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TradeMark Africa (TMA) has launched a trading platform that seeks to ease market and information access for women traders in East Africa. The platform comes after the trade agency bagged $2 million (Sh261.8 million) in donor funds from the Canadian government through its philanthropy arm Global Affairs Canada.

TMA says the new platform known as iSOKO, will remove barriers that hamper start-ups, noting that it targets 20,000 subscribed traders in the region by year end.
The e-commerce platform can be accessed through a mobile application, a website and a USSD code. Customers can view displayed commodities and business management where onboarded traders get to take charge of their sales through services such as bookkeeping and tracking orders.
The platform is currently live in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi with about 3,700 traders and 50 service providers having signed up.

The Kenya National Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KNCCI) serves as the country host for the platform.
“Through our county chamber and Women in Business arm, we have onboarded 2,650 users onto the platform with information on over 100 commodities uploaded. Of this number, 34 are service providers and 25 orders have been processed so far,” noted KNCCI President Richard Ngatia at the launch of the platform.
Canadian High Commissioner to Kenya Christopher Thornley said women’s involvement in trade and development is central in efforts to bring down the levels of poverty reduction.

“Having women at the centre of how we do development, foreign policy and trade, is effective, and helps us to meet our development objectives key among them poverty reduction,” Thornley said.
Low penetration of internet connectivity and cyber security concerns in Kenya and the region have been blamed for slow shift to digital economy.