WTO Trade Facilitation Adoption Challenges in East African Trade Region during COVID-19 Crisis

The emergence of COVID-19 crippled global trade, exacerbating supply and demand chain shocks. As COVID-19 was unanticipated, policymakers in East Africa resorted to numerous trial-and-error methods to stabilize their economies, as they lacked predetermined trade policies for times of crisis. The high number of trade notifications to the World Trade Organization demonstrates East Africa’s numerous trial-and-error approaches to (WTO). Before COVID-19, developing and developed nations complained to the WTO about excessive cross-border bureaucracy. The WTO drafted the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA) to address this problem. Full implementation of the Trade Facilitation Agreement is projected to reduce African trade costs by 14.3%. The study focuses on the five East African region nations; Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, and Rwanda. The study employed an empiricist methodology with a constructivist ontology, which asserts that social actors shape social phenomena and their meanings. This study examines trade facilitation adaptation obstacles in the policymaking environment that impede or stall TFA adaptation and execution in East Africa during COVID-19. During COVID-19, many challenges hindered the WTO trade facilitation agreement adaptation; the biggest challenge is the “policy implementation gap” that prevents trade facilitation policies from taking root. The positive aspect of the lessons learned from COVID-19’s challenges is the increased urgency with which East Africa has adopted the WTO trade facilitation agreement, which has facilitated the cross-border movement of goods and services, with the most effective facilitation in East Africa being the “One Stop border post” in Namanga, Kenya-Tanzania.