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Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Empowering Border Communities through Modernization of Locally Shared Markets

This week experts from the EAC Partner States are meeting in Kagali Rwanda to develop a project for empowering border communities through modernization of locally shared border markets. The concept includes development and modernizing a border market in such a manner that communities of both borders will utilize the facilities.


The Border Market is expected to position border communities to benefit more from the EAC regional integration. Under the locally shared border markets, Government of EAC Partner States will ensure that the markets are modernised and relevant infrastructure is established. Interventions will also include enhancement of the capacity of the producers and traders along the value chains of the products traded across the borders.

Some of the players expected to directly utilize the markets are; border institutions, cross border traders, communities living at the borders, providers of business support services such as hotels and banks,  investors in storage and warehousing services, value addition processors and investors in social development services such as schools, health centers and recreation facilities, among others.

It is hoped that once the border market program is successfully implemented, it will transform communities living into meaning players in the regional economy. The border markets will also enhance intra-regional trade and reduce on the problem of foreign traders who penetrate and get deeper inland into a Partner State thereby disadvantaging the locals involved in the middle value chain of exports.


The borders which are expected to become mini-cities will also create employment opportunities which in-turn will reduce the problem of rural-urban migration by redirecting the labor force from the main cities of the Partner States to the borders.
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