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

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...

Increased orders from Tanzania and Rwanda lifted exports of Kenyans goods to the six-nation East African Community (EAC) market to a four-year high in the period to September. Kenyan traders earned Sh102.69 in the nine-month period, representing a growth of Sh5.60 billion or 5.77 percent compared by the same period a year ago. This is the highest level of receipts from the bloc in the January-September period since Sh104.29 billion was recorded in 2016. It signals improving trade ties between Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. Exports to Rwanda surged Sh3.38 billion, or 25.06 percent, to nearly Sh16.89 billion, while orders from Tanzania climbed Sh2.25 billion, or 10.12 percent, to Sh24.43 billion, data collated by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) show. Sales to landlocked Uganda, Kenya’s largest trading partner, increased a measly Sh901.3 million, or 1.95 percent, to Sh47.02 billion, while Burundi bought Sh5.18 billion goods — Sh156.4 million or 3.12 percent growth year-on-year. Exports to South Sudan, which has been ravaged by years of civil strife, dropped Sh1.08 billion to Sh9.18 billion, the KNBS data shows. This snaps a trend in recent years where Kenyan factories have struggled to grow exports to regional markets, largely due to tariff and non-tariff barriers fuelled by mistrust and unresolved trade disputes, particularly with Dar es Salaam and, in some isolated cases, Kampala. “If Kenya is to industrialise and really be a manufacturing powerhouse in the region, we need to have our own four-band tariff. This is zero for (importation of) raw...

THE journey to an East African Community (EAC) political confederation is taking shape as experts are now engaged in consultations in Burundi. The constitutional experts are holding national stakeholders consultations as they go forth in preparations to draft the EAC Political Confederation Constitution that is expected to get completed by 2022. The EAC Secretariat says the consultations that started on Tuesday in Bujumbura, Gitega, Ngozi and Makamba were launched on Wednesday by President Pierre Nkurunziza and are being conducted under the leadership of Dr Benjamin Odoki, the Ugandan retired Chief Justice. The exercise goes on until January 20th. “The objective of the consultations is to obtain stakeholders’ views on their interests and other key issues that will better inform the drafting of a model political confederation and subsequently a confederation constitution in line with the principle of a people-centred Community,” said Ambassador Liberat Mfumukeko, the EAC Secretary General. The national stakeholders’ consultations are also expected to enhance awareness on the ongoing constitutional making process for transforming the EAC into a political confederation, as well as prepare the public in general to give their inputs into the draft constitution once it will be drafted. “National Stakeholders’ consultations will ensure participation of EAC citizens in the integration process and particularly the political federation pillar,” said Ambassador Mfumukeko. The drafting of the EAC political confederation constitution is being undertaken by a team of constitutional experts nominated by the EAC partner states. The 18-member team is chaired by Justice Odoki. It will be passed...

Toward the end of the last decade, globalization – the lowering of barriers to cross-border flows of goods, services, investment, and information – came under severe pressure. Populist politicians in many countries accused others of various economic wrongs and pushed to rewrite trade agreements. Developing countries have argued for decades that the rules governing international trade are profoundly unfair. But why are similar complaints now emanating from the developed countries that established most of those rules? A simple but inadequate explanation is “competition.” In the 1960s and 1970s, industrialized countries focused on opening foreign markets for their goods and set the rules accordingly. Since then, the tide has turned. Emerging economies, especially China, got a lot better at producing goods; and the old rules dictate that developed countries must keep their markets open to the now-more-productive producers from elsewhere. To a cynical observer, developed countries’ current efforts to rewrite the rules look like an attempt not to level the playing field, but to thwart competition. One reason why emerging-market producers are competitive is that they pay workers less (typically because those workers are less productive). Hence, the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA, the renegotiated NAFTA) would limit Mexico’s advantage by requiring that 40-45% of automobile components be made by workers earning at least $16 per hour (by 2023). It also mandates a variety of labour protections, including stronger union representation for Mexican workers, which will be monitored by US inspectors. What looks like a good deal for Mexican workers imposed by...

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. Source: Daily Monitor

Arusha. Intra-regional exports within the East African Community (EAC) bloc grew by 5.6 per cent in 2018, wile cross-border imports shot up by 13.9 per cent. Cross-border exports during the year amounted to $3.2 billion in value, up from $2.9 billion in 2017, according to the EAC Trade and Investment Report for 2019. The marginal growth of exports and imports within EAC is seen as an iota of improvement - given the low level of intra-regional trade ($3.2 billion) in the six-nation bloc. Until 2018, trade within the region was estimated at only 20 per cent of the total EAC trade with the outside world. The trend is blamed on a host of hurdles, notably non-tariff barriers to trade (NTBs). According to the statistics released by the East African Business Council (EABC), the gross EAC economy expanded by 5.7 per cent in 2018 up from 5.6 per cent in the previous year. However, foreign direct investments (FDIs) into EAC fell by 15.9 per cent, to $5.7 billion, in 2018 - down from $6.8 billion in 2017. Total EAC exports decreased by 4.7 per cent, to $14.0 billion, in 2018 from $14.7 billion in 2017 - of which intra-EAC share of total exports stood at 22 per cent. Exports to the Southern Africa Development Community (Sadc) and the European Union (EU) in 2018 amounted to $1.9 billion and $2.5 billion respectively. On the other hand, total EAC imports grew by 19.2 per cent, to $38.3 billion, in 2018 - up from...

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...