By 2016, TMEA would like to see a 10% increase in the total value of exports from the EAC region.

TMEA which is funded by a range of development agencies with the aim of growing prosperity in East Africa, also wants to see a 25% increase in intra-region trade exports when compared to total exports in the region.

Other targets include a 15% reduction in average time to export and import a container from Mombasa or Dar es salaam to Burundi and Rwanda, and a 30% decrease in the average time a truck takes to cross selected borders.

While there exits clear lines of sight from the results of TMEA’s programs, it is becoming more urgent to establish links between the impacts of the TMEA-supported programmes to the general improvement of the welfare of the East African citizens, particularly the poor.

TMEA’s methodology quantifies how pre-poor the TMEA interventions are, and measures the attributes their outcomes towards poverty alleviation in East Africa. 

This in turn identifies the gap in the programmes. The intention is not only to prove that TMEA-supported programmes are pro-poor, but where necessary to improve the programmes to ensure that they are becoming increasingly pro poor as much as possible.

A three-pronged approach has been adopted to address the pro-poor issues

1. A concept note has been developed to guide TME’s approach on specific and urgent research questions applicable across the TMEA portfolio. The initial pieces arising from the two studies focusing on the issue of one stop border posts on the poor and on the women cross border traders. Also, a methodological approach towards main streaming the poverty issue is being developed from the concept note, with the first step being a proposed toolkit already used to enrich a number of terms of references and baseline studies.

2. An internal desk review was undertaken by TMEA staff validating the organization’s theory of change against the poverty issue. Other studies are planned as part of the external joint evaluation plan.

3. An annual symposium is planned, with a call for papers to gather external knowledge on the poverty issue, based loosely around the research question in the above concept note.

The analytical framework for the poverty is loosely based on confirming that programmes benefits eventually trickle down on the poorest of the poor and that all short term and medium term risks to the poor mitigated within the program acuities to the greatest extent. TMEA is focusing on becoming increasingly pro-poor in its project activities.

TMEA leading investors are the Belgian Development Cooperation; Foreign Affairs, trade and Development Canada, DANIDA, the Finland Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Netherland Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Swedish Development Assistance, UKaid and USAID.