Stories

Afro Ark of Rwanda & Resilience Organization of South Sudan Afro Ark of Rwanda and the Resilience Organization of South Sudan have jointly developed a digital platform called ‘Buy East Africa’. This platform, supported by the East African Community and GIZ through the Incubator for Integration and Development in East Africa (IIDEA), is an e-Commerce platform, connecting women and youth entrepreneurs in agribusiness between Rwanda and S...

Lyfplus Limited Poor accessibility to healthcare among EAC cross-border truckers, traders and border resident populations are a result of their remote residency and work settings and exposes them to great medical risks. This in-turn increases the risk of cross border transmission of diseases and epidemics across East Africa, affecting integration efforts and cross-border trade. Supported by German Development Cooperation through the EAC-GIZ In...

Improved Local Booking System for Small and Medium Tour Operators Tourism can make a considerable contribution to East Africa's regional economic development. It can channel vast amounts of income into the local economies across East Africa. However, increasing destination competition, pre-leakages and the lack of SME tour operators’ regional capacity limits the multiplier effects and reduces the sector’s positive economic impact and devel...

A Project by Kigezi Biota Tours A considerable number of women in East Africa have studied tourism and undergone training in tourist guiding through associations, institutions and tour companies. However, only very few of them are actually practicing the tourist guiding profession. According to the Uganda Tourism Board, 47 out of the 578 registered tourist guides in Uganda are women, which is equal to 8.1% of all tour guides. This figure so...

Eastern African Sub-Regional Support Initiative for the Advancement of Women (EASSI) The Eastern African Sub-Regional Support Initiative for the Advancement of Women (EASSI), with support from GIZ-EAC IIDEA, has started a new six-month project on ‘Positioning Women Cross Border Traders to Seize Opportunities in The East African Community and Africa Continental Free Trade Area.’ The project’s two main objectives are to enhance particip...

Bird Uganda Safaris Nimule-Elegu Project Tourism is the fastest growing foreign exchange earner globally and employs a substantial number of youths. However, there remains a big gap between men and women working in this industry – tourism is still a vastly male-dominated domain. The Nimule-Elegu Project” under the Intra-Regional Trade Facility (IRTF) wants to counterbalance this trend by training women bird watching guides to increase t...

Advanced Smart Solutions Limited (ASSL) ‘In Kenya as well as in other East African countries, small clinics, pharmacies, and drug shops provide over 70% of Primary Health Care. Still, pharmacies lack an easy-to use tool that allows them to understand sales, margins, and stock-levels. This lack of basic business and logistical insights can lead to stockouts of essential medicines and limits their ability to generate information needed to acce...

The project intends to increase the income and improve the livelihood of 2,000 youth and women along the bee keeping value chain. It develops measures to improve the quality of honey, increase the production capacity of local beekeepers and links the beekeepers to reliable markets in the EAC through a contract model. The project provides technical training on beekeeping combined with business training. Modern bee keeping equipment is provided ...

The latest batch of IIDEA projects is now in full swing realising the great ideas they developed to show the benefits of East African Integration to the citizens of East Africa. See their various approaches, for example in beekeeping, setting up an e-commerce platform for East African Goods, enabling women cross-border trader to seize the opportunities provided by the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), supporting female tour guides ...

At the beginning of 2021, the Incubator for Integration and Development in East Africa (IIDEA) and the Intra-Regional Trade Facility (IRTF) invited private sector and civil society organisations in the East African Community Partner States to submit innovative ideas for small-scale projects. IIDEA concentrated on the areas of digitalisation/ICT, health and stakeholder engagement on the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). IRTF invited pro...