Browsing: kenya tanzania relations

• Tanzanian traders afraid to go to Kenya fearing potential attacks.
• Fears sparked by recent cases of abduction, torture and deportation visited on Kenyan activists by authorities in Tanzania.
• President William Ruto apologized to Tanzania. 

Following the torture, inhumane treatment and deportation visited on Kenyan and Ugandan activists in Tanzania recently, a number of cross-border traders in Tanzania are afraid to go to Kenya fearing potential attacks. In an exclusive interview with The Exchange, several Tanzanian business persons, mostly women, have expressed their concerns over potential attacks on Tanzanians.

“I usually go to Nairobi every week to collect goods for my shop, but I am now afraid to go,” laments a business woman in Arusha (name withheld). The trader deals in second hand clothes and kitchenware, which she buys in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, for resale in Arusha, Tanzania.

She is one of several traders interviewed by this paper, who …

The improved trade relations come a year after Kenya and Tanzania agreed to eliminate barriers.

In March 2021, the two countries said several barriers were hindering the smooth flow of trade and people and agreed to form better relations.

As reported by The Exchange Africa, at the time, President Uhuru Kenyatta and Tanzania Head of State Samia Suluhu Hassan announced new measures to facilitate trade.

Among them was establishing a joint team of experts to address the disjointed enforcement of cross-border Covid-19 containment protocols, one of the most pronounced non-tariff trade barriers between the two nations.…