COMESA develops mobile app for traders
By BUSINESS REPORTER THE Common Market for Eastern and Sothern Africa (COMESA) has developed a mobile application for cross border traders to exchange information on regional trade and integration.
COMESA secretary general Sindiso Ngwenya said the decision to develop the mobile application for traders was made be- cause most cross border traders use mobile phones to exchange information.
Mr Ngwenya was speaking during the launch of the Great Lakes Trade
Facilitation Project (GLTFP) website at the Comesa headquarters in Lusaka on Wednesday.
The website was developed and launched with the support of the World Bank which also provided a loan to the International Development Association for infrastructure efficiency in participating countries.
“As Comesa, we have developed a mobile application for cross border traders. We created the mobile application after realising that cross border traders don’t visit websites,” he said.
He said as the website was getting fully implemented, Comesa had to look at other applications like whatsApp because information nowadays was shared through such mobile applications.
Mr Ngwenya said the launch of the GLTFP website was a historic moment for COMESA and urged experts to replicate the project in other countries.
“It is yet another historic day for Comesa, and I would urge our experts, as soon as possible that the project is expanded to include more countries,” he said.
And GLTFP coordinator Thomas Barasa said the main objective of the project was to reduce the cost of doing business and improve capacity by building border infrastructure and improving the capacity of border officials to facilitate trade.
The project is being implemented in three countries – in the
Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda in the first phase while in the second phase, which is under planning, it shall include
Tanzania, Burundi and Zambia.
“So far, we have taken a couple of things, we are at the moment developing a project communications strategy and engaged a company to develop materials for training of trainers,” he said.