In East Africa, goods were no longer waiting at borders for lack of roads: they were waiting for lack of data. The portfolio evaluation covering 2017-2023 estimates an average decline from 97 to 31 hours since the introduction of ICT4T systems, according to an independent assessment of its digital programs. This 68 percent gain—equivalent to an estimated 6.1 to 9.1 million hours per year—points to a truth that major infrastructure had long obscured: borders cost less to modernize than to circumvent.
The essentials
- In ICT4T systems evaluated in East Africa, the average reported time fell from 97 to 31 hours since the systems’ introduction, according to an independent evaluation whose results are summarized at results.trademarkafrica.com.
- Digital systems and data exchange contributed to measured gains, without fully isolating their effect from that of other interventions.
- Small operators and exporters of perishable goods benefit from these reduced timeframes, though the evaluation notes certain infrastructure and institutional capacity problems in system access.
- The open question is structural: without complementary policies promoting productive transformation, a faster corridor alone does not guarantee greater local value addition.
African corridors blocked at the border
A trade corridor is only as good as its slowest link. In East Africa, that link was not asphalt but the customs office. Until the mid-2010s, trucks could travel hundreds of kilometers of decent road only to come to a standstill for several days at border posts where each administration worked with its own forms, its own databases, its own schedules.
The World Bank, in its 2026 report Integrating Africa: From Threads to Hubs, documents this phenomenon at continental scale. Logistics costs in sub-Saharan Africa represent a much larger share of the final price than they represent in Southeast Asia for comparable distances. The bulk of this gap comes from delays at borders, not from transport itself.
TradeMark Africa, a nonprofit organization specializing in trade facilitation in East and Southern Africa, began addressing this bottleneck through customs automation programs, electronic data sharing between states, and single-window services for operators. The results published on its evaluation platform cover the 2017-2023 period and concern several corridors, notably the Mombasa-Nairobi-Kampala axis, the Dar es Salaam-Lusaka route, and borders between Tanzania, Kenya, and Uganda.
The central figure is this: 97 hours before the introduction of ICT4T systems, 31 hours after. These hours measure the reported time to conduct commercial activities related to the systems being evaluated, including permit, license, and certificate requests and customs procedures. The 66-hour reduction is associated with an estimate of 6.1 to 9.1 million hours per year for the evaluated sample, under usage assumptions.
Interoperability in practice
The technical term masks a simple reality. Before digitalization, a Ugandan exporter shipping cut flowers to Europe via Mombasa had to physically present documents at multiple windows, in multiple offices, sometimes in multiple states. If a document was missing, if a stamp was not affixed in the correct order, the cargo waited. Flowers can wait twelve hours before being worth very little.
TradeMark Africa worked with the administrations of partner countries in the East African Community, notably Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi, to connect their computer systems. Concretely, this means that pre-border declarations can be submitted electronically, that one administration’s checks are visible to neighboring administrations, and that payments can be made without physical visits to a window.
The Integrated Customs Information Management System, used in several countries in the region, allows an operator to submit a single declaration that circulates among the relevant administrations. The OECD, in its 2026 report Corridors, Trade and Local Development in Africa, notes that these shared systems reduce corruption opportunities linked to waiting delays, in addition to reducing delays themselves. Less waiting means fewer moments when a pressured operator agrees to pay to speed things up.
This logic aligns with what is observed in Europe, where lack of railway interoperability long cost more than the lack of high-speed lines, a problem the European Union still finances without having resolved. Physical infrastructure is not enough if the information systems that manage it remain national and incompatible.
Small operators: unequal beneficiaries of a faster system
The 9 million hours saved are an average. They conceal very different realities depending on operator size.
Large export companies, agro-industrial groups, mining companies, multinational logistics operators, already had, before digitalization, professional customs agents capable of managing administrative complexity. For them, the gain is real but marginal in their organization. They benefit from the reduction in delays, but they had found workarounds.
For a small Ugandan farmer exporting green beans to Kenya, or a Rwandan SME importing components from Tanzania, the situation was different. These operators lacked the resources to navigate complex procedures. Many gave up on formal export or went through informal intermediaries who took their cut.
TradeMark Africa developed technical assistance programs for small cross-border operators, notably for border market traders, a predominantly female group that represents a significant share of informal trade in the region. The challenge is to widen access to digital platforms beyond established exporters. This requires sufficient network coverage at border posts, interfaces available in local languages, and training in tool use.
The risk is well known: digitalization that simplifies formal procedures without addressing access barriers can accelerate operators already exporting while leaving out those not yet crossing the border legally. Reduced delays do not automatically redistribute themselves.
Faster corridors to export what?
The improvement of East African corridors raises the same question as the reconfiguration of global supply chains since the 2021-2024 disruptions: does a more efficient corridor benefit all its users, or primarily those already equipped to capitalize on it?
The structure of exports from East African corridors remains largely dominated by raw materials and minimally processed agricultural products. A truck crossing the Kenya-Uganda border in 31 hours instead of 97 often carries the same goods as before. Logistics fluidity facilitates existing exchanges but does not guarantee, without value-chain and production policies, upgrading in global value chains.
The OECD emphasizes in its 2026 report that coordinated regional policies and regional value chains, industrial transformation zones, common regional standards for manufactured products, and intra-regional tariff preferences for processed goods can help increase local value added. Without this support, accelerating a corridor does not guarantee higher local value added.
The challenge is comparable to that facing other emerging economies in their insertion into global value chains: logistics competitiveness is a necessary, not sufficient, condition for upgrading in the international division of labor.
Two trajectories for corridors by 2040
TradeMark Africa’s evaluation documents what was accomplished over 2017-2023. It does not establish quantified conclusions for the entire portfolio beyond this period. Two trajectories distinguish themselves depending on policy choices in the coming years.
In the first, data interoperability gradually extends across all regional corridors and is coupled with coordinated industrial policies between states. Special economic zones along corridors attract transformation activities, food processing, light assembly, textiles. Intra-African trade carries a growing share of manufactured goods rather than raw materials. The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa plays the role of common regulatory framework for this trade. In this scenario, corridors become production networks with value added shared between states: their speed serves a more diversified regional economy.
In the second trajectory, data sharing remains confined to customs formalities. Interoperable systems reduce delays but are not articulated with policies of productive diversification. Investments continue funding the fluidity of raw resource exports rather than the emergence of a regional industry. Corridors become faster, but their economic structure does not transform. This trajectory is more likely if physical infrastructure financing is not conditioned on adoption of interoperable digital systems and if no regional institution is given the explicit mandate to orient corridors toward value-added value chains.
Both trajectories share an identical collective need: ensuring that time and cost gains at borders benefit small operators. The fastest corridors in the world change little if SMEs and cross-border traders lack access to the platforms that make them faster.
The signals to watch to distinguish the two trajectories are precise. First, the share of intra-regional trade involving processed products in corridors equipped with digital systems—if it increases, interoperability is beginning to serve regional production. Second, the number of customs administrations connected to common data-sharing platforms: each new connection expands the system’s scope and increases its value for all users. Finally, conditions imposed by funders on physical infrastructure projects: if road and port financing requires interoperable digital system adoption in return, the dynamic accelerates. If the two components remain separate, corridors will continue advancing at different speeds depending on whether customs has been modernized.
Allocation of 9 million hours saved
TradeMark Africa’s evaluation estimates economic benefits linked to time and cost savings for a subset of projects, with data limitations preventing quantified conclusions for the entire portfolio. For companies that recover them, these are redeployable personnel hours, vehicles that complete an additional trip, perishable cargoes that reach destination instead of being lost.
For customs administrations, digitalization also generates revenue. Several studies conducted on East African corridors have documented increased tax revenue after adoption of electronic declaration systems: less fraud, less evasion, increased traceability. For states with constrained budgets, improved tax compliance determines the capacity to fund public services.
TradeMark Africa worked within a cooperation framework with regional governments, regional organizations, and funders like the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union. This model, outsourced technical assistance coupled with progressive ownership by national administrations, presents a known fragility: it depends on external financing and political will of governments to maintain and evolve systems once projects end.
The sustainability of gains documented between 2017 and 2023 depends on appropriation by host institutions, but also on their financial resources and technical capacities to maintain and upgrade systems. A poorly maintained digital system degrades. An administration with insufficient resources to ensure continuous training in digital procedures risks gradually losing ownership of systems. Documented priorities include consolidation, modernization and sustainability plans suited to existing systems, as well as extending their interconnection to corridors not yet benefiting from it.
The true measure of success will be the nature of goods circulating in these corridors, and the share of their value that remains in the region.
Sources
- TradeMark Africa, evaluated results of trade digital systems: https://results.trademarkafrica.com/
- World Bank, Integrating Africa: From Threads to Hubs, 2026
- OECD, Corridors, Trade and Local Development in Africa, 2026
