A unified Kenya-Uganda market would create a combined economy of over 100 million people with a GDP exceeding Sh19.4 trillion.
If Kenya and Uganda announced tomorrow that they would eliminate their border within five years, it would transform the continent.
President Yoweri Museveni’s recent comparison of East Africa to a multi-storey building, where only the ground floor residents claim ownership of the compound, sparked predictable outrage. He argued that it is madness to say the compound belongs only to the flats on the ground floor. While his son Muhoozi Kainerugaba’s periodic Twitter threats to invade Nairobi make for good political theatre, we must not let the messenger distract us from the message. The underlying grievance deserves serious consideration because it points to a radical truth: both Kenya and Uganda would be economically superior without the border between them.
Let us start with the numbers that matter. Kenya-Uganda bilateral trade is now worth well over Sh160 billion a year, with Uganda firmly established as Kenya’s largest export market in Africa, absorbing about Sh125.9 billion in Kenyan goods in 2024. In the other direction, Uganda ships roughly Sh80 billion worth of goods to Kenya, mostly agro-processed products such as milk, sugar and cereals, along with cement and iron and steel products.
