TRADERS from Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi will benefit from training on trade facilitation that seeks to boost knowledge, skills on the World Trade Organization (WTO)'s Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA). Tanzania was picked to be the first country in the bloc to benefit from the training that is undertaken by the International Trade Centre (ITC) in partnership with the East African Business Council (EABC) and the Tanzania Private Sector Foundation (TPSF). The workshops that kicked off at Kilimanjaro, Tanzania have been organized as part of the European Union-East African Community Market Access Programme (MARKUP). The East African local business-support associations and traders are being equipped with a comprehensive knowledge of the TFA with a view to identifying obstacles on cross-border and advocate for their removal. The initiative comes in a wake of trade and movement of people's restrictions in some East African Community (EAC) member-states due to Covid-19 pandemic. It saw some countries, excluding Tanzania, undergoing strict lockdowns, closure of businesses that led to paralysis of intra-EAC trade. This initiative has been developed in response to persistent delays and red tape hampering the movement of goods across borders in East Africa. Among the members of the community, inefficient trade procedures and non-tariff barriers represent obstacles to expanding intra-regional trade and deepened regional integration. Trade facilitation - the simplification, modernization and harmonization of export and import processes - has thus become a key issue for the global trade system and regional economic communities, such as the EAC, to create new opportunities...

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...

App helps truckers skirt coronavirus challenges - Aviation tariff row sours German winemakers' sales

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

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...

Summary The visit seeks to strengthen bilateral relations between the two countries. Malawi President Lazarus Chakwera arrived in Tanzania on Wednesday morning for a three-day state visit to boost bilateral ties between the two neighbouring countries. Mr Chakwera was received by Tanzania President John Magufuli in the commercial hub Dar es Salaam and was accorded a state reception. "The visit seeks to strengthen bilateral relations between the two countries," Tanzanian Minister for Foreign Affairs and East Africa Cooperation Prof Palamagamba Kabudi said in a statement. The two leaders are expected to lay the foundation stone at the Mbezi Luis Bus Terminal on the outskirts of Dar es Salaam. The $22 million (Tsh51 billion) bus terminal, which is under construction, will accommodate upcountry and cross-border-bound buses including those to and from Malawi and will have a capacity of handling about 3,430 buses daily. Prof Kabudi said the visit by President Chakwera follows an invite by Dr Magufuli extended to Malawi after his two-day State visit in April last year when Peter Mutharika was president. Mr Chakwera was sworn-in as president in June this year after winning the re-run of a hotly disputed election. Mr Mutharika’s victory in the May 2019 election was overturned in February by the Constitutional Court over fraud allegations. Projects President Chakwera has since made one-day working visits to Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, member countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Tanzania becomes the fourth SADC country the Malawi leader is visiting, where he is expected to...

THE East African Community (EAC) and the European Union (EU) are partnering to realize a fully-fledged EAC Custom Union as they launch a regional economic integration programme. The EU Ambassador to Tanzania and the EAC, Mr Manfredo Fanti and the Secretary General of the EAC, Ambassador Libérat Mfumukeko launched a new Euro 16,400,000 joint programme that will strengthen regional economic integration, through advancing implementation of the Customs Union and Common Market Protocols. The Common Objectives in Regional Economic Integration (CORE) programme will be instrumental in moving towards a fully-fledged Customs Union, by supporting more robust Information Communication and Technology (ICT) based on data exchange protocols for the clearing of goods. The EAC Customs Union was established under the EAC Treaty. The EAC Customs Union Protocol was signed on March 2nd 2004 and became operational on 1st January 2005 with the passing of the EAC Customs Management Act. The overall objective of the Customs Union is the formation of a single customs territory. The aim of creating one single customs territory is to enable Partner States to enjoy economies of scale, with a view to supporting the process of economic development. A needed critical change is to upgrade IT and leverage it to implement the SCT, particularly as concerns three functions: exchange of data between Partner States and with the EAC Secretariat for customs operational purposes, extraction of data from national customs systems for a systematic monitoring, and support functions with a regional component in risk management and valuation. A well-developed...