East Africa: Regulations Needed to Strengthen E-Commerce
By Ben Omondi
Nairobi, Kenya---Experts are calling on East African Community (EAC) governments to develop standards and regulations that will help create an enabling environment that supports the growth of electronic commerce (e-commerce) in the region.
The experts were speaking at the recently concluded e-commerce conference organized by the Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA) Kenya chapter, which brought together key stakeholders - including banks, mobile operators and regulators – to discuss the underlying threats and opportunities for e-commerce in East Africa.
Kenya’s Information and Communications Permanent Secretary Dr Bitange Ndemo said that the Kenya government had put in place the necessary infrastructure to spur the growth of e-commerce and was looking into relevant regulatory frameworks in consultation with other regional governments.
“The growth of mobile banking and intense competition in the banking industry in Kenya and East Africa at large has created a growing need to ensure systems are reined in by controls that meet business objectives. As a government, we are prepared to fully embrace e-commerce and benefit from it to help create employment and reduce poverty among our youth,” said Dr. Ndemo.
Dr. Ndemo noted that even though e-commerce can provide many benefits, there are many potential issues arising from its use like data integrity and security as well as moral issues.
East African Community’s deputy secretary general for productive and social sectors, Jean Claude Nsengiyumva said the EAC’s regional integration framework had succeeded in promoting free trade of goods and services through the Customs Union and Common Market Protocols.
“The Conference is in line with the second pillar of the East African Community Integration Process, namely the Common Market which was adopted by the Heads of States in November 2009 and came into effect from July 1 2010. East Africans are going to enjoy progressively free movement of goods, persons, labour, capital, services and a right of establishment and residence across the region under the EAC Common Market,” said Nsengiyumva.
He said that in order to facilitate the movement of capital and services in the financial sector, a number of reforms are necessary on the policy side as well legal and regulatory environment fronts, adding that the EAC through the Monetary Affairs Committee (MAC), composed of the 5 EAC Central Bank governors had made progress in addressing some of these challenges.
One case in point, he noted, is the on-going project to establish the East African Payment System (EAPS) which will link the Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) systems of the 5 EAC partner states, thereby drastically reducing the time for processing cross border payments which are currently not only costly but also take not less than 21 days.
ISACA Kenya chapter chair Roy Akalah noted that the ratification of the East Africa Common Market protocol had created enormous opportunity for the growth of e-commerce in the region.
“It is for these reasons that ISACA Kenya has convened a two day regional conference bringing together industry professionals and regulators to chart the way forward especially on the strengthening of the policy and regulatory framework on e-commerce which will support continued growth and expansion of trade and business within the region,” said Akalah.
“Unlike developed economies, these technologies are actually leapfrogging older technologies and creating challenges unseen elsewhere in the world and therefore proper regulatory framework is necessary to help check on any adverse effect of the adoption of such technologies in trade,” he said.