The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) in partnership with the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), TradeMark Africa (TMA) and Food Trade Coalition for Africa (FTCFA) converged in Tanzania at the 2023 Africa Food Systems Forum (AGRF), where they reflected on challenges and pathways for fair and inclusive trade environment for women and youth. With about 85% of the economic activity in Africa happens in the informal sector, women constitute close to 90% of the labour force. Developing pathways for formal and regulated markets has the potential to catalyse a switch from subsistence-leaning production systems to more market-oriented ones. Moderated by TradeMark Africa’s Director of Gender, Inclusion and Women, Gloria Atuheirwe, the panellists highlighted four main action points to ensure women and youth are provided with capacity building support to prepare them to take advantage of opportunities of trade especially in the purview of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). “In order to effectively engage in intra-regional trade, women and youth must understand how the trade system works. They must have access to trainings on sanitary, processing and packaging requirements, non-tariff barriers, crossing border posts, and registration with export authorities,” said Lauren Phillips, FAO Deputy Director of the Inclusive Rural Transformation and Gender Equality Division. Dr. Phillips also highlighted the importance of addressing structural issues through effective and inclusive policymaking: “How can we run, if we do not know how to walk? There are gaps to be closed before addressing the gaps in trade. These include, for example, limited...

Members of European Parliament’s International Trade Committee, on November 3, 2022, held talks with teams from TradeMark East Africa, Kenya’s Ministry of Trade and regional private sector representatives on investment opportunities, trade relations and barriers. Led by committee chair, Bernd Lange, the team sought to understand key concerns around the interim Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between Kenya and the EU and how trading between the two partners can be more mutually beneficial. Mr. Lange also highlighted the need to reflect on a regional perspective in the negotiations with Kenya, which is no longer categorised as a least developed country (LDC) as its East African Community (EAC) counterparts. While the country’s exports still benefit from preferential treatment, Kenyan exporters face stringent requirements on labelling, rules of origin and phytosanitary standards, according to the State Department of Trade. In the last half a decade, Kenya has been a net buyer of commodities from the EU, with imports hitting US$1.9 billion in 2019, less than half of the US$916 million Kenya exported to the EU, according to the Overseas Development Institute (ODI). Kenya exports mostly horticultural products. With favourable trade conditions and increased efficiencies in the production and supply chains, Kenya can significantly scale up its share of exports of cut flowers, vegetables, macadamia, avocados, sweet potatoes, pineapples, coffee, and apparel, in response to burgeoning demand in the EU. The delegation also heard of how Kenya and East Africa are positioned to tap into the immense potential of the African Continental Free Trade...

In the line of my work for an aid-for-trade organisation, I recently traversed key trade corridors across the African continent to assess their current state of play. These include Abidjan-Lagos in the West, Mombasa-Goma in the East and Durban-Lubumbashi to the South. Travelling mainly by road along these crucial trade routes revealed the vast trade opportunities they hold, as well as the great potential for intra-continental and global trade. Daunting challenges were also quite clear, including the low quality of infrastructure and interconnectivity (hard and soft), limited awareness of cross-border trade potential, differing trade regimes, red tape and differing customs systems, among others. The result of these challenges is not only a choked trade environment attendant to high transport costs but also significantly higher Green House Gas emissions (GHG) along the corridors. Take the Northern Corridor, a leading trade route connecting Mombasa Port, along the Eastern Seaboard of Sub-Saharan Africa, with the region’s 250 million people in East Africa’s hinterland, including the nations of Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Ethiopia, DRC, and South Sudan. GHGs are unacceptably high, at 1.72 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide. This is 2.3 times and 1.22 times more than the GHG intensity, in similar corridors, across China and Europe respectively. A growing trade partnership between Europe and Africa demands the modernisation of these crucial trade routes, which will pay great dividends for both Europe and Africa. As the ongoing conflict in Ukraine has demonstrated, there is an urgent need for sustainable connectivity between the continents...

This paper uses Kenyan trade data published up through May 2020 to provide a preliminary evaluation of the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on regional trade in the East African Community (EAC). Paradoxically, given the prevailing pessimism surrounding the prospects for global trade, Kenya actually experienced a significant improvement in exports in the first quarter of the year, together with a moderation of imports, leading to a marked decline in the trade deficit. While the initial shock to Kenyan trade caused by the COVID-19 crisis initially looked dramatic in terms of the declines registered, this paper reveals that i) the shock is not so alarming when seasonality is taken into account; ii) re-exports and imports have been the primary foci of impact; and iii) domestic exports have actually performed extraordinarily well under the circumstances, with incremental growth since 2019. Notably, not all supply chains were disrupted by the crisis, with some Kenyan exports like tea and fruit surpassing levels of years past. Rather, imports have been the principle victim of the crisis, declining by a quarter over the three months since the crisis began (between March and May 2020). Capital goods imports have declined markedly—a trend which, if sustained, could have implications for long-term economic growth. However, the fall in imports of consumer goods could also set the scene for a revitalization of national and regional industry, as local producers step up to fill the void created by the sharp lull in imports. At the same time, Kenya’s EAC neighbors—especially...

It took a traffic jam of a couple thousand trucks at the Malaba border between Kenya and Uganda to fully visualize both the health and trade issues at stake when borders operate at optimum. The COVID-19 crisis has revealed both hairline fractures along borders in East Africa and the potential to solve them through better regional coordination. The East African Community (EAC) to date has been a grand experiment in more than just free trade between Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda. It also seeks to transform the region into a single market that allows free movement of goods, people, services, labour and capital, and create a single investment area. The coronavirus pandemic has curtailed this dream in the short-term but the experience has been a learning curve, and UNCTAD, TradeMark Africa (TMA) and other regional partners have used the moment to help the region’s national trade facilitation committees (NTFCs) improve their skills and work more effectively by offering them ground-breaking online training. “It’s a complicated situation due to the necessity of imposing health controls and measures to manage COVID-19 on one hand, while still ensuring trade flows, especially of essential goods, on the other,” said Shamika N. Sirimanne, UNCTAD’s director of technology and logistics. “The situation has been extremely challenging for everyone from policymakers to customs officials; truck drivers to traders,” she added. “Training is one of the solutions to this challenge.”   [caption id="attachment_54331" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Trade facilitation in East Africa is critical during COVID-19[/caption] Trade...

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is one of the greatest examples of Pan-Africanism since the creation of the African Union (AU). The agreement has acquired the signatures of 54 of the AU’s 55 member-states, bringing together an impressive domestic market of more than 1.2 billion people with a collective GDP of $2.6tn. The logic behind the deal is sound. Africa is, by most standards, the least integrated continent, where internal trade currently accounts for just 16 percent of its total trade volumes. The potential benefits of liberalised trade across the continent, from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, Cape Town to Cairo, could be substantial. Evidence suggests the removal of tariffs, supplemented by trade facilitation initiatives, could boost intra-African trade by 52.3% or $34.6bn by 2022. However, the benefits are far from guaranteed, and the continent now faces the task of implementing the agreement. The deal stipulates signatories eliminate tariffs on 90% of goods and address a plethora of non-tariff barriers (NTBs), which will in turn tackle the comparatively high cost of trade across the continent. High cost of trade in Africa This latter point is crucial to Africa’s success. Recent studies published by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)   and the World Bank suggest that NTBs prove more of an impediment to trade than tariffs do. In fact, the UNCTAD says that by tackling NTBs, African countries as a group could see gains of $20bn each year. Higher levels of internal trade will help wean Africa off its reliance on...

Logistics industry stakeholders in the East African Community (EAC) have renewed push to contain further spread of the novel coronavirus by adopting containment measures, while ensuring that the region continues to get vital supplies and inputs through the Central and Northern transport corridors. This follows emerging data that revealed that long distance truck drivers are a weak link in the fight against Covid-19 after several of them tested positive at various border crossing points.  With TMA’s support, The Federation of East African Freight Forwarders Associations (FEAFFA), the umbrella body of the region’s clearing agents has played a central role in the ongoing multi-agency efforts to tackle Covid-19 and enhance trade being employed in the region. Continuously, FEAFFA, Kenya Transporters Associations (KTA), Regional Lorry Drivers and Transporters Association (RLDTA), Transporters Association of Tanzania (TAT) and Tanzania Truck Owners Association (TATOA) held consultative meetings to develop recommendations which were presented to National Covid-19 Taskforces in the East Africa Community Partner States. This will inform the ongoing debate and shape the policy measures being pronounced.  The recommendations by the logistics representatives and players were guided by years’ of experience the agencies have on handling of cargo at various border crossing points. The basis of the recommendations was as follows: The agencies appreciated the plausible measures the EAC states pushed to adopt, for example deployment of relay driving where truck drivers swap with their counterparts in transit countries at the borders. And, drivers mandatory testing at borders. Additionally, the use of delivery of cargo...

Frank Matsaert and Erastus Mwencha On February 27th, 2020 Nigeria confirmed the first case of COVID-19 in Sub-Saharan Africa. Since then, the COVID-19 virus has spread to all corners of the Continent with the number of infections increasing exponentially, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti. Even before the first cases were recorded, COVID-19 was already having an impact on international demand for exports in key sectors such as textiles and floriculture, have severely threatened businesses and fuelled unemployment. Flower exports are down by more than 90% and tourist arrivals have ground to a halt. In the largest economy in East Africa, the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics reported that imports have dropped by more than 20% in the first two months of 2020, with Chinese imports plummeting around 37%.  As the pandemic continues, the projected losses grow. Trade volumes in the East African Community (EAC) are down by up to 25% since the beginning of 2020, with even worse reductions in the informal sector.  African countries, conscious of the fragility of their public health systems and limited intensive care capacity, have had to move quickly to try and protect their people by instituting strict measures to stem the spread of the virus. However, in doing so they are faced with a dilemma. For many in the region their livelihood depends on being able to move about freely. There is no work from home option for the hundreds of thousands of small-scale traders that...