On May 4, Presidents Samia Suluhu Hassan and William Ruto stood together at State House Dar es Salaam and made a commitment that the East African region had been waiting years to hear: all non-tariff barriers between Tanzania and Kenya would be eliminated by the end of May 2026.
The bilateral trade corridor, which is worth over $720 million in 2024, would be freed from the bureaucratic friction that has long frustrated exporters, logistics operators, and the investors who back them.
It was a headline moment, signed in the ink of eight Memorandums of Understanding and the political goodwill of two heads of state.
Nine days later, the East African Court of Justice (EACJ) issued an interim injunction from its First Instance Division in Arusha.
The order was unambiguous: the Tanzania Revenue Authority must immediately cease collecting a Sh400 per kilogram excise levy on Kenyan-made safety matches, a duty introduced under Tanzania's Finance Act 2025, which a Kenyan manufacturer, Match Masters Limited, argues constitutes discriminatory treatment of imported goods in breach of EAC Common Market Protocol obligations.
The court noted the dispute raised serious concerns. The injunction was binding. The trucks, accordingly, should have crossed.
They did not.
Two weeks after the order was issued, border officials continued to enforce the levy.
Transporters presented the court order at crossing points and were told it was not operative. The duty remained live on Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA) systems.
A senior trade official, speaking anonymously, described the situation plainly: the EACJ order was simply not being adhered to.
This is not a story about safety matches. It is a story about what happens when a member state of the East African Community declines to comply with a binding order of its own regional court, while its head of state is simultaneously pledging to dismantle trade barriers with the very country whose exporter is seeking relief.
The legal question at the heart of the Match Masters case is straightforward.
Article 75 of the EAC Common Market Protocol prohibits member states from applying measures that discriminate against goods originating from partner states.
Tanzania's Finance Act of 2025 introduced this levy specifically on imported matches while domestically manufactured equivalents face no equivalent burden.
That asymmetry is precisely the kind of measure the Protocol was designed to prohibit.
The EACJ agreed the matter raised issues serious enough to warrant interim relief, which is a meaningful threshold. Courts do not issue injunctions lightly. The enforcement question is more troubling.
The EACJ has no independent enforcement mechanism. It cannot compel a member state government to instruct its revenue authority to update a border system.
That gap has always existed in the architecture of EAC dispute resolution, but it has rarely been exposed so nakedly, so publicly, and in circumstances so directly contradicted by concurrent political messaging. The EAC Secretariat's silence has been noticed.
For the foreign investor community, the implications deserve careful reading.
Tanzania is, in the same week, marketing itself as a destination with rule-of-law credibility and institutional reliability.
The Tanzania Investment Summit opens in Arusha on 3 June with a $2.85 billion pipeline of structured, government-backed projects.
The proposition to international capital is that Tanzania honours its commitments and that legal processes work.
The Match Masters imports episode does not destroy that proposition, but it introduces a question mark that sophisticated investors will not ignore.
Sovereign commitments and institutional behaviour must align. When they visibly do not, the due diligence conversation changes.
Tanzania has legitimate interests in protecting domestic manufacturing.
The policy intent behind the Finance Act 2025 levy is not difficult to understand.
However, the mechanism for pursuing that interest is not non-compliance with a regional court order.
It is full participation in the EACJ proceedings, presenting the strongest possible case, and accepting the outcome. That is what regional integration requires. It is also what investor confidence demands.
The May deadline that President Samia and Ruto set has now passed. Whether it was met in spirit as well as in announcement is a question the business community on both sides of the Namanga border can answer without reference to any press release.
Regional integration is built case by case, crossing by crossing, and order by order. When a gavel falls and nothing moves, everyone notices – especially those deciding where to place long-term capital.
Amne Suedi is the Managing Director of Shikana Investment and Advisory, Honorary Consul of Switzerland in Zanzibar, and Chair of the Switzerland-Tanzania Chamber of Commerce.
