As trucks stacked up for days, Rwanda and neighboring Tanzania worked out a deal that scrapped plans for relay drivers but mandated transferring cargo at the border, “except for trucks carrying perishable goods and petroleum products destined to Rwanda,” the Kigali government said in a news release Friday.
Kenya last week began mandatory COVID-19 testing for truckers, ordering that they undergo tests 48 hours before leaving the Port of Mombasa — a shipping hub in the country’s second-largest city — or before entering Kenya from elsewhere in East Africa.
But Wednesday, a day after Kenya announced the return of more than 180 foreigners to Tanzania because of positive COVID test results, a Tanzanian regional official accused the Nairobi government of faulty testing.
Zambia also had closed its border with Tanzania for several days last week after several truck drivers, immigration officers and sex workers tested positive for COVID, Reuters reported.
Several heads of state in the EAC bloc — including Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya and Salva Kiir of South Sudan — last week agreed to double testing of truckers.
