Client: Trade Mark East Africa (TMEA)
Contract timeline: November 2020 – January 2021
Objective:
The assessment is aimed to critically assess the impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Rwanda’s informal cross border trade (ICBT) and to generate feasible recovery strategies and proposals to revamp the sector.
Scope of the assignment:
- Establish the present status of informal cross border trade operations across the country`s borders, including the various ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic has affected informal cross border trade in Rwanda;
- Assess the impact of COVID-19 on Informal Cross Border Trade flows (“before and after” COVID-19 trends in values and volumes) and sectors and products which have heavily affected by COVID-19 with emphasis on the major cross border trade areas such as Rusizi 1, Rusizi 2, Bugarama (kamanyola) , Rubavu, Cyanika, Rusumo and Kagitumba;
- Examine how the antiCOVID-19 measures undertaken by the Government have helped to contain the spread of the pandemic but at the same time affected economic activities, incomes, and livelihoods of the informal cross border traders;
- Identify and analyse the number of cross border traders including cooperatives affected by the COVID-19, disaggregated by gender and assess the effect of COVID-19 on each category.
- Examine the effectiveness of some of the innovations, elements, and new ways in which ICBT is currently conducted amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Establish the coping mechanisms which have been adopted by the ICBTs and their households in view of diminished/lost income from ICBT due to COVID-19;
- Identify and assess the effectiveness of measures and trade facilitation tools which have been put in place after the advent of COVID-19 to help in revamping and building resilience for cross border traders.
- Identify major gaps in the current response and the priority needs for effective mitigation of the impact of Covid-19 among the border communities in the informal cross border trade (ICBT) sector;
- Generate feasible and sustainable recovery strategies, trade facilitation interventions and approaches for rebooting the informal cross border trade sector.