Cross-border traffic and trade between Uganda and Kenya has been disrupted following an eruption of violence after Mwai Kibaki was sworn in for a second term as Kenya’s president Dec. 30. This interruption could soon disrupt trade to countries throughout Africa's Great Lakes region. Much violence has occurred at the Kenyan town of Kisumu, a stronghold of opposition leader Raila Odinga, who narrowly lost in the Dec. 27 election to Kibaki. Kisumu is Kenya’s third-largest city, strategically located in the western part of the country along the main road linking Kenya's capital, Nairobi, to the Ugandan capital, Kampala. Violence also has wracked the nearby town of Eldoret, effectively choking off an alternate route around Kisumu to the Ugandan border. While Ugandan-Kenyan border crossings at Busia and Malaba remain officially open, little traffic is actually taking place. Both Ugandan and Kenyan authorities have mounted a heavy security presence in border areas, constraining road traffic, to prevent a possible spillover of violence from Kenya. Road traffic will continue to be especially slow on the Kenyan side during the coming days as Kenyan police maintain a heavy security presence on roads leading to the Kenyan capital of Nairobi. Roadblocks will be reinforced by police to try to prevent Odinga's supporters from attending a planned Jan. 3 protest rally there, which the opposition has called for a million people to attend. The cross-border disruptions are constraining the delivery of imports — notably fuel supplies — to landlocked Uganda, and could soon spread beyond just that country. Uganda and the rest of the Great Lakes region depend heavily on overland routes through Nairobi to Mombasa — Kenya and East Africa’s busiest port — for imports and exports. Gasoline prices in Uganda reportedly have already skyrocketed, and motorists in Uganda have called on the Ugandan government to boost fuel reserves to compensate for the cross-border disruptions. Other countries that rely on the Kenyan-Ugandan trade route include landlocked Rwanda and Burundi, the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the southern part of Sudan. Working out alternative trade routes — such as through the Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam — is possible but not easy to accomplish in the short term. Kibaki on Jan. 2 urged the country’s parliament — in which Odinga’s supporters are now the majority — to find a political solution to the post-election violence, which has resulted in an estimated 300 deaths so far. Though Odinga’s party has not yet responded to Kibaki’s call, demands by foreign governments and international agencies to bring the violence in Kenya to an end — reinforced by the very real economic costs facing Kenya and the Great Lakes region — will shortly force the political antagonists to accommodate one another.