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

Kampala- Uganda leads the rest of East Africa in ease of access to foreign exchange, according to the 2019 Absa Financial Market Index. The country, according index, scored 70 out of 100 points compared to Rwanda’s 66, Kenya’s 65 and Tanzania’s 60. Burundi was not surveyed. Access to foreign exchange continues to be a pillar growth across the African continent. The Absa Africa Financial Markets Index evaluates financial market development in 20 countries, and highlights economies with the clearest growth prospects. The index seeks to position how economies can improve market frameworks to meet yardsticks for investor access and sustainable growth. Presenting findings of the index in Kampala yesterday, Mr Jeff Gable, the Absa chief economist said: “Uganda performs strongly … with almost the same score as top-ranked South Africa. It has a high level of foreign reserves relative to net portfolio investment flows and enough reserves to cover more than four months of imports.” Interbank foreign exchange turnover used as a measure of foreign exchange liquidity, he said was $20m in the year to June 2019, one of the highest in the index. Mr Gable said Uganda has enough foreign exchange reserves to cover its portfolio flows with net portfolio investment in 2019 standing at $97m, which is low relative to reserves of $3.4 billion. Easily accessible  According to the findings of the index, survey respondents said foreign exchange was easily accessible but the study noted that Uganda could score more points by adopting the Global Foreign Exchange Code of...

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;...

East African Kiswahili expert meeting was convened today to discuss on ways Kiswahili can be used in various sectors so that no one is left behind in the region due to language barriers. Cross-border traders say that if young people learn Swahili as language, it would be of great importance to them in the future because trade in this region improves and widens by more and more and Kiswahili is a prominent language in the trade. Source: Youtube

The Secretary General (SG)of East African community (EAC), Liberat Mfumukeko has said that the Bill for the establishment of the East African Monetary Institute (EAMI) has been assented to by the Summit of Heads of State, adding that the EAMI would later be transformed into the East African Central Bank that would issue the single currency. EAC Partner States are in the process of harmonizing critical policies and putting in place the requisite institutions to attain a single currency for the region by 2024 as outlined in the EAC Monetary Union Protocol. “The establishment of this institute will help to provide impetus towards the formation of the East African Monetary Union, which is the third pillar of our integration,” said Mfumukeko. Amb. Mfumukeko disclosed that the Council of Ministers had approved the EAC Domestic Tax Harmonization Policy, adding that proper implementation of the policy would reduce tax competition thereby enhancing cross-border trade and investment in the region. On the Financial Sector, the SG said that the Community had developed requisite legal instruments (Bills) for the insurance and microfinance sub-sector and strategies for implementation of financial education and insurance certification. “Further, we implemented the financial market infrastructure for payment and settlement systems as well as finalized regional regulations for portability of pension benefits and consumer protection,” he added. Mfumukeko was giving his New Year’s Address to the Staff of EAC Organs and Institutions spread across East Africa from the EAC Headquarters in Arusha, Tanzania. He said that Community would have in...

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...

While Kenya and Tanzania have attempted to join global trade through the production of goods in special economic zones, high labour costs threaten to hamper their effort, says World Bank Group chief economist Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg. Now, companies are avoiding the region because of the existing poor infrastructure, restrictive trade and investment policies and low adoption of international qualities and standards have made companies avoid East Africa, and in the process crippling the take-off of the manufacturing sector and killing the dream of industrialisation. In Kenya and Tanzania, manufacturing labour costs stand at $2,200 and $1,700 annually, respectively, compared with $900 in Ethiopia and $800 in Bangladesh. “Kenya has underperformed in its participation in global value chains even after transitioning to basic manufacturing,” said Ms Goldberg during a media briefing in Nairobi. She added that even after transiting from a commodity-based GVC to limited manufacturing of mainly agribusiness and apparel within the Export Processing Zones, Kenya’s participation has only increased by 10 percentage points in a quarter of a century. While Vietnam and Mexico witnessed a significant 57 per cent growth in per capita, Kenya’s growth was a mere four per cent. “GVCs translate into faster growth in per capita but we have not seen that in Africa,” she noted. She added that GVCs can continue to boost economic growth, create better jobs and reduce poverty if developing countries undertake deeper reforms and developed nations pursue open and predictable policies. The World Bank contends, a one per cent increase in...

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...