East Africa’s apex body representing businesses in the bloc EABC,have co-organised a dialogue seeking to create business synergies in various sectors while showcasing the EAC as an ideal business destination for trade and investment. The dialogue dubbed the East African Community-German Business and Investment Expert Dialogue which was also organized by the German-African Business Association at the EAC Headquarters in Arusha, Tanzania. The Executive Director of the East African Business Council, Mr Peter Mathuki said it is with no doubt that if all Non-Tariff Barriers (NTBs) hindering trade within the  EAC Common Market  are removed, the domestic demand and market of over 150 million people from the six EAC partner states will attract  investments from Germany and all over the world as it will be more economically viable for all Investors to invest in the EAC. In his remarks read by EABC Manager Policy and Standards, Mr. Lamech Wesonga, Mathuki said EABC  will continue to ensure that the agenda of the Private Sector is well articulated and received by the policymakers in order to promote a business environment conducive to business formation, growth, expansion. Addressing the forum on behalf of the EAC Secretary General, Amb Liberat Mfumukeko, the Deputy Secretary General in charge of Productive and Social Sectors, Hon. Christophe Bazivamo, said the draft EAC Investment Policy which is currently under consideration by the Council of Ministers, envisages a transformed upper middle-income EAC that is a competitive common investment area with a more liberal, predictable and transparent investment environment. Mr...

AFRICAN countries have committed to live to Maputo Declaration that req uires AU member states to allocate 10 per cent of national budget to agricultural sector. It is assumed that sustained ten per cent allocations into the sector would translate into 6 per cent sector growth. However there are arguments whether the 10 per cent allocation alone can contribute to food security and reduce poverty levels. The biggest challenge however is where and how should governments in Africa spend money in agriculture sector and what practices need to be embraced by all actors, including the government, private and smallholder farmers. It is against this back drop, smallholder farmers in the region are calling upon East African Community (EAC) partner states to allocate adeq uate budget for the development of the sector which is the back bone of the economies of these countries. Their argument in the recent EAC Agriculture Budget Summit in Arusha is that the member states are not doing enough to boost growth in the sector and as a result we grapple with poverty, hunger and malnutrition. The call for more budget for agriculture sector comes amid other arguments that Africa need not remain hungry given its abundant fertile land and growing population which makes the continental potential to become a major food producer and ensuring food security. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation said in a report last week that global food import bill is lik ely to drop by 2.5 per cent in 2019 to...

Africa is expecting to raise $40 billion in trade and investment deals at the Intra-African Trade Fair (IATF) scheduled to take place in Kigali from 1-7 September, 2020. A similar event in Cairo, Egypt, in 2018 successfully raised $32 billion, positively encouraging organizers that more can be mobilized from the forthcoming event in Rwanda. Speaking at the launch of preparations for the event, Rwanda’s Trade Minister, Soraya Hakuziyaremye said experience from Egypt will facilitate Rwanda to create better experiences for participants while in Kigali. The launch was held on the sidelines of the ongoing Transform Africa Summit that ends on Thursday, May 17. The IATF2020 will be organized by Rwanda in collaboration with the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) and the African Union. The event will provide a unique and valuable platform for businesses to access an integrated African market of over 1.2 billion people with a GDP of over $2.5 trillion created under the African Continental Free Trade Area. More than 5000 participants and 1000 exhibitors are expected to attend from 55 countries. The event will consist of an exhibition, trade and investment forum, virtual trade fair and creative African experience. There will also be a conference featuring leading African and international speakers and a variety of sessions dealing with African trade and investment. Business-to-Business and government-to-business opportunities for matching and exchanges will be held to facilitate striking trade and investment deals in nearly all sectors ranging from ICT, mining, agriculture, automotive, manufacturing and many more. Minister Hakuziyaremye called upon...

Kenya is eyeing to become the second major destination for cruise ships in Africa after Egypt following its search for new deals during the recent cruising conference in Miami, USA. The authorities expect the cruise ship business to take off from November when the construction of the terminal to receive the ships is completed. In 2017, Kenya failed to attend and showcase its cruise ship product to Miami — which was hosting the world's largest cruise ship conference — due to the delays in the construction of the facility at the port of Mombasa. The construction of the Sh350 million world-class cruise ship terminal at the port, which was initially set to be completed in 2017 but was pushed to 2018 and later to November this year, is 40 per cent complete. Kenya’s plan to have a California-based operator of luxury cruise ships make Mombasa a home port for its vessels to boost arrival of holidaymakers from the United States went a notch higher after officials of the Kenya Ports Authority attended the world's largest cruising conference last week. The delegation led by the chairman, General (Rtd) Joseph Kibwana, Managing Director Daniel Manduku, General Manager Operations Captain William Ruto and Principal Communication Officer Hajji Masemo was last week in America attending the global cruise ship forum to bag business ahead of the take-off of Kenya’s cruise ship sub-sector in November. During the meeting, the team met various leaders and showcased its plans besides making contacts with potential partners and customers...

Should all go according to projections, Tanzanians will enjoy new rail services by December, when the government expects the first phase of it $1.9 billion standard gauge railway between Dar es Salaam and Morogoro to be complete. Last week, the country, through the SGR project contractor Turkish firm Yapi Merkezi, in partnership with Portuguese firm Mota-Engil Africa, received the locomotives that will be used for testing, moving it closer to actualising one of sub-Saharan Africa's few high speed trains. It also launched the flash butt welding of the SGR in Soga, on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam, a key milestone for the project. "We are going to start conducting the first trials of these speed trains in July to cover part of the 300km. Once this is done, and we are finished with the final works in the third quarter, then we should start seeing operations by December," Minister for Works, Transport and Communications Isack Kamwele said. The tests will be the first for the ambitious project that Dar es Salaam has been pushing since April 2017. In operation, the trains are expected to reach speeds of 160 kilometres per hour. Modern services The actualisation of this project will make Tanzania the third country in the region to start enjoying modern railway services after Kenya and Ethiopia, which built them with help from the Chinese. "We have built the embankment, the rail sleepers have been installed and we have now launched the connection of this line to electricity, a...

The establishment of a railway link between Uganda and Kenya is expected to reduce the cost of commodities through reduced transport expenses. In 2017,Uganda and Kenyan governments embarked on a joint initiative to improve trade between the two countries beginning with establishment of a one border post in Malaba that has seen tremendous improvement in clearing of goods and persons. Yet there are still some bottlenecks at the border . The minister for Works and Transport Monica Azuba Ntege said the two governments have finalised talks to enable the move goods direct from Mombasa To kampala by rail. According to the plan, goods will be transported using the standard gauge railway from Mombasa to Naivasha where they will be shifted to the meter gauge through Malaba as compared to the past where goods were transported by trucks. She revealed that the Kenyan government has offered Ugandan land in Naivasha to establish a container port. The two governments also committed to revamp the old meter gauge railway on either side to Naivasha where it will be connected to the standard gauge railway. Yet like any other development, using the railway to transport goods will translate into reduced business for truck owners and drivers and could lead to unemployment. The MP for Tororo county Fredrick Angura appealed to government to develop coping mechanisms for those whose livelihood will be affected by the new developments. Source: Nile Post

Earlier in our continent’s history, children were encouraged to work hard in school in order to pass their examinations and get a job. Higher education, and especially a degree, was the way for a young person to get into gainful employment and get on their way to fulfilling their dreams. That is no longer the case today. Many people end up taking jobs outside their areas of study and for many, unfortunately, they end up jobless as there are not enough opportunities for employment in the formal sector. In these unfortunate circumstances, unemployment and under-employment have become common in our society today. In Rwanda, the youth today make about 28.1 percent of the total population, estimated to be 12 million. The economy of the country is bolstered by the existing opportunities in financial services, agriculture, commerce, hospitality and information technology. Vibrant and educated young men and women are capitalising the ease of starting a business in these sectors. Rwanda’s high ranking in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business is proof of its readiness to make things work for entrepreneurs. Economists have argued that the current unemployment crisis is as a result of an education system intent on labour supply instead of incubating entrepreneurship and skilling. Entrepreneurship-centered learning produces a cascading effect as with more business ventures created, more students get a higher chance of accessing employment. Evidently, small and medium small and micro businesses compromise 98 percent of total business in the country and account for 41 percent of...

A Kenyan living in Zambia, Mozambique, Ethiopia or the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) would be able to easily transact banking business from their favorite home-grown banks as the east African nation's top financial institutions go for the regional markets. The customers would be able to make deposit or withdraw cash, remit cash back home and access mobile banking services affordably and just as easy as they do while at home, thanks to an ongoing expansion drive by banks in the east African nation. Top Kenyan banks, namely Equity Group and Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB) Group, after conquering the Kenyan market, and extending to the larger East African Community countries, are now following in the footsteps of their South African and West African peers, which have branches in various African countries. KCB Group on May 7 announced that it is in buyout talks with a bank in the DRC as it seeks to enter the market. The bank had earlier declared that it is in talks with authorities in Ethiopia to enter the market and it is also eyeing Somalia. KCB chief executive Joshua Oigara said, once completed, the new branches would facilitate deals in syndicated lending and trade finance. "Ethiopia is a restricted market but there are reforms going on. We are optimistic they will allow Kenyan banks," said Oigara. By eyeing DRC, KCB is following in the footsteps of its rival Equity Group which already operates in the market, having entered some two years ago by buying a...

For sure, the signing of the Kigali Declaration on African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) in March 2018 by African heads of state and government marked a significant shift in expectations by Africa’s business community, among others, for Africa’s future economic growth and development. The declaration introduced the enhanced intra-African trade, achievable through AfCFTA as the sure way of achieving the much elusive sustainable economic development, employment creation in member states and most importantly, reversing the declining economic growth and development trend in the continent. Indeed, over the past 15 or so years, most countries in Africa experienced have sustained economic growth, with the rates often exceeding five percent a year. Between 2000 and 2010, the continent achieved average real annual GDP growth of 5.4 percent, adding $78 billion annually to the GDP (2015 prices). This growth indeed inspired optimism around and about the continent’s socio-economic prospects and in its ability to deliver better socio-economic welfare gains to the people. However, this was not the case. Between the years 2010-2015, Africa’s economic growth slowed down. Growth dropped to an average of 3.4 percent per year thus sending shockwaves through leadership of Africa and the entire business community. Despite this decline in the performance of the mentioned economies, the rest of Africa economies were able to maintain stable growth rates in general. Nonetheless, African economies amid many internal and external shocks have been resilient. According to the World Bank Review (2018), growth in sub-Saharan Africa is estimated at 2.3 percent for...

The establishment of a railway link between Uganda and Kenya is expected to reduce the cost of commodities through reduced transport expenses. In 2017,Uganda and Kenyan governments embarked on a joint initiative to improve trade between the two countries beginning with establishment of a one border post in Malaba that has seen tremendous improvement in clearing of goods and persons. Yet there are still some bottlenecks at the border . The minister for Works and Transport Monica Azuba Ntege said the two governments have finalised talks to enable the move goods direct from Mombasa To kampala by rail. According to the plan, goods will be transported using the standard gauge railway from Mombasa to Naivasha where they will be shifted to the meter gauge through Malaba as compared to the past where goods were transported by trucks. She revealed that the Kenyan government has offered Ugandan land in Naivasha to establish a container port. The two governments also committed to revamp the old meter gauge railway on either side to Naivasha where it will be connected to the standard gauge railway. Yet like any other development, using the railway to transport goods will translate into reduced business for truck owners and drivers and could lead to unemployment. The MP for Tororo county Fredrick Angura appealed to government to develop coping mechanisms for those whose livelihood will be affected by the new developments. Source: Nile Post