Abstract:
Despite the existence of formal trade, the phenomenon of informal trade, between
the border people, continues to be dominant. Based on the theory of economic
integration, we examined the drivers for this informal trade. Using
interdisciplinary approach, we look at the resilience of border traders, the history
and economies of scale behind such trade and how traders straddle formal and
informal trade. Economic integration is the unification of economic policies
between different states, through the partial or full abolition of tariff and non-
tariff restrictions on trade. In the Malabo Declaration of June 2014, African
countries committed themselves tripling the level of intra-African agricultural
trade and service by 2025, fast-tracking the African Continental Free Trade Area
and adopting Common External Tariff (CET) on external goods (Bouet, Pace and
Glauber, 2018). Bashir Saad Ibrahim (2018) has examined the challenges and
prospects of cross-border trade in West Africa. between Nigeria and Niger and he
proposes viable solutions on how to improve cross border trade between the two
nations and Africa in general, a study which is germane to our own analysis of the
drivers to trade between Kenya and Ugandan borders.