Summary In 2019, transit cargo from Dar es Salaam to Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi was at 37 percent, up from 22 percent in 2018. On average it costs $1.80 per kilometre per container to transport goods from the port of Dar es Salaam to Bujumbura compared with $3.10 per kilometre per container from the port of Mombasa. The turnaround of the Central Corridor has been attributed to the revival of the Central line metre gauge railway. This may have prompted Kenya Railways — after two decades of neglect — to rehabilitate the old meter-gauge railway from Nakuru to Kisumu at a cost of Ksh3.8 billion ($35 million). The Dar es Salaam port could attract lucrative business away from the Mombasa as the Central Corridor proves to be cheaper compared with the Northern Corridor transport route. On average it costs $1.80 per kilometre per container to transport goods from the port of Dar es Salaam to Bujumbura compared with $3.10 per kilometre per container from the port of Mombasa. The recently released the Central Corridor Transport Observatory 2019 report, which measures the performance of the Central Corridor, also shows that the average costs per km per container from Dar es Salaam to Kigali is $1.90 compared with $2.10 from the port of Mombasa. Importers from Uganda, also pay less at $1.80 per km per container to transport goods from the port of Dar es Salaam compared with $1.90 per km per container charged from Mombasa, while those from Goma pay $2.60...

Port, railway and pipeline operations will now be managed by under a single entity in a move aimed at turning Kenya into a commercial regional logistics hub. The development was announced by President Uhuru Kenyatta in an Executive Order on Friday establishing the Kenya Transport and Logistics Network (KTLN) to oversee the flow of cargo from Mombasa port to the hinterlands and East Africa export markets. In effect, Kenya Ports Authority (KPA), Kenya Railways Corporation (KRC) and Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC) will now fall under the State-owned Industrial and Commercial Development Corporation (ICDC), which will be headed by newly appointed John Ngumi for a three-year term that ends on May 2022. “Going forward, the State agencies have 30 days to enter into a joint operations agreement where each entity will re-organise their structures, resources, operations and services towards establishment of a seamless and coordinated national transport and logistics network,” said President Kenyatta. The agencies have also been transferred to the National Treasury, which is expected to provide personnel to boost oversight in investment portfolio management while ensuring each is professionally run thereby enabling them meet their individual targets. The setting up of KTLN comes amid rising concerns over conflicting directives that cause operational delays as agencies operate independently. This has seen importers, manufacturers, among other port users protest over numerous levies paid to the separate entities where delays in evacuation of cargo cost them a tidy sum due to storage and demurrage costs. President Kenyatta said the new structure creates...

ADDIS ABABA, Aug. 6 (Xinhua) -- Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), Vera Songwe, on Thursday emphasized the need to boost intra-Africa trade in order to augment Africa's share in the global trading platform. The ECA chief made the urgent call during a virtual meeting on African perspectives on the World Trade Organization (WTO) and prospects for regional trade cooperation on Thursday, as she emphasized the need to strengthen trade among African countries. "Africa's trade in the global community was 2 percent two decades ago. We are still at 2 percent despite having joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) and having more countries that trade outside the continent more," Songwe told the virtual event. "Let's develop our productive capacity to transform our goods from raw commodities," the ECA Executive Secretary added. According to Songwe, when Africa trades with itself, it creates more value, and whenever it creates more value, it creates more wealth and reduces poverty. "The Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Agreement offers countries opportunities to develop regional value chains and increase competitiveness in the global markets," she said. Songwe also noted that African countries are "driving a solidified trade voice and a resoluteness to implement the AfCFTA." "This renewed and reinvigorated approach to trade is necessary for economic growth and job creation on the continent," she stressed. The AfCFTA offers a new hope and continental exhilaration in terms of boosting intra-African trade, facilitating Africa's development and industrialization. According to the ECA, once...

Poor infrastructure, logistical hurdles and high prices are some of the challenges that have affected Africa's food supply. With border closures and night curfews, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated these problems. In the busy market of Baba Dogo — a town located northeast of Nairobi, Kenya — Irene Kwira sells clothing she imports from China, Uganda and Tanzania. Kwira's supply chain broke when the coronavirus pandemic hit the world and forced many manufacturing industries to shut down businesses and countries to close borders. Kenya took similar measures to limit the spread of the virus. "This meant that we could not get our goods easily because they could not reach us," Kwira told DW. "So the returns were low and we would buy goods at a higher price because the demand could not match the supply." Kenya closed its borders and allowed only essential goods to be imported and transported throughout the country. The government's decision on what counts as essential services also made Kwira's job of selling her stock exponentially harder. "It's difficult to send goods timely to my customers within the country due to the curfew," Kwira said. Cross border trade in East Africa hampered by the coronavirus Kwira is not the only merchant affected by the pandemic. Shoe seller Nico Manyasia has battled to stay afloat and keep clients happy. "Goods cannot reach the customers in good time," Manyasia said, adding that merchants must wait weeks to get their deliveries. Medical supplies affected in Ghana In Tamale, Ghana's northern region, the road leading to the Janjori...

COMESA, SADC, and the EAC have adopted common transport and trade guidelines to use during the pandemic. The tripartite guidelines will facilitate the safe movement of goods and services and contain the pandemic within the three trading blocs. It is also an opportunity towards the achievement of the Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFTA) signed in 2015. According to the trade guidelines, member countries will now treat truck drivers who test positive for COVID-19 in the partner country as opposed to repatriating the crew to the country of origin. Speaking during the harmonization of the trade protocols, COMESA-EAC-SADC Tripartite Task Force Chairperson Dr Stergomena Lawrence Tax noted that mobility restrictions during the pandemic have resulted in shortages of goods, thus higher cost of doing business. Similarly, cross border restrictions have led to the stigmatization of truck drivers which threatens efforts to contain the virus. Dr tax, therefore, called for harmonized guidelines for the movement of goods and people, to tackle these challenges, and others to stimulate traffic in the region. Drivers are to use gazetted transit routes along the transport corridor and interconnecting roads. Governments in the region will also designate specific points in the route to allow drivers to recuperate, without risking contact with local communities. The tripartite trade guidelines urge member states to introduce and enhance the pre-clearance of goods and adapt common surveillance systems for both drivers and trucks. Leaders in the regional blocs have also called shipping lines to waive charges on container delays and costs for handling essential goods during...

The launch of the digital Covid-19 certificates by East African Community (EAC) is set for Friday in a move that will curb the use of fake certificates and help in easing of congestion at the crossing points. EAC says the system will be launched at border points of Malaba, Rusumo, and Kobero today (Friday), while at Mutukula crossing point and Namanga it will be effected on August 14 and 21 respectively. Electronic Cargo and Driver Tracking system will ease the movement of goods at the border points as it will allow sharing of Covid-19 test results of truck drivers electronically, eliminating the need for physical checks, which has been blamed for causing delays in clearance. The reliance of hard-to-verify manual certificates has been blamed for costly long delays at border points, that sometimes last for weeks. “Regional Electronic Cargo and Driver Tracing System will be launched at border points of Malaba, Rusumo, Kobero, Mutukula and Namanga… this August,” said EAC. The Ministry of Health had in June said the roll-out of the electronic certificate will be implemented once the member states put in place a technology that will link all the laboratories and ensure a seamless operation. The precautionary measures laid down by the ministry are meant to stop the spread of Covid-19 along transport corridors after Busia County emerged as the virus hotspot. The move follows claims that truck drivers useg fake certificates to cross to neighbouring countries and into Kenya. It is also designed to ensure that truck...

Summary The technology has the capacity to monitor and model human congestion, thereby mapping how the virus is spreading. It is not clear what the starting date would be now but Commissioner Muchanga indicated that his Department was entering into many partnerships with multiple Pan-African stakeholders to ensure that the free trade bloc gets going as early as possible. Contact monitoring can be used in tracking social behavior mobility and the movement of persons from one region to another. But in implementing such a program, organisations involved must protect the data privacy of the persons being monitored. As African airlines get back to international skies this month for the first time since March, their commitment towards minimizing the possibility of an upsurge in Covid-19 infections will be critical in jump starting the air travel business. To help manage the uncertainty among passengers about the health safety of international flights, the African Union (AU) Open Corridor Initiative is supporting a collaboration among pan-African private sector institutions to launch a Consortium to deploy and manage a digital platform that will perform bio-screening and tracing of contacts across borders. Dubbed PanaBIOS, the application, which can be accessed on the web or downloaded from Panabios.org, is already being utilized in Ghana to manage congestion in workplaces and other high-risk locations while enabling digitizing of cross—border travel health clearance to suppress disease importation and transmission. A pilot was initiated on June 1 in Ghana as part of the West African country's Trancop Initiative and then formally...

Nairobi and Kigali are set to resume international flights on 1 August, as the region begins reopening its skies in time for the end-year tourism peak season. The decision by Kenya and Rwanda to reopen their skies amidst a surge in COVID-19 cases follows similar decisions in Tanzania and South Sudan in June. Domestic flights in Kenya resumed on 15 July, a fortnight after President Uhuru Kenyatta announced the phased reopening and said the country would adopt a wait-and-see approach to any changes in the preventative measures it has instituted since March. In late July, Kenyan Transport Cabinet Secretary James Macharia listed 11 countries that will be allowed to originate internationally, but added this list would be reviewed daily. Of its five neighbors, Nairobi would allow flights from Uganda and Ethiopia, as well as its East African Community partner Rwanda. The exclusion of Tanzania from the list was expected, as the extent and rate of infections in the country is unknown. Tanzania stopped announcing official figures of the pandemic in April, and while reopening the country in early June, President Magufuli declared that it was coronavirus-free. Although the list also includes Uganda, President Museveni’s administration still has stringent movement restrictions. In his latest update, President Museveni said Uganda’s borders will remain closed “because there is so much chaos in some of these countries abroad.” Ethiopia’s response has been more measured, as its airline continued flying to destinations that still allowed flights. By early July, Ethiopian Airlines was flying to 40 destinations. Different arrival procedures While international...

SUMMARY The resumption of passenger flights signals a reduction on cost of freight charges resulting from additional capacity offering a relief to exporters who have had to content with high rates in the last four months. Passenger airlines, which had been grounded since March, account for 40 percent of the total export freight in the country. Freight charges have remained at a high of Sh321 a kilogramme from Sh197 in the same period in corresponding time last year. The resumption of passenger flights signals a reduction on cost of freight charges resulting from additional capacity offering a relief to exporters who have had to content with high rates in the last four months. Passenger airlines, which had been grounded since March, account for 40 percent of the total export freight in the country. Freight charges have remained at a high of Sh321 a kilogramme from Sh197 in the same period in corresponding time last year. Sanjeev Gadhia, the chief executive officer of Astral Aviation, a Nairobi-based cargo airline forecast a 20 percent cost cut. “Passenger airlines carry up to 40 percent of the total cargo in the country. The increased capacity will see the freight charges come down,” said Mr Gadhia. Exporters say the belly cargo that has been missing since the closure of the airspace in March, plays a significant role in supplementing the cargo flights, hence checking on the high cost. Kenya horticulture industry suffered one of the worst moments in its history after a number of major...

The Common Market for East and Southern Africa (COMESA), East African Community (EAC) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) on 29th July, 2020 adopted harmonised Tripartite Guidelines on Trade and Transport Facilitation Guidelines for Safe, Efficient and Cost-Effective Movement of Goods and Services during the COVID-19 Pandemic. The Guidelines are aimed at containing the spread of COVID-19 whilst facilitating trade and transport of goods and services across the Tripartite area during the COVID-19 pandemic. In his remarks at the opening of the Tripartite Council of Ministers meeting, Honourable Mr Tarek Shalaby, Assistant Minister for Foreign Trade, Agreements and International Relations of the Arab Republic of Egypt, representing the Chairperson of the COMESA-EAC-SADC Tripartite Council of Ministers said the harmonisation of guidelines on Trade and Transport Facilitation presents an opportunity towards the realisation of the Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFTA) which was signed by the Tripartite Heads of State and Government in June, 2015. The Minister called for collective action to guarantee movement of goods and services to promote intra-regional trade, while reducing the cost of goods and services within the tripartite area. He added that the attainment of tripartite and continental integration can only be realised with the harmonisation of regional initiatives and overcoming the challenges of overlaps and multiple membership of COMESA, EAC and SADC. On her part, the Chairperson of the COMESA-EAC-SADC Tripartite Task Force, the Executive Secretary of SADC, Her Excellency Dr Stergomena Lawrence Tax, highlighted that the overlapping nature of membership and sharing of traffic...