Dar es Salaam - John Pombe Magufuli may have been a compromise candidate, but less than three months after taking over as Tanzania's president, his radical reforms have the region in awe. Many east Africans are hoping for the "Magufulification" of their countries as they watch the 56-year-old cut perks to officials, channel funding to public services and tackle corruption. Some measures are less popular as he has expelled slum dwellers and cracked down on migrants who are in the country illegally. One of Magufuli's first acts was to cancel the Independence Day celebrations on December 9, saying it was "shameful that we're spending money on independence when our people are dying of cholera". He diverted the budget of $1.9m to expanding a congested road and street cleaning, replacing the independence celebrations with a National Day of Cleanliness during which he collected rubbish himself. Magufuli scaled down the inauguration of the new parliament, channelling 200 million shillings to the Muhimbili National Hospital in Dar es Salaam to buy beds for patients. He uses a car instead of a jet to travel around the country, and has banned all but the most essential foreign travel for officials, instead ordering them to visit rural areas to find out about problems there. In the October elections, Magufuli was a compromise candidate for the Chama Cha Mapinduzi party, which has dominated politics since the country's independence in 1961. Few Tanzanians expected him to launch the radical reforms that are now sparking comparisons with the...

Arusha — Embattled Burundi President Pierre Nkurunziza may be stopped from assuming the chair of the East African Community (EAC) Heads of State Summit if a petition filed by human rights groups in Africa is given a nod by relevant regional bodies during its hearing which kicks off here today. The Pan African Lawyers Union (Palu) and other petitioners from within and outside the region want the Burundi leader stopped from taking over the rotating chairmanship of EAC until he resolves the political, human rights and humanitarian crisis in his country. The petition was submitted to the East African Legislative Assembly (Eala) and is set for hearing at the EAC headquarters beginning this morning at a time the mediation efforts among the warring parties in Burundi are yet to bear fruit and with the humanitarian crisis there worsening. President Nkurunziza, whose country is one of the EAC partner state, is expected to assume the Chair of the regional Heads of State during the coming Summit, whose date and venue is yet to be announced. He will take over from President John Magufuli. According to the EAC Treaty, the tenure of office of the Chairperson of the Summit is one year and the office of the Chairperson shall be held in rotation among the partner states. Currently there are five the others being Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya. Subject to the provisions of the Treaty, the Summit shall determine its own procedure, including that for convening its meetings for the rotation of...

For a long time, the 54 countries of Africa have been a patchwork of different languages, laws, and currencies, making travel (let alone business) on the continent quite an endeavor. Indeed, for businesses, for a long time being in Africa has required moving from country to country, which too often means more than just navigating a map and changing money—it includes meeting different standards, understanding different laws, and paying different tariffs at every (and there are many) border crossings. At the same time, African countries, many landlocked and small, face unique challenges in being able to scale industries and access markets. How might Rwanda export its coffee if it has no access to the ocean? How might a line of countries best collaborate to create a railroad or road spanning their collective land for the benefit of all? How might countries with different advantages integrate into global value chains? And so, in 1991, 51 heads of state and government signed the Abuja Treaty, which established a roadmap towards an African Economic Community to be completed by 2028. In 2013, the African Union, created Agenda 2063—a vision and action plan—which, among other objectives, sets out to better integrate the continent to circumvent and even knock down these obstacles to trade, investment, and overall economic growth. Thus, the African continent has been creating and fostering “regional economic communities” with the aim of facilitating trade and eliminating economic bottlenecks. Eight of these communities, as seen in Figure 1, are the “building blocks” of...

MOMBASA: Poor technology and government bureaucracy have been cited as the main factors hampering cargo operations at East African ports. According to the 2015 East Africa Logistic Performance Survey, close to 31 per cent of the surveyed respondents feel that Government procedures are the biggest contributors to prolonged delays at the ports. About 25 per cent of those polled attributed the slowness to network and challenges in adoption mechanisms of Information Communication Technology, a factor that was ranked second, with others blaming multiple agencies at the port. "Some 13 per cent of the respondents perceived the presence of too many Government agencies and insufficient or faulty port infrastructure as the biggest contributor to the lengthy dwell time," read in part the survey. The survey sponsored by Shippers Council of East Africa (SCEA) interrogated 93 stakeholders in the cargo shipping business across the region in an attempt to measure the efficiency of road freight transport services in the region linking the ports. These included turnaround times (the average time it takes for truck to leave the port, deliver cargo to designated destinations within the EAC and return to the port), road conditions, weighbridges, checkpoints and traffic congestion within port cities. These. It notes, are some of the factors that are major contributors to slow turnaround times. "For example, in Mombasa, heavy traffic between the port exit gates and Mariakani causes a delay of up to six hours sometimes, a stretch that would ordinarily take 30 minutes to go through," indicated the...

Transport costs have reduced by up to 40 per cent in the last four years across the East African Community (EAC), a new report has revealed. According to the 2015 East Africa Logistics Performance Survey, improvement of Mombasa Port operations and ongoing infrastructure projects in the EAC had contributed to the trend. The report says average transport rates between Mombasa and other major towns of East Africa had been on the decline from 2011 to 2015. The reduction has been attributed to efficient operations in handling of cargo that is going parallel with improved infrastructure. “The average cost of transporting a 40-foot container from Mombasa to Nairobi gradually reduced from a high of Sh130,000 per 40-foot container to Sh100,000. “The trend is replicated on the Juba route which registered a drop from a high of Sh980,000 to a low of Sh550,000,” read part of the report. The survey further attributes this to a plunge in fuel prices which in turn increased the number of fleet trucks that lead to cut-throat competition among truckers. Decline rate “The route with the highest rate of decline was Juba at 44 per cent while the least gainer was Bujumbura with a 14 per cent increase,” it added. However, this was quite the opposite of the Central Corridor which Tanzania is part of where on average the transport rate increased by 39 per cent over the same period; Kampala rates increased by 79 per cent while Bujumbura remained relatively stable at three per cent. “EAC...

Just before the December festive season got underway last year, East African Community (EAC) Secretary General, Amb. Richard Sezibera and Arancha González, the International Trade Centre Executive Director announced a joint project to boost intra-Africa trade. Note that intra-Africa trade is less than 15% of overall African trade, which makes this project important and worthy of strong support. Dr. Sezibera said the deal will contribute to improving the global competitiveness of the EAC region and to trigger sustainable economic growth. Implementation of the five-year $8.5 million TRIP for EAC project is set to begin this month. The government of Finland has also pledged to provide initial funding. According to the EAC Secretariat, the new initiative aims to strengthen existing efforts by East African countries for closer economic integration, including the East African Customs Union, and the 2010 establishment of the EAC Common Market. ITC is the joint agency of the WTO and the United Nations. ITC assists small and medium-sized enterprises in developing and transition economies to become more competitive in global markets, thereby contributing to sustainable economic development within the frameworks of the Aid-for-Trade agenda and the UN Global Goals. The TRIP for EAC project also sets out to support the African Union's Action Plan for Boosting Intra-African Trade and the recently agreed tripartite free-trade agreement among the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the EAC and the Southern African Development Community (SADC). ITC and the EAC will intervene at three levels to provide integrated solutions to...

The government of Tanzania said the $10 billion Bagamoyo Port development project, one of the largest port developments currently planned worldwide, has not been suspended and that work on the project would commence in July. The ministry of works, transport and communications issued a statement yesterday to clarify the status of the project following reports it had been suspended and that the government was instead planning to focus on improving the capacity, performance and efficiency of the existing Dar es Salaam and Mtwara ports. The statement said work on the project would start in July after the conclusion of negotiations on financing with China Merchants Holding International and the sultanate of Oman. It said the negotiations were expected to finish in March. "The Government of the United Republic of Tanzania in December, 2015 compensated a total of 2,183 Bagamoyo residents Sh45.65 billion ($21 million) [to pave way for the project]. A joint working team, comprising technical people from the United Republic of Tanzania, China and Oman is preparing technical and commercial contracts for the implementation of the Port of Bagamoyo," the statement said. The minister for works, transport and communications, Prof. Makame Mbarawa, had previously been quoted by the Tanzania press as saying the project was suspended because it needed more attention and planning due to its scale and because it needed a major source of funding. The project to build the new port at Bagamoyo, 75 kilometers (46 miles) to the north of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s capital and...

Waturi Matu is a Kenyan and serves presently as director, business environment at TradeMark Africa but has before now served in different capacities in different organizations within the travel industry and is popular for her strong views and advocacy for united Africa front when it comes to developing and promoting the travel industry. She speaks with ANDREW IRO OKUNGBOWA on her life’s trajectory and engagement with the industry What attracted you to the travel industry? The universe conspired. I returned from a year’s stay in South Africa, and a board member of the Kenya Association of Travel Agents (KATA) reached out to me as they were looking at hiring a chief executive officer. At that time, I knew nothing about the travel and tourism industry apart from being a ‘traveller and tourist.’ However, business issues are largely the same. So, I decided to give it a shot and to learn the particulars with regards to policy and regulatory matters in travel and tourism, governance and business support services for membership organizations. I worked at KATA for four years before joining the East Africa Tourism Platform where I did three years. Both bodies left me richer (not money wise of course) than they will ever know. However, I left the organizations with stronger revenue bases, policies and financial systems to ensure their long-term sustainability. What was the motivation for all the years you worked in the various organizations where you have left indelible prints especially at EATP? The travel and tourism...

The end of one year and the beginning of another always induce mixed feelings. On the one hand, one is glad to have crossed into the new year. On the other, even for the most irrepressible of optimists, as the new year begins, questions arise as to what the next 12 months will bring. Within my local community, the passing of the previous year is celebrated as though it was a virulent disease, as implied in the greeting “Gukulike, omwaka!” (Congratulations; you survived it!) For me, as 2016 kicked in, existential pre-occupations were far from what was on my mind. It was firmly fixed on matters political, and kept shifting from national to regional to continental issues. What did they mean? In what has for long qualified as one of Africa’s violence “hotspots,” the Great Lakes region of East Africa, Tanzania and Kenya, traditionally its “islands of stability,” remained pretty much off the headlines. Beneath the surface, however, in Tanzania questions continued to loom large over the “Magufuli effect,” one of them being whether the path the country’s new president had chosen, of literally turning things upside-down in pursuit of a clean government, represented a permanent turning point or a mere blip before sleaze returns in full force. For Kenya, only a few years ago, many East Africans were worried sick about the country imploding and pulling the rest of us down with it. You need to live in Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and South Sudan to appreciate the importance of...

Uganda’s leading role in the inter-Burundi dialogue has come under scrutiny after the second round of talks failed to take off in Arusha last week. The parties claimed that they were not informed of the exact date for the Arusha meeting. Coupled with Tanzania’s parallel shuttle diplomacy to salvage the talks that were set for January 6, the United States has cast doubts on Uganda’s ability to broker a deal since President Museveni is also a beneficiary of extended term limits just like his Burundian counterpart Pierre Nkurunziza. Uganda changed the Constitution in 2005 and Rwanda did the same last year albeit with popular support from the citizens to remove presidential term limits. Warring parties Launching the talks in Entebbe last month, President Museveni has asked warring parties in Burundi to end the violence and warned that he will investigate the killings of civilians in Bujumbura. Tanzania is also keen on forestalling the crisis in Burundi, which has already left it and Rwanda hosting thousands of Burundian refugees. Dar es Salaam is also said to be unsure whether the African Union’s decision to deploy 5,000 troops in Burundi is appropriate before a local peacemaking initiative — The National Inter-Burundian dialogue Commission (CNDI) — is given a chance. Sources within the African Union in Addis Ababa told The East African that the United States is not happy with President Museveni, who was selected by the EAC, continuing as the mediator. The spokesman for the Burundi ruling CNDD-FDD, Daniel Gelase Ndabirabe, said...