Africa is expecting to raise $40 billion in trade and investment deals at the Intra-African Trade Fair (IATF) scheduled to take place in Kigali from 1-7 September, 2020. A similar event in Cairo, Egypt, in 2018 successfully raised $32 billion, positively encouraging organizers that more can be mobilized from the forthcoming event in Rwanda. Speaking at the launch of preparations for the event, Rwanda’s Trade Minister, Soraya Hakuziyaremye said experience from Egypt will facilitate Rwanda to create better experiences for participants while in Kigali. The launch was held on the sidelines of the ongoing Transform Africa Summit that ends on Thursday, May 17. The IATF2020 will be organized by Rwanda in collaboration with the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) and the African Union. The event will provide a unique and valuable platform for businesses to access an integrated African market of over 1.2 billion people with a GDP of over $2.5 trillion created under the African Continental Free Trade Area. More than 5000 participants and 1000 exhibitors are expected to attend from 55 countries. The event will consist of an exhibition, trade and investment forum, virtual trade fair and creative African experience. There will also be a conference featuring leading African and international speakers and a variety of sessions dealing with African trade and investment. Business-to-Business and government-to-business opportunities for matching and exchanges will be held to facilitate striking trade and investment deals in nearly all sectors ranging from ICT, mining, agriculture, automotive, manufacturing and many more. Minister Hakuziyaremye called upon...

Earlier in our continent’s history, children were encouraged to work hard in school in order to pass their examinations and get a job. Higher education, and especially a degree, was the way for a young person to get into gainful employment and get on their way to fulfilling their dreams. That is no longer the case today. Many people end up taking jobs outside their areas of study and for many, unfortunately, they end up jobless as there are not enough opportunities for employment in the formal sector. In these unfortunate circumstances, unemployment and under-employment have become common in our society today. In Rwanda, the youth today make about 28.1 percent of the total population, estimated to be 12 million. The economy of the country is bolstered by the existing opportunities in financial services, agriculture, commerce, hospitality and information technology. Vibrant and educated young men and women are capitalising the ease of starting a business in these sectors. Rwanda’s high ranking in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business is proof of its readiness to make things work for entrepreneurs. Economists have argued that the current unemployment crisis is as a result of an education system intent on labour supply instead of incubating entrepreneurship and skilling. Entrepreneurship-centered learning produces a cascading effect as with more business ventures created, more students get a higher chance of accessing employment. Evidently, small and medium small and micro businesses compromise 98 percent of total business in the country and account for 41 percent of...

For sure, the signing of the Kigali Declaration on African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) in March 2018 by African heads of state and government marked a significant shift in expectations by Africa’s business community, among others, for Africa’s future economic growth and development. The declaration introduced the enhanced intra-African trade, achievable through AfCFTA as the sure way of achieving the much elusive sustainable economic development, employment creation in member states and most importantly, reversing the declining economic growth and development trend in the continent. Indeed, over the past 15 or so years, most countries in Africa experienced have sustained economic growth, with the rates often exceeding five percent a year. Between 2000 and 2010, the continent achieved average real annual GDP growth of 5.4 percent, adding $78 billion annually to the GDP (2015 prices). This growth indeed inspired optimism around and about the continent’s socio-economic prospects and in its ability to deliver better socio-economic welfare gains to the people. However, this was not the case. Between the years 2010-2015, Africa’s economic growth slowed down. Growth dropped to an average of 3.4 percent per year thus sending shockwaves through leadership of Africa and the entire business community. Despite this decline in the performance of the mentioned economies, the rest of Africa economies were able to maintain stable growth rates in general. Nonetheless, African economies amid many internal and external shocks have been resilient. According to the World Bank Review (2018), growth in sub-Saharan Africa is estimated at 2.3 percent for...

The East African Community (EAC) summons for extended support from Canada, one of the leading development partners to Africa. The community is specifically pressing for assistance in the infrastructure and trade sectors to help it gain its intergrated agenda. Mr. Liberat Mfumukeko, the secretary general said, "There is an urgent need to upscale the EAC-Canada relations as well as Canada's support". He made the call when he met the Canadian High Commissioner to Tanzania, Ms Pamela O'Donnell, who is aslo accredited to the EAC. The Envoy was briefed, during the meeting at the community headquarters, on the latest milestones recorded in the four intergration pillars. They aslo conferred on Canada's support to the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and the Burundi peace process. The meeting stressed the need for the two sides to deepen cooperatin to speed up the EAC regional intergration initiatives through speedy implementation of projects. Ms O'donnell reaffirmed her country's commitment to support the EAC, saying regional economic groupings were key in boosting regional and international trade. Canada joined a host of donor countries with full diplomatic representation at the Arusha-based EAC in 2017. When Ms O'Donnell predecessor presented his credentials, the two sides stressed cooperation in trade, agro-processing and investment. Although it trails, the European Union, Germany and the United States, Canada has featured in investment flows in gas, oil and minerals projects to EA. One of them is the Canadian-supported five year project aimed to push for law reforms in the oil and gas...

President Paul Kagame has urged residents of Rubavu and Rutsiro districts to consider the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as a market that needs to be tapped into. He also urged them to improve their operations promising them government support where necessary. Kagame made the request today as he met residents of Rubavu and Rutsiro districts, Western Province that convened at the football playground in Nyundo sector on the third day of the citizen outreach program. He was last in Rubavu during presidential campaigns in 2017. President Kagame told residents that they did what he wanted that they deserve what they want in return. “You wanted security and development. We must provide them, by all means, rooting on collaboration with citizens and all leaders understanding that it is their duty to serve citizens,” he said. President Kagame explained that both Rwanda and DRC can work together to make good use of available opportunities to further progress as long as they enjoy good relations. “Starting with opportunities of having neighbors, there is Goma town; there are other parts of that country and many people. When there is a presence of a large number of people, it is a market, you are also a market,” he addressed the crowd that welcomed him. “If there is cooperation, interchange of what is not available on one side and free movements of people, they gain improved benefits. But no one goes to neighbors without fixing own issues. That means it is our market in Rubavu...

The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) isn’t simply a ‘Free Trade Agreement’; it’s about establishing a unified continental market with 1.2 billion potential customers and where the private sector is a major engine to make it happen. This was the tone from the discussions of the meeting held on 25 April 2019 in Arusha about how the East African Private sector including Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) could benefit from the AfCFTA. The one-day meeting, organized jointly between the East African Business Council (EABC) and the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), convened close to 40 key players from the region’s private sector. The office for Eastern Africa of ECA estimates large potential gains from the AfCFTA, including an increase in intra-African exports of Eastern Africa by nearly US$ 1 billion and job creation of 0.5 to 1.9 million. “Together African economies have a collective GDP of 2.5 trillion USD, making it the 8th largest economy in the world. That makes the continent much more attractive to investment, both from within and from outside the continent,” said Andrew Mold, Acting Director of ECA in Eastern Africa. “This should encourage business people to take advantage of AfCFTA and make the investments necessary to sustain economic growth and create employment”. Nick Nesbitt, Chairman of EABC, emphasized the importance of the continent having a clear vision to put an end to the fragmentation of the internal market. “I really applaud everybody who has involved in creating the AfCFTA because their vision is the...

It’s a great privilege to be here and above all a great privilege to have the opportunity for the last hour and a half to meet some of you and to learn from you. I think if there’s one theme that is central to the way that Britain thinks about itself in the world in the future, it’s the theme of humility, the theme of listening to other people, learning from people, working with other people. And I think this is particularly true when we come to probably one of the most difficult intractable and exciting problems in the world, which is the question of unlocking the potential of the African economies. When we talk about economies in Africa – and many of you will have been to these conferences all the time – there is a very strange sense that you lurch from an incredibly optimistic positive vision of where Africa’s going, to suddenly going to the absolute opposite of people being very, very gloomy. And I don’t want to repeat the cycle, but clearly in that tension between these two principles, between the incredible potential of Africa and people’s sense of frustrations, is something there in the centre of this problem which needs to be unlocked. And part of that problem is the question of how you unlock finance and how you unlock money in the centre of those economies. The big picture I don’t want to bore you with because you have heard these ten thousand times...

The Prime Minister Dr Ruhakana Rugunda has said the closure of Rwanda’s border with Uganda is being resolved by both Presidents. Rugunda says that leaders at the regional level are also involved in resolving the matter. Rugunda was on Thursday speaking at the launch of the 2019 NRM Manifesto week at the Media Centre. Rwanda announced the closure of the Gatuna border post, to allow for the completion of the one-stop border post, which has been delayed for two years. The Rwanda Foreign Affairs Minister Richard Sezibeera accused Uganda of holding in its prisons Rwandan nationals and torturing some. Rwanda went as far as stopping its nationals from crossing into Uganda. Recently, the Private Sector foundation expressed worry saying the continued closure could cripple Uganda’s manufacturing sector since Rwanda is one of Uganda’s trade destination in East Africa. Rugunda admitted a decline in trade but said this was a temporary matter that is going to be resolved. Source: Business Focus

Kenya on Wednesday called on African countries to embrace mutual recognition agreements for product standards to help spur intra-Africa trade. Betty Maina, principal secretary in the ministry of trade, industry and cooperatives, told an international standards forum in Nairobi that lack of harmonized standards constitute huge non tariff barriers to cross border trade. “Mutually accepted standards for products and services across Africa will reduce the need for duplication of testing when importing and exporting and thus greatly facilitate intra-Africa trade,” Maina said during the 34th International Organization of Standardization (ISO) Committee on Conformity Assessment (CASCO) plenary meeting. She told a two-day event that brought together over 130 delegates representing the ISO member states that mutually accepted standards will help make conformity assessment activities as uniform as possible across industries and the world. Maina noted that conformity assessment plays a vital role in the Kenyan economy because it involves a set of processes that show the product, service or system meets the requirements of a standard. “It provides a tool for managing compliance and providing an objective and defensible means to implement standards thus enforcing national health, safety and environmental legislation,” she added. The Kenyan official noted that on the basis of standards, the East African Community (EAC) has an agreement of mutual recognition of certification marks. Eddy Njoroge, president-elect of ISO, said that the world is getting widely and deeply interconnected making it intimately interdependent, at an alarmingly rapid rate. “As a consequence, standards and conformity assessment have become not...

The Economic Insight: Africa report provides a snapshot of East Africa, Central and West Africa, Franc Zone, Northern Africa and Southern Africa's economic performance. According to the report; East Africa is expected to remain the strongest growing region with a 6.3% economic expansion this year. Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda are all expected to record real GDP growth above 6% this year, largely due to infrastructure investment and the expansion of financial and telecoms services. African economic growth has in general been driven by public infrastructure investment and the expansion of services to a largely underserviced population. However, financial technology (FinTech) is increasingly receiving attention from both private and public sector, facilitating innovation in other sectors of the economy and allowing African nations to leapfrog more traditional infrastructure. "African economic growth is currently driven mostly by traditional sectors, However, FinTech has the opportunity to leapfrog other key drivers and to foster inclusive development. But this can only happen if it is managed properly," says Michael Armstrong, Regional Director, ICAEW Middle East, Africa and South Asia. How the FinTech industry shaping Africa's future Almost one-third of total funding on the continent was raised by fintech start-ups in 2017. This can be supported by the fact that 60% of all mobile money accounts globally can be found in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), according to an Ecobank study. The FinTech sector is set to show strong growth over the medium term, from roughly $200m in 2018 to $3bn by 2020. The majority of these investments have...