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Across East Africa, consumers are increasingly choosing foods grown without synthetic chemicals, valuing produce that protects soil health, biodiversity, and local farming traditions.
This shift—fuelled by rising health awareness, nutrition education, and farmer-led advocacy—has placed agroecological products at the center of conversations about sustainable food systems.
Yet while demand is growing, the region’s policy and trade architecture has not kept pace. The East African Community (EAC), which remains the region’s most influential trade bloc, envisions deeper regional integration with seamless movement of goods, predictable rules, and a fair marketplace for all.
Under both the EAC Treaty and the Customs Union Protocol, Partner States committed to harmonizing sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) measures and technical regulations. Article 108(c) and Article 38(1C) clearly direct governments to align these systems to ease intra-regional trade.
But in practice, agroecological traders experience something different. Phytosanitary thresholds vary widely, laboratory accreditations are uneven, border officers apply different documentation rules, and inspections remain unpredictable.
A consignment accepted in one country may be delayed— or rejected—in another. For smallholders already operating on thin margins, such unpredictability is a structural barrier.
Rising NTBs Amid Regional Integration
One of the biggest persistent obstacles remains non-tariff barriers (NTBs). Although tariffs were largely eliminated under the EAC Customs Union, NTBs are rising sharply.
According to the June 2025 EAC Sectoral Council of Ministers reports, the number of NTBs in the region jumped from 10 in November 2024 to forty-eight by May 2025. These include discriminatory taxes, procedural delays, and inconsistent regulations that collectively choke trade flows.
A recent study by the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) warns that unless deliberate efforts integrate agroecological entrepreneurs into regional markets, trade within the EAC—and even the broader AfCFTA—will continue to be dominated by large industrial traders.
This imbalance carries environmental and social costs that contradict the region’s sustainability goals. Addressing dignitaries during a regional conference on advancing agroecological trade in Jinja City last month, Beatrice Pamela Onyango, Assistant Director of Trade Policy and Strategies at Kenya’s State Department for Trade, committed to building the capacity of traders while disseminating information on the significance of trading agroecological products.
“We shall support aggregation of market’s specific interests in promoting Agro-ecological zoning,” she said.
Efforts to reduce trade costs have made some impact. More than 15 One-Stop Border Posts (OSBPs) have cut average border crossing times by 70 per cent and saved the region more than $63 million annually.
Yet even these gains are undermined when regulations remain patchy, the Simplified Trade Regime (STR) is inconsistently applied, or traders revert to informal channels because formal systems remain unpredictable.
EXPERTS PUSH VALUE ADDITION OVER PRIMARY EXPORTS
Aiman Ahmed Omar, a digital trade specialist at Trade Policy Training Centre in Africa (TRAPCA), argues that the region must shift from trading low-value, unprocessed goods toward shared agro-industrial value chains that benefit all EAC member states.
“We are not going to eliminate Non-Tariff Barriers (NTBs) because we are producing similar products. Instead, we must look at the bigger picture and focus on creating opportunities for value addition,” she said.
By strengthening regional value chains, governments can help smallholder farmers capture more value, reduce post-harvest risks, and escape competition that relies solely on volume.
Naume Kalinaki, Programmes Officer–Enterprise and Livelihoods Development at Eastern and Southern Africa Small-Scale Farmers Forum (ESAFF Uganda), reinforces this direction, stressing that value addition improves quality, safety, and market appeal of agroecological products while increasing their competitiveness and alignment with regional standards.
“Through processing, packaging, grading, and certification, farmers and traders in Uganda can reduce post-harvest losses and meet the demands of regional markets, hence strengthening their bargaining power and lessen the risks of trading raw produce,” she says.
On the ground, however, traders— especially marginalized groups, continue to grapple with knowledge gaps and inconsistent enforcement. Interviewed for this publication, Zira Babu, youth representative of the Busia Women Cross-Border Cooperative at the Uganda–Kenya border, noted that severe information gaps lock many traders out of formal cross-border markets, particularly those dealing in agroecological products, saying many small-scale traders do not utilize services issues by Trade Desk Information Officers (TIDOs), because they do not know that they even exist.
“Most traders lack knowledge about their rights and trade procedures, which exposes them to non-tariff barriers and potential exploitation,” she explained.
“Some border agencies themselves struggle to interpret existing trade policies, creating additional obstacles for traders.”
These policy misalignments and information blind spots disproportionately affect women and youth, who often operate on smaller scales and deal with perishable goods. Without proper recognition, many are denied access to trade finance, market information, training on cross-border regulations, and other essential supports.
Real change will require political will. Current EAC policy frameworks do not explicitly mention agroecology, and many trade instruments remain biased toward conventional industrial production.
Without deliberate intervention, smallholder agroecological producers will continue to be invisible within the system, undermining the potential of agroecology to advance sustainability, food sovereignty, and shared prosperity.
The region needs concrete reforms that create trade systems reflecting, and rewarding the ecological stewardship of smallholder farmers. When policy finally sees and supports them, the benefits ripple outward, strengthening communities, ecosystems, and regional identities.
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