Kenyan traders can now access the continent’s investment regulatory data on one platform following the launch of an e-portal aimed enhancing ease of doing business. The tool, tradebarriers.africa, has been developed by United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the African Union, and also seeks to make trade less costly for local investors. The platform became operational on January 13. UNCTAD and African Union (AU) said Kenyan traders and businesses moving goods across the continent will be able to report the challenges they encounter, such as quotas, excessive import documents or unjustified packaging requirements. UNCTAD and the AU trained 60 public officials and business representatives from across Africa on how to use the tool in December 2019 in Nairobi. “Non-tariff barriers are the main obstacles to trade between African countries,” said Ms Pamela Coke-Hamilton, director of UNCTAD’s trade division. “That’s why the success of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) depends in part on how well governments can track and remove them,” she said, referring to the agreement signed by African governments to create a single, continentwide market for goods and services. Complaints logged on the platform will be monitored by government officials in each nation and a special coordination unit that’s housed in the AfCFTA secretariat. The unit will be responsible for verifying a complaint. Once verified, officials in the countries concerned will be tasked with addressing the issue within set timelines prescribed by the AfCFTA agreement. Kenya’s manufacturing sector is betting big on the Africa-wide...

A decade since it came into force, the East African Community Common Market Protocol, is going through a reality check. This week, Uganda lodged a formal protest against Kenya, over blockage of its milk exports. Kenya also accuses Uganda of imposing hefty duties on some of its exports especially beverages. Tanzania has been involved in several trade skirmishes with Kenya even as they were united in disputing Uganda’s sugar surplus and for a while blocking Ugandan sugar from their markets. In a case of selective amnesia, Uganda also does not believe Tanzania has a rice surplus although many Ugandan entrepreneurs rent land in southern Tanzania to grow rice. When the common market was conceived, it was believed free trade would be a vehicle for efficient allocation of resources across the economic spectrum. For instance, free movement of labour would allow skills to move from areas of surplus to areas in the community that had a deficit. Theoretically, application of those skills would over time raise the productive capacity of such an economy, creating a degree of parity with the rest of the region. What the framers might have anticipated but did not state, was that open markets would trigger a realignment of the regional economy as investors look for the most cost efficient production bases. Uganda got a taste of this early on when multinationals Bata and British American Tobacco shifted their manufacturing operations from Uganda to Kenya. This seeming loss has however, been more than compensated for by the...

The government of Tanzania has inked a deal to link its Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) to Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The agreement which was signed between Transport ministers of the three countries Isack Kamwelwe (Tanzania), Jean Bosco (Burundi) and Roger Biasu (DRC), gives Burundi and DRC direct access to the Dar es Salaam Port, greatly boosting Tanzania’s Central Transport Corridor. Tanzania transport minister Mr. Isack Kamwelwe affirmed that the deal is in line with the completion of a preliminary feasibility study of detail design plans which was successfully done by the consultancy company Gulf Engineering Ltd. Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) The rail line will start from Uvinza district in Kigoma region in north western Tanzania to Gitega, via Msongati region, in Burundi, covering a stretch of 240km. It will then be extended to the eastern regions of DRC according to the agreement. Tender for the project will be issued out this year. Upon completion, Tanzania’s SGR line will be 1,457 km stretch from Dar es Salaam to the shores of Lake Victoria. DRC’s President Felix Tshisekedi commended the deal and said that the extension of the SGR line to Rubavu from Kigali would open trade opportunities for the landlocked DRC which depends largely on the ports of Dar es Salaam and Mombasa to access the sea. Tanzania will become the third country in East Africa to start enjoying modern railway services after Kenya and Ethiopia. Kenya, was the first in the region to start constructing an SGR line,...

Le bénéfice de 6 milliards de Franc CFA du Port Autonome de Dakar annoncé sur 2018 s’inscrit en trompe-l’oeil tant il est loin des performances de 2010 quand la plateforme dégageait 23 milliards de Franc CFA. Autant dire que, sous le magistère de Aboubacar Sédikh Bèye, le PAD, doté de bonnes intentions et d’un plan stratégique 2019-2023 axé sur le désencombrement, semble certes revenir au dessus de la ligne de flottaison. Mais l’on est loin de l’âge d’or des années 2000-2010 pour cette vieille plateforme datant de 1867 et évoluant désormais à bonne distance derrière Lomé, Lagos, Tema, et Abidjan. Assurant actuellement 65% du trafic à destination du Mali, Dakar doit surveiller de près la concurrence (Abidjan) qui convoite cette manne. Le trafic du Mali qui représente 17 à 18% du volume du trafic du PAD pâtit de l’arrêt de la ligne ferroviaire entre Dakar et Bamako. “Il y a cinq ans, 75% de ce trafic partait par le train. Aujourd’hui, c’est 0%”, déplorait le Directeur du PAD, en juin 2018, lors du lancement de son plan stratégique. Le trafic vers le Mali passe désormais par la route, ce qui occasionne des coûts d’entretien routiers évalués à 55 milliards de Franc CFA par an selon le ministère sénégalais des Infrastructures. L’avantage comparatif du port de Dakar dépend aussi des infrastructures portuaires. Les travaux d’extension du «Môle 3» devront permettre de rattraper le retard accumulé. Cette plateforme datant de 1939 a entamé sa cure de jouvence en juillet 2019 grâce à...

““Our Mission is to promote, assist and enhance economic and business development for all our members at both National and County level so as to stimulate wealth at all levels of governments right from the communities they represent,” she reckons. The two-day program was initiated by the High Commissioner of Uganda to Kenya Phoebe Otaala ,under the theme “Unlocking business women’s potential in the region”. The delegation further paid a courtesy call on Uganda President Yoweri Museveni to sought his guidance and intervention on various challenges facing businesses along the Kenya Uganda border. WIB acknowledges that the existing structures such as border offices and market stalls are often dilapidated, whilst toilets, lighting, and fencing are typically absent. In addition, high customs duties, complex clearance procedures, cumbersome documentary requirements (often featuring centralized permit and licensing systems), along with unpredictable trade policies all contribute to raising trade costs. “We shall strive to blend all women professionals in the Women in Business to find the synergy required to empower and create an expanded economic atmosphere and market for all-inclusive business development,” Muthoni says. The business lobby group has voiced its support or contents of the Building Bridges Initiative Report. Through its President Muthoni, the group supports the recommendations to allow the youth to least have a seven year tax holiday as an initiative to help them in business entrepreneurship. She stated the tax holiday would encourage both women and youth to engage in business. Muthoni further termed the tax holiday proposal as crucial...

The much anticipated African Free Trade Zone – the world’s largest trade zone – is set to launch in July this year. It will be a major development for the continent where most countries mainly trade with nations outside Africa. Only 15% of trade is done between African countries compared to 70% of trade among European nations and 25% in the South East Asian region. The Continental Free Trade Area will comprise of 53 African countries with a population of 1.2 billion people and an estimated gross domestic product of $2.5 trillion. Eritrea is the only African country that has not signed the African Continental Free Trade Area treaty. Some of the challenges that are likely to hinder the single market project are: Poor road and rail networks linking African nations Underdeveloped industries High dependence on custom revenue Inefficient border posts Additionally, there are concerns that the more developed nations will gain from the single market at the expense of the less developed nations. Countries like South Africa and Egypt, with their advanced industrial base, will benefit by selling their goods to less developed markets in the region. For the Single Market trade agreement to succeed, African countries need to improve their infrastructure, create new revenue streams away from customs income, eliminate protectionist laws, and improve efficiency at points of entry. Source: The Kenyan Wall Street

Africa made history this year as the agreement establishing the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) officially entered into force. As trading under the AfCFTA starts on July 1, 2020, with a market of over a billion people and income of about $3 trillion, the big question is whether the new free trade area will lead to one big African market. Already, the AfCFTA has energised the continent by positioning regional integration front and centre. By requiring member states to remove tariffs from 90 per cent of goods, the agreement is expected to boost trade among African countries from its low level of 16 per cent. The Economic Commission for Africa estimates likely trade effects of over 50 per cent. Yet, lowering tariffs further will not be the magic bullet. Overcoming non-tariff barriers is key. Here are factors to facilitate one big African market. Regional Economic Communities (RECs): Africa’s regions have many RECs with overlapping memberships, including the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa and the East African Community. These RECs are at different stages of integration. The AfCFTA aimed to consolidate them into one entity. That did not happen. AfCFTA’s Article 19(2) states that “members of a regional economic community that have attained higher levels of regional integration than under the AfCFTA, shall maintain such higher levels among themselves”. This provision mandates trade liberalisation to follow different paths, not one single market. The signatories recognise the problem of many overlapping RECs. At their July summit meeting, they asked...

The World Bank has projected a weaker economic growth in sub Saharan African in 2020, pinning hopes on investor confidence to turnaround fortunes of the region’s economies. According to the Bank’s 2020 Global Economic Prospects, growth is expected to pick up to 2.9 per cent this year, assuming investor confidence improves in some large economies, energy bottlenecks ease and robust growth continues in agricultural commodity exporters. The forecast is weaker than previously expected, reflecting softer demand from key trading partners, lower commodity prices and adverse domestic developments in several countries. But for East African Community, the problem is further compounded by low intra-trade, meaning much needed foreign exchange is spent on imports from outside the region, leading to slowdown in manufacturing and reduced job opportunities. This is the reason increasing intra-East African Community trade is top on the agenda of the regional private sector-led umbrella body—the East African Business Council (EABC). This was the major resolution arrived at in Arusha last November during the two-day high-level East African Business and Investment Summit. Even though the EAC is one of Africa’s fastest growing regional blocs, registering economic growth of 5.7 per cent in 2018, more intra-trade won’t be easy. While the Summit took stock of EAC achievements for the past 20 years, it is increasingly becoming clear that the more resolutions are made to increase intra-trade, the more the challenges the region faces. “Mechanisms for resolving Non tariff barriers were put in place, for instance, the national monitoring committees and regional...

The Horn of Africa coast is strategically important because it is on the Bab al Mandab Strait and Indian Ocean coast where nearly 20 percent of the world trade and maritime shipping pass through. Thanks to their sea port developments, it is set to be the gateway and the link that connects the sub-Saharan Africa to this international trade route, Suez Canal and the Arabian Peninsula on the opposite side of the Red Sea. The mercantile shipping vessels plying along the Bab el Mandeb can now drop their transit consignments at any of the Red Sea or Horn of Africa ports. Similarly, export goods from sub-Saharan Africa and their imports from the rest of the world can easily be picked or delivered from these ports and hauled across to central and West Coast of Africa by existing railways or roads. Recently, the significance of the Horn of Africa and its sea ports was boosted by the discoveries of oil, gas and other extractive minerals in the sub-Saharan Africa countries. Huge exploitations of the same are now in progress in Eritrea, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Chad, Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Somalia, DR Congo and Kenya; among others. Additionally, the coastal Horn of Africa countries are experiencing a relative peace renaissance that has enabled development of their Ports and Roads developments not realised in the last 50 years. Hitherto, these countries were ravaged by civil and territorial wars, military rules and instabilities that hindered their endeavour to address their national development challenges. This peace...

THE East African Community (EAC) Council of Ministers has been tasked to furnish the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) with comprehensive reports on regular basis about implementation of pillars of integration. Specifically, the ministers are supposed to inform the august House on each partner state’s status in relation to progress in execution of the Customs Union Protocol and the Common Market Protocol. The resolution was moved by Dr Abdullah Hasnuu Makame (Tanzania Constituency) and adopted by the House. It further wants the Council of Ministers to direct all partner states to fully implement the Customs U nion Protocol by June 2020 and the Common Market Protocol, a year later. The House further urges the Secretary General, (Ambassador Liberat Mfumukeko) to furnish the House with comprehensive reports on the implementation of the Food Security Action Plan, the Climate Change Policy and the Industrialisation Policy and Strategy. The Council of Ministers is also encouraged to develop Comprehensive Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting frameworks that would track implementation of major actions to be taken and adopted by the Summit of EAC Heads of State and other organs. According to Dr Makame, it is only the Customs Union Protocol that has a stipulated Treaty Timeframe under Article 75(7 ), with the Treaty documenting a period of four years in which to conclude it. He informed the House that, Article 7 7 of the Treaty forecast on the establishment of a Common Market through a Protocol that would be concluded without prescribing a timeframe to achieve...