Anyone moving cargo under customs control in Kenya runs into two acronyms within the first week: RECTS and ECTS. They are related but not interchangeable, and the difference matters now that the seal supply model has changed.

RECTS is the platform. ECTS is the service.

The Regional Electronic Cargo Tracking System is the shared monitoring platform used along the Northern Corridor by Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda. It was built so that a container sealed in Mombasa can be watched by three revenue authorities on one screen rather than handed between three separate national systems at each border. A central monitoring centre sees the seal, the route and the alerts.

An Electronic Cargo Tracking System is what sits underneath: the device on the container, the fitting and de-fitting operation, the alert handling, and the data feed into RECTS. When a transporter says they need “ECTS”, they mean a vendor who will seal their cargo, monitor it to the exit point, and answer the phone when something goes wrong at 2am outside Salgaa.

What happens on a normal transit

The sequence is unglamorous and rarely varies.

• Release. Cargo clears for transit and a seal is requested against the customs entry.
• Fitting. A technician fits the device at the port, the CFS or the bonded warehouse and arms it against that entry. The seal number ties to the declaration from this point on.
• Transit. The device reports position at corridor-grade intervals. Tamper, unscheduled stop and route-deviation events raise alerts in the monitoring centre.
• Intervention. Where an alert is genuine, the monitoring centre contacts the driver and, where necessary, the enforcement team. Most alerts are not theft; they are a driver sleeping in the wrong place or a battery at the end of its life.
• De-sealing. At the exit point or final destination the device is removed and the transit closes against the entry.

Two things determine whether that sequence runs smoothly. The first is fitting capacity at the release point, because a truck waiting for a technician is a truck not earning. The second is what happens when a device fails mid-corridor, which brings us to replacement.

Why replacement time is the number to interrogate

Seal hardware is specified by KRA, so every approved vendor fits a device built to the same technical standard. Comparing devices is mostly wasted effort. What differs between vendors is how quickly a failed unit is replaced, and where their technicians actually are.

A seal that dies at Mtito Andei with no replacement inside a few hours strands cargo, burns driver hours, and puts the transporter in an awkward conversation with customs about an unmonitored leg. Ask for the replacement commitment in writing, ask where the nearest technician is based, and ask who carries the cost. Those three answers separate vendors more reliably than any specification sheet.

iCMS and why the audit trail matters

The Integrated Customs Management System is where the declaration lives. A seal event that does not reconcile cleanly against the entry creates a manual exception, and manual exceptions take days to clear. Clean integration means the sealing and de-sealing events land against the right declaration automatically, which is invisible when it works and extremely visible when it does not.

For clearing agents handling entries for several principals at once, this is the whole game. An agent who has to reconcile seal events by hand at month end is paying for the vendor’s integration gap in staff hours.

What changed in 2026

Until this year KRA supplied the seals itself. From 27 October 2026 it does not. Cargo under customs control can only move on a device supplied by a vendor on the KRA approved schedule, under a private commercial agreement between the vendor and the trader. The monitoring obligation is unchanged. What changed is who owns the device and who you contract with.

Fifteen vendors appear on the schedule published on 11 September 2026. For transporters this is a procurement exercise that did not exist a year ago, with a deadline attached. For fleets that have not yet contracted, the constraint between now and the end of October will be fitting capacity rather than paperwork.

Where we sit

Keshi Holdings appears on that schedule as Keshi Holdings / Leavitt Holdings (JV), listed fourth of fifteen, covering both the eSeal and eFuel categories. We run a national cargo tracking deployment for DGDA, the customs authority in the Democratic Republic of Congo, through phases one and two.

See how the changeover works, or reach us on +254 705 333 999.