Like every other economic sector, the Northern Corridor received its fair share of challenges brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, with cross-border transit transport and trade almost grinding to a halt. The pandemic posed unprecedented questions as to how to facilitate the movement of goods while ensuring safety and preventing international transmission of the disease. Lack of harmonised mechanisms to respond to the challenges posed an even greater challenge.

The COVID-19 pandemic unexpectedly hit world economies at the beginning of the year, disrupting various economic sectors. Its impact on transit trade across the Tripartite region has been monumental. It is the disruptive happenings like COVID-19 that bring the efficiency of the transport corridors into sharp focus and highlight their level of resilience to disruptions.

The 41st meeting of the COMESA Council of Ministers conducted via Video Conferencing from 26th to 27th November 2020 directed speedy digitalisation of trade instruments which include electronic trade (e-trade), e-logistics and e-legislation under the COMESA Digital Free Trade Area initiative. The Council urged Member States to enhance investments in internet infrastructure and penetration to promote online supply of services and reduce costs of communication-mobile, internet and financial services to increase/expand the benefits of digital technology.

The Northern Corridor Transit and Transport Coordination Authority (NCTTCA), in collaboration with TradeMark East Africa (TMEA), is upgrading the Northern Corridor Transport Observatory toolkit to improve the efficiency in reporting. The expanded toolkit will include a data collection tool running on mobile devices and a data warehouse consisting of data storage and extract, transform, load (ETL) to blend data from multiple sources and a database for processed data.

According to the findings of the inspection of private facilities similar to the Roadside Stations (RSS) designs by a multi-agency team involving Public and Private sector Stakeholders in Kenya, most existing and ongoing projects for parking facilities along the Northern Corridor are either under private sector initiatives or County Governments.