Tanzania and Kenya have ended a two-month diplomatic row that led to import bans of some products and resulted in heavy financial losses for businesses from either side. The cessation of hostilities came after President Uhuru Kenyatta and Tanzania's John Magufuli stepped in to end what was fast degenerating into a full-blown diplomatic crisis between Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. Following the deal, Tanzania has re-opened its borders to Kenyan products, including unprocessed foods, milk products and cigarettes, ending a standoff that saw exporters from both countries suffer financial setbacks. In reciprocation, Kenya has allowed Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG) from Tanzania back into the country, a month after imposing a ban citing safety and security risks. Kenya has also lifted the ban on Tanzanian wheat. The ban has been lifted. We no longer have a problem at all,” Petroleum Principal Secretary Andrew Kamau told Standard Business yesterday. Trade PS Chris Kiptoo confirmed the lifting of the import ban by both countries. “To my knowledge, the borders have been reopened for business, but we have a bilateral meeting set for September 6 to 8 in Tanzania,” he said of the new developments. Tanzania has, however, retained the duty it imposed on Kenyan products pending the outcome of the high-level meeting to iron out some sticky issues. Meeting aborted The meeting was supposed to be held on Wednesday last week but it aborted at the last minute when Tanzanian officials failed to show up. Previous attempts to resolve the impasse have not...

Over the last 20 years, Rwanda International Trade Fair has grown by leaps and bounds becoming a strategic platform through which major businesses from around the world have penetrated the Rwandan market. The annual exhibition, the largest in the country, is organised by Private Sector Federation in partnership with the Ministry of Trade Industry and East African Community affairs. Many foreign exhibitors that first came to Rwanda through the annual exhibition have since set up shop in the country. Aware of this, Private Sector Federation has stepped up efforts to promote the event beyond Rwandan borders, encouraging foreign businesses to come and showcase their products but also consider investing in the country, industry leaders said. Movit Products Ltd, a Ugandan cosmetics company, is one of the foreign firms that first came to Rwanda through the exhibition and has since set foot in the Rwandan market. This, officials say, has helped create employment for many Rwandans but also boosted the country's economy in one way or another. John Nabirinda, the Movit country distributor, says the company set up shop in Rwanda thanks to the trade fair. "We were attracted to the market. We came as exhibitors in the expo only to realize that there was actually a good market for our products," he told The New Times. The other foreign firms that have entered the local market through the expo include Dubai's JKK International from Dubai (have since started a construction company), Ugand'a Mukwano Industries (laundry detergents, cooking oil etc) and...

Electricity trade among East African states will soon begin as Ethiopia and Kenya race to finish the stringing of cross-border high-voltage transmission lines. Work has started on the 2,000 km Kenya-Tanzania-Zambia interconnector link to the South Africa Power Pool to provide opportunities for trade between the eastern and southern part of the continent. North China Power Engineering Company is doing the line from Isinya on the outskirts of Nairobi to Namanga town on the border with Tanzania. “Survey has started and foundation work on a 93 km, 400 kilovolt (kV) line starts in September 2017. Completion is expected by December 2018,” said Kenya Electricity Transmission Company (Ketraco) managing director Fernandes Barasa. The $309 million line from Isinya substation in Kenya to Singida in southern Tanzania is expected to transfer 2,400MW. Ketraco and Tanzania Electric Supply Company will oversee the project. The Tanzanian line is 414 km from Namanga to Singida. There will be a substation in Arusha and expansion works expected on the Singida substation to link the two countries’ national grids. Ketraco said a new line running from Suswa substation near Naivasha town to Lessos in western Kenya and on to Tororo in eastern Uganda will be built, with an arm from Lessos near Kapsabet to Kisumu. Suswa is the distribution point of power from Olkaria, Olkaria 1 and Olkaria 4 geothermal plants, with an output of about 500MW. Thermal plants The Ethiopia-Kenya line and Loiyangalani in northern Kenya are linked to the Lake Turkana Wind Farm. The 220...

African countries will incur at least $4.3 trillion, or $174 billion a year, in financing infrastructure projects to support economic growth over the next 23 years, according to a recent report by G20’s Global Infrastructure Hub (GI Hub). The Global Infrastructure Outlook calls upon African countries to raise the continent’s infrastructural investments to $240 billion per year ($6 trillion by 2040) in order to match their peers. According to the study covering infrastructure investment needs globally, Africa’s infrastructure segment remains small, accounting for just six per cent of the global tally. The continent’s needs are 39 per cent more than the forecast investment under current trends. “Total infrastructure investment in Africa was equivalent to 4.3 per cent of GDP between 2007 and 2015. The continent will need to maintain investment at around this proportion of GDP to accommodate economic and population growth to 2040,” the report says. In East Africa, the three countries included in the report; Kenya, Ethiopia and Tanzania will cumulatively spend $837 billion on infrastructure projects by 2040. But the three will require at least $308 billion more to meet their infrastructure spending needs over the period. Striking differences Kenya must spend at least Ksh969 billion ($9.3 billion) every year on infrastructure to meet its infrastructure spending needs of $223 billion. Ethiopia has the highest forecast spending against current spending trends gap of $154 billion, followed by Tanzania at $115 billion followed. To bridge the gaps, the two countries will need to raise their infrastructural spending to...

The Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) began Monday a consultative process within member states which is expected to lead to a pact that will enable free movement of people in the region. According to the IGAD secretary general, Amb. Mahboub Maalim, when the body was established on January 16, 1986, one of its core objectives was to enable free movement of people among member states. "One of the core ambitions of IGAD was to enable migration. Unfortunately we have been dogged by many challenges such as internal conflicts in member states. We were thus forced to focus on priority areas such as peace, security and disaster management," he said. He added that regional co-operation has been vital in solving conflicts in Somalia and South Sudan, citing Uganda's contribution as key in stabilising both nations. "Migration is not about to stop anywhere. People cross borders every minute. It is unfortunate that many of the migrants dying in the Mediterranean Sea are from the IGAD region, yet we could have worked out a mechanism to help them by easing intra-migration. And that is why the entire world is concerned about migration," said Maalim. The three-day consultative meeting (August 21-23) dubbed The Protocol on Free Movement of Persons in the IGAD Region, brings together key players in the migration sector, including civil society, academia, private sector, the media, the Police, the military, and the ministries of health, internal affairs and foreign affairs. The stakeholders are expected to give their views on free movement...

A new report on Barack Obama's main legacy project for Africa shows it is falling short of his original goal of bringing electricity to 20 million households in Kenya, Tanzania and four other countries by 2018. Mr Obama's Power Africa initiative, announced in 2013, has so far helped connect only about half the projected number of households, according to the programme's 2017 annual report published on Monday. “To date Power Africa has supported private-sector companies and utilities in connecting a total of 10.6 million homes and businesses to power solutions — that is approximately 53 million people who have gained access to electricity since 2013,” the report states. SOLAR LANTERNS But about two-thirds of those new connections take the form of solar lanterns, which power a single light and enable mobile-phone charging, the annual report notes. Power Africa touts the lanterns as “a critical first step [that] results in dramatic livelihood improvements” for households in remote and impoverished areas. Larger systems are required in order to provide Africans with power to run appliances and create businesses, the report acknowledges. 2 MILLION HOMES It says the US initiative has so far helped connect more than two million homes and businesses to such sources. The annual report cites additional progress toward Power Africa's revised and expanded goal of supporting the installation in several countries of 30,000 megawatts of generation capacity and 60 million new electricity connections by 2030. Hitting those targets will depend, however, on President Donald Trump's attitude toward a programme...

Speaking during the Africa Business Forum, South African Trade Minister Rob Davies said that available colonial era infrastructure was only geared towards fulfilling its role as a mere producer and exporter. “Colonialism has created infrastructure that was only geared towards the continent fulfilling its role as mere producer and exporter of primary commodities that were taken to other people’s economies. There is a huge amount of catch-up that we need to undergo as a continent in order to achieve regional integration,” said Davies. The continent is also losing over 40 percent of its competitiveness due to the absence of infrastructure or inefficiency of established infrastructure. He emphasized the role of infrastructure saying it would provide roads, rail, ports, energy transmission lines and ICT connectivity which are all necessary to facilitate economic development. “Infrastructure can be an important counter-cyclical tool because by infrastructure development we can to generate economic activity even if some of the other forms of economic activities are suffering from the negative waves,” he continued. The continent, therefore, needs integration which is dependent on three factors: free trade areas, infrastructure development and cooperation which are essential in promoting industrial development across the continent. “We need to partner to build the required infrastructure and the real capability that will assist all of us build our countries. Adequate, effective, affordable and well-maintained infrastructure is an essential tool for Africa’s growth and development,” he said in conclusion. Source: Capital Business

Kenya will use next week’s trade expo in Kazakhstan as a platform to diversify its share of the export market to the country from the current 0.16 per cent. Trade PS Chris Kiptoo said the import value of Kazakhstan is $30 billion annually and Kenya accounts for only Sh47 million of the market share. He said tea forms 97 per cent of the total exports to the country. “We are going to use the expo as an opportunity to boost export of other goods to Kazakhstan, which is a potential market for Kenyan goods,” said Dr Kiptoo at a media briefing in Nairobi on Tuesday. The government, he said, aims to export of fresh produce, which accounts for $1.1 billion of Kazakhstani imports and textile and apparel that stands at $900 million. “We have a lot of fresh produce that we can export to Kazakhstan, instead of relying on Netherlands, which is our major market at the moment for these commodities, we can diversify to other markets as well,” he said. Kazakhstan is among the top 10 buyers of Kenyan tea. Source: Business Daily

Government has  signed a multimillion dollar deal with a Nigerian investor to revamp and develop the country’s potato industry and help make Rwanda a key producer and exporter of potato products. It is a new dawn for Irish potato growers in the country following the signing of a multimillion dollar deal between government and a Nigerian firm to develop the country’s Irish potato value chain. Under the deal signed last week between Rwanda Development Board (RDB), the ministries of Agriculture and Animal Resources, and Trade, Industry and EAC Affairs and BlackPace Africa Group, the firm will also set up two potato processing plants and boost production activities. The five-year project worth $120 million (Rwf102 billion) involves building of two potato factories; one in the Kigali Special Economic Zone for frozen French fries, and another in Nyabihu District to produce potato products for the export market, according to Joseph Mugarulire, the director general of the National Industrial Research and Development Agency (NIRDA). NIRDA is supporting the project on research and trade issues. The firm targets production capacity of 10 million tonnes of potato by the fifth year of the project, officials said. When it starts operations, it will process 80,000 to 100,000 tonnes of potatoes making frozen French fries (at the Kigali Special Industrial Zone-based plant), and potato flakes and crisps (Nyabihu plant) targeting export markets in Africa and the Middle East, according to Olusegun Paul Andrew, the chairman of BlackPace Africa Group. Clare Akamanzi, the Rwanda Development Board CEO, expressed...

The Minister of Trade and Industry, Dr. Rob Davies says the development of infrastructure is an essential and absolutely fundamental catalyst for regional integration for increased inter-regional trade and for industrialisation in Africa. Minister Davies was speaking during the opening the two-day Infrastructure Africa Business Forum that started in Sandton. “As the government of South Africa we categorically stated that the development of infrastructure is an essential and absolutely fundamental catalyst for regional integration for increased inter-regional trade and for industrialisation in Africa. Therefore, infrastructure develop lies in the very heart of our efforts to promote high levels inclusive growth and development throughout the continent,” said Minister Davies. Minister Davies added there was a huge deficit in the infrastructure that is necessary to support high levels of inter-regional trade that connects African countries to one another. “As a continent Africa has an infrastructure deficit estimated at $93 billion per annum for the next 20 years. Colonialism has createdinfrastructure that was only geared towards the continent fulfilling its role as mere producer and exporter of primary commodities that were taken to other people’s economies.  There is a huge amount of catch-up that we need to undergo as a continent in order to achieve regional integration,” said Minister Davies. He explained that in addition to the infrastructure deficit, Africa was losing over 40% of its competitiveness as a continent due to the absence of infrastructure or inefficiency of established infrastructure. “The critical role of infrastructure development in achieving integration, growth and development in Africa can never be overemphasised. Through Infrastructure development we can provide roads, rail, ports, energy transmission lines and ICT connectivity that are all necessary to facilitate economic development.  Also, infrastructure can be an important counter-cyclical tool because by infrastructure development we can to generate...