May 26th, 2023

In April 2021, FSD Kenya received a request for support from the Kenya Export Promotion and Branding Agency (KEPROBA) to develop a national exporters portal aimed at boosting the export sector leveraging technology to provide market linkages between Kenyan manufacturers and international buyers.

The Portal was also earmarked to provide a platform to showcase authentic products and services originating from the country, thereby, serving as a channel to promote Kenyan manufacturers. KEPROBA, a government agency whose mandate is to advocate, coordinate, harmonise and implement export promotion and nation branding initiatives, with financial support from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) and working closely with the Kenya National Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KNCCI), has since developed, launched and is implementing this e-portal dubbed Make it Kenya.

The e-portal, whose go live was in October 2022, provides a hub for information to local and international traders where they can easily identify, retrieve and use resources but additionally, a platform where they can showcase their products and get market intelligence and allow government to promote Kenya’s exports and the national brand.

Unique selling points of the Make it Kenya e-portal are:

• It is interactive, professional and serves to build the capacity of exporters and ultimately link them with buyers. As designed, it is programmed to meet the specific needs of traders, including workflow, and therefore, does not require programming or specialised knowledge to maintain, update, edit, and delete content.
• It simplifies access to collected and aggregated resources/information.
• It is singular, coherent and is integrated with categorised content for various customers and where exporters/sellers can showcase their products to the international market and facilitate their linkage, provide customised market intelligence information to current and potential exporters, and promote Kenya’s exports and the nation’s brand.
• It has incorporated mobile architecture and GIS, thereby, supporting processes, activities and communities to improve the access, processing and sharing of information within and across the markets.
• It can automate processes through incorporating of roles, workflows, collaboration, content management and business intelligence while deploying adequate security measures to ensure data integrity and at least 99.99% availability/ uptime.

Apart from all the key features listed above, participating exhibitors can, at no cost, also take advantage of e-learning, which is embedded in the portal and additionally, participate in virtual exhibitions. To ensure authenticity of products as mentioned above, there are a few requirements that each enterprise needs to comply with to be listed. These include but are not limited to legal registration of the business and addresses (telephone number and contact person), certification of the products by relevant mandated government regulator e.g., The Kenya Bureau Of Standards (KEBS) and have considerable stock for export – even though there is no set volume for export, it is important that the enterprise looks at its readiness to supply higher quantities of marketed products to the export market.

You can interact with the e-portal using this link 

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