Arusha — South Sudan, the newest but troubled African State which had also applied to join the Arusha-pivoted, East African Community has announced that, the country will need five more years to sensitize its citizens before becoming the sixth member of the EAC. Official reports from the East African Community Secretariat in Arusha are to the effect that South Sudan's council of ministers approved the country's bid to join the EAC, but insisted its government needed five years to sensitise citizens on the benefits and risks of becoming a member. The council, recently chaired by President Salva Kiir, reportedly listened to a memo presented by the presidential advisor and economic affairs, Mr Aggrey Tisa Sabuni that the government must prepare its people on the risks of joining the community as well informing them on the benefits that the citizens of South Sudan are going to gain, as far as the Deputy Information Minister, Racheal Nyadak, is concerned. Meanwhile, the Royal Norwegian Ambassador to Tanzania also accredited to the EAC bloc, Ms Hanne-Marie Kaarstad, has paid a courtesy call on Dr Richard Sezibera, the Secretary General of the East African Community. The Secretary General and his guest discussed a wide range of issues geared towards deepening cooperation between Norway and the East African Community. Ms Hanne-Marie Kaarstad also briefed the Secretary General about the pending visit by the Royal Norwegian Minister of Trade and Industry, Ms Monica Meland to the EAC Headquarters in September 2015. Later, Dr Richard Sezibera and Ambassador...

JUBA, 20 June 2015 [Gurtong] - Hon. Racheal Nyadak Paul, Deputy Minister of Information and Broadcasting while addressing journalists after the council of ministers meeting on Friday said the council has agreed to join the EAC. “The Council resolved that joining the East Africa Community is a key interest to the people of South Sudan” said Nyadak. Nyadak added that the approval on the timeline on how the agreed project can be implemented will be discussed in the assembly which the council has agreed. “There will be a summit in October this year where possibility may be South Sudan can be a member of EAC” she said. The Deputy Minister said the council also had a briefing on the aspects of joining the EAC including discussions on the risks and benefits. “The council further discussed and resolved the need to sensitize the community on how important joining the community is and if there are risks they have to be discussed on how to come out of those risks” she said. “Already there are interests and there are gains or benefits of joining the East Africa Community” she said. In regards to obtaining a visa to the East African countries, she said “you don’t obtain your visa in Juba to travel to the East Africa like Kampala or Nairobi; you just get your visa at the airport whenever you feel like to travel. I think these are the good things that we have seen” she explains. Source: Gurtong

June 20, 2015 (JUBA) – South Sudan’s council of ministers on Friday approved the country’s bid to join the East African Community (EAC), but insisted its government needed five years to sensitise citizens on the benefits and risks of becoming a member. The council, during its weekly meeting chaired by president Salva Kiir, reportedly listened to memo presented by the presidential advisor and economic affairs, Aggrey Tisa Sabuni. “We have to sensitize our people on the risks of joining the community as well informing them on the benefits that the citizens of South Sudan are going to gain,” the deputy information minister, Racheal Nyadak told reporters in the country’s capital, Juba. Sabuni, who co-chaired the government of South Sudan team on joining the five-member regional body, told the council of ministers that the new nation could benefit from joining the EAC, which currently comprises of Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda. “If you are a south Sudanese, you are African and once have pay fees like Kenyans or Ugandans citizens because they are not foreigners,” Nyadak quoted Sabuni to have said. South Sudan applied for EAC membership soon after gaining it’s independence from neighbouring Sudan in 2011. However, the young nation’s admission to the bloc delayed as member countries cited poor governance and its underdeveloped public institutions. Although South Sudan could be admitted to the EAC at its October summit, Nyadak said cabinet’s resolution would see the young nation maintain observer status for five years. The resolution to join the...

The 19th century British colonialist Cecil Rhodes’ dream of unifying Africa from “Cape to Cairo’ was not too far-fetched after all. In a poetic sense, tinged with a dash of de ja vu, this dream was fulfilled with the launch of the Tripartite Free Trade Area Agreement (TFTA), in the idyllic Egyptian city of Sharm el Sheikh on the Red Sea when 26 African Heads of State endorsed an economic integration plan for the continent on a scale never witnessed before. The new trade arrangement, signed on Wednesday, June 10, was described by president Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe as creating a “borderless continent”. It assembled three (RECs) regional economic communities into a single free trade area that establishes a framework for preferential tariffs to ease the movement of goods and people in the region. “We have told the world today…of our desire to adopt practices that are necessary to increase trade among ourselves. We will do whatever is possible to activate this agreement,” said Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi when he hosted 26 Heads of State, representing the largest trading bloc in Africa, and one of the biggest free trade areas in the world. The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), East African Community (EAC) and Southern African Development Community (SADC) combine a population of over 625 million people, making up over half of Africa’s population and a GDP of over $1 trillion. Negotiations for the TFTA were undertaken in two phases. Phase I covered trade in goods,...

[caption id="attachment_7863" align="alignleft" width="352"] Lt. Gen. Mikaya Modi Legge, Director General of South Sudan Customs Services (SSCS) shakes hands with Eugene Torero, TradeMark Africa (TMA) South Sudan Director during the MOU signing[/caption] Juba, 11thJune, 2015:The South Sudan Custom Services(SSCS) and TradeMark Africa (TMA) today signed a Memorandum of Understandingto support a customs reforms development program. TMA committed to provide financial and technical support to the SSCS amounting to US$10.4 million. SSCS partnership with TMA aims to lay a foundation for a wider customs reform programmeand modernising of the custom services systems which will lead to increased and diversifying South Sudan revenue incomes as well as increase accountability and transparency in management of these revenues. The assistance, which will reinforce the custom services human resource capacity and improve its physical infrastructure, will support SSCS to become an effective and efficient agency able to support the government's objective of increasing non-oil revenues while facilitating regional trade. This will be achieved through training of customs officers, re-engineering of business processes and procedures which will improve trade environment and reduce trade costs, automation of systems to achieve real time efficiency and establishment of anti-smuggling task teams. Lt. Gen. Mikaya Modi Legge, Director General of SSCS represented the customs service, while TMA was represented by Eugene Torero, the South Sudan Country Director. Speaking at the signing ceremony, Lt. Gen. Mikaya Modi Legge, Director General of SSCS said; “We are very happy and greatly appreciate the technical support that TradeMark Africa is providing in strengthening SSCS....

The South African Development Community (SADC) in yellow, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) in different shades of green and the East African Community (EAC) in the light brown (the only country in the EAC that isn’t also a member of COMESA is Tanzania). That map is from 2009 so doesn’t include South Sudan. In a recent note, Capital Economics named Africa as one of the world’s few potential bright spots as far as boosting global trade is concerned: Over a longer time horizon, sub-Saharan Africa could also play a much larger role in world trade… If sub-Saharan Africa can sustain the pace of GDP growth seen over the past ten years, its share of the world economy could more than double over this time. While this would not be as dramatic as China’s rise over the past 35 years, it does still imply that Africa’s share of world trade will rise substantially from where it is today. Given the development levels and divergence of the countries involved, progress is likely to be slow — but the Tripartite Free Trade Area would be a big step in the right direction. The world is just about to get a free trade area that’s bigger, by population, than either the European Union or NAFTA. It’s got nothing to do with the much-publicised Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). In fact, you’ve probably never heard of it. It’s actually the Tripartite Free Trade Area, a deal that...

Agriculture accounts for 30% of the gross domestic product (GDP) of EA and it employs over 60% of the population of East Africa. In East Africa, it is reported to have annual value of $50b and this represents a 75% of the Agricultural products being traded from the commodities like maize, rice, potatoes, cassava, beans, wheat among others. Agricultural performance is critically important to pro-poor growth since it employs over 75% of EAC member population, where the majority of them live in rural settings. The sector provides a basis for improvement of livelihoods in both rural and urban populations. Despite the importance of the sector to the EAC economies, reviews of public expenditures and programmes that was recently conducted by Civil Society Budget group and other partners like Action Aid, Uganda Debt Network, Food Rights Alliance and ESAFF, indicates that, the input and output from Agriculture has continuously kept declining where inputs being the lowest in the sectors of the economy and is registered being below the National Development Plan target of 4.9% for the case of Uganda. Besides the decline in the East Africa member states with an exception of Rwanda have not prioritised Agriculture in their public spending to the extent that the sector receives less than 4% of the national budgets. This, therefore, calls for the Government and other partners to ensure that there is increased public financing for the sector in East Africa and need to invest more in Agriculture to better support the economies. The...

The irking story of high costs of doing business in the East African region is slowly changing to high returns, thanks to the implementation of the Single Customs Territory (SCT). At the bottom line is the execution of the Customs Union Treaty that seeks to promote cross border trade and attract investment into the enlarged regional market with minimal formalities in customs clearance. The Director for Taxpayer Services and Education at the Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA), Richard Kayombo said in an interview that the system started with few goods and the number is progressively being increased to full-fledged. Kayombo also said that some of the goods that were assessed during the piloting period include rice, maize, sugar, neutral spirits, cigarettes, petroleum products, wheat, salt, edible oil and pharmaceutical and cosmetic products. “The story has changed in many aspects. For example, we currently talk of three-day travel from Dar es Salaam port to Kigali and only three blocks up to the Rwanda border,” he said. He said also that at the first point of entry, depending on the level of risk, customs officers from the destination country, who are posted at the first point of entry, can subject the goods to physical examination before release. He added, the system has called to an end cheating and dumping of transit goods into the local market because the cargo clearance goes together with the payment of all taxes. Customs declarations are made electronically and processed and released by the authorities from the country...

East African Community Headquarters, Arusha, Tanzania: 28 May 2015: The Chairperson of the Summit of the EAC Heads of State H.E. Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete has convened an Emergency Summit on the situation in Burundi to take place on Sunday, 31 May 2015 in Dar es Salaam, The United Republic of Tanzania. The Emergency Summit is a follow-up to the 13th Extraordinary Summit of the EAC Heads of State held on 13 May 2015 also in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The Emergency Summit shall be preceded by a meeting of Ministers/Cabinet Secretaries of the EAC Partner States to take place on Saturday, 30 May 2015 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The Chairperson of the African Union Commission, H.E. Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, is among the leaders that have been invited to attend the Emergency Summit on Burundi. Others include South Africa’s President H.E. Jacob Zuma and Angolan President H.E. Eduardo dos Santos, who is the current chair of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICLGR).The Secretary General of the United Nations (UN) will be represented by his envoy to the Great Lakes region.​ Media Alert All Foreign and Local Journalists intending to cover the Emergency Summit are alerted that the Accreditation Process will commence from tomorrow, Friday, 29 May 2015 at the Maelezo offices (Tanzania Information Services-TIS) located on 9th Floor of the Golden Jubilee Towers on Ohio Street in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Source: East African Community

After 30 days of demonstrations and police confrontations following Burundi President Pierre Nkurunziza's gamble for a third presidential term, 25 people are reported to have been killed. The wounded are reportedly standing at 450. Concerns are mounting in Burundi and around the world about the risks of the conflagration in the country and the Great Lakes region. The East African Community (EAC), of which Burundi is one of five members, comes under increasing pressure from the African Union, the United Nations and Burundi bilateral partners, to take action. In fact, the Burundi crisis puts EAC members in a quandary. They could push Nkurunziza out or let him proceed to elections. Whichever option they take, they know that it will be precedent setting in the broader region. An EAC summit on Burundi is scheduled for Sunday in Dar es Salaam, 18 days after the first was called off amidst an attempted military coup in Bujumbura. The request by protesters that Nkurunziza withdraws from the presidential race is based on the Accord for Peace and Reconciliation in Burundi signed in Arusha, Tanzania (the Arusha Accord), in August 2000. It clearly states: "No one may serve more than two presidential terms." A six-hour drive from Bujumbura, Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni, reflects the dilemma facing the region. An Africanness champion, Museveni chaired and led the "Regional Initiative for Burundi" which for eight years, managed to broker the difficult Arusha Peace Accord. For the Ugandan leader and for Africa, giving in to Nkurunziza's third term...