In line with its mission and vision, the EATP, the East Africa Tourism Platform, hosted a forum for open discussions on the vision of East Africa as one tourism destination, and the feasibility and viability of this objective. The meeting took place at Elevate Suites in Kigali last week. Invited to the meeting were CEOs and executive directors of private sector tourism associations in the five East African countries, namely from Burundi, Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. Tourism boards in the East African Community member states were also invited to the meeting as EATP fosters private/public-sector collaboration in matters of tourism in the entire region. These stakeholders were invited in their respective capacities as policymakers and influencers to discuss challenges and opportunities of developing tourism in EAC and promoting it as a single destination. For two days, EATP challenged the participants to look beyond their differences and challenges at their national levels and rally their strengths behind finding solutions to common problems. Ms. Carmen Nibigira, the EATP Regional Coordinator, emphasized that solutions will have to come from all of the 5 partner states, with a unified vision and collaboration towards developing regional tourism. Ms. Nibigira hoped the forum gave each tourism stakeholder an opportunity to borrow a leaf from each other in their efforts to develop tourism in East Africa. The priorities which emerged from the 2-day forum that are common to the 5 countries were described as policy regulations, product development and marketing, skills development, and research. EATP called...

NAIROBI (Xinhua) -- Kenya’s flower industrialists on Wednesday expressed concern about the uncertainty of the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) deal that signed between the EU and the East African Community (EAC) states. Kenya Flower Council (KFC) CEO Jane Ngige told a media briefing in Nairobi that all member states’ parliament are required to endorse the deal by end of June, yet there are concerns about the dynamics of different countries in the EAC, some of which are currently undergoing elections and could delay endorsing the agreement. The EPA, which was initiated by all players in October 2014, should come into force in October. Kenya’s exports account for 40 percent of all EU flower imports. The East African nation exports only seven percent of its local production. The EPA deal provides Kenyan flowers a duty free and quota free access to the EU market which absorbs a majority of its flower exports. "We must work hard to safeguard the market share due to the significance of the flower industry," Ngige said. "We have a lot of potential to increase export earnings if we can access more international markets." As part of market diversification, Kenya wants to reduce its reliance on the flower auction in Netherlands and sell more flowers directly to individual country. Source: Coastweek

The Red Sea has played a pivotal role in global trade for millennia. In the time of the pharaohs, it was at the heart of the global spice trade. Today, it is an essential global artery, feeding Western demand for hydrocarbons and facilitating the flow of goods between Europe and booming Asian markets. More than 10 percent of world trade moves through the Red Sea basin every year, a figure that is set to increase as Egypt doubles the capacity of the Suez Canal. And yet, with a few exceptions, most of the modern wealth generated by that trade sails rapidly onward, leaving little to show for its passage. There is no reason that should continue to be the case. A regional effort to facilitate trade and build infrastructure has the potential to reposition the countries surrounding the Red Sea as destinations for global investment and international trade. The Red Sea region, comprising the 20 countries that use the route as their primary trading corridor, is the largest, fastest-growing, and least exploited emerging market in the world. Over the next 35 years, the United Nations expects the region’s population to rise more than twofold, from 620 million today to 1.3 billion. This population growth will be accompanied by one of the world’s highest urbanization rates, creating a burgeoning middle class, which the Brookings Institution estimates will grow from 136 million today to 343 million by 2050. Over the same period, according to current projections, the region’s GDP will triple, from...

Kenya has nearly doubled its electricity exports to Tanzania and Uganda on the back of increased geothermal power generation even as local consumers await the price advantage. Kenya Power, the electricity distributor, sold 46.6 million units (kilowatt hours) to the two countries last year, up from 26.9 million a year earlier, official data shows. The country also cut its power imports by almost half following the injection of geothermal power to the national grid. The additional cheaper geothermal energy, especially the 280MW injected in the second half of 2014, helped to reduce the use of expensive thermal power. But power bills have remained nearly the same over the period as the expected benefits were wiped out by tariff increases in June 2014. Kenya has a direct transmission line connecting it with Uganda, enabling bulk power trade. Uganda accounted for 93 per cent of the market for power from Kenya. The country, however, lacks a line connecting it with Tanzania, resulting in limited power exchange at common border towns which are not connected to the Tanzanian grid. Kenya sells power to parts of Tanzania that via Namanga, while Dar es Salaam previously sold power to Nairobi via the coastal local towns of Lunga Lunga and Vanga. Nairobi last year stopped electricity imports from Dar and significantly cut imports from Kampala while ramping up its power sales. Tanzania plans a natural gas-fired power plant that could result in a cutback on Kenyan imports. Source: All Africa

Khartoum — Sudan participated, with a delegation headed by the Minister of Commerce, Ambassador Salah Mohamed Al-Hassan, in the meetings of the Framework Agreement for trade and investment between COMESA countries and the United States of America in Zambia (Lusaka). The Minister of Trade, in a statement to SUNA after returning home Wednesday, that his participation in the two-day meetings during February 7-8 touched on investment opportunities in COMESA region for the US companies and institutions. Ambassador Al-Hassan explained that the meetings touched on access of the COMESA's states' exports to the United States, referring to Sudan receiving of an invitation to participate in the ministerial-level meetings by the COMESA secretariat. The minister said that his speech to the meeting touched on the financial embargo resulting from the US administration's economic sanctions imposed on Sudan, which has had a negative impact on the health and development aspects as well as the commercial exchange with COMESA countries. The Minister of Commerce urged the US delegation participated in the meetings to lift economic sanctions, particularly that Sudan responded to the request of the US administration to allow exporting gum Arabic. The minister pointed out that the head of the US delegation explained that once Sudan responds to a number of human rights-related requirements and stops the war, then it will be ineligible for US aid as well as the freedom of commercial exchange and the return of US investments. The Ambassador Al-Hassan said he would inform the Minister of International Cooperation and...

The Jubilee Government, under the leadership of President Uhuru Kenyatta has put the necessary machinery in motion for an impressive portfolio of infrastructure projects throughout the country aimed at improving the overall quality of the road network in the region. Kenya’s second largest city, Mombasa which is host to the country’s leading seaport, occupies a special place in the national economy is among the regions that will get a facelift with good road networks as it plays the critical role of being the gateway, not just to Kenya but to Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan, parts of northern Tanzania and eastern DR Congo. A huge proportion of imports and the exports in the region transit through the Port of Mombasa, making it a key player in the overall performance of the regional economies. The regional economies will only be as efficient as the port. Increasingly, the city is also on ascendancy as a tourist hub. A large number of tourists visit the island and the attractions around it. Only recently, the sandy beaches of Diani in Mombasa’s South Coast were adjudged the best in the world. The hinterland is equally rich in diverse flora and fauna and some of the world’s most famous conservation areas. Mombasa has by this development evolved into a tourism hub, with most visitors including the Kenyan coast as part of their itineraries. Mombasa has witnessed this trend with the many cruise ships and air charters that have played host to that the city recently. For...

President Paul Kagame has said Rwanda does not intend to remain dependent on donor support but rather aims at transitioning to sustainable development by attracting investments and doing business. The President was yesterday speaking at World Government Summit, currently underway in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, with John Defterios, the CNN emerging markets editor, on a one-on-one discussion. The global summit is dedicated to shaping the future of governments worldwide by shaping the agenda with a focus on how they can harness innovation and technology to solve universal challenges facing humanity. Kagame said the national vision is to make sure that Rwanda can stand on its feet, develop, attract investments and do business. "Donor support is not something we wanted to rely on forever, it was there to help build our foundation, institutions and different fundamentals to be in place so that we can sustain our economy based on what we can do ourselves and also within the region, for example through regional integration," the President said. The transition from donor dependence, he said would be made possible by regional integration and increased intra-Africa trade. He said so far as a result of integration, Rwanda was already experiencing increased trade within the East African Community as well as trade between the community and other regions. Under the president's leadership, Rwanda has been pursuing regional integration through multiple ways and is a member of several trading blocs including; East African Community (EAC), the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA)and Economic...

The five-nation East African Community (EAC) of Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and Tanzania plans to transition into a formal federation sometime in the near future, catapulting its significance from a regional to a global actor. The integrational bloc is betting that its East African Railway Master Plan, partially financed and constructed by China, will not only do wonders for its own economic cohesiveness, but will stimulate broader sub-Saharan cooperation. The vision is that this strategic blueprint will link the prospective East African Federation (EAF) together with Ethiopia, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), with the ultimate goal being to bridge Africa’s transoceanic divide by connecting to the Atlantic Ocean via the Congo River and the modernization and expansion of existing railway infrastructure in Zambia and Angola. Without the emergence of a coordinated geopolitical core to manage the region’s strategic infrastructural potential, China’s investments in East Africa might disappointingly fail in their forecasted multipolar function and never become anything more significant than a few scraps of steel. The EAC plans to follow in the footsteps of other regional integrational organizations such as the EU, Eurasian Union, and ASEAN by tightening the relations between its members and formally becoming a factor in world politics. If it succeeds in forming a federation, then the newly consolidated unit would have enormous economic and geopolitical promise simply by means of its expanding population and favorable location alone. These two critical factors are maximized when one recognizes that the countries which would...

The port of Mombasa faces fresh threats of congestion following a directive by the government that all sugar imports and transit cargo be inspected at the facility’s main yard. As part of reforms aimed at sealing suspected tax leaks at the port, Transport secretary James Macharia on Tuesday ordered that the two categories of cargo would temporarily be inspected within the port instead of at Container Freight Stations (CFSs) as has been done previously. “All transit cargo will be inspected within the main port and not in CFSs (Container Freight Stations). We have also directed that any sugar imported into the country be inspected within the port,” he told a news conference in Nairobi. The directive however triggered concern over renewed congestion at the port even as inventories by its managers, the Kenya Ports Authority(KPA) showed that its container yard population as at January 3 stood at 14,033 Twenty-Foot Equivalent Unit (TEUs). “The CFSs were particularly designed to hold cargo away from the main port but when you revert to the old ways of holding some cargo at the port yard you run the risk of creating a fresh congestion within the port which is not good for the port’s profile,” Hassan Ibrahim, a cargo dealer in Nairobi told Shipping & Logistics. Kenya is a key gateway to the region in that the Mombasa port handles imports such as fuel and consumer goods for Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia and exports of tea...

The port of Mombasa has now fully adopted a regional guarantee scheme for cargo cleared at the facility as partner states of the East African Community moved to seal tax leaks and improve efficiency through a seamless trade platform. Starting February 1, all maritime products cleared under the Single Customs Territory (SCT) and the Transit Regime are now only secured by the Regional Customs Transit Guarantee (RCTG) instead of the previous National Transit Bond (CB8). This follows a directive by the Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) that targets to reap the full benefits of the SCT platform. Kenya is a key gateway to the region as the Mombasa port handles imports such as fuel and consumer goods for Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia as well as exports such as tea and coffee from the region. A customs transit guarantee scheme ensures that customs officials in a transit country receive proper payment for dues and duties for any goods moved through their territory. Typically any person importing goods must deposit a security in form of cash, insurance bond or bank guarantee to cover for payment of custom duties or other charges due on the goods in every transit country in case the goods in transit are short landed or diverted for consumption in the country of transit. The issue of depositing cash or lodging an insurance bond or bank guarantee at each country of transit has been criticised as serious drawback to trade because it’s...