Summary

  • The EAC says Partner States reviewed and updated baseline data in the strategy monitoring tool at a regional meeting in Dar es Salaam on 13–15 October 2026, drawing on national-platform recommendations from September and October. The 16 October announcement gives no new values or definitions.
  • The 2022 strategy already divides the measurement chain among national statistical bureaux, programme units and focal points, an EAC programme unit, and a regional platform that reviews progress quarterly. The next test is public comparability.

The baseline is a governance instrument

The East African Community’s October announcement describes a small but consequential step. Delegates met in Dar es Salaam from 13 to 15 October to review implementation of the regional e-commerce strategy. A major agenda item was the strategy’s monitoring and evaluation tool. Partner States reviewed and updated baseline data, drawing on recommendations from national e-commerce engagement platforms held between September and October. The EAC says the process is intended to improve data availability and quality for tracking implementation and informing policy.

That is a process update, not a result sheet. The announcement publishes no revised baseline values, country table, indicator definitions, source dates, or revisions to the method. It does not say which recommendations changed the tool, or whether every Partner State supplied comparable observations. A refreshed baseline is useful only if a later reader can tell what changed and why.

The strategy adopted on 12 July 2022 anticipated the challenge. Its proposed indicators include the share of people, households and businesses using e-commerce, broken down by age, gender and income; the share of purchases paid electronically rather than cash on delivery; the proportion of firms selling or taking orders online by business size; e-commerce’s share of business turnover; and the proportion of e-commerce between Partner States.

Those measures answer different questions. An account or an online order does not show how many purchases were completed. An electronic payment is not the same as cash paid when goods arrive. A business that accepts an online order may not complete delivery across a border. And a rise in total intra-EAC trade does not establish that more trade was initiated, ordered or paid for online.

The EAC project manager cited growth in intra-EAC trade from US$1.6 billion in 2005 to US$19.65 billion in 2025. That figure describes trade broadly, not an e-commerce series. Presenting it as proof of online-market growth would collapse distinctions the strategy’s indicators are meant to preserve.

Who owns each link

The 2022 strategy assigns responsibilities across two levels. National statistical bureaux are to capture e-commerce and regional-trade statistics. National programme-management units collect indicators and report through state focal points. At regional level, an EAC programme unit monitors national and regional implementation, captures key performance indicators and reports to the responsible structures. The regional engagement platform is meant to review progress quarterly.

This architecture can locate a stalled measure. A missing country series may reflect inconsistent definitions, limited capacity at the source agency, weak coordination between ministries, or the absence of cross-border transaction data. Without a named owner and reporting date, each problem looks alike in a regional dashboard. With them, leaders can distinguish a policy failure from a measurement failure and assign the next action.

National platforms add valuable practical knowledge. Businesses, logistics providers, postal operators, payment firms and public agencies see different parts of a transaction. Their recommendations can expose a cost, dispute or delivery stage that aggregate statistics miss. But consultation cannot substitute for the denominator, collection method or institutional sign-off behind a baseline. Participation can improve a measure; it cannot alone prove regional progress.

This distinction keeps the meeting in proportion. The EAC says Partner States reviewed and updated baseline data; it does not say they adopted new laws, harmonised all consumer-protection frameworks or put online dispute resolution into operation. Those are priorities for regional action, not completed results. The announcement also mentions preparedness for the AfCFTA Protocol on Digital Trade; it does not establish that the protocol is in force in every Partner State or has been implemented domestically.

What a comparable release should contain

Each indicator should carry a stable definition, numerator and denominator, reference period, source institution and responsible reporting unit. The table should show country coverage and missing observations, distinguish counts from rates and estimates, and preserve earlier versions when definitions change. A regional total should link to country components rather than conceal them.

The strategy’s own indicator design makes this concrete. Usage by age, gender and income requires a survey or administrative source that captures those groups. Comparing firms by size requires compatible classifications. Cross-border e-commerce needs a rule for identifying buyer, seller and transaction route. If the tool uses a proxy, it should label the proxy instead of presenting it as direct measurement.

The strongest signal of progress would not be a larger dashboard. It would be a traceable sequence: national source, documented definition, comparable baseline, updated observation, explanation of the change, and an action assigned to the institution with authority to deliver it. A strategy can coordinate many agencies, but it cannot make their evidence comparable by declaration.

The public record supports a narrower conclusion today. The EAC put baseline quality back on the regional agenda and gathered national-platform recommendations. Whether that improves implementation depends on what the tool now measures, which countries it covers, who validates the figures and whether the resulting table is published for scrutiny. The next reporting cycle can answer those questions.

Sources