...Lauds JPM for keeping economy open amid Covid-19 THE East African Business Council (EABC) has called for a deeper collaboration between the Public and Private sectors to boost East African Community (EAC) intra-trade. Also, the council has lauded President John Magufuli for a job well done, especially in spearheading major economic reforms in the country. Amid the global economic disruptions caused by the Coronavirus pandemic, EAC private sector wants to steer better relations as a strategy to boost trade and investment in the region. The leaders noted that the decision by President Magufuli to keep the economy open, offered the private sector a major relief in terms of business resilience as it also strengthened local supply chains. EABC Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Dr Peter Mathuki said that is the spirit for the region - both public and private sector to move forward and business to prosper. It came about after consultations of CEOs at a roundtable meeting organized by the EABC in collaboration with German Development Agency (GIZ) with a theme 'Creating Perspectives Project', convening companies' CEOs with an aim of deliberating on approaches that the private sector can explore to revamp businesses amid the pandemic. Tanzania took absolutely a different approach in dealing with Covid-19, by President Magufuli who seeks a second term in office led the nation in style, by ruling out lockdown, letting business go on but with taking reasonable protective measures and it paid handsomely. In spite of the situation in the bloc, Africa and world...

Uganda has condemned the continued use of non-tariff barriers by her East African Community neighbors despite several petitions, saying it beats the purpose for which the community was created. Uganda has for long felt that her neighbors, mainly Kenya, Rwanda, and Tanzania keep backtracking when it comes to implementing the free trade treaties that govern the EAC bloc. Recently, sugar exports to Tanzania have been blocked and returned to Uganda, while Kenya has often blocked Uganda’s sugar, poultry, and dairy products. And in all instances, exporters say, there are no proper reasons given The Assistant Commissioner for Regional and Bilateral Division External Trade at the Ministry of Trade, Richard Okot Okello, says there must be renewed efforts to remove all barriers if intra-regional trade is to be revamped. He was speaking at an online regional symposium on the effects of Covid-19 on women’s economic empowerment in East Africa, organized by the Eastern African Sub-Regional Support Initiative, EASSI. Okot-Okello says regional countries have persistently put nationalist and protective measures above the regional mechanisms that were put in place to enhance regional integration. On her part, Dr Juliet Wakaisuka, a lecturer at Makerere University Business School, expressed worry that in all the support and economic recovery programs, the special plight of women is not being given special attention. She calls for affirmative action like helping women entrepreneurs formalize their business, and supporting them to adapt fully to the digital-based environment. The Commercial Attache at the Kenyan Embassy in Uganda Robert Okoth said...

With three of the eight candidates to become the next leader of the World Trade Organization (WTO) coming from Africa, BBC Africa business editor Zawadi Mudibo looks at what difference having one of them at the helm would make for the continent. There is a growing feeling among African diplomats that someone from the continent should be at the helm of one of the world's top economic institutions. Whereas an American has always led the World Bank and a European has always been at the head of the International Monetary Fund, an African has never taken an equivalent position. But if one from Nigeria's Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Kenya's Amina Mohamed or Egypt's Abdel-Hamid Mamdouh emerges from the long selection process as the WTO's next director-general, the continent can feel that it is playing in the same league as the rest of the world. [caption id="" align="alignnone" width="976"] IMAGE COPYRIGHTGETTY IMAGES: image captionGarment factories, like this one in Kenya, could benefit if trade opened up[/caption] The WTO sets the rules for global trade and adjudicates in trade disputes between nations. It is also, according to its website, supposed to "open trade for the benefit of all". The Geneva-based organisation's ability to get global agreements of basic principles that every country signs up to has been hamstrung in recent years but the WTO leader has influence and a bully pulpit. The director-general attends G7 and G20 meeting and can broker disputes between world leaders. But is there more to be gained for the...

In Summary Last week, Ethiopian Airlines which was the first to resume flights to Julius Nyerere International Airport is set to increases flights from four landings weekly to 14. Dar es Salaam. Ethiopian Airlines is set to join Rwandair when it launches cargo flight service to Mwanza with effect from September 9, adding its already available passenger flights to other parts of Tanzania. The carrier announced the new move on its twitter account. Rwandair has been operating cargo flights from Mwanza Airport to Europe since April, mainly airlifting fish from Lake Victoria. Last week, Ethiopian Airlines which was the first to resume flights to Julius Nyerere International Airport is set to increases flights from four landings weekly to 14. Apart from Ethiopian Airlines, KLM has increased flight frequency from one to four whereas Qatar Airways on the other hand has increased scheduled flights from two to 14. Tanzania was the first East African country to open its airspace following the reduction in the number of coronavirus cases; Kenya on the other hand opened its skies on August 1. Latest reports show that Uganda is scheduled to open its borders and Entebbe International Airport on October 1, the facility has been closed since March when the country recorded its first Covid-19 case. Read the original article

According to the African Union, in order to get maximum benefit of the arrangement as a country, we need to work on minimising or eliminating non-tariff barriers altogether. The Africa Continental Free Trade Area (ACFTA) was supposed to be launched at the beginning of July, but due to the coronavirus crisis, this has been pushed back to January next year. ACFTA will liberalise the movement of goods, services and people throughout the continent which is an important ingredient for the transformation of Africa's people. A major challenge for Africa is that it does more trade with the outside world than it does within itself. This is a historical arrangement that was set in place by the colonialists. Trade between African countries accounts for 15% of all trade done by the continent. This is woefully small compared to Asia's 58% or the European Union's 75%. Being the major markets for our products means the former colonial powers can set the price of our coffee, tea, cotton and even gold. Increasing trade within the continent will break this monopoly market, create greater interdependence between our countries and unlock the vast potential of our continent. It will also make us a more attractive investment destination, aid in technology transfer and in so doing reduce poverty and aid the transformation of our countries. We have evidence here at home of how through the opening of regional markets, the East African Community (EAC) has boosted our farmers' production of grain. Imagine if the same concept...

International trade and investment have always relied on the cross-border mobility of individuals. Transporting goods across borders involves humans, and will do so for the foreseeable future despite important technological advances. In addition, face-to-face contact continues to play a critical role in addressing some of the information and transaction costs involved in trading goods internationally. Physical proximity between producers and consumers is essential for many types of services trade. In some instances, this proximity is achieved when individuals cross international borders. Indeed, the temporary cross-border movement of natural persons is one of the four modes (i.e. mode-4) through which services may be traded in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), while services purchased abroad by consumers is another (mode-2). Individual mobility is also a factor beyond these two modes, since business travel is frequently part of services provision through the establishment of a commercial presence abroad (mode-3) or remotely, for instance online (mode-1). Indeed, the modes of supplying services are often bundled, with varying degrees of substitutability amongst them. In this sense, human mobility constitutes services trade in its own right, while also enabling trade in goods and other services. With the objective of containing the Covid-19 pandemic, governments around the world have imposed temporary travel or immigration restrictions, which have severely restricted the cross- border movement of individuals. While these mobility-related measures are not motivated by trade considerations, but by public health reasons, they have a significant impact on trade. Perhaps paradoxically, this has brought into sharper...

In the Business Think Tank today, Smart24 TV’s Kamweya Tushabe will encourage our panel of experts to talk about the ‘Economic Contribution of Women in Informal Cross-border Trading’. The panelists are: Jane Nalunga, the executive director of SEATINI Jacob Siminyu, the spokesperson of the ministry of Internal Affairs Connie Kihembo, the CEO of Uganda Women Entrepreneurs Association Limited (UWEAL) Sarah Jesca Agwang, programme coordinator (Women’s Economic Justice and Empowerment) at Uganda Women’s Network (UWONET) Sheila Kawamara, the chief executive of EASSI ( The Eastern African Sub-Regional Support Initiative for the Advancement of Women. Follow this link to watch the event live Before Covid-19, Uganda enjoyed a booming cross-border informal trade, 80% of which was being done by women as their sole source of income. Research by the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD), (2018) notes that informal cross-border trade is still rampant at over 40% of all intra-regional trade Over the past decade, increasing the participation of women in cross-border trade has been a key focus area for stakeholders in trade, including the Government, through the ministries of trade and the East African Community affairs and development partners, including TradeMark Africa (TMA), USAID and the Eastern African Sub Regional Support Initiative for the Advancement of Women. Policies have been instituted to increase the participation of informal cross-border women traders to boost their incomes, improve living standards, and contribute to the country’s overall economic development. Data from the Bank of Uganda (BOU) indicates that informal cross-border exports fetched the country...

Unlike anything before it, the Covid-19 pandemic has underlined the importance of harmonising legislation governing the transport of goods across borders. This was the message from all four speakers at the second webinar hosted by the Southern African Transport Conference (SATC) earlier this month. The webinar explored Covid-19’s impact on freight and logistics, and was addressed by Transnet group chief executive Portia Derby, TradeMark Africa senior director of transport Abhishek Sharma, and International Road Transport Union senior advisors Jens Hügel and Kazeem Asayesh. The view of every speaker was that harmonising the legislation that governs cross-border good transit would bolster economies by reducing transport and warehousing costs, and thus increase individual countries’ resilience in the face of economic crises. Sub-Saharan Africa had taken several hard knocks due to the pandemic, which had caused significant supply chain disruptions that had led to shortages of vital commodities such as food and medicines, said Sharma. “The sub-Saharan region is not the only one to feel the negative effects of the pandemic on freight and logistics,” said Hügel. The IRU is a global road transport organisation representing companies that provide transport, mobility and logistics services in more than 80 countries across the world. Globally, movement restrictions, health screening, and border controls and closures – put in place to ward off the virus that caused Covid-19 – had led to an estimated 18% average decline in annual turnover for goods transported by road, Hügel said. The Asia-Pacific and Middle East-North Africa regions are the worst...

Despite Africa’s informal sector employing more than 80 per cent of the workforce, it receives little or no attention when it comes to government’s policy plans implementation. This neglect leaves it exposed to the ravages of unavailable financing or expensive credit which slows down the achievement of the sector’s full potential in growing the various economies. While this is the general view, it gets even worse for women-owned enterprises which struggle from age-old patriarchal approaches to doing business as well as the delicate balancing act that women have to innately learn since they are the ones who also run their homes in many cases. But despite all these challenges, women in business have a big role to play in a post-covid-19 Africa and could significantly reduce the continent’s high dependence on imports of essential food, medical and pharmaceutical items. The UN Economic Commission for Africa’s Mama Keita who is the Director of ECA in Eastern Africa says, “As we are building back our economies after covid and are seeking to turn vulnerabilities into opportunities, let us recall that intra-Africa trade is still very low at less than 20 per cent and that women entrepreneurs have a big role to play in boosting this.” Speaking in a virtual meeting organized by the Office of the Special Envoy for the Great Lakes, Keita who presented the socio-economic effects of covid-19 in the Great Lakes Region emphasized how reduced economic activities stemming from lockdowns, curfew and disruption in international trade affected the region. She...

Last week, the Africa Trade Policy Centre (ATPC) of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) in collaboration with the UK-based Overseas Development Institute (ODI) has released a working paper entitled “Africa trade and COVID-19: The supply chain dimension”. The paper investigates the impacts of the pandemic on trade and value chains in Africa, with a special focus on Ethiopia and Kenya, and the pharmaceutical sector. It also makes specific policy recommendations on how the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) can be reconfigured to reflect the new realities and risks of the 21st century. In this article, we focus on Chapter 2, which examines the impact of the lockdown and social distancing policies – in response to the COVID‑19 crisis – on trade volumes, commodity prices, services and investment. I. Impact on cross‑border trade In the fight against COVID‑19, almost all African countries, albeit to a differing degree, have now suspended international flights, introduced a14‑day quarantine for entrants into the country and closed land and/or maritime borders. A total of 38 of Africa’s 54 countries have now announced land closures of some form, and 17 countries have announced the closure of maritime borders. Typically, these closures are targeted at the movement of people, and there are exemptions for the movement of emergency and essential freight supplies under very strict conditions, including mandatory testing, the sanitisation of trucks, limited crew members on trucks and designated transit resting areas. This has led to an abrupt slowdown and delays in cross‑border trade,...