On June 10, 2015, the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the East African Community (EAC) and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) agreed to expedite their efforts to unite into a single, trans-African free trade zone, to be known as the Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFTA). The TFTA would cover 26 countries stretching north to south from Egypt to South Africa and east to west from Mauritius to Namibia (see diagram below). According to the Communiqué of the Third COMESA-EAC-SADC Tripartite Summit issued at the conclusion of their recent meeting in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, the TFTA countries collectively account for 632 million people or 57 percent of Africa’s population and nearly 58 percent of Africa’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). As noted in the Communiqué, the TFTA represents the “Market Integration” leg of the overall tripartite integration process that also includes “Infrastructure Development” and “Industrial Development.” Implementation of the TFTA would be of significant economic interest to foreign investors seeking to trade into larger regional markets and to companies within individual countries seeking to expand into the continent, as well as to their governments. The ambitious attempt to forge a trans-African free trade zone has long been a priority for African leaders seeking to reduce obstacles to intra-African trade and promote economic opportunities throughout the continent. The Communiqué cites TFTA as a “decisive step” to achieve the African Economic Community envisioned in the Lagos Plan of Action and the Final Act of Lagos of 1980. The parties...

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

COMPANIES and institutions serving at the Dar es Salaam Port have been sensitised to think of relocating to a new state-of-the-art Tanzania Ports Authority (TPA) building as a way of improving services. The Acting Dar es Salaam Port Manager, Mr Hebel Mhanga, told editors who toured the port recently that apart from being the TPA’s headquarter offices, the new 35-floor building which is about to be completed will house various public and private companies and institutions that serve the port. “This will be a one-stop centre for ports services, we welcome stakeholders to apply for space,” he said. Already, some institutions such as Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA), Tanzania Food and Drugs Authority (TFDA), Tanzania Bureau of Standards (TBS), Government Chief Chemist and Weight and Measurements Agency have desks at TPA. The Manager explained that should other companies move to TPA’s new building, it will help a lot in improving port services and therefore make it competitive. “This new building is one of measures taken by the government to improve the Port of Dar es Salaam,” he noted. The Chief Executive Officer, TICTS, Mr Paul Wallace, said they have modern cranes to serve the ever increasing cargo traffic at the Port. “We are ready to serve the Port on time and therefore contribute to the ongoing modernisation endeavours,” he noted. He said the port needs a deep that will allow huge ships to anchor and best roads and rail network that connect neighbouring countries. “These responsibilities fall under the government and...

Tanzania and Zambia on Saturday signed two bilateral agreements seeking to facilitate cross-border road transportation of both passengers and freights between the countries. Tanzania’s Finance Minister Saada Mkuya and Zambia’s Minister for Transport, Works, Supply and Communication Yamfwa Mukanga signed the agreements and promised a smooth transport environment between Dar es Salaam and Lusaka. The agreements replaces the one signed in 1999 by the two countries with the aim of overcoming the bottlenecks of road transport also called non-tariff barriers. Dar es Salaam port is the gateway into East and Central Africa through the central corridor of transport that connects Tanzania with Rwanda, Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda and Kenya. The road transport agreements aim at facilitating trade between the two countries through Tunduma/Nakonde, the busiest border in Tanzania in terms of traffic from Dar es Salaam port to landlocked countries. In 2013/14, Zambia transported 1.86 million tons of cargo through Dar es Salaam port and Tunduma border, Mkuya said. Mukanga said the new agreements signed have been aligned to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) model road transport agreements. He also advised that it was better the road signs at border posts be translated to Kiswahili for more Tanzanians to understand the language they speak. “It would be wise for the Zambian side to consider mounting information billboards on the Dar corridor that directly meet the linguistic expectations of the drivers from Tanzania,” he said, adding that the move would reduce traffic accidents. “Zambia seeks to eliminate...

There is cause for celebration following the meeting in Cairo of 26 African heads of state representing the countries that make up the three major trading blocs on the continent — the East African Community, Southern African Development Community and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa — for the formalisation of the Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFTA) agreement. The leaders endorsed a five-year negotiated framework that establishes preferential tariffs to ease the movement of goods and traders in a region of 625 million people. The conference kick-started a process that will set up harmonised trade policies, the removal of trade barriers and a renewed promotion of trade facilitation. The momentum for intra-African trade is strong, with real benefits in increased trade, global competitiveness, employment and higher incomes for the region, and the culmination of the African Union action plan in 2012 to double intra-Africa trade and fast-track a continental free trade area. The main attraction at the Egyptian conference was the offer of 100 per cent liberalisation on tariff lines. Thereafter, no country should face higher tariffs under the new trade regime. Although there are more than a dozen overlapping regional trade arrangements of which only eight are recognised by the African Union, intra-Africa trade and investment has remained a distant goal with low trade volumes among countries partly due to the conflicting trade policies and a “bandwagon effect” brought about by corresponding membership in the different trading blocs. While the preceding trade arrangements in Africa were set...

Hopes for an African free trade agreement moved closer to reality when negotiations were launched in Johannesburg this week, with 2017 set for the conclusion of a treaty. But trade experts have cautioned that there is much to do before realising this ambitious target. The negotiations for a continental free trade agreement were launched at the African Union summit this week, and come off the back of the ratification of the smaller but significant tripartite free trade agreement in Egypt earlier this month. The tripartite agreement links three major regional blocs – the East African Community (EAC), the Southern African Development Community and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa. Ongoing negotiations The tripartite agreement talks began in 2008 and, although the legal agreement has been concluded, further phased negotiations on protocols governing, among other things, competition, cross-border investment and intellectual property rights are still ongoing. With the signing of the tripartite agreement, however, the dream of a continental agreement is no longer as distant as it once seemed, according to Wolfe Braude, the founder of research consultancy firm Emet Consulting. “We are now on the road towards continental economic unity,” he said, but warned that the timelines were ambitious. Once completed, the continental agreement would link 54 countries, with a combined gross domestic product of $3-trillion, and could raise intra-African trade by 52% by 2022, according to the AU Commission. Braude said the AU wanted to conduct back-to-back negotiations with the tripartite agreement, which could be useful because...

26 EAC-COMESA-SADC zone members to produce for market of 630 million people Africa’s largest free trade area comprising 26 countries has been endorsed and is now expected to take off in 2017 following the signing of the long-awaited agreement on June 10. It includes the East African Community (EAC), the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), and the Southern African Development Cooperation (SADC). The signing, which followed negotiations of almost four years, took place in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheikh. It was signed by six heads of State, five vice presidents, two prime ministers and 13 plenipotentiaries. Amelia Kyambadde, the minister of trade, industry and cooperatives signed on behalf of Uganda. The tripartite free trade area (TFTA), which has been hailed as an ‘historic’ moment for Africa, will cover countries stretching from Egypt on the Mediterranean Sea Coast in the north of the continent to South Africa’s Cape Coast in the south. It will however skip South Sudan, which does not yet belong to any of the three regional blocs. There is hope that the trade zone will offer significant opportunities for business and investment within the three blocs and will act as a magnet for attracting direct foreign investment in the region. The business community in particular, would benefit from an improved and harmonized trade regime, which reduces the cost of doing business as a result of the elimination of overlapping trade regimes. Jane Nalunga, the Uganda country director for the Southern and...

Dar Es Salaam port’s annual cargo traffic growth now stands at 14, the Acting Director General of the Tanzania Ports Authority, Mr Awadhi Massawe, says. He told editors of Tanzania media houses on a familiarisation tour of the Dar es Salaam Port that major infrastructural improvement and good working relations with port users were behind steady cargo traffic growth at the port. “The traffic growth is steady and encouraging,” he told the editors, adding: “all of these can be translated into two cardinal service delivery tenets: good working relations and understanding what the stakeholders want.” Mr Massawe said major reforms and infrastructural development projects that have been executed in recent years sought to enhance the port’s performance, telling editors that 40 per cent of the government revenue comes from ports. It was only pertinent and rational that editors and port authorities work together to ensure ports work efficiently for the good of the nation, the acting director general said appealing to editors: “let’s work together to ensure ports have a good image and perform well so that they generate requisite revenue for the welfare of Tanzanians.” On behalf of the editors the chairman of Tanzania Editors’ Forum (TEF), Mr Absalom Kibanda who is also the Chief Managing Editor of New Habari Corporation, appreciated reforms and improvements at the port. He also said TPA and the government should focus on improving railway transport because, it was the cheapest and probably the quickest haulage system if it worked well. “With efficient TRL...

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 launch of the Tripartite Free Trade Area after 16 member states signed the text, is a momentous accomplishment. One day, when the intended free trade area has become fact, those then enjoying the benefits of inter-continental trade, will hail their forefathers for their insight and vision to have started the project in 2015. As I stated last week, the free trade area is a noble idea, however, it is only an idea. One can not talk of unrestricted trade aposteriori when there is no trade apriori. And this is what I argued, - there is a reason why intra-African trade is so exceedingly modest. It is because there are very few linkages that can carry the trade (goods), and very limited institutional and statutory convergence that can support trade (services), across the territories and the jurisdictions. Africa as a whole is fragmented, under-capitalised and sorely lacking in infrastructure that connects us to our neighbours in any meaningful way, at least in such a way to serve even a small fraction of the envisaged common market of 620 million people.As such, the major obstacles are infrastructural and it will require massive (in the superlative) capital investment over decades, to change conditions.In the 12 days since the Tripartite Free Trade Area was launched, more expert eyes had opportunity to peruse the text of the agreement. This brought to light some very significant legal and statutory challenges, in addition to my perceived infrastructure deficit, that will all take time to unravel, and...