The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken the globe and disrupted the lives of billions of people in every corner of the world. Eastern Africa has not been left unscathed. The pandemic has affected trade and economic activity in a fundamental way. Whereas many have weighed the impact of COVID-19 on health terms, we in trade facilitation have seen firsthand how debilitating its impact has been to global trade, disrupting supply chains across the globe.
This knowledge informed our quick adaptation, and helped to offset major trade disruptions experienced in the Eastern, Southern and Horn of Africa Region.
The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken the globe and disrupted the lives of billions of people in every corner of the world. Eastern Africa has not been left unscathed. The pandemic has affected trade and economic activity in a fundamental way. Whereas many have weighed the impact of COVID-19 on health terms, we in trade facilitation have seen firsthand how debilitating its impact has been to global trade, disrupting supply chains across the globe.
The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken the globe and disrupted
the lives of billions of people in every corner of the world.
Eastern Africa has not been left unscathed. The pandemic
has affected trade and economic activity in a fundamental
way. Whereas many have weighed the impact of COVID-19
on health terms, we in trade facilitation have seen firsthand
how debilitating its impact has been to global trade,
disrupting supply chains across the globe. This knowledge
informed our quick adaptation, and helped to offset major
trade disruptions experienced in the Eastern, Southern and
Horn of Africa Region.
The impact of COVID-19 hit TMEA closer home. Cuts to donor
funding caused by COVID-19 inflicted economic recession in
donor countries necessitated a human resource restructuring
process, and scaling down of programming. Nevertheless,
TMEA was resilient and delivered strong impact. I am honoured
to mention a few of the interventions and associated
impacts achieved in the last year, as I welcome you to read
about many more in this annual report.
We also supported the procurement and supply of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to 30 border crossings in Eastern, Horn and Southern Africa, and at the Ports of Mombasa and Djibouti. These protected and benefited frontline border workers and traders. 90 percent of the PPEs were procured in the region for the region. Working with the Financial Sector Deepening Programme (FSD) in Kenya, we transferred patient capital to over 900 women traders in the Kenya-Uganda border town of Busia, many of whom had lost over 90 percent of their business capital. To further support women cross-border traders, we supported the construction of Safe Trade Zones (STZ) in select border markets in Somaliland, Ethiopia, Kenya and Rwanda. This we believe revived the hopes and incomes of traders whose businesses were adversely affected by the pandemic.
The effectiveness of Safe Trade was anchored on strategic partnerships. For example, with the EAC Secretariat, we developed guidelines for the manufacture, use, handling and disposal of PPE and hygiene products. Similarly, with apex bodies like the East Africa Business Council, the Federation of East African Freight Forwarders Associations, and the Kenya Private Sector Alliance we successfully advocated governments to review taxes and encourage banks and mobile lenders to reduce interest rates on loans.
We supported Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda to develop national African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) strategies that provide implementation roadmaps. Great progress was also made on the infrastructure front, particularly the construction of Kipevu, Magongo and Mbaraki Roads in Mombasa, Kenya, and Hargeisa Bypass in Somaliland, promising to help exploit trade and economic potential of the Northern Bypass and Berbera Corridor, respectively. Kipevu road was completed and handed over to Kenya Ports Authority. It is expected to significantly reduce the time taken by tracks to exit the port through the main gates.
As a key link on the Berbera Corridor, the Hargeisa
Bypass will provide urgent and strategic alternative route for
increasing trade efficiency in the Horn of Africa. Trade volumes
are expected to rapidly accelerate due to an investment by
DP World in additional capacity at Berbera Port. In Uganda,
construction of Gulu Logistics Hub (GLH), which H.E. President
Yoweri Museveni launched, is nearing completion. It will be
operational by the close of the next financial year.
Ongoing Information Communication for Trade work contributes
to borderless trade. Notably last year, we facilitated
single windows and customs systems such as Kenya Revenue
Authority’s new customs system, iCMS, which doubled customs
clearance efficiency for East Africa’s leading economy,
and is projected to substantially increase revenue. The
Rwanda Electronic Single Window saw implementation of the
International Air Transport Association manifest going live
during the year, with airlines successfully forwarding electronic
manifests to the ReSW. We completed Tanzania’s e-learning
and integrated Standardisation, Quality Assurance, Metrology
and Testing Platforms for Tanzania Bureau of Standards. This
has increased the efficiency of processing certificates, and
increased access by small and medium enterprises and other
stakeholders.
We continue paying special attention to the needs of women
traders and medium, small, and micro enterprises (MSMEs).
It is noteworthy that women traders account for the bulk of
informal trade in the region. Through our women and trade
programme, we have since 2012, cumulatively reached over
89,000 beneficiaries, 23,954 of them this year. We’ve also
reached 3,500 MSMEs. In the last year, tens of thousands of
women cross-border and other traders were able to sustain
their trade after benefitting from TMEA’s capacity building,
advocacy, and digital access to information. We are keen to
expand new interventions to advance and broaden access to
the benefits of trade because experience show us that businesses
still faces significant trade and investment uncertainty.
We have brokered new partnerships to enable this happen.
Expansion plans to the rest of Africa continued. Significantly,
we secured funding from Agence Francaise de Development
(AFD) to develop the Djibouti Corridor under the Horn of Africa
Initiative. Our support will include facilitating the implementation
of a cargo tracking system that will improve real time tracking of
cargo, thereby eliminating the need for numerous check points,
and reducing the dwell-time to transport cargo along the corridor.
We have also started examining the viability of extending
our support to help implementation of the AfCFTA, with new
operations likely to start in West Africa next year. In addition,
we scoped new programming in Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique,
and Southern Africa. This will move us towards our long-term
goal of becoming a Pan-African institute.
The urgency of the climate crisis demands that greater attention
be given to the role of trade in accelerating emissions, mitigating
the effects of climate change while pursuing sustainable growth.
TMEA’s Strategy on Green Transport and Logistics Corridors
in Eastern Africa promises to do just that. TMEA’s eco-system
takes a multi stakeholder approach to diagnosing problems,
designing solutions, and implementing transformative trade
facilitation projects. This has delivered a strong performance
over the last 12 years, and we can plan for bigger impact in the
coming years. I remain grateful to all our donors, the European
Union, the Governments of Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland,
France, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, the United Kingdom and
the United States of America