On 2 September 2026, COTANCE joined the launch of the East African Community Leather Value Chain Development Initiative, part of the EU-funded MARKUP II programme led by the International Trade Centre (ITC), in collaboration with the Portuguese Footwear Technology Centre (CTCP) and the Africa Leather and Leather Products Institute (ALLPI).
The initiative is designed to help East African countries - Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, South Sudan and beyond - move from exporting raw and semi-processed hides to producing competitive, value-added leather materials, strengthening the leather value chain across the region and building long-term institutional capacity.
At the launch, COTANCE Secretary General Edoardo De Paola pointed to three critical gaps the initiative must address:
🔹 Know-how transfer - East Africa holds vast quantities of raw hides and skins, much of which goes unprocessed or is processed incorrectly. Closing that gap is precisely where European expertise can make a real difference.
🔹 Traceability - with or without the EUDR, traceability is here to stay. The CEN standard EN 18199, developed by the Leather Traceability Cluster, provides a concrete framework for minimum leather traceability & one the region already has a connection to, as ALLPI was part of the initiative from the outset.
🔹 The role of clusters - as Europe's experience demonstrates, strong industry clusters are essential for representing SMEs, defending their interests, and creating new synergies across the leather value chain.
As ITC acknowledged at the launch, COTANCE is where it all started: in 2024, then-Secretary General Gustavo Gonzalez-Quijano travelled to Nairobi, matched the right people together, and helped shape the initiative from the ground up. Today, that groundwork has become reality. We are excited to keep supporting it all the way to the finish line.