LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM - JANUARY 20: (Top L-R) South Africa's Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Naledi Mandisa Pandor, Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmend, Angola's President Joao Lourenco, Algeria's President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, World Bank President David Malpass, UN executive secretary of Economic Commission for Africa Vera Songwe and IMF Africa Director Abebe Aemro Selassie, (Middle L-R) Mauritius Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth, Mauritania's President Mohamed Ould Ghazouani, Malawi's President Peter Mutharika, Britain's Business Secretary Andrea Leadsom, Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta, Guinea's President Alpha Conde, Britain's International Trade Secretary Liz Truss, Ghana's President Nana Akufo-Addo, Democratic Republic of Congo's President Felix Tshisekedi and Tunisia's President Kais Saied, (Bottom L-R) Britain's International Development Secretary Alok Sharma, Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni, Sierra Leone's President Julius Maada Bio, Senegal's President Macky Sall, Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Rwanda's President Paul Kagame, Nigeria's President Muhammadu Buhari, Mozambique's President Filipe Nyusi, Morocco's Prime Minister Saad-Eddine El Othmani and Ivory Coast's President Alassane Ouattara pose during the family photo at the start of the UK-Africa Investment Summit on January 20, 2020 in London, England. The British PM is hosting African leaders and senior government representatives along with British and African businesses during the UK-Africa Investment Summit, aimed at strengthening the UK’s economic partnership with African nations. By CNN For Citizen Digital British companies have made bigger profits investing in Africa than in any other region of the world, according to a new report from the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), which urges firms to...

In Summary The committee noted that there was a significant improvement of cargo transit time along the Northern Corridor following infrastructure initiatives undertaken in Kenya between 2013 and 2019. On infrastructure, the committee agreed to seek funds to improve roads especially in South Sudan, where less than one per cent of roads are in a good state according to the Northern Corridor Transit Transport Co-ordination Authority 2019 report. By ANTHONY KITIMO The 10-year-old Northern Corridor trade agreement will be updated by March to address emerging trade opportunities, meet current needs and boost regional trade. This was the main resolution of the 48th executive meeting of the Northern Corridor Transit and Transport Co-ordination Authority member states — meeting in Mombasa, Kenya recently. The member states are Kenya, Uganda, South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Burundi. “The revised draft of Agreement and protocols has been received and is awaiting a validation workshop in March this year before its submission to the Council of Ministers,” said executive secretary Omae Nyarandi. The revised trade agreement will include the use of Kenya’s Standard Gauge Railway, which was not there in 2007 when the agreements were being drawn up; joint funding of infrastructure such as roads, one-stop-border posts, motion weighbridges; and speed up implementation of the Customs Union Protocol by adopting a single window system for regional custom data transfer to end cross-border delays. Trade Mark East Africa has committed budgetary support of $393,000 for the recruitment of system developers to enhance the current...

Building Cities in Africa – FBW Group Development News UK and Africa businesses urged to “seize the moment” A leading East African architecture and engineering firm is urging businesses in the UK and Africa to “seize the moment” following a major summit looking to deliver more investment and jobs. FBW Group, which is helping deliver large-scale development projects across the region, has also welcomed UK International Development Secretary Alok Sharma’s pledge of new aid to help build green cities across Africa with quality infrastructure. Malawi Creator Centre, Medical Training building: The new UK Centre for Cities and Infrastructure that he has announced aims to “turbo-charge investment” in fast growing cities across the developing world. It will provide British expertise to African governments and city authorities to improve the way cities are planned, built and run, including making them more environmentally-friendly. The focus will be on improvements to infrastructure, including water and energy networks. Mr Sharma’s announcement came on the eve of the UK-Africa Investment Summit 2020 which took place in London earlier this month (January). In the post-Brexit world the British government is looking to increase exports and encourage UK companies to be more active globally – and specifically turn their attention to markets like Africa. The aim of the London summit was to create new lasting partnerships to deliver more investment, jobs and growth, benefiting both Africa and the UK. It brought together UK and African business representatives, African leaders, international institutions and young entrepreneurs. FBW has operations in...

The African Union-led agreement is designed to establish the world’s biggest free-trade zone by area, encompassing a combined economy of $2.5-trillion A truck and trailer drives into a Beitbridge customs and immigration control point on the SA border with Zimbabwe. Picture: REUTERS Nyoni Nsukuzimbi drives his 40-tonne Freightliner for just more than half a day from Johannesburg to the Beitbridge border post with Zimbabwe. At the frontier town — little more than a petrol station and a KFC — he sits in a line for two to three days, in temperatures reaching 40°C, waiting for his documents to be processed. That’s only the start of a journey Nsukuzimbi makes maybe twice a month. Driving 885km farther north gets him to the Chirundu border post on the Zambian frontier. There, starting at a bridge across the Zambezi River, trucks snake back miles into the bush. “There’s no water, there’s no toilets, there are lions,” says the Zimbabwean. He leans out of the Freightliner’s cab over the hot asphalt, wearing a white T-shirt and a weary expression. “It’s terrible.” By the time he gets his load of tiny plastic beads — the kind used in many manufacturing processes — to a factory on the outskirts of Zambia’s capital, Lusaka, he’s been on the road for as many as 10 days to traverse just 1,600km. Nsukuzimbi’s trials are typical of truck drivers across Africa, where border bureaucracy, corrupt officials seeking bribes, and  myriad regulations that vary from country to country have stymied attempts...

Conference is being hosted jointly by Pakistan and Kenya and will also be attended by dignitaries from other African States. Conference will provide an important opportunity for Pakistani and African businesses to interface, identify the areas for enhanced engagement, and develop proposals for customized economic collaboration. During the visit, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi will hold meetings with the Kenyan leadership including Cabinet Secretaries for Foreign Affairs & International Trade, African Community and Northern Corridor Development. Source: IPPMEDIA

There has been much hype about a major Africa investment summit being hosted by the UK. Attended by Prime Minister Boris Johnson and an array of royals, a great deal of hopeful win-win-win rhetoric abounded linked to forging new partnerships for a post-Brexit future.At the summit, Ghana, it seems, is being given top treatment as a favoured destination, while Zimbabwe appears to have been snubbed despite being “open for business”.UK aid policy these days is focused on promoting UK trade interests abroad, with the government adopting a global business promotion approach for UK firms. The linking of aid and trade, of course, has a history in Britain.In 1994 the Pergau dam scandal – in which aid was used as a sweetener for an arms deal – led to the commitment to untie aid. It also led to the establishment of a separate development department and an Act of Parliament specifying how aid must be spent. This consensus on aid since the mid-1990s, however, is now under threat. Trade and investment can, of course, help reduce poverty, promote women’s empowerment and be good for children’s rights.But the opposite may be true too. There are many different business models – and so labour, environmental and rights regimes – with very different outcomes. We’ve been looking at some of these issues over the last few years across several projects.All were funded by the UK’s Department for International Development. The project compared three broad types of commercial agricultural investment: estates and plantations; medium-scale commercial farms;...

The Kenya National Highway Authority (KeNHA) has started the process to construct part of the 460-kilometre East African Coastal Corridor development project. Tenders were advertised for the two phases of the 13.5km Mombasa—Mtwapa (A7) section, which entails the construction of a four-lane dual carriageway. The works include construction of a grade separated junction, service roads, storm water drains, major and minor drainage structures, access roads and social amenities along the road. The project has already received funds from the African Development Bank (AfDB) and a grant from the European Union. Last June, Gabriel Negatu, East Africa director general of AfDB said construction of the road would begin this year. “Both the Kenya and Tanzania governments have finalised all their requirements to pave way for the construction of the coastal highway,” Mr Negatu said. The Coastline Transnational Highway project, conceived more than two decades ago, covers Bagamoyo-Tanga-Horohoro on the Tanzania side and Lunga Lunga-Mombasa-Mtwapa-Malindi on the Kenyan side, and is expected to cost $751 million. According to an agreement signed last November, AfDB will finance 70 per cent of the highway and the governments of Kenya and Tanzania will cover 30 per cent. Last December, AfDB approved of the $384.22 million financing package for the road construction a few months after the EU gave a grant of $33.41 million or 7.7 per cent of the total project cost to the government of Kenya. The road is a priority item in AfDB’s Eastern Africa Regional Integration Strategy and the Country Strategy Papers...

The UK this past week opened a new chapter in its relations with African countries at a summit to set the tone for the country’s trade and diplomatic ties with the continent after exiting the European Union. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson hosted leaders from 21 African countries in London, where 27 deals worth an estimated $8.5 billion (£6.5 billion) were signed at the UK-Africa Summit held on January 20. The summit came just months after Japan and Russia hosted African leaders in their respective capitals last year. “We want to build a new future as a global free trading nation, that’s what we are doing now and that’s what we will be embarking on, on 31st of January,” Mr Johnson told the gathering in London. “But I want to intensify and expand that trade in ways that go far beyond what we sell you or you sell us.” The tone of the meeting signalled a shift in Mr Johnson’s attitude towards Africa. Eight years ago, as mayor of London, he wrote a commentary in the Spectator Magazine suggesting that Africa would have been better off if the UK was still its colonial master. Britain expects to start an 18-month transition from being a member of the EU beginning January 31, to being an independent country capable of signing bilateral or multilateral trade deals. Britain may have to renegotiate all trade deals initially signed under the EU, including with African countries. In the EAC, for example, Britain had been a...

With the AfCFTA expected to increase intra-African trade by 52 per cent by the year 2022, the journey towards making it a reality is in high gear. The Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement seeks to have the removal of tariffs on 90 per cent of goods traded within the continent. Towards this, UNCTAD and the African Union have developed an online platform to help remove non-tariff barriers to trade in Africa. The tool became operational on January 13. Moving goods across the continent Traders and businesses moving goods across the continent can now instantly report the challenges they encounter, such as quotas, excessive import documents or unjustified packaging requirements. To improve the movement of goods across the continent and reduce the cost importers and exporters in the region face, the tool will help African governments monitor and eliminate such challenges which slow trade costing the continent billions of dollars annually. The African Union’s Agenda 2063 seeks to transform Africa into a global powerhouse of the future. The need to envision a long-term 50-year development trajectory for Africa is important as the continent needs to revise and adapt its development agenda due to ongoing structural transformations; increased peace and reduction in the number of conflicts; renewed economic growth and social progress; the need for people-centred development, gender equality and youth empowerment; changing global contexts such as increased globalization and the ICT revolution; the increased unity of Africa which makes it a global power to be reckoned with and capable of rallying support around its own...

The Epower forum, recently hosted at Nairobi’s Movenpick Hotel, unfolded the key issues regarding the way in which E-commerce can enable cross border trade for women in light of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AFCFTA). In attendance were over 150 women owned SME’s. The basis of the event touched on how cross border trade can be made simpler, more cost effective, whilst creating new business opportunities and enhancing social development. This comes at a time where the advancement of technology is at an unprecedented level. Eric Wainaina, from Africa’s talking, said “It is annoying to hear, that Africa is not at par with the rest of the world concerning technology. It’s not true” With regards to how E-commerce is relying on technology, it was made increasingly clear that the uptake of more technology will allow for seamless patterns, instead for operating in a fragmented manner, ensuring more out of the value chains. This was emphasized by Gloria Atuheirwe, Director Women in Trade East Africa, “ICT to facilitate trade, automating and making trade easier. ICT to be the building blocks for improving outreach, processes and efficiency”. Outlining trade issues from two perspectives, barriers and cost of trade, alluding to how technology can ease up those processes. Through the inception of the Epower forum, women globally have learnt how to plug into E-commerce learning to harness the power of internet skills. Source: CIO East Africa