impact is profound. At the Rwanda–DRC border, 87 per cent of traders are women and 4 per cent are youth. These women, some breastfeeding with no place to rest their children, are exposed to exploitation and gender-based violence. As one report stated, “The women are not protected.”
Seeds of hope: Promising practices to scale
Yet within this challenging landscape, innovators are planting the seeds of a better future. The Jinja Declaration rightly calls for scaling these “promising practices.”
- Harmonisation and Trust: The call for “one-document checks” and “joint testing facilities” is a direct solution to bureaucratic delays. If a product is certified in one EAC country, it should pass in all. Scaling up Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS), community-based certification, can build trust and make verification affordable for smallholders.
- Designated green lanes: The establishment of “green lanes for fresh produce” and “designated marketplaces” for AE goods is crucial. This would provide visible, privileged spaces for the products our region needs most, reducing post-harvest losses and creating a brand identity for quality, ecological food.
- Digital and structural empowerment: Digital platforms for trade and investment in cold rooms and storage facilities are critical 21st-century infrastructures. As the Jinja Declaration urges, we must invest in cold storage, logistics, and public infrastructure that support agroecological enterprises.
A call to the East African Community
If the border posts of Busia, the women traders of Rwanda, and the farmers of Tanzania could speak with one voice to the East African Community, their message would echo the Jinja Declaration:
- Harmonise, don’t hinder: Harmonisation of policies on agroecological products and the removal of non-tariff barriers are not technicalities; they are prerequisites for survival and growth. We must support the mutual recognition of Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) standards.
- Build a unified market: A single currency for the flow of trade and the free movement of goods and people is the bedrock of integration. We must promote financial inclusion through regional currency harmonisation.
- Invest in people and knowledge: Building the capacity of trade information officers and raising awareness among consumers and traders is essential. The big gaps in knowledge of agroecology can be filled by leveraging existing platforms like community agroecology schools and universities.
The Jinja Declaration is more than a document; it is a covenant for a resilient, sovereign, and just East Africa. It recognises that agroecology is not a niche concern but the backbone of our food security and ecological health. The lessons from our borders provide an urgent, actionable to-do list.
The choice is clear. We can continue with a fragmented system that allows chemicals to flow freely while fresh, healthy food is trapped at borders, or we can embrace the vision of the Jinja Declaration, which is a vision for agroecology and food sovereignty. We can choose to harmonise our policies, invest in green infrastructure, and place smallholder farmers and traders, especially women and youth, at the centre of a thriving regional economy.
Let us choose the path that leads from border chaos to a unified, agroecological future.
The article was published by Dr. Million Belay, General Coordinator Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa.