East Africa: Fear of COVID-19 Slows Trucking in East Africa

In East Africa, long-distance truckers are suspected of carrying the dreaded coronavirus along with their cargo. So for weeks, trucks have stalled at border crossings — with trucks sometimes stretching back hundreds deep at some points — as governments restrict access and implement mandatory COVID-19 testing to protect their residents.

“They are calling us ‘corona.’ We are not corona, and we have certificates on the vehicles, but they are still calling us corona. Why?” asked Muhammed Ali, a Tanzanian trucker halted last week at Uganda’s Mirama Hills border crossing with Rwanda. He carried a paper certifying he had tested negative for the virus.

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