The region has proved it can build technology around local needs. The next opportunity is making successful digital models work across borders, writes John Syekei of Bowmans Kenya.
There is abundant evidence of East Africa’s ability to address real economic and social needs through technology. Mobile money has transformed access to financial services, while digital platforms are helping farmers connect to markets and information.
Technology is creating new ways to deliver healthcare and education, while digital channels allow businesses to reach consumers who may be far from traditional branches, stores or service centres.
What these successes have in common is that they are grounded in the realities of the markets they serve. East Africa’s next technology opportunity may depend on taking that same principle beyond individual countries.
For businesses and governments, the next opportunity is to enable successful technologies and business models to travel between countries throughout the region.
The case for regional scale
There is sound logic behind the push to think regionally. East Africa was the leading driver of global growth in monthly active mobile-money accounts in 2024, with mobile money contributing more than 5% to the gross domestic product of Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. In these markets, digital services are already deeply embedded in everyday economic activity.
Regional commerce is also growing: trade within the East African Community (EAC) increased by 28% in 2025, reaching USD 19.3 billion. Yet there is substantial room for deeper economic integration, with intra-EAC trade representing only 12.3% of the bloc’s total trade.
This creates a significant opportunity for technology businesses, financial institutions, retailers, healthcare providers and agribusinesses. A solution developed for one market may have applications across several others, increasing the potential customer base and improving the economics of investment.
Making technology portable, however, involves more than making the product available in another country.
Connecting the regional market
In an encouraging sign, regional institutions are increasingly recognising this opportunity. The EAC is working toward a single digital market supported by initiatives covering connectivity, digital trade, payments, data flows and online services. Recent progress includes a regional cross-border payment system masterplan, work to harmonise electronic transaction rules and a proposed framework for cross-border data flows.
Some of those ambitions are beginning to move into practical testing. Rwanda and Tanzania, for example, are developing a proof of concept linking their national instant-payment systems, with the intention of identifying the technical, legal, operational and governance requirements for cross-border transactions.
These are important developments because infrastructure is no longer only physical. For digital businesses, the ability to move money, transfer data, verify transactions and serve customers across borders can be as important as roads, ports or fibre networks. Greater compatibility between national systems could reduce duplication and make regional expansion commercially
Regional scale, local rules
Regional integration is not the same thing as uniformity. A service may cross a border instantly, but the legal and regulatory obligations surrounding that service do not.
East African markets have their own requirements governing areas such as payments, licensing, consumer protection, data protection, cross-border data transfers, intellectual property, tax and competition. Even where countries share similar policy objectives, the mechanisms for meeting those requirements can differ.
Data is a good example. Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda each regulate cross-border transfers, but the tests, safeguards and approval mechanisms are not identical. The EAC itself has acknowledged that differences between national rules can increase compliance costs and create uncertainty for businesses operating across several jurisdictions.
Clearer and more compatible rules can give companies greater confidence to invest while giving consumers confidence to use new services. Well-designed regulation can therefore become an enabler of regional growth: creating room for innovation while protecting citizens’ rights and maintaining trust in the systems on which increasingly important parts of the economy depend.
For businesses, this means that regional scale must be planned for and designed from the early stages.
Designing for the opportunity
Regional scale requires businesses to consider market, commercial, technological and legal requirements together from the outset.
A payment platform expanding across East Africa will face different considerations from a health technology company handling sensitive patient information. An agribusiness digitising its supply chain will have different requirements from a bank deploying AI or a cloud provider considering where data can be stored and processed.
Technology may be the common thread, but the sector, business model, customers and markets determine what successful deployment looks like. Different disciplines need to be brought around the same opportunity from the outset: technology, commercial strategy, regulation, corporate structuring, data, intellectual property, tax and sector knowledge, along with a keen understanding of how conditions differ between markets.
East Africa has already demonstrated its capacity to develop technology around distinctive local needs. The next opportunity is to make more of those successes portable by enabling ideas, investment and digital services to reach a regional market without losing sight of the local realities that made them successful in the first place.
John Syekei is co-head of technology at Bowmans Kenya.
