The East African Community (EAC) has taken an important step towards improving the availability of reliable Trade in Services (TiS) statistics by convening a five-day regional training workshop on the collection, analysis, and reporting of TiS data. The workshop, held from 23–27 June 2025 in Nairobi, Kenya, brought together representatives from National Statistical Offices of EAC Partner States, Central Banks, the EAC Secretariat, and development agencies.
Jointly supported by the EU-CORE Programme and GIZ-LIFTED, a project co-funded by the European Union and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) in partnership with the EAC Secretariat, the regional workshop will be followed by a series of national-level trainings across Partner States. These sessions aim to strengthen statistical capacities through a modular approach for compiling high-quality TiS data.
Trade in services has become a key driver of global economic activity, contributing around 50% to GDP, employment, and development. However, compiling reliable TiS statistics in the EAC has been hampered by challenges in classification, valuation, and data availability. Evidence on services production and trade is often weak and fragmented, limiting its use in designing competitiveness-enhancing policies.
Currently, available statistics offer only aggregate figures, such as overall trade with “the rest of the world,” without showing which specific countries Partner States trade with or providing detailed sectoral breakdowns. This lack of disaggregated data makes it difficult to measure the true value and dynamics of services trade within the region and beyond.
By building capacity and harmonising methodologies, the workshop series is expected to generate more robust, comparable, and policy-relevant statistics. This will enable EAC Partner States to design better strategies for services trade, foster competitiveness, and integrate more effectively into regional and global markets.