SUMMARY The 10,000-capacity Jumuiya market will provide for secure all-weather space, stores, stalls and cold rooms for perishables produce. Busia border point is strategically located along the Northern Corridor. It is an important gateway into the east and central African region. The project is being funded by both the government of Kenya and the TradeMark Africa (TMA). Traders in Busia market will benefit from Sh2 billion market to be built at the Kenya-Uganda border. The 10,000-capacity Jumuiya market will provide for secure all-weather space, stores, stalls and cold rooms for perishables produce. Busia border point is strategically located along the Northern Corridor. It is an important gateway into the east and central African region. The project is being funded by both the government of Kenya and the TradeMark Africa (TMA). The Treasury and TMA Wednesday signed four financing agreements of $13.1 million to support the construction of infrastructure projects in Mombasa, Malaba “with part of it going towards the Busia market. “TMA will partner with Ministry of East Africa Community to oversee the construction of the retail section. The Sh559 million comprise Sh74.3 million from GoK and Sh485 million from TMA as captured in the financing agreement,” said the Ministry of EAC. The market will be constructed on a 40-acre piece of land in Marachi on the Kenyan side of the border, which adjacent to the One-Stop Border Post. The market will comprise a retail section, a business hub and a wholesale section. A retail Section will include all-weather stores,...

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In Summary The facility was planned to have been commissioned by President Uhuru Kenyatta in November last year. Rival projects between Uganda and Tanzania, including the $3.5 billion (Sh381 billion)Uganda–Tanzania Crude Oil Pipeline (UTCOP), are among those that have left Kenya in the cold. Lack of political goodwill and rival regional projects are proving to be a headache for Kenya's ambitions to commission and fully operate the Kisumu Port, shippers have noted. Refurbishment of the facility at a cost of Sh700 million was completed in September last year, but its commissioning is yet to take place one year later, with the government shifting dates for its launch. The facility was planned to have been commissioned by President Uhuru Kenyatta in November last year. It was later pushed to January this year, an event the government has gone mum on to date, despite the President making several visits to the Lakeside city. In August, President Uhuru Kenyatta made a low key visit to Kisumu where he made an impromptu tour of the port, which took about 40 minutes. His most recent visit is last week when he landed at the facility during his tour of the region, with residents hoping he would address the delayed commissioning of the port which is expected to open up regional trade and create employment. Rival projects between Uganda and Tanzania, including the $3.5 billion (Sh381 billion)Uganda–Tanzania Crude Oil Pipeline (UTCOP), are among those that have left Kenya in the cold, according to shippers. The Shippers...

In Summary For full transparency, the US published our FTA negotiating positions online for all to see. This is about America first and Kenya first — a win-win agreement. The 56-year-old US-Kenya relationship flourishes because we trust each other, respect each other, and our nations share common values. The US and Kenya believe in a strong economy through an open, free marketplace allowing entrepreneurs, businesses, and the private sector to thrive and create jobs. The African Growth and Opportunity Act enhanced markets, allowing Kenyan businesses to grow. The Act will expire in 2025 and, while it has been helpful, Agoa has not been transformative in driving the broad-based economic growth Kenya seeks. Kenya is ready for the next step, a US-Kenya Free Trade Agreement that will bring our relationship from reliance on tariff preferences that erode over time and can be unilaterally withdrawn, to an agreement that drives more efficient uses of resources and expands trade. While Kenyans hear a lot about the ongoing FTA negotiations, not all of it reflects reality. Many thoughtful Kenyans and Americans are engaged in these negotiations and recognise the FTA’s importance. Unfortunately, the negotiators are not the ones speaking publicly about the talks’ progress, leading to some unfruitful conversations. Let’s start at the beginning: Kenya is the powerhouse economy in East Africa and it makes sense that the US would look to Kenya as our partner for the first modern FTA in the region. To do that, we must look beyond Agoa to negotiate...

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...

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

Thirty-six Kenyan vegetable and fruit companies sold Sh235.22 million worth of produce at this year’s Macfrut Digital Trade Fair in Rimini, Italy. The three-day event, which was in collaboration with the International Trade Centre, was postponed in May amid disruptions brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic. The virtual exhibition saw exhibitors showcase products as well as attend business-to -business meetings with the world’s leading exporters, importers, technicians, experts and investors in value addition. “We are happy that even Covid-19 did not stop our Kenyan exporters from interacting with the world on the streets of Rimini and making sales. We will continue following up the exhibitors and update the confirmed orders and delivery for the next 12 months,” said the Kenya Export Promotion and Branding Agency’s chief executive Wilfred Marube. Mr Marube said the agency will strengthen its technological infrastructure to diversify export promotion initiatives. “Going forward, we are creating an exporters portal for online engagement, meetings and exhibitions. This one will be a game-changer in promoting our exports since it will ensure that we are not limited by physical distance, space or even funds to contribute to the growth of exports. It will provide limitless and borderless opportunities,” he added. This comes at a time when statistics shows that horticulture earnings rose to Sh81 billion in the first half of the year from Sh76 billion in the same period last year, amid interruptions caused by the pandemic in the second quarter. This was boosted by higher demand for fruits and...

Last month, Mastercard announced a partnership with Samsung, Airtel Africa and Asante Financial Services Group to launch a Pay-on-Demand payments platform and drive the digital economy across Africa. By enabling digital access to everyday products and services for under-served consumers and micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), the continent could experience positive economic growth covering even the poorest which has been elusive for decades. The International Finance Corporation (IFC) notes that the launch and growth of digital financial services has led to an unprecedented increase in the number of people enjoying access to formal financial services. Today, Africa has more digital financial services deployments than any other region in the world, with almost half of the nearly 700 million individual users worldwide. Mobile money solutions and agent banking remain the most preferred since they now offer affordable, instant, and reliable transactions, savings, credit, and even insurance opportunities in rural villages and urban neighbourhoods even without bank branches. This, quite literally, banking at your fingertips – is for everyone and it has revolutionised how transactions are carried out. The impact of this convenience is that it extends beyond the individual since the impact can be felt across society. “Ten years after the breakthrough of digital financial services in Sub-Saharan Africa, we are seeing evidence of this. Field studies show that access to mobile money services has increased daily per capita consumption levels of households, lifting them out of extreme poverty,” notes Reeta Roy who is the President and CEO of Mastercard...

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...

The scope of the training focuses on operations at the OSBP with close contact to travelers and their luggage. s the Partner States in the East African Community (EAC) region ease measures that were established to prevent and respond to the COVID-19 global pandemic, the EAC Secretariat has commenced a training of trainers’ course for staff at 12 One Stop Border Posts between the Partner States. This training aims at strengthening the prevention of and response to COVID-19 and other communicable diseases. The training programme kicked off last week at the Isebania-Sirari border post between Kenya and Tanzania and is being conducted by AMREF Flying Doctors in close cooperation with the EAC Secretariat. Between 16 and 32 staff members are trained as trainers in a 2-days course. They come from customs, immigration, port health and animal health, bureau of standards, security, cargo and baggage handlers. Clearing agents are also included targeted in the training. “The participants in this training will in turn train their colleagues on the skills they have acquired to further cascade the message and ensure that the busy border posts can effectively prevent the spread of COVID 19 and detect and respond to infected passengers”, explains Anthony Kihara of AMREF Flying Doctors. “The scope of the training focuses on operations at the OSBP with close contact to travelers and their luggage.” The Principal Customs Officer for Capacity Building at the EAC Secretariat, Stephen Analo, who is coordinating the training is convinced that “all the EAC Partner States...