By Diana N. Kintu
KAMPALA: A customer places an order through WhatsApp. The seller has the clothes in stock and is ready to dispatch them. But the buyer is in another African country, and completing the sale means navigating payment systems, customs requirements and delivery costs.
For a small business, finding a customer can be only the beginning. Uganda wants to help address these barriers as African countries work towards a more integrated digital market, where businesses can sell across borders through clearer rules and better-connected systems.
Speaking at the Uganda Media Centre on 15 October, Minister of Trade, Industry and Cooperatives Sanjay Tanna called for Uganda to take an active role in shaping that market.
“Uganda must help shape the rules and systems that will determine how Africa trades,” he said, referring to the digital economy.
His remarks preceded the KTA Annual Africa Technology and Intellectual Property Symposium (ATIS), scheduled for 22–23 October 2026 at Kampala Marriott Hotel.
The symposium’s theme, “Building Africa’s Digital Single Market: The Role of Government and the Private Sector in Achieving Regional Integration,” places cooperation between policymakers and businesses at the centre of the discussion.
The Ministry sees digital trade as a way for cooperatives to find buyers, manufacturers to reach regional distribution networks and creative entrepreneurs to earn from their intellectual property across borders.
It links these opportunities to its 2025–2030 Strategic Plan and Uganda’s Tenfold Growth Strategy, which targets a US$500 billion economy by 2040. But reaching a wider market requires more than an internet connection.
Tanna identified predictable trade rules, reliable cross-border payments, efficient delivery networks and customs procedures suited to small e-commerce consignments as priorities.
He also called for accessible ways to resolve consumer complaints, responsible handling of personal data and stronger intellectual property protection.
Taxation forms another part of the discussion. The symposium’s programme included consideration of value-added tax (VAT), digital services taxation and customs arrangements. These were areas for examination, rather than reforms already approved.
Kenneth Muhangi, a partner at KTA Advocates and co-convenor of the symposium, said small enterprises with products, customers and ambitions to expand can still struggle to complete transactions across borders.
Payment difficulties, customs procedures and delivery costs can make a promising market too expensive to serve.
He called for businesses to have a stronger voice in developing solutions. “We need government to come to us, invite us into the conversation,” Muhangi said.
According to the programme outlined at the press conference, payment discussions would involve the Bank of Uganda and payment providers, while delivery sessions would draw on perspectives from Posta Uganda, DHL Express Uganda, and Jumia.
The Uganda Revenue Authority and Trademark Africa were scheduled to discuss customs, with Trademark Africa’s Uganda Country Director, Anna Nambooze, set to speak.
Uganda’s Electronic Single Window offers an example of the potential benefits of simpler trade procedures. TradeMark Africa reports that traders using the system saved US$26.4 million in 2021 through reduced clearance time and paperless transactions.
The figure concerns traders using the wider trade facilitation system; it is not a measure of savings by online sellers alone.
The announced programme also included Wamkele Mene, Secretary-General of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Secretariat, and Lacina Koné, Director-General and Chief Executive Officer of Smart Africa.
Their scheduled contributions connected the discussion to wider continental efforts to align trade rules, technology and infrastructure.
The AfCFTA Protocol on Digital Trade is intended to support this integration through common rules, fewer barriers and digital systems that work together across markets.
Organisers identified two proposed symposium outcomes: a memorandum of understanding between African e-commerce associations and a joint policy paper setting out private-sector priorities for an integrated digital market.
Tanna urged participants to make their recommendations specific, identify the institutions responsible for action and establish a clear sequence for implementation and follow-up.
The symposium’s convenors included KTA Advocates, the Centre for Law, Policy and Innovation Initiative, the Uganda Law Society, and the Alliance for Digital Trade, E-Mobility and Couriers Association-Uganda. GIZ’s Pan-African E-Commerce Initiative was among its supporters.
For the trader taking orders through WhatsApp, the value of these discussions will ultimately be measured in everyday transactions: whether payment arrives reliably, a parcel clears customs without avoidable delays, and delivery costs leave room for a profit.
That is where the promise of Africa’s digital single market must prove itself—one completed sale at a time.
Source: Press statement by Sanjay Tanna and remarks by Kenneth Muhangi at the ATIS press conference, Uganda Media Centre, 15 October 2026.