IOTA Foundation, the non-profit behind the IOTA ecosystem, has reportedly partnered with Trademark East Africa (TMEA) to provide a lasting solution to one of the biggest challenges facing global trade in relation to paperwork, which clogs up supply chains across the world.
According to the press release shared with Market Tabloid, the partnership is targeted at creating an interconnectivity technology highway for East African businesses and government systems to communicate in a transparent, secure, and instantaneous manner, among the two entities, as well as with international partners.
Benefits of the IOTA Foundation and Trademark East Africa (TMEA) Partnership
According to the report, the partnership will enable traders to focus on developing their products and optimizing their business by digitizing bureaucratic processes and moving export documentation to IOTA’s ledger data structure, Tangle.
The system developed through the partnership anchors the key trade documents on the Tangle and shares them with customs in destination countries to fast track the export process and give African companies the capability to challenge others across the world.
The report added that the partnership will enable trade partners, authorities, and logistics companies to collaborate with transparency, trust, and perpetual access to reliable and verified data.
So, by moving export documentation to the IOTA Tangle, traders could drastically reduce their time and monetary costs. They would also virtually eliminate the risks of lost.
The report added that TradeMark East Africa has made the project a strategic priority and extended its contract with the IOTA Foundation to take it to the next level. The next stage is to expand testing into more trade lanes, such as tea export to the UK, fish to Belgium, and textiles to the US, while also working with other governments in East Africa to test the integration of the technology with their border agencies.
The report pointed out that IOTA Foundation plans to engage governments around the world to take advantage of the innovation developed through the partnership, in order to make cross-border trade easy and inclusive.
Reacting to the new development, Head of Global Trade & Supply Chains at IOTA Foundation, Jens Munch Lund-Nielsen, said:
“The technology we use, with the permissionless distributed ledger, is about bringing trust to all these actors at the vital point when they exchange the data. The cost of doing cross-border trade has an enormous effect on the cost of goods, which in turn affects the employment and consumer markets. The Trade Logistics Information Pipeline project will have an enormous impact on all traders in Kenya. It shortens the time goods take to cross borders, it takes out failures, and it makes the product much cheaper overseas.”
Sr. Director Trade Environment at TradeMark East Africa, Alban Odhiambo also said:
“COVID-19 challenged the project as travel became impossible. Despite many challenges the IOTA Foundation has proven to be a steady partner in development and we are excited to enhance our collaboration.”
