Welcome to the Sauti Newsletter!

Welcome to the Sauti Newsletter!

Sauti, meaning voice in Swahili, is a mobile-based trade information and social accountability platform for SMEs engaged in cross-border trade in the East African Community. We want to secure economic justice for traders by empowering them with information on trade procedures, documentation and taxes and enabling them to rate their border experience and report any incidents of corruption and harassment. Through the generous support of the D-Prize Challenge and the London School of Economics, we are now piloting our platform at the Busia and Malaba border crossings, with the goal of servicing the whole East African Community within 2 years.

The purpose of this […]

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What Challenges do Traders Face when Crossing Borders?

What Challenges do Traders Face when Crossing Borders?

Meet Wilkister, she is a cross-border trader in the town of Busia. A single mother of two children, Wilkister travels by foot across to Kenya to bring back potatoes and mangoes, which she sells at a local market on the Ugandan side. In her daily trading Wilkister faces a myriad of uncertainties. On good days she will pass through the official border post in 30 minutes, and pay only a small amount of VAT and local municipality taxes, as her Simplified Certificate of Origin (SCOO) will exempt her from tariffs on goods produced in the EAC.

On a bad day, she […]

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