Chinese President Xi Jinping offered another $60 billion in financing for Africa on Monday and wrote off some debt for poorer African nations, while warning against funds going towards “vanity projects”. Speaking at the opening of a major summit with African leaders, Xi promised development that people on the continent could see and touch, but that would also be green and sustainable. China has denied engaging in “debt trap” diplomacy, and Xi’s offer of more money comes after a pledge of another $60 billion at the previous summit in South Africa three years ago. Xi, addressing leaders at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, said the new $60 billion will include $15 billion of aid, interest-free loans and concessional loans, a credit line of $20 billion, a $10 billion special fund for China-Africa development, and a $5 billion special fund for imports from Africa. Chinese companies will be encouraged to invest no less than $10 billion in the continent in the next three years, he said. Government debt from China’s interest free loans due by the end of 2018 will be written off for indebted poor African countries, as well as for developing nations in the continent’s interior and small island nations, Xi said. “China-Africa cooperation must give Chinese and African people tangible benefits and successes that can be seen, that can be felt,” he said. China will carry out 50 projects on green development and environmental protection in Africa, focusing on fighting climate change, desertification and wildlife protection, Xi...

A trade war is a side effect of protectionism that occurs when one country (say country A) raises tariffs on another country’s (Country B) imports in retaliation for Country B raising tariffs on Country A’s imports commonly known as ‘tit-for -tat.’ Protectionism refers to government actions and policies that restrict or restrain international trade, often with the intent of protecting local businesses and jobs from foreign competition. In ordinary terms, a tariff is a tax imposed on imported goods and services. Trade tension started this year when the United States of America President Donald Trump on July 6, imposed tariffs on 818 goods worth of $34 billion (Shs128 trillion) of imports from China. This move substantially escalated the US-China trade tension (trade war). In retaliation to US’ move China announced a 25 per cent charges on $16 billion (Shs60.2 trillion) worth of US goods the move which is shaking the global trade arena because of its possible effect in global economy. The US has already imposed $50 billion in tariff on Chinese imports including $16 billion and threatened to follow up with levies on further $200 billion of products. Any impact on Uganda? As a result, the trade tension between the world’s largest economy and the second largest world economy has caused a slowdown in global trade. To find out the current trade tension between US and China could affect Uganda, Prosper magazine spoke to experts who gave their insights on the current situation. Much as the impact of the...

China-Africa partnership catalyses sustainable development, a senior United Nations official said. The win-win cooperations, between African countries and China “will put Africa on a sustainable development pathway,” Ahunna Eziakonwa, assistant administrator and director of the Regional Bureau for Africa at the United Nations Development Program, told Xinhua in an interview. Eziakonwa will join the delegation led by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to attend the Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) on Sept. 3-4. During the interview, she named the railway connecting landlocked Ethiopia with Djibouti, the Mombasa-Nairobi railway in Kenya, the hydropower plants in Uganda and some other major Chinese-assisted infrastructure projects in Africa, saying China-Africa cooperation has entered the fast lane. China and Africa have a long history of cooperation, which has greatly intensified in the past decade, especially in the last five years, she said. It is exciting to see Africa making incredible developments with China, she added.  Africa has received help from many countries, yet its relationship with China has unleashed explosive growth in the region, she said. China’s development experience is relevant to Africa, she said, adding that Chinese investments in Africa, especially those in infrastructure, have ignited hope for the region. “Having been at a similar development point in history gives a lot of developing and emerging economies hope for transformation, accelerated human development and innovation,” Eziakonwa said. The 2015 FOCAC held in South Africa witnessed an agreement between China and Africa to carry out 10 major cooperation plans. These plans will help the...

President Paul Kagame has described the existing relationship between China and Africa as one based on equality, mutual respect and “a commitment to a shared wellbeing.” The Head of State was addressing leaders from across Africa and China at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) summit that is underway in the Chinese capital, Beijing. The forum, seventh of its kind, is a platform where all African countries and China meet periodically to see how to collectively strengthen ties with an aim of building a shared future. “The relationship between Africa and China is based on equality, mutual respect, and a commitment to shared well-being. This was our starting point eighteen years ago, when the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation was established,” said President Kagame, who is also the Chairperson of the African Union. According to the President, ever since the first forum, China’s actions have demonstrated that a stronger Africa is seen as an opportunity to invest in, rather than as a problem or a threat. “China has continued to lead the way in showing what is lost in not engaging and partnering with Africa,” he said. The President said that the Forum has grown into a powerful engine of cooperation, fully aligned with Africa’s Agenda 2063 and the Sustainable Development Goals. Since its establishment 18 years ago, FOCAC has achieved a significant mark of China-Africa cooperation, with trade volume between China and Africa amounting to 170 billion U.S. dollars in 2017. This represents a major increase from the just over...

Dar/Kampala. Tanzania and Uganda have reached an agreement on how to conduct cross-border sugar trading between the two East African Community (EAC) partner states. This comes after Tanzania recently slapped a 25 per cent import duty on 12,000 bags (600 tonnes) of Ugandan sugar. The permanent secretary in the ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment, Prof Joseph Buchweishaija, told The Citizen yesterday that following their recent meeting in Kampala, Uganda, the two countries agreed to sort out their differences on how Tanzania should import sugar from Uganda. “We agreed that when there is a sugar deficit in Tanzania, our Ugandan colleagues will fill the gap, and that will happen only when there’s a surplus there,” he said. Last month, Tanzania imposed a 25 per cent import duty on sugar from Uganda. Mr Jim Kabeho, the Uganda Sugar Manufacturers Association chairman and outgoing East African Business Council chairman, termed this as “blatant disregard” for the EAC Common Market Protocol. Under the Protocol, locally-produced sugar is zero-duty rated in cross-border trade. But speaking during a joint press conference with Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni in Dar es Salaam last month, President John Magufuli said his government banned sugar from Uganda because unscrupulous traders were using the opportunity to bring in sugar originally smuggled into Uganda. Tanzania’s four sugar factories – namely Mtibwa and Kilombero in Morogoro; Kagera Sugar in Kagera and TPC in Kilimanjaro – annually produce about 300,000 tonnes of sugar, against the domestic demand of 420,000 tonnes. In such a situation,...

Arusha. Tunduma border post between Tanzania and Zambia is being upgraded into a One Stop Border Post (OSBP) to fast-track increased movement of people and goods. It will operate along the same pattern as the recently opened 15 similar border posts already established within the East African Community (EAC) bloc. Two other jointly operated border posts linking the region with neighbouring blocs are being set up at Moyale along the Kenya/Ethiopia border and Gisenyi on Rwanda/DR Congo boundary. "New OSBPs are being established to link the Community with other blocs because our trade is not limited to East Africa", said Stephen Analo from the EAC secretariat. He told officials from Tanzania and Kenya manning the Sirari/Isebania border route last week that EAC the new unified borders would play the same role; enhancing trade. "If we don't enhance trade with our neighbours, we will end up with goods clogged at outer borders", he said at the end training of the officials manning border operations. Mr. Analo, a tax expert, urged officers from the two countries where such facilities are being set up to cooperate fully so as to tap in the benefits of unified border operations such as increased tax collections. "Integrated border coordination is not a foreign concept. It is the same all over the world", he said, noting that they are necessary due to increased movement of goods, services and people across EA borders. At the jointly operated border posts, Immigration, Customs, bureaux of standards, phytosanitary inspections, goods clearance...

Increasing trade between the EU and the ACP (African-Caribbean-Pacific), particularly African countries, lay at the heart of the ambition of the Cotonou Agreement. That was supposed to be embodied by regional Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA) with the EU. But it has not worked out that way. Eight percent of EU exports and less than 7% of EU imports came to and from Africa in 2016. Slow to be negotiated, in large part because many African regional blocs felt the European Commission was pushing them to open up access to their markets to European firms, only one EPA has been successfully ratified, with the six-member Southern African Development Community (SADC). No way, EPA The sense that African countries won’t allow themselves to be pushed around by the EU on trade is held by Carlos Lopes, appointed in July as the African Union’s High Representative on the post-Cotonou talks. “The reality is clear that the EPAs were badly negotiated and apart from the SADC, most of them are not implemented,” he told EURACTIV. He added that the deadlines attached to agreeing and ratifying the EPAs were “artificial to give an impression that they were the only way to get access to the European market.” Many African countries can already trade largely duty-free with the EU as ‘least favoured nations’ and felt that the EPAs offered them little. Tanzanian officials have described the proposed EU EPA with the East African Community as “skewed and exploitative”, and such views are shared by a number of...

China will this week host a forum where development projects for the next three years will be discussed. African leaders are going to Beijing for the Forum on China-Africa Co-operation (FOCAC) Summit, hoping to get financing for their mega infrastructure projects. The summit themed "China and Africa: Towards an Even Stronger Community with a Shared Future through Win-Win Cooperation," is meant to link the Belt and Road Initiative with the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the AU’s Agenda 2063 and individual countries' development plans. But it comes at a time when some African countries are grappling with an external debt burden and a trade balance favouring Beijing. Credit rating firms and global financial institutions have been advising against taking out further loans, instead recommending fiscal consolidation to arrest the ballooning debt. Kenya, for instance, had taken over $5 billion from China as at the end of March 2018 while Uganda owed China $1.6 billion. Kenya’s National Treasury has recently been under pressure to slow down the growth of public debt, with the International Monetary Fund raising its concerns. Even then, East African Presidents Paul Kagame of Rwanda — who is also the African Union chairman — Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya are expected to attend the summit and seek financing for their joint infrastructure projects, particularly the standard gauge railway. Kenya is looking to complete the second last phase of the line and Uganda will be inking a deal for its first phase from Malaba...

The East African Community (EAC) is, probably, the most integrated regional bloc in Africa. Earlier this month, President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni of Uganda traveled to Tanzania to meet his counterpart, Dr. John Pombe Magufuli. As reported by the media, the two leaders, among other things, discussed “issues affecting trade relations” between their two countries and in the region. Uganda and Tanzania are two among the six EAC Partner States. The Treaty for Establishment of the East African Community (“EAC Treaty”) was signed on 30 November 1999 and entered into force on 7 July 2000. The EAC integration is still forming. Key pillars such as the common market and the monetary union are yet to take their shapes. So, it’s not very surprising that there are “issues”. Despite marked successes in the customs union, there are several other areas that are not in harmony with each other among the Partner States. One such area is the tax systems. For example, some Partner States levy the excise tax on ad valorem basis (monetary value) while others levy on a specific basis (quantity). Also, Partner States offer tax incentives (say 10 years tax holiday) and others don’t. Capital gains are taxable in some Partner States and exempt in others. What is the implication of all these differences on the free movement of capital, goods, and services? Lack of a certain level of harmonization of the national tax systems and tax policies is among the issues that may be impeding implementation of the common...

THE East African Community (EAC) looks forward to having success stories of the youth, who engage in agriculture for economic prosperity. EAC Deputy Secretary General Christophe Bazivamo said having the successful youths would enable others to learn. He was speaking in Dar es Salaam during a two-day regional validation workshop on best youth agribusiness models in EAC partner states, which started in Dar es Salaam on Tuesday. "If properly utilised, the youth have the potential to boost productivity and strengthen inclusive economic growth," he stated. He said in this new initiative, the EAC would be collaborating with Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to address youth unemployment through agriculture. "Engaging the youth in an agri-food chain is increasingly seen as a viable solution to youth unemployment, food insecurity, rural poverty and distress migration for EAC," he remarked. According to EAC and FAO, the youth represent 48 million of the total population of the EAC partner states in the next 20 years. The number is expected to grow to 82 million. The EAC senior official urged the youth in the EAC bloc to change the mind-sets and appreciate what they had. For his part, Mr Mohamed Aw- Dahir, senior officer (programme and partnership) in the sub-regional office for Eastern Africa (SFE) said as part of FAO commitment to supporting member states to achieve sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) they had also decided to support the youth in agriculture to ensure no one was left behind. Mr Aw-Dahir added that they would enable the...