Streamlining Small-Scale Trade: How Ethiopia and Kenya are Promoting Cross-Border Trade at Moyale
In the bustling border community of Moyale, a town between Ethiopia and Kenya, it’s common to see the daily dealings of a marketplace as small-scale traders barter, negotiate and finally exchange goods to ensure that products make it from one side of Moyale to the other. Moyale stands as one of the main livestock trading hubs across the Ethiopia-Kenya border, with other goods being vegetables, cereals and items like cloth and shoes.
Driven by small-scale traders, many of whom are women, small-scale cross-border trade (SSCBT) accounts for an estimated 40 per cent of regional trade. Despite the recognized value of SSCBT, this sector often operates informally, facing numerous barriers such as high trade costs, corruption and limited market access. These challenges were exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic, underscoring the need for focused support on SSCBT.
Part of this effort is an IOM Development Fund project, aimed at enhancing cross-border coordination and community engagement to remove barriers and facilitate small-scale trade. Initiated in January 2023 and set to conclude in December 2024, the project is designed to support the implementation of a Simplified Trade Regime (STR), that remains under discussion between Ethiopian and Kenyan governments. Once finalized, the STR would reduce tariffs for certain products at Moyale, enhancing SSCBT flows between the two countries.
Implemented by IOM Ethiopia and IOM Kenya, the project plays a key role in bringing together stakeholders from both countries, in addition to local border communities to ensure that challenges faced by small-scale traders are addressed.
“The overall objective of the programme is to identify challenges faced by small-scale border traders and their associations, improve the security situation, and increase the income of the traders to increase the flow of regular border trade in the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA).”
Lechissa Jifara, Expert from Ethiopia’s Ministry of Trade and Regional Integration (MoTRI)
Kenya and Ethiopia are both COMESA members, a regional economic community in Africa with 21 member states, stretching from Tunisia to Eswatini. Moyale sits at a critical junction along this key trade and mobility corridor in Africa.
He went on to say that the project is also working to improve institutional capacity and to facilitate small-scale cross-border trade between countries by improving information sharing and providing a better information exchange and monitoring system for participating traders, which would in turn raise government income. To do so, the project is establishing community dialogue platforms to allow for open discussion between traders and relevant government agencies.
“The initiative’s main goals are to address policy and governance reforms and strengthen institutional capacity to accomplish various key goals,” said Abibatou Wane-Fall, Chief of Mission for IOM Ethiopia. “It also strives to boost cross-border cooperation between Kenya and Ethiopia to foster trade and human mobility, with an emphasis on involving border communities in the process,” she added.
Additionally, the project is hoping to lessen corruption and harassment, paying special attention to the way that the Moyale One-Stop Border Post (OSBP) disproportionately affects women and other vulnerable groups.
Gender-sensitive border management was an important point of emphasis during a workshop for government officials in September 2023. During the three-day workshop, more than 30 participants engaged in specific training on addressing harassment and sexual exploitation at the border and identifying gender-specific challenges related to corruption. Outside of capacity development, the initiative will also establish a reporting and redress mechanism for small-scale traders to report instances of corruption, harassment, or abuse.
By means of these endeavours, the project hopes to establish a more effective and comprehensive cross-border environment that facilitates trade and human movement while attending to the requirements of the vulnerable.
