Uganda Moves Closer to Opening Horn of Africa Borders Under New IGAD Mobility Pact
A quiet but significant shift is taking shape in East Africa. Uganda's Ministry of Foreign Affairs is putting the final touches to a draft document on the IGAD Protocol on Free Movement of Persons, which will soon land on the desk of Cabinet. For the travel trade across the continent, this is more than a bureaucratic milestone. It signals that the map of movement in the Horn of Africa may look very different within a few short years.
The draft follows a five-day technical workshop held in Entebbe, where government officials and partners refreshed Uganda's Migration Regulatory Impact Assessment. This assessment is the homework a country must complete before it formally ratifies a treaty. It weighs the gains against the risks and gives decision-makers hard evidence rather than good intentions. Uganda signed the protocol on 14 May 2024 together with fellow IGAD member states, and the national approval process has been moving steadily ever since.
Solomon Kasasira, an IGAD desk officer in the ministry's Department of Regional Peace and Security, explained that the exercise looked closely at both the advantages for Uganda and the areas where the country had registered reservations. The resulting document sets out, in plain terms, what Ugandans stand to gain. Consultations involved the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development, the Immigration Department, the Office of the President, the Solicitor General, Interpol and the Uganda Police Force, among others. That breadth tells its own story: free movement touches security, labour, law and commerce all at once.
The commercial logic is compelling. Kasasira pointed to Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Djibouti as markets and gateways that easier mobility could unlock for Ugandan traders. Crucially, he raised the prospect of alternative export routes for agricultural goods, reducing the country's heavy dependence on the Port of Mombasa. Any agent who has watched a corridor closure disrupt supply chains and client itineraries will understand why a second door matters.
Speaking for IGAD, migration expert Agnes Igoye praised Uganda for assembling a technical team to interrogate the protocol properly. "This process goes beyond a technical exercise. It's an important step towards ensuring that decisions on ratification are informed by credible evidence," she said. Ephrem Getnet, chief technical adviser for free movement of persons and transhumance in the IGAD region, confirmed that the assessment and the Cabinet memorandum had both been updated, calling the work a significant milestone. He added that the International Labour Organization and the IGAD Secretariat would remain on hand to support wider national consultations, and he cautioned that ratification is a beginning rather than an ending. Implementation planning, he noted, will demand sustained attention.
IGAD unites eight countries: Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda. Taken together, they represent a vast corridor of trade, labour migration and, increasingly, leisure and business travel. A functioning framework for movement across this bloc would influence employment patterns, service delivery and cross-border cooperation in ways that ripple directly into the travel economy.
Honesty about the timeline is important. The protocol must still clear Cabinet and the full ratification procedure. Real benefits will depend on entry into force, domestic implementation measures and genuine cooperation between member states. Africa has seen ambitious mobility agreements signed with fanfare and then stall at the border post.
Yet the direction of travel is clear, and professionals who plan ahead will be best placed. Easier movement across the Horn means simpler multi-country itineraries, fresh demand for regional air links, new corporate travel flows following trade, and growing appetite for visa advisory expertise. Agencies that begin building relationships in Addis Ababa, Djibouti City and Juba now may find themselves selling routes that barely exist today. The borders of tomorrow's East African product are being drawn in meeting rooms like the one in Entebbe.
