Kenyan manufacturers are hopeful the just concluded trade mission to Tanzania will help open up trade between the two countries. The visit comes amid renewed political ties between the two countries, fostered by the warm relationship between Presidents Uhuru Kenyatta and Samia Suluhu, and their pledge to foster better working ties  between the two countries. Last week, local manufacturers led by the Kenya Association of Manufacturers (KAM) were on a trade a trade mission to Tanzania, organised in partnership with the Confederation of Tanzania Industries. The meeting “yielded promise, hope and a positive turning point for the two countries,” KAM CEO Phyllis Wakiaga said. “One thing stood out; trade relations between the two countries can flourish given sustained political goodwill and mutual understanding between businesses,” she added. While Kenya and Tanzania have for years shared strong trade relations, non-tariff barriers, high cost of production and cheap imports from outside the East Africa Community (EAC)  have impacted trade between the two countries. Kenya’s exports to Tanzania declined from $342.9 million (Sh37 billion) in 2016 to $294.9 million (Sh31.8 billion)in 2020. Tanzania’s exports to Kenya grew from $126.2 million (Sh13.6 billion) in 2016 to $258.2 million (Sh27.8 billion) in 2020. “Looking at the nominal values of our trade statistics, there is plenty of room for improvement in the total volume of trade between the two countries,” Wakiaga said. Some of Kenya's concerns have been discriminatory treatment of cigarettes manufactured in Kenya, which is charged excise duty that is 80 per cent higher than cigarettes manufactured in Tanzanian. Tanzania also introduced import charges on animal and animal...

TradeMark Africa (TMA) and the Agence Française de Développement (AFD), signed this afternoon a €29.9 million (approx. USD 35.5 million) grant agreement to contribute to more sustainable and inclusive regional economic integration in the Horn of Africa. The funding comes from the European Union, who delegated it to AFD via a €32 million total financing agreement, signed one week earlier between the two parties. The TMA-AFD project will focus on the Djibouti corridor as the main artery of trade for Ethiopia, whilst also supporting more inclusive trade between Djibouti and Ethiopia. The overall objective is to enhance the competitiveness of this corridor through logistical and regulatory improvements (reduction of transport and transit times at ports and border crossings, simplification of procedures and reduction of associated costs) and strengthening the capacity of stakeholders to benefit from these improvements, including the most vulnerable. It will be implemented according to four lines of operation: Reduction of trade costs and time along the Djibouti-Ethiopia corridor, from Djibouti Port to the Galafi border post and the dry ports in Simplification and harmonisation of procedures, standards and regulations governing trade between the two countries, bringing them into line with the various trade agreements signed, with a view to their Support to enterprises and producers in the logistics sector both in Ethiopia and in Djibouti and in the export Support to the most vulnerable populations: small traders at the borders, women operating in export sectors, , to enable them to take advantage of these improvements. In 2019,...

French container transportation and shipping company CMA-CGM, the world’s third largest container operator, has expressed interest to invest in the new port of Lamu. CMA CGM, based in Marseille France, is one of the leading carriers in the global container shipping industry using 257 shipping routes between 420 ports situated in 160 different countries. The Vice President Africa CMA-CGM Ludovic Rozan disclosed this during a familiarization tour of the facility when he was received by the General Manager, Lamu Port, Eng. Abdullahi Samatar. Rozan noted that the Port of Lamu was a good opportunity for a transshipment base. “To be able to grow in Lamu port we need to grow in Mombasa port and therefore we expect the Kenya Ports Authority to give us a dedicated berth in Mombasa,” he added saying with such a facility, the shipping company would have a capability to operate 365 days in the region. He explained that from the Port of Lamu, the shipping company would be able to handle transshipments to Tanzania, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Somalia, Mombasa and even Mozambique. “If you can help us in Mombasa, we are ready to help you here in Lamu,” he said. The VP who was accompanied by the Managing Director CMA-CGM East Africa Jean-Baptiste Longin further said the shipping company has invested heavily in West and North Africa especially the successful port in Morocco but had nothing in the East African hub. He said that he was positive about Kenya’s economic growth and the notable improvements...

Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture said on Saturday that plans are in the works to begin transporting tea from the hinterland to the port city of Mombasa through Chinese-built Standard Gauge Railways (SGR). Peter Munya, cabinet secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries and Cooperatives said the SGR provides a cheaper, safe and efficient means of transporting the commodity from Kenyan highlands to the port of Mombasa for export to overseas markets. This will lead to significant savings and consequently enhance growers’ earnings,” Munya said at a briefing in Nairobi. He called on smallholder tea producers to explore competitive rates for transportation of the green leaf to the storage facilities. Kenya has witnessed a sharp decline in tea prices at the Mombasa tea auction in the last few weeks due to the overproduction of the commodity. Munya said that this is a threat to the livelihoods of over 620,000 smallholder farmers and the country’s socio-economic growth since the smallholder sub-sector accounts for about 56 percent of the national production. He said the government is exploring the use of existing storage facilities around the smallholder tea factories to enable them to store the green leaf as opposed to rushing to the market. Kenya produced about 569 million kilograms of tea last year compared to 458 million kilograms in 2019. Enditem Read original article

The number of countries that ratified the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement has increased to 40 with the recent ratification of Zambia, Malawi, Algeria and Burundi, a top official told reporters on Friday, July 9. Secretary-General Wamkele Mene was addressing his second quarterly press briefing. He noted that the DR Congo, Seychelles and Burundi ratified but are yet to deposit their instruments of ratification, quickly adding: "But it's a very positive signal, the fact that 40 countries have ratified." "This is a very important development," Mene noted, adding that he recently visited Tanzania and had fruitful discussions with its leaders. End last month, the Secretary-General visited the country and met with President Samia Suluhu Hassan. "Its President told me that Tanzania will ratify by September and that means that one of the biggest economies in Africa is also going to ratify," he said. "With Tanzania (ratifying) it means that EAC, the entire Customs Union, will now be part of the implementation of the AfCFTA." Burundi ratified the AfCFTA on June 17, becoming the fourth East African Community (EAC) country to ratify following in the footsteps of Rwanda, the most committed country to the Agreement, Kenya and Uganda. The agreement initialed in Kigali, on March 21, 2018, aims to create the largest free-trade area in the world and the EAC business community wants things fast-tracked. The Continental Free Trade Area aims to reduce all trade costs - eliminate 90% of tariffs - and enable Africa to integrate further into...

Burundian President Evariste Ndayishimiye has made a three-day State visit to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to strengthen relations between the two neighbours. Mr Ndayishimiye was received at the Ndijili Airport in Kinshasa on Monday by Prime Minister Jean-Michel Sama Lukonde. He met with President Felix Tshisekedi on Tuesday for bilateral talks on security and economic ties. The two leaders are expected to sign agreements on a railway infrastructure project between Burundi’s capital Gitenga and Kindu city in east-central DRC, a line that will also facilitate the transit of products to Uvinza in Tanzania. The project was part of talks between President Tshisekedi and his host the late president Pierre Nkurunziza when the former visited Burundi during a charm offensive in the East African Community member states soon after he assumed office in January 2019. Nkurunziza died in June 2020. The visit comes nearly two weeks after the Congolese leader met with Burundian Foreign Affairs minister Albert Shingiro in DRC’s eastern border city of Goma in North Kivu. On security, the leaders are expected to address rebel activity in eastern DRC as well as issues of refugees with both countries hosting Burundian and Congolese nationals on either side. Read original article

Malawi and other countries in the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) stand to benefit from the $40 billion (about K33 trillion) adjustment fund designed to lessen the economic impact of tariff reduction to support the implementation of the agreement. The AfCFTA Secretariat said recently it had already made available $1.5 billion (about K1.2 trillion)for the fund and was mobilising resources to increase it to $40 billion. Further to this, the secretariat is mulling on establishing a Pan- African payment platform which would offer businesses an opportunity to conveniently make payments without necessarily converting their currencies. In an interview this week, Ministry of Trade spokesperson Mayeso Msokera described the AfCFTA Adjustment Facility as an important financing instrument that “will contribute significantly in complementing measures taken at national level to lessen the possible impact of trade liberalisation under the AfCFTA, such as the loss of tariff revenue”. On the digital payment platform, he said the platform will offer the country’s merchants a convenient and affordable means of receiving and making payments for their transactions. Said Msokera: “Currently, to make payments for goods and services bought within Africa, most business people have to first convert the funds from, say Malawi kwacha into dollars before it is transferred; and then the recipients will also have to convert the dollars into their local currencies [or vice versa]. “This increases the transaction costs in terms of money and time. This digital platform will, therefore, enhance cross border payments by eliminating the need to buy a...

French shipping company CMA CGM is pushing to have a dedicated berth at the port of Mombasa as a condition to help Kenya attract business to the newly commissioned Lamu Port. In yet another indication that Kenya could have sunk $367 million in a "white elephant" project, CMA CGM is pushing authorities in the East African nation into a tight corner by demanding a dedicated berth in the country’s main gateway in return for sending some of its ships to call at the Lamu port. CMA CGM Africa Vice President Ludovic Rozan said that for the company to help position Lamu as a transshipment port, it needed a dedicated berth in Mombasa. "To be able to grow in Lamu port we need to grow in Mombasa port, and therefore we expect the Kenya Ports Authority to give us a dedicated berth in Mombasa. If you can help us in Mombasa, we are ready to help you here in Lamu," he said during a familiarization tour of Lamu Port. He added that while Mombasa is central in the company’s business strategy of increasing cargo destined for Kenya, CMA-CGM is willing to utilize the Lamu facility for transshipment cargo to Tanzania, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Somalia, Mombasa and Mozambique. Since the commissioning of the first berth in May, Lamu Port has largely been an idle facility with only three vessels calling at the port, a reality that brings into question the viability of the facility that has been widely described as a white...

The IOTA NFT Marketplace aims to solve the existing challenges of other NFT platforms like a high-fee structure. Access to the test version of the IOTA NFT marketplace is now available as users can create free accounts on the platform. IOTA, the open-source distributed ledger and IoT-specific blockchain platform, is now diving into the world of NFTs. On Monday, July 12, the IOTA community announced the launch of the IOTA NFT marketplace. The launch happened on the IOTA 2.0 DevNet illustrating the future of digital assets and NFTs that are accessible to all. IOTA notes that its feeless protocol helps it to deliver the right NFT infrastructure while solving some of the existing limitations of the NFT market. Non-fungible tokens have created a massive rage in the crypto space over the last six months. Besides, the market has witnessed NFT sales worth Millions-of-dollars in a short time. As the name suggests, non-fungible tokens help in the unique representation of assets. This could be anything like a piece of artwork, videos, images, etc. Thus, NFTs are basically cryptographic tokens representing something unique in a digitized form. In today’s world, anything can be digitized and represented as an NFT. While NFTs have seen major market acceptance because of their value proposition, IOTA thinks that there are still many drawbacks. With the existing setup of the NFT market, getting the NFTs to the buyer is very expensive. It involves high-end costs like the minting fee for creating the NFT, platform listing costs additional, then comes...

Traders in Tanzania stand to benefit from increased efficiency following launch of the Trade Information Portal in Tanzania (www.tantrade.go.tz), which has consolidated more than 100 documents and procedures required for import and export business in Tanzania on one online platform. The portal is estimated to serve at least 1.5 million users per month and publishes information on 84 procedures made up of 336 steps, 851 forms and documents, 140 contact persons, 88 norms and laws. It covers 11 priority product groups (6 products for export and import, thus ensuring a shorter period in the export and import processes. Completion and launch of the information portal make Tanzania the fourth country in the East Africa Community (EAC) to fulfil Article 1 of WTO Trade Facilitation agreement which requires member states to publish their trade procedures online, displaying them step-by-step, with contact information on enquiry points, access to forms and other required documents and all relevant trade and customs laws. Tanzania Trade Development Authority (TanTrade), Business Registrations and Licensing Agency (BRELA) under the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MIT) implemented the portal with financial support of approximately US$ 498,000 from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) through TradeMark Africa (TMA). United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) provided technical assistance. Presiding over the launch, the Zanzibar Minister for Industry and Trade, Hon. Omar Shaban (MP) said, “The Tanzania trade portal is part of the Government’s initiative to facilitate trade in line with the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on...