Cross-border traders are blaming Customs officials for harassment, high taxes, and inspection of their products by the customs authorities at the border points. According to the traders, the officials lack information on the Customs Union and the Common Market Protocol. The traders were speaking at the recently concluded 20-year anniversary celebrations of the East African Business Council in Nairobi. “Most of these officers do not understand what the Common Market Protocol entails. You will be charged taxes at the border on every product even when you try to explain that you are East African and it is not right,” said Charity Githinji, the managing director of Tandaza Tanzania Ltd. She said that although the one stop border posts have helped ease the cost and time of doing business, not all the Customs officers understand how they work. “If, for example, I am crossing the border from Tanzania to Kenya, I am subjected to checks on both sides instead of just one side,” said Ms Githinji. She cited the single tourist visa as one of the boosts for business in the region, even though only Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda have signed it. Hajjat Nakasujja, the chief executive of Aloesha Organic Natural Health Products, said there was a need to sensitise Customs officials on what free trade under the EAC entails. “New rules, regulations and agreements are passed but the information does not reach the border officials. This is where the challenge is,” said Ms Nakasujja. EABC chairman, Jim Kabeho recommended implementation of...

East Africa's largest economies, Ethiopia and Kenya, are among Africa’s top investment destinations. In its 2018 Africa Investment Index, Quantum Global Research Lab — Quantum Global’s independent research arm — ranked Ethiopia and Kenya at positions seven and nine, up from 21 and 15 respectively, the previous year. Ethiopia improved largely due to the country’s strong economic growth, averaging 8.4 per cent over the past three years. It was fuelled by significant investments in public infrastructure. This year, the World Bank estimates that Ethiopia will remain one of the fastest growing economies, but will slow down to 8.2 per cent from the 8.3 per cent forecast for 2017, as the country moves to stabilise public debt, which now exceeds 50 per cent of GDP. The index assesses a country’s business environment, liquidity, risk, growth, social capital and demographic factors to “paint a picture of the investment attractiveness of countries in the medium term.” Despite its protracted 2017 election, Kenya rode on a slight improvement in the ease of doing business, its relatively large economy and strong demographic factors to make it to the top 10 list, while Uganda slipped from position 12 to 17. “Kenya’s elections are a known factor and investors have developed an inbuilt tolerance. Kenya remains a free market economy, a transit state to the wider region,” said Aly Khan Satchu, CEO of Rich Management. The top five African investment destinations were Morocco, Egypt, Algeria, Botswana and Cote D’Ivore. Together, they attracted $12.8 billion in foreign direct...

March 21 in Kigali, Rwanda, saw African leaders launch the biggest free trade agreement since the establishment of the Geneva-based World Trade Organization 23 years ago. The African Continental Free Trade Area is a culmination of an agreement reached in 2012 and the intense negotiations of African heads of government that started in earnest in 2015. Initially the accord was to be signed by 55 member states. Only 44 signed the document after Nigeria, Africa's biggest economy, absconded. Whichever way you look at it, Rwanda's President Paul Kagame, also the African Union chairman, rightly put it: "Some horses decided to drink the water. Others have excuses and they end up dying of thirst." The new free trade area brings together an estimated 1.2 billion people with a combined gross domestic product of more than $2 trillion. The draft agreement commits countries to removing tariffs on 90 percent of goods, with 10 percent of what they referred to as "sensitive items" to be phased in later. Crucially, the covenant liberalizes services and aims to address the perpetual problem of non-tariff barriers, which have become the biggest headache in intra-African trade. Such barriers come in the form of government laws, regulations, policies, conditions, restrictions or specific requirements or prohibitions that protect domestic industries from foreign competition. Once the bottlenecks are done away with, African states look forward to a situation where there will be free movement of labor and the establishment of a single currency like the eurozone monetary union of 19...

Delta Air Lines has said it added a second non-stop route from Lagos to the United States (U.S.), with the aim of boosting trade and commerce between both nations put at $9 billion as at 2016. The airline also affirmed that the move came as Nigeria opens up greater investment opportunities, as well as to provide business travellers more opportunities to reunite with families and friends.Records have shown that the U.S. is Nigeria’s largest foreign investor and the airline carried more than 89,000 passengers between Lagos and the country in 2017, while the new strategy is expected to increase the indices. Unveiling the new commercial schedules to newsmen last week, in Lagos, alongside the Commercial Director, West and East Africa, Bobby Bryan, the company’s Senior Vice President, Europe, Middle East, Africa and India, Corneel Koster, said the Lagos to New York-JFK route is planned to connect both financial headquarters. Launched on March 25, 2018, as the first ever direct operations on the route, he disclosed that the flights depart Lagos at 11.30p.m (23:30hrs) on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday to arrive New York-JFK at 5.30a.m (05:30hrs), while in-bound flights arrive Lagos Monday, Wednesday and Saturday. According to Koster, the new arrangement will afford customers flying to Delta’s New York-JFK hub the benefit of over 20 connections across the U.S. to destinations including Washington D.C., Baltimore and Chicago, while also complementing the existing Lagos-Atlanta route with more travel options to and from the U.S. “With the U.S. the largest foreign investor in...

Kenyan farmers stand to earn more if the government scraps the Mombasa tea auction and replace it with a blending and packaging facility that exports finished products to the international market. Already Dubai, which does not produce any tea, has established the Dubai Tea Trading Centre (DTTC), which has become an important intermediary between production and consumption. The facility combines warehousing, blending and packaging to provide the most complete and convenient solution for traders looking to maintain a stock capable of meeting the requirements of importers in the Middle East and the international market. Domiciled at the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC), a free trade zone, the facility currently processes teas from 13 different countries. According to Sunitha Murthy, customer relations manager at DTTC, at a fee, the multipurpose infrastructure offers the importers of teas from different countries limited free storage for limited periods, access to a tea blending unit, tea bag and loose tea packing facilities, tea tasting and in-house expertise and networking opportunities. “Our members include tea producers, exporters, regional importers and international merchants, all attracted by our exclusive range of services, industrial clustering and the broad opportunities of our dynamic trade ecosystem and community,” she told People Daily. While Sunitha did not give the volume of raw tea imported from Kenya to the facility by different traders for blending because of customer confidentiality, she acknowledged that most of the tea at the facility is sourced from Kenya, India and Sri Lanka. Last year, over five million kilogrammes...

The East African Community (EAC) stands to benefit from the recently unveiled African free trade area if it consolidates its internal market, according to the East African Business Council (EABC). “Failure to remove trade impediments means that our bloc will remain weakened,” EABC executive director Lillian Awinja said last week. She told regional press that the African Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA) unveiled in Kigali last week could pull some EAC states into the new pact at the expense of their trade relations. “This means the benefits going elsewhere...to the rest of African market instead of our internal market,” she said on the sidelines of a regional workshop on trade between EAC and the outside world. CFTA was launched by leaders of the African Union (AU) member states in Kigali on March 21, and the continental body hopes that it will be the world’s largest single market with a cumulative GDP of $3.4 trillion. Leaders from some 44 African countries out of 55 signed up for the trade deal while more others committed to the deal through assenting to the Kigali Declaration. The milestone agreement is seen as a key part of AU’s long-term development plan, Agenda 2063, which calls for easing of trade and travel across the continent. The pact came in the wake of advanced talks on a tripartite trade area comprising the EAC, Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) and South African Development Community (Sadc), constituting more than 60 per cent of Africa’s GDP and...

AS people continue to complain over substandard and fake goods, the Zanzibar Foods and Drugs Agency (ZFDA) has been urged to ensure that all the consumable products imported to the Islands are safe for its people. The call was made here by the Deputy Minister for Health, Ms Harusi Said Suleiman (pictured), at the launching of the ZFDA Information Management System or 'ZFDA e-portal' as par the 'East African Community Medicine Regulatory Harmonisation' (EAC-MRH). "With this support, you have to ensure that food and drugs in Zanzibar are safe for the people," said Ms Suleiman as she thanked Trade-Mark East Africa (TMA) for the support as she appealed to the agency officers to work hard to meet their goal. TMA funded the design and roll out of the e-portal with a grant of US 150,000 dollars. It is expected that the e-portal will ease trade document verifications and improve health safety inspections, along with administration and management of regulatory services and documents issued by ZFDA. Dr Burhan Simai, the Executive Director of ZFDA, said its agency "Prides itself in joining the ranks of 4 other countries in EAC who have rolled out e-portals for their pharmaceutical regulatory bodies. It is a reassurance to citizens that food and drugs in the market are of good quality." TMA Tanzania Country Director, Mr John Ulanga, said that supporting the portal is in line with the organisation's commitment to working with EAC institutions to reduce barriers to trade, "Easing the importation and transiting of...

A free trade agreement across Africa is "great in principle," Matthew Parks, parliamentary deputy co-ordinator for the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), told CNBC via telephone Tuesday. COSATU represents more than 2 million workers in South Africa. Attending a summit in Kigali, Rwanda, last week, South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa did not immediately sign the African Union's proposed free trade agreement. The agreement posits a free trade area between its 55 member states. Safeguarding jobs and cheap Chinese goods flooding the market are hurdles the South African government must clear before it signs up to a pan-African free trade agreement, the country's largest trade union group told CNBC. A free trade agreement across Africa is "great in principle," Matthew Parks, parliamentary deputy co-ordinator for the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU), told CNBC via telephone Tuesday. COSATU represents more than 2 million workers in South Africa. But, "we need to see some kind of plan," he added. Attending a summit in Kigali, Rwanda, last week, South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa did not immediately sign the African Union's proposed free trade agreement, which posits a free trade area between its 55 member states. Ramaphosa instead signed the Kigali Declaration, a precursor to the deal. "We are part of this process of opening up Africa for trade. All that is holding us back from signing the actual agreement is our own consultation process," Ramaphosa was quoted as saying by South African broadcaster eNCA. Forty-four African nations signed on to...

The East African Community is set for logo change in a move aimed at accommodating new members and creating harmony among various organs within the body. The exercise which is expected to conclude in November saw youths from member states invited to submit different designs for consideration. It got 485 different designs from the youths aged between 18-35 years. “We have narrowed down to ten applicants and expect to forward the top three to the council of ministers for approval in an exercise we expect to come to conclude before the end of this year,” said Jesca Eriyo, EAC deputy secretary general. “Rebranding is important to enable the East Africa Community have a simple logo that can also be easily adopted in other organs of the body,” she said noting that the current logo has so many colours that needs to be replaced to also accommodate new entrants in the union. The East African Community launched the rebranding competition in 2017 targeting to change its visual brand identity for eleven Organs and Institutions including the regional parliament and the court. The council of ministers will consider the report of the top entrants in April 2018, where 438 proposed designs have been considered by regional brand experts. The Rebranding process targets to resolve among others the lack of a unique common identifier among the EAC Organs and Institutions, too many colours being used for the flag and logos, the EAC logo not being adaptable to the expansion of the community, two...

Kenya is the ninth most attractive economy for investments flowing into the African continent, according to the latest African Investment Index 2018 by Swiss-based research and private equity firm Quantum Global. This is an improvement from position 15 in the 2017 index. Kenya beats other members of the East African Community (EAC) who do not appear on the top 10 list. Regional countries that come closest to Kenya are Ethiopia and Zambia which are ranked seventh and eight respectively. North Africa North African countries including Morocco, Egypt and Algeria are the most attractive on the continent at position one, two and three respectively. “International investors are looking at a wide range of sectors for investments including energy, infrastructure, tourism, and ICT amongst others,” said Quantum Global in a statement. The index is constructed from investment indicators, which include the share of domestic investment in GDP, the share of Africa’s total FDI net inflow, GDP growth rate forecast and a population-augmented GDP growth factor. Other factors taken into account in the calculation are real-interest rate, the difference of broad money growth to the GDP growth rates, inflation differential, credit rating, import cover, the share of the country’s external debt in its GNI, current account ratio, ease of doing business and the country’s population size. Indicators are based on secondary data collected from World Bank Development Indicators, IMF World Economic Outlook, UNCTAD Data Centre and Quantum Global’s estimates. “Continued FDI inflows will continue to drive the much-needed capital to develop Africa’s primary...