Economic growth in Africa rebounded, but “not fast enough” in recent past, according to Africa’s Pulse, a bi-annual analysis of the state of African economies conducted by the World Bank, released on Wednesday in Washington. The report, which was released during the World Bank Spring Meetings, however shows that, “Growth prospects have strengthened in most of East Africa, owing to improving agriculture sector growth following droughts and a rebound in private sector credit growth. In Ethiopia, growth will remain high, as government-led infrastructure investment continues.” The report suggests that Sub-Saharan Africa’s growth is projected to reach 3.1 per cent in 2018, and to average 3.6 percent in the 2019–20 period. The growth forecasts are based on expectations that oil and metal prices will remain stable, and that governments in the region will implement reforms to address macroeconomic imbalances and boost investment. “Growth has rebounded in Sub-Saharan Africa, but not fast enough. We are still far from pre-crisis growth levels,” said Albert G. Zeufack, World Bank Chief Economist for the Africa Region. To achieve high and sustained levels of growth, Zeufack says, African governments must speed up and deepen macroeconomic and structural reforms. The moderate pace of economic expansion reflects the gradual pick-up in growth in the region’s three largest economies, Nigeria, Angola and South Africa. Elsewhere, economic activity will pick up in some metals exporters, as mining production and investment rise. Among non-resource intensive countries, solid growth, supported by infrastructure investment, will continue in the West African Economic and Monetary...

Construction of the Northern Corridor transit transport route has been boosted with US$1.05m from Trademark East Africa. The funding will enable the agency to collect and analyze data related to transport of goods and persons. This follows the signing of a finance agreement between Trademark East Africa (TMA) and the Northern Corridor Transit and Transport Coordination Authority (NCTTCA) on Tuesday. The money will be channeled from TMA through NCTTCA. The agreement was signed by NCTTCA acting executive Secretary, Fred Tumwebaze and Ahmed Farah from TMA. The Northern Corridor is East Africa’s main transport corridor that begins at the port of Mombasa with two routes; one through Uganda to South Sudan and the second one through Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi to DRC. NCTTCA member countries include Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan and Democratic republic of Congo, adds a press statement from TMA. NCTTCA oversees the corridor monitoring framework known as Northern Corridor Transport Observatory, which is a performance monitoring tool that informs interventions geared towards reducing costs and delays of transportation and other related logistics challenges. With the new financing, the Authority will improve monitoring of the Northern Corridor performance with regards to movement of people and goods. The statement adds that the authority will adopt modern technologies, including mobile based and online systems to enhance its capability to monitor trade and transport flows, bottlenecks and impact of interventions. Information from TMA indicates that data collected will support evidence-based advocacy and decision-making, resulting to fit for purpose interventions in reducing...

The Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) will soon start handling conventional cargo after the extension of the rail line to cover 10 berths at the Port of Mombasa. SGR Project Manager Engineer Maxwell Mengich said completion of the extension line will make it possible for cargo discharged from a ship loaded directly into the SGR.The line will be completed by August according to the Kenya Railways officials. Its completion will enable SGR to handle non-containerised (conventional) cargo such as clinker, fertiliser, grains, and steels.The extension of the Sh327 billion Mombasa-Nairobi SGR which will cover 10 berths at the Port of Mombasa will be complete by August. Kenya Railways Managing Director Atanas Maina said the construction work is more than 50 per cent complete. The project is expected to be completed in four months. “The bridge is intended to connect SGR to berth number one to 10, which largely handles bulk and other conventional cargo,” Mr Maina said.He said the SGR line is currently connected to berths number 11 to 21, which mostly handle containerised cargo discharged at the port by a ship. “We are also targeting conventional cargo since we have wagons that can handle this too. On the Nairobi side, such cargo will be handled at the Nairobi Freight Terminal (NFT), which is next to the terminus,” Mr Maina told Business Daily during an interview. He said the reason for linking all berths to the SGR line is to ensure efficiency at the port and utilise effectiveness of the facility...

Kenya could triple export revenues if the newly signed continental trade agreement is fully embraced. This will bring Sh1.53 trillion in revenues from trade, with the signing of the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement, Kenya Association of Manufacturers has said. “Local manufacturers are open to the possibilities. Our exports are more than Sh510 billion and this can be tripled,” KAM chief executive Phyllis Wakiaga told the Star. Last month, President Uhuru Kenyatta joined 43 other African heads of state to sign a new trade agreement aimed at absolving tariff and non-tariff barriers that have hindered intra-Africa trade for  years. The trade pact includes Protocol on Trade in Goods, Protocol on Trade in Services and Protocol on Dispute Settlement. Signatory states will commit to absolving tariffs on 90 per cent of goods with 10 per cent of “sensitive items” to be phased out after further deliberations. It will also address licensing rules and quotas presented in non-tariff barriers. “If we want to develop through trade as a continent this is one of the issues we must address. We must abolish tariff and non-tariff barriers that hinder successful trading between our countries,” Wakiaga said. Kenya is already a member of COMESA free trade area as well as the EAC customs union where originating goods, which certify the rules of origin, are already being traded at zero tariffs. Trade PS Chris Kiptoo earlier told the Star that the country had already removed 37 per cent of total tariffs under the EAC Common External...

Creating sufficient capacity ahead of demand at the Mombasa port and proactive investment in expansion and upgrade of roads and rail linking the facility to hinterland will grow Kenya’s economy by at least two per cent. This is according to a new report by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). The report says the increase in investment in the port and landside regional transport system will also redirect global cargo flows into East and Central Africa, attracting more giant shipping lines. Currently, container ships deployed to Mombasa are smaller compared to those handled by Durban in South Africa and ports in West Africa such as Lagos-Apapa and Abidjan. The capacity of container ships to East African Coast is 2900-5000 twenty foot equivalent units (TEUs) compared with West Africa where the average container capacity is 5,500 TEUs, peaking at 13,000 TEUs, according to the PwC’s report on port development in sub-Saharan Africa. “Ports that can accommodate larger vessels generally have a higher capacity than comparable ports that can only handle smaller vessels,” PwC says in the report titled Strengthening Africa’s Gateways to Trade, launched in Nairobi  on Thursday last week. “Even if ports can accommodate larger vessels, the quality of port equipment and operations needs to be sufficient to process a sufficient number of containers to make it economical for such ships to call at a port,” the report says. Mombasa port’s capacity rose to nearly 1.7 million TEUs from 1.08 million TEUs following completion of the first phase of the Sh30 billion second container...

A report on African ports released last week by global research firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) shows that Dar es Salaam and Djibouti may overtake Mombasa port as the regional hub. The report identified Durban (South Africa), Abidjan (Cote d’Ivoire) and Mombasa as the most likely to emerge as the major hubs in Southern Africa, West Africa and East Africa, respectively based on the degree of port centrality, the amount of trade passing through a port, and the size of the hinterland. It also established that the closest rivals for these ports, due to their better operational performance, are Lagos-Apapa (Nigeria) and Tema (Ghana) as alternatives to Abidjan, and Djibouti and to a lesser extent Dar es Salaam to Mombasa. “Djibouti poses much less of a threat to Mombasa due to the latter’s larger hinterland and operational efficiencies. If it was not for the close proximity of Dar es Salaam to Mombasa, it would have been a major contender to be an East African hub. Given their close proximity, it is unlikely that both Dar es Salaam and Mombasa will both emerge as hubs,” reported PwC. “Also due to Mombasa’s better hinterland connections and larger throughput, it is more likely to fulfil the role of a hub, with Dar es Salaam being a significant regional port.” Both Tanzania and Djibouti have recently embarked on major developments on their ports in a bid to improve their operational performances and position themselves as continental hubs. In July 2017, Tanzania announced that it had received...

NAIROBI — Cooperation between countries and the private sector will be key to the successful implementation of the Paris Agreement on climate change in African nations, panelists at Africa Climate Week held at the United Nations Office at Nairobi said. Africa is the most vulnerable continent to the impacts of climate change but accounts for the smallest share of global greenhouse gas emissions. In the face of climate change, the continent is threatened with extreme temperatures, droughts, and flash floods, which work to heighten food insecurity, experts say. The majority of African nations have signed and ratified the Paris Agreement. Under the agreement, countries have crafted Nationally Determined Contributions plans, which outline their strategies for cutting emissions and adapting to the impacts of climate change. The international community is expected to finalize the guidelines for how countries will implement the agreement at the end of this year at COP24, hosted in Poland. Article 6 of the agreement encourages cooperation in order for countries to achieve these strategic plans. During Africa Climate Week, various stakeholders, including African government representatives and the private sector met to discuss how they will go about integrating cooperation into these plans. This included ensuring strong policy frameworks and cooperation within African regions. “Carbon market mechanisms are the mechanisms for cooperation. They are the mechanisms for doing things together between countries, between businesses, between businesses and the government,” said Tomasz Chruszczow, COP24 special envoy for climate change, during the conversations. “This is the way to do more with less. This...

Fostering international development has long been viewed as central to the moral, humanitarian, strategic and security interests of the United States. In particular, there is one area where the United States has been a leader in development assistance — providing trade preferences to African countries, most of which are low-income countries. This has been achieved through the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which was initially passed by U.S. Congress in 2000 and signed into law by President Bill Clinton. The legislation was deliberately renewed by both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. AGOA demonstrates the power of U.S. trade policy to bring about significant change in Africa through measures that, while trivial from the American perspective, can have a sizeable impact in Africa. Specifically, AGOA allows for eligible African countries to export a long list of goods to the United States without paying the import tariffs that most countries must pay and without being subject to import quota restrictions. The beauty of AGOA lies in the fact that it costs the U.S. very little to implement in terms of lost tariff revenue and lost market share. In fact, it’s fair to say that the implementation of AGOA has had zero impact on the U.S. economy, and close to zero in terms of American tariff revenues. At the same time, however, AGOA has resulted in an increase in exports in some key products that have been massive when measured by African standards. For example, apparel exports, which have historically...

TradeMark Africa (TMA) and the Northern Corridor Transit and Transport Coordination Authority (NCTTCA) yesterday signed a financing agreement worth US$ 1.05 million.TMA will disburse the money to the NCTTFA secretariat over a 3-year period (2018 – 2021). Funding will enable the agency to collect and analyse data related to transport of goods and persons along the transport corridor, therefore informing decision making The Northern Corridor is East Africa’s main transport corridor that begins at the port of Mombasa with two routes; one through Uganda to South Sudan and other through Uganda, to Rwanda, Burundi to DR Congo. NCTTCA member countries include Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan and Democratic republic of Congo. NCTTCA oversees the corridor monitoring framework known as Northern Corridor Transport Observatory, which is a performance monitoring tool that informs interventions geared towards reducing costs and delays of transportation and other related logistic a, challenges. With the new financing, the Authority will improve monitoring of the Northern Corridor performance with regards to movement of people and goods. It will adopt modern technologies, including mobile based and online systems, to enhance its capability to monitor trade and transport flows, bottlenecks and impact of interventions. Data collected will support evidence-based advocacy and decision making. This initiative will complement monitoring the implementation of the Mombasa Port Charter. TradeMark was represented by Country Director for Kenya, Ahmed Farah, while NCTTCA was represented by Ag. Executive Secretary Fred Tumwebaze. NCTTCA collects data from over 20 stakeholders in all the member countries with the...

NAIROBI, KENYA: President Uhuru Kenyatta kicked off the program for his five-day visit to the UK by presiding over the opening ceremony of the London Stock Exchange. Speaking after the ceremony, President Kenyatta urged UK investors to increase their investments in Kenya. The UK is a leading investor in Kenya with at least 220 British companies operating in Kenya running business valued at more than 2.7 Sterling Pounds. President Kenyatta, who was joined by the Secretary State for International Development (DfID) Penny Mordaunt and the Chairman of the London Stock Exchange Group Donald Brydon, said Kenya is open for business and offers the best investment opportunity in Africa. “Kenya has just recorded the best improvement in ease of doing business. We are inviting more UK companies to invest in Kenya,” said the President. “Kenya is the third most competitive country in Africa with a liberalised economy.” He said the business environment in Kenya is supported by a strong telecommunication network, a reformed regulatory framework and an efficient aviation network. The President said London is a strong partner for Kenya’s economy and this was evident when Kenya’s sovereign bond was oversubscribed by more than 7 times a few months. “The United Kingdom continues to be a valuable economic partner in Kenya’s socio-economic policies,” said the President. The President, who was accompanied by Trade and Industry CS Adan Mohamed and Foreign Affairs CS Monica Juma said the London Stock Exchange and the Nairobi Securities Exchange have entered into an agreement for dual...