‘Opportunities for Ugandan innovators lies in building trade rails, not apps’

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The opportunity for Uganda’s innovators is no longer just in launching more digital products.  RukaPay chief executive officer Rowena Turinawe says it is in building the infrastructure that allows trade to move predictably, efficiently and at scale.

Turinawe believes the next wave of African innovation will not be defined by apps, but by trade trails or coordination.

“Africa does not have a talent problem. Africa does not lack ambition, we have a trade friction problem. And trade friction in large part is a payments and coordination problem,” she says.

Her argument comes at a time when regional commerce is expanding under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). According to the African Trade Report 2023, intra-African trade surged to nearly $193 billion (about shillings 700 trillion) in 2022.

She says that with the above trade figure, the message is becoming unmistakable that the opportunity for Uganda’s innovators is in building trade trails or coordination.

“Trade corridors are becoming more active, private capital is responding, and digital businesses are multiplying across the continent. But volume growth has not automatically translated into efficiency in execution,” says Turinawe.

For many young founders in Uganda building e-commerce platforms, export-focused SMEs, logistics startups or digital marketplaces, she says the biggest challenge is rarely creativity but execution across borders.

“Once value attempts to cross a border, friction appears,” Turinawe explains, pointing to settlement delays, opaque foreign exchange spreads, fragmented payment ecosystems and reconciliation complexity. “We celebrate product launches. But trade does not scale on launches. Trade scales on rails or coordination,” she added.

Arthur Muwanvu of the Uganda Development Bank emphasised that scale demands discipline and measurable viability.

Financing institutions, he noted, are not looking for ideas in isolation. “They are looking for operational proof, predictable settlement systems, transparent pricing models and infrastructure capable of handling real transaction volumes,” he says.

From a systems perspective, Dr Raymond Mugwanya of Qodesign Dynamics argued that innovation must be feasible, viable and usable within regulatory and institutional realities.

Technology, he cautioned, cannot float above infrastructure constraints. Without integration into real systems, he says, scale becomes fragile.

Meanwhile, Shirley Nakyejwe of the Ministry of ICT and National Guidance warned against duplication and aesthetic-first innovation that ignores ecosystem alignment.

Products fail, she said, when they are not grounded in user behaviour, policy direction and institutional coordination.

Development trends

The Bank of Uganda is developing a National Payment Switch to strengthen domestic interoperability. The East African Community (EAC) and COMESA are advancing regional integration efforts.

Afreximbank has launched the Pan-African Payment and Settlement System to facilitate cross-border trade. TradeMark Africa continues to improve corridor efficiency.

In countries such as Kenya and Nigeria, mobile money interoperability and real-time settlement systems have already demonstrated how coordinated payment rails can accelerate domestic digital trade.

With these developmental trends, Turinawe says the opportunity now lies in extending that discipline across borders. “For Ugandan businesses and innovators, this moment presents tangible openings,” she notes.

“Payment service providers that integrate early into cross-border settlement frameworks can influence corridor standards and capture growing regional transaction flows. Banks investing in interoperable liquidity models can reduce working capital friction for SMEs and deepen trade relationships,” she says.

Additionally, she says technology firms building reconciliation tools, foreign exchange transparency engines and dispute management systems will find rising demand as trade digitises.

“This is not a policy conversation alone. It is a commercial opening. Aligned trade rails would mean defined cross-border settlement windows, foreign exchange locked at the point of payment, standardised reconciliation tags across providers, shared dispute resolution timelines and liquidity alignment across markets,” she notes.

Additionally, she says it would also require SME onboarding models that recognise the realities of informal and semi-formal traders. “Participation in the ecosystem is not enough; integration is the real work,” she says.