News Categories: EAC News

Young EA traders urged to tap into global e-commerce market

In summary UNCTAD Secretary General Mukhisa Kituyi How the AfCFTA facilitates the revival and growth of African small businesses will be key to its success as an engine for Africa’s economic renaissance. E-commerce can lower entry barriers and help connect MSMEs with global markets and value chains by providing the services needed to facilitate their exports. ITC plans to provide capacity building and advisory services to enhance the continental business environment, strengthen national and regional trade support institutions, and improve business competitiveness. African Continental Free Trade Area agreement aims at accelerating intra-African trade and boosting Africa’s trading position in the global market by strengthening the continent’s common voice and policy space in global trade negotiations. Young entrepreneurs in East Africa have been urged to embrace e-commerce and reap from a $26 trillion (Sh2.8 trillion) global online sales market ahead of Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) kick off next year. International Trade Centre (ITC) Executive Director Pamela Coke-Hamilton said online marketplaces could drive inclusive growth across Africa, with e-commerce likely to create as many as three million jobs by 2025. Speaking during a forum dubbed Trade Beyond Covid19: Unpacking the AfCFTA for East Africa in Nairobi, she said ditching outdated business models for e-commerce would drive intra-regional trade and attract benefits. “This can open markets to otherwise isolated rural communities, servicing Africa’s fast-growing consumer market, and offer women access to new business opportunities” she said. Implementation of AfCFTA in Eastern Africa could result in welfare gains of $1.8 billion (Sh197 billion), a...

Lake Victoria: East Africa sitting on untapped trade worth $60b

Summary Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda are seeking to revive connected ports and maritime operations on these shared waters to enhance integration and grow trade by offering cheaper transport across borders. The development of Lake Victoria ports is the biggest project in implementing the East African Community Inland Waterway Transport infrastructure development agreed by partner states to strategically link Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya to both the Northern and Central transport corridors. The three countries are seeking to revive connected ports and maritime operations on these shared waters to enhance integration and grow trade by offering cheaper transport across borders. The Tanzanian ports of Mwanza, Musoma and Bukoba are so far up and running and the busiest on the lake, while the Kisumu port in Kenya was rehabilitated this year as Uganda struggles to build the Bukasa port to complement services offered at Port Bell. The revival of the Kisumu port started as a quid pro quo for the Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga in March 2018, for making peace with President Uhuru Kenyatta after the contested 2017 polls. The port has always been part of the larger East African Community development plans as Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania revive the neglected and underdeveloped Lake Victoria transport infrastructure with a potential of generating $60 billion worth of trade annually, but currently only realises $6 billion for the three countries combined. Kenya pumped $7 million into the construction of a fuel jetty, feeder jetties and piers, shunting areas, berths, a terminal and yards, with administrative and...

Boosting Africa’s Food Supply: Rethinking Aflatoxin Management for Improved Food Trade in East Africa

The high prevalence of aflatoxins in maize and other staple foods in East Africa has become an important obstacle to domestic and regional food trade. While East African Community (EAC) Member States have made good progress in adopting regionally harmonized standards that include limits on aflatoxins, the high cost and complexity of meeting these standards has led to a large share of food being traded outside the regulatory system. This has further distanced poor producers from the market and undermined the prospects for regional value chain development. Especially as countries in the EAC look to recover from COVID-19 and build resilient food systems for the future, minimizing the cost of market transactions is more important than ever. The need for aflatoxin management begins at the farm level where fundamental challenges with smallholder agriculture make crops highly susceptible to contamination. Simple improvements to mitigate aflatoxins areas are possible but add to costs; so, can be difficult for poor farmers and traders to justify without adequate incentives. As awareness of aflatoxins grows in the EAC, many farmers are adopting improved practices on crops saved for family consumption but not for market sale. New technologies may have the potential to transform the incentives for upgrading significantly reduce aflatoxin risks in domestic and regional trade. Lateral flow test kits can be used to measure aflatoxins without a laboratory setting and are known to produce very accurate results. Test strips have been around for many years but can now be machine-read using a smartphone or other mobile device...

East Africa: EAC Partner States Get Five Years to Join Kenya-UK Trade Deal

East African Community member states have up to five years to join the UK-Kenya trade agreement due to be signed ahead of the Brexit transitional deadline, officials privy to the draft text say. They added that the new document has also shielded budgetary cuts that had been imposed on the trade policy group Trade Mark East Africa's work in Kenya, allowing continued regional trade facilitation by the organisation. However, budgets for Rwanda, Ethiopia were cut by 15 percent, just lower than the initial 29 percent announced earlier in the year. It means that while Kenya negotiated solely, other East African countries could ride on the deal for the next few years as they figure out whether to enter, based on what parties called "transitional clauses." These transitional clauses, sources said, will allow other EAC member states to utilise what Kenya had agreed on with the UK, but could discuss variable new issues such as services trade, new technology, and research and innovation, which were lacking under the European Union Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). The proposal was agreed to in principle last week as Nairobi closed the deal to save its exports from facing taxation in the UK market, once the transitional clauses under the EU expire. The UK had demanded a deal with all six East African Community member states, but other partners were reluctant to begin negotiations as Uganda, Tanzania and Burundi all faced elections this year with the rest preoccupied with Covid-19. Betty Maina, the Kenyan Trade Cabinet...

EAC to enjoy British support despite Brexit

BRITAIN has assured the East African Community (EAC) that it will continue supporting and cooperating with the regional grouping despite its withdrawal from the European Union (EU) and the European Atomic Energy Community. Newly appointed British High Commissioner to Tanzania and the EAC Mr David Concar told EAC Secretary General, Liberat Mfumukeko that his appointment was an expression of the British government’s faith in the EAC Integration Project. He lauded the bloc for creating a sense of mutual confidence and stability among members states of the East African region. The good news comes as some EAC partner states like Burundi and Tanzania had peaceful elections while Uganda is also heading for the same. Britain is edging near Brexit from the European Union (EU) later this year. Mr Concar commended the EAC Secretariat for the good work that has led to the attainment of several achievements and promised his country’s commitment to continue supporting the integration process. The British envoy believes the bloc has an important role to play in promoting economic development and lifting East Africans out of poverty. Ambassador Mfumukeko hailed the strong relations existing between the EAC and Britain and commended the latter’s support to the EAC integration process. He shared the progress made by the EAC in the four pillars of integration; namely the Customs Union, Common Market, Monetary Union and Political Federation. He added that the EAC had made great strides in the four pillars due to the political goodwill of its leaders and the support...

IOTA co-founder: DLT will transform supply chains into demand chains

In another article for nasdaq.com, IOTA co-founder Dominik Schiener explained how Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) will revolutionize the industry and especially the supply chain. As Schiener describes, the supply chain is a constantly moving part of the corporate infrastructure, the pursuit of which is “traditionally a challenge” and “generally known for reactive rather than proactive analysis”. “That will soon change,” says Schiener. DLT can be applied to the traditional supply chain infrastructure to reverse the market logic and create demand chains. Instead of waiting for the market to respond to a product, a demand chain would ideally respond directly and in real time to consumer behavior and link the data back to the actual supply side. In effect, market demand could be met automatically as soon as it exists, rather than waiting for total supply to run out. This would empower businesses to not only have a wealth of supply chain data, but reform their supply chain processes to become more efficient and create a more sustainable future. However, as the IOTA co-founder also emphasizes, this requires consumers to trust the network. Ultimately, consumer transparency can only be implemented in a trustworthy ledger. In return, however, a demand chain would be created, which would mean a “relocation of actual production”. Contrary to the current system, in which supply is produced on the basis of past history, production would be based on demand. Ultimately, a highly effective system of rapid response to demand could be created that can be changed in the middle of...

Labour urges UK trade secretary to end delays over Kenya and Ghana deals

The Labour party has urged the UK trade secretary, Liz Truss, to end delays over rollover deals with Kenya and Ghana to prevent them being slapped with high tariffs when the UK leaves the EU on 1 January. Negotiations with Kenya and Ghana have yet to be signed off with only nine weeks to go before the UK’s transition deal with the EU comes to an end, when import charges would be imposed on goods worth £2.6bn from the African countries. Labour officials fear Truss is trying to drive a hard bargain with individual nations that depend on foreign income from sales of bananas, cocoa and flowers to the UK to make up for deals that largely favour foreign imports. With EU trade talks hanging in the balance and discussions with the US barely started, the trade department signed a deal with Japan last month that the shadow trade secretary, Emily Thornberry, warned massively favoured the world’s third-largest economy. Shadow trade minister Gareth Thomas said in a letter to Truss that he was concerned that the department’s attention had switched from talks with the East African Community (EAC) trade bloc to bilateral deals with individual countries. He said that the failure to sign deals with Kenya and Ghana had left them unable to plan for next year and, worse, the current proposals left them facing duties on exports to the UK. “The terms of the continuity agreements you have been proposing would lead to new barriers to trade between both...

East Africa bloc seeks to develop regional infrastructure master plan

Representatives from the eight-member East Africa bloc are set to meet in the Kenyan capital Nairobi next week to assess the development for the regional infrastructure master plan due in December, the bloc said on Sunday. The two-day meeting organized by the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) economic cooperation and social development division will seek to educate and inform stakeholders of way projects will be designed in an environmentally and socially acceptable manner with the necessary mitigation measures. The meeting will be attended by over 50 participants drawn from environmental and social issues connected NGOs and non-state actors from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda. Analysts say infrastructure development initiatives need to adhere to the right codes of environmental and social developmental requirements, espousing the motto of sustainable development. The regional infrastructure master plan is aimed at enhancing regional economic integration through trade, free movement of goods and persons and poverty reduction amongst IGAD Member States. The master plan is covering the regional sub-sectors of transport, ICT, energy and trans-boundary water resources. Read original article

Minister for Africa announces closer UK-Southern Africa partnerships on visit to Malawi and Zambia

James Duddridge's visit shows how Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office brings together development and diplomacy to act as a force for good in the world. The UK Minister for Africa, James Duddridge, travelled to Malawi and Zambia this week (5 to 9 October) where he built on UK partnerships across Southern Africa to promote, support and reinforce our shared national interests – with a focus on boosting regional trade links and tackling the health and economic impacts of COVID-19. He visited businesses in the 2 countries – including Zazu, a British-backed financial services start-up in Lusaka and 14Trees, a CDC investment in Lilongwe producing environmentally sustainable bricks. In Zambia, the Minister announced UK funding to help small-and-medium-sized (SME) firms to access investment, innovate and improve productivity. This support will help create 50,000 jobs and facilitate over £100m of private sector investment into high-potential Zambian businesses. James Duddridge meeting His Excellency Lazarus Chakwera, President of Malawi. In Malawi, a major focus of discussions with the President, Vice President and Finance Minister was how to drive growth through improving the investment climate and reforming state-owned enterprises, building on the foundations of the UK-Africa Investment Summit in January. He also met with the Zambian Minister for Finance and trade bodies to discuss a new UK-backed partnership between the Government of Zambia and Trademark East Africa (TMA). The support will help improve trade flows at one of Southern Africa’s busiest borders – the Nakonde border post between Zambia and Tanzania, through which 135,000 trucks...