Trade within the East African Community bloc dropped by 5.5% in 2020 to reach Kshs. 649 billion ($5.9 billion) due to the COVID-19 that had a negative impact on trade.
However, exports from the bloc increased 3% year-on-year to Kshs. 1.8 trillion ($16.2 billion.)
Adoption of technology to build enterprise resilience has been touted as the recovery solution for businesses going forward.
The East African Business Council Chief Executive Officer John Kalisa says the private sector and buy East African, build East Africa campaign is central in driving the economic recovery agenda for the EAC bloc.
The pandemic impacted trade performance with EAC imports seeing a decline to Kshs. 396 billion ($3.56 billion) in 2020 from Kshs. 434.5 billion ($3.95 billion) in 2019.
During the first nine months of 2020, Covid had adverse effects on the performance of the Agriculture Sector, with Rwanda and Uganda, suffering from retracted sectoral growth but recovered in the third quarter.
Tanzania and Kenya’s Agriculture Sectors registered positive growth, throughout the Pandemic, however, the growth was below 5% and inconsistent.
The 2020 estimate of food insecurity for the EAC Region, was 2% to 5% higher than the pre-COVID-19 period.
The number of food insecure people in the region increased from 59.3 million to 65.1 million.
In Kenya, food insecure people went from 11.4 million pre-covid to 13.6 million people during the Covid period.
EAC has called for the evaluation and monitoring of policies and plans, putting in place safety nets, elimination of trade restrictions, trade facilitation for food diversification and increasing production capacities and integration of regional value chains.
Source: KBC