ADDIS ABEBA – The implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) in Eastern Africa could result in welfare gain amounting to USD 1.8 billion for East Africa, a new report says. It could also boost intra-African exports by more than USD 1.1 billion and creating more than 2 million new jobs, says report jointly published by the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and Trademark East Africa. Stephen Karingi, Director Regional Integration and Trade Division at the ECA, said that by 2040 the AfCFTA has the potential to increase the value of agricultural and food exports on the continent by US$16.8 billion. Largest percentage increases – that is over 25 per cent in intra-African exports for industrial sectors – are found in textile, wearing apparel, leather, wood and paper, vehicle and transport, agro-foods such milk and dairy products, sugar, beverages, vegetables, fruit, nuts and rice, according to ECA’s recent estimates. Boosts to intra-African trade According to the report, the elimination of tariffs and non-tariff barriers required by the Agreement will boost intra-African trade and improve developmental prospects for East Africa, allowing regional firms to tap into the rapidly growing markets both within the region and throughout Africa. However, the report stresses that many of the expected gains could be undermined if the needs and concerns of the private sector are not heard in order to gain an understanding of the impact on the affected sectors This requires an understanding of needs at all levels including large, small and...

Local regulators have for long grappled with firms that have grown too big for oversight and whose success has at times been detrimental to consumers. Some have tended to abuse their dominance by locking out new entrants while dictating prices and other industry issues for consumers who do not have alternatives.Cartels, too, some aided by monopolies and government agencies, have proved a hard nut to crack for regulators, not just locally but regionally.A recent study by the World Bank blamed the cartels and monopolistic behaviour by large firms dealing in food as being directly responsible for keeping more than 270,000 people in absolute poverty. This is just one industry, and the numbers could rise sharply when anti-competitive behaviour is evaluated in other sectors. Opening markets Successful implementation of the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) could deal a major blow to the cartels and monopolies that have resisted regulators in the past, according to a report by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (Uneca) and TradeMark Africa (TMA). The report notes that AfCFTA’s opening up of markets will enable other firms from across the borders to bring in formidable competition to monopolies or duopolies that have a firm hold on East Africa’s economies.The report published last week noted that East Africans stand to be major beneficiaries of the break-up of anti-competitive behaviour perfected by local firms and multinationals. Such firms, it noted, have had a stranglehold on key industries and markets to the extent that they solely determine prices...

IOTA Foundation, a non-profit foundation focused on distributed ledger technology (DLT) and open-source ecosystem development, announced today a partnership with TradeMark Africa (TMA). The goal of the partnership is to help TMA in its mission to improve East African trade and global competitiveness using IOTA’s distributed ledger technology. TMA works closely with the East African community institutions, national governments, the private sector and civil society organizations to increase trade by reducing current barriers and by improving business competitiveness. Currently, Africa has vast, unlocked potential that has not yet been realized, due to its lack of physical and digital trading infrastructure. This greatly affects the economic prosperity of the continent. TMA’s goal is to increase trade by improving the trade system in East Africa, leading to an enhanced economy and a reduction in poverty, particularly in sectors and geographic areas that depend on international trade. In order to take advantage of trade opportunities, the private sector in Eastern Africa must produce safe and competitive goods on time for its customers. “It is key to us that introducing new technologies is not a lock-in but puts the control into the hands of the government and the traders. Public infrastructure must avoid any potential to monopolize the control or the data with a few private actors - and give value to all actors independent of size. This partnership provides us access to a technology where we can test the value of decentralized data management and have control mechanisms of the underlying infrastructure. Equally...

Africa took a giant stride along the path of increased economic co-operation, with the launch of the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) in March 2018. The move was widely hailed as a major milestone towards the long-standing goal of creating a unified continental market. AfCFTA is hailed as one of the most exciting new developments on the continent, with the potential to connect African countries from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, and from Cape Town to Cairo. By liberalising trade, AfCFTA will help countries grow economies and create jobs. If fully implemented, AfCFTA would see the creation of the world’s largest free trade area since inauguration of the World Trade Organisation in 1995, boasting a domestic market of more than 1.2 billion people, and a collective gross domestic product of $2.6 trillion. Effective implementation of AfCFTA would be transformational. The African Development Bank has forecast that elimination of bilateral tariffs on goods and services would increase intra-African trade by 15 per cent. Yet significant barriers remain beyond tariffs. Without a focus on implementation, we could see a trade agreement that is largely unusable. Many African countries are members of several regional economic communities — the East African Community, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, the Southern African Development Community and the Economic Community of West African States — applying different rules of origin, trading standards and cross-border procedures, all making it costly to trade. The World Bank Doing Business report for 2020 shows that while it...

A Kenyan delegation was on a trade mission to Tanzania.Kenya’s High Commissioner to Tanzania Dan Kazungu (pictured left) last week hosted a delegation from Nairobi on a trade mission to the country.The delegation was led by Kenya Export and Branding Agency Chief Executive Peter Biwott to hold talks with key Tanzanian trade and investment promotion bodies aimed at increasing bilateral trade between the two countries. Source: Standard Media

he purpose of national economic reform is to change the structure and overall direction of an economy. Reforms therefore can affect the amount of resources available to a country. They can also affect human rights. South Africa desperately needs to reform its economy. Its capacity to deal with its tragic problems of unemployment, poverty and inequality is diminishing. State owned enterprises like the power utility Eskom, public transport group Prasa and South Africa Airways, are failing to deliver adequate services. They are also draining public resources away from more productive and socially beneficial purposes. And the country’s economy is too carbon intensive. It needs to transition to less carbon intensive forms of production and consumption. The South African government’s proposed responses to these challenges are controversial. They involve job losses and cuts in social services. Government claims that over time the reforms will yield more jobs, better services and a growing economy that is environmentally sustainable. Unfortunately, while the short term costs are clear, the long term benefits are uncertain. Even if they arrive, they may not benefit the groups bearing the short term losses. The same is true about the alternatives. For example, the mining sector’s efforts to protect the coal industry may preserve jobs but at the cost of the long term health of children. Efforts by trade union to preserve wages for public sector workers may mean fewer jobs in the public sector for today’s students and learners. In short, all these options may produce substantial benefits....

Kenya and Tanzania are seeking to eliminate at least 10 nontariff barriers that hinder cross border trade between the two countries. A second trade mission in the coming months will focus on Dodoma the new capital in central Tanzania and Zanzibar to ensure Kenyan products are available in the superstore. The April meeting is expected to eliminate the 10 trade barriers between the two countries. Kenya High Commissioner to Tanzania Dan Kazungu says a trade delegation from the two states will meet in April to hold discussions on the trade barriers with a view of increasing “made in Kenya products” on Tanzanian shelves. Kazungu also says exports to Tanzania rose Ksh 5billion to stand at Ksh 38billion, a figure attributed to the resolution of 25 non-tariff barriers last April, from 37. Also Read  KEBs seizes fake sanitisers Tanzania remains one of Kenya’s largest trade partners in the region. Already the Kenyan Government has sent a High-level trade delegation to Tanzania for two months to engage all business distribution channels to ensure Kenyan products are available on Tanzania shelves. Exports to Tanzania were hurt by the exit of two Kenyan retailers, Uchumi and Nakumatt. The delegation under the Brand KE consortium is touring Moshi, Arusha, Mwanza and Dar-es-Salaam, and Mbeya the southern capital.  

NAIROBI (Reuters) - The greater East Africa region could gain two million new jobs if the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) - due to start in July - works as planned, according to a study the United Nations released on Thursday. The AfCFTA, which is the biggest trading bloc in the world after the WTO, is designed to bring together Africa’s 55 countries into a single market of 1.3 billion people with an annual economic output of over $3.4 trillion. That will drive industrialisation, the U.N. Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) said in the report, although the planned removal of tariffs on more than 90% of goods alone will not be enough. Officials must make sure businesses can move goods freely across borders and customs rules and procedures are consistent, the study warned. “What will have a big impact is making sure our borders operate seamlessly,” said Frank Matsaert, the head of Trade Mark East Africa, an organisation that promotes free trade in the region and co-produced the report with UNECA. Massive red tape and delays have crippled past attempts to integrate economies on the continent through existing smaller trade blocs like the East African Community. The 14 countries in the greater Eastern African region have some of the world’s fastest growing economies, such as Ethiopia, but the region suffers massive trade deficits. Importing large amounts of finished goods puts pressure on national currencies and hurts local industries, which are operating 20-40% below capacity because imports are cheaper, the...

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