The World Bank Board has approved a mega project meant to strengthen selected higher institutions of learning in Eastern and Southern Africa to deliver quality postgraduate education and build collaborative research capacity in priority areas. The Eastern and Southern Africa Higher Education Centres of Excellence Project (ACE II), expected to close in 2021, will see each of the 24 Africa Centres of Excellence (ACE) funded to a tune of $6 million over five years. The project is good news for the regional higher learning institutions which are grappling with poor quality education due to limited research funding. Since the project will focus on supporting collaborative research, it is a step forward in fixing quality challenges in higher institutions of learning. If well implemented, the project will significantly enhance the quality of education in the region and this will reduce on the number of people who travel out of the region in search for better education. The Uganda-based IUCEA, an East African Community (EAC) institution responsible for coordinating the development of higher education and research, is the regional facilitation unit for the ACE II project. The EAC member countries should collaborate to ensure that IUCEA benefits all the member countries within the framework of fast tracking the integration process. Education is a key component in the integration process and having quality education in all member countries will go along away in fulfilling the goals of the integration. By the time the project concludes in 2021, the centre should have developed sufficient...

WHEN the first East African Community (EAC) collapsed in 1977, some in the Kenyan government celebrated with champagne. Since its resurrection in 2000, officials are more often found toasting its success. A regional club of six countries, the EAC is now the most integrated trading bloc on the continent. Its members agreed on a customs union in 2005, and a common market in 2010. The region is richer and more peaceful as a result, argues a new paper* from the International Growth Centre, a research organisation. Many things boost trade, from growth to international deals. The researchers use some fancy modelling to pick out the effect of the EAC. They find that bilateral trade between member countries was a whopping 213% higher in 2011 than it would otherwise have been. Trade gains from other regional blocs in the continent are smaller: around 110% in the Southern African Development Community (SADC), and 80% in the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA). Those numbers for the EAC are all the more impressive because the available data stop before the EAC’s common market had properly come into effect. Progress on that front has sometimes stuttered. A 2014 “scorecard” identified 51 non-tariff barriers. Full implementation could double the income gains seen so far, say the researchers. Not surprisingly, it is landlocked Rwanda which would see the biggest benefits. Tanzania, which has dragged its feet on integration, would profit the least. The researchers are warier of the EAC’s other grand project: creating a...

The East African Business Council has elected Mr Econie Nijimbere from Burundi as its new Chairman for the period of 2016-2017. The Burundian is taking over from Mr Dennis Karera, who served at that capacity from the year 2015. Mr Nijimbere was serving as a Vice Chair. According to the statement issued yesterday, the new EABC chief is currently the President of Burundi Federal Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CFCIB). He has over 16 years of experience in the private sector, from 2010 to the present. He has also served as President of the Burundi Manufacturers Association as well as Board Member of the Burundi Revenue Authority (OBR).  In his acceptance speech, during the council annual general meeting held in Nairobi, Kenya, Mr Nijimbera thanked the outgoing Chairman Mr Karera and the Executive Committee for a job well done and the progress made so far. He outlined key areas that his tenure will focus on implementation of the EABC Strategic Plan 2015/18, extensive advocacy on issues outlined in our EABC Policy Advocacy Agenda document that aims at addressing key sectoral and cross cutting trading policy challenges as well as highlighting gaps and discrepancies in the implementation of the East African Community Customs Union and Common Market Protocols which are hindering East Africans from enjoying advantages presented by East African Community Integration and the wider EAC Common Market. Source: All Africa

East African Community regional integration has not evolved as envisaged. However, it is still achievable, given that the EAC partner states have harmonised most of their policies and internal and external tariffs. As EAC governments unveil their annual budgets, it is essential for the respective proposals to boost cross-border trading, movement of goods and manpower, and address the fundamental issue of non-tariff barriers across the region. Non-tariff barriers are restrictions and limitations that are obstacles to trade. They are not tariffs but rather take different forms of government participation. These include restrictive trade practices, administrative and custom entry procedures, charges on imports, technical barriers, sanitary and phytosanitary measures, institutional corruption, tedious licensing procedures, and transport, clearing and forwarding procedures. Non-tariff barriers have positive and negative effects and present a major stumbling block to full EAC integration. They trim the magnitude of imports in a country by promoting and cushioning local manufacturers and producers against dumping of sub-standard goods in the local markets. However, they also limit the movement of goods across the region and lead to increased cost of doing business, unnecessary delays at border points, and restricted opportunities for business expansion. The EAC committee on the elimination of non-tariff barriers reported that there were 40 unresolved barriers and three new ones in 2012. In 2014, the number of unresolved barriers had increased to 56 and the new ones to five. Insufficient infrastructural services have been identified as a major barrier that increases the cost of doing business and commodity...

An increasing drive to promote domestic textile manufacturing in East Africa is threatening the trade in used clothing to the region, the Bureau of International Recycling (BIR) has been told. The warning was delivered at a session on the global trade in used clothing and textiles at the BIR’s annual Convention and Exhibition in Berlin last week (31 May – 1 June), where delegates disagreed on the status of the used clothing trade. While some  consider used clothing to be a product generated through sorting operations and recognised market specifications, others notably the East African Community (EAC), continued to regard used clothing as a waste and a threat to new clothing production. This view has given rise to calls in some parts of the world for a ban on used clothing imports. At a meeting on an EAC proposal to phase out imports of used textiles and footwear by 2019, BIR Textiles Division president, Mehdi Zerroug, of Framimex in France, said: “Second-hand clothing is a product and new clothing is a product – this needs to be understood.” EAC The EAC comprises six countries, namely: Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and South Sudan. Guest speaker Jalia Nabukalu Packwood, business development officer at Bangor University’s Sustainability Lab in the UK, explained that used textiles traders number in the many tens of thousands in places such as Uganda and Kenya. The convention heard that more than 80% of all clothing purchases in Uganda were used clothes, while Kenya collected US$ 54 million...

As a Kenyan, I am happy to hear that Rwanda is not walking away from Northern Corridor SGR, but working on a plan that will concurrently rely on its good relations with both Kenya and Tanzania to advance not only its interests but also the collective interests of the whole region through the railroads. However, I would urge the Rwandan Government to broadcast this position much more loudly to the world. The reason is because media outlets from various parts of the world, based on the earlier misreporting on the topic, are spreading all sorts of innuendo about the impact of the decision by Rwanda to use the Tanzanian route on the existing cordial relations among the members of the East African Community. In conclusion, I would like to take this opportunity to urge the peoples of East Africa not to lose sight of the vision and mission that originally created the East African Community that is currently powering the economic renaissance of the region. Let us hold hands and march forward together in unity and fraternity. We stand to gain more from collaboratively confronting our problems than from working separately. Who knows? In the future, we could evolve into a super state out of our collaboration. We could come up with something really ingenious with which to represent ourselves to the world – something like “The United Republic of Swahili Speakers”. Imagine how incredibly beautiful that would be. We would have everything within our borders – oil, coal, diamonds,...

This was revealed by the Chairman of Board of Directors Ali Mufuruki who said EAC still needs the support of his organisation especially when it comes to Infrastructure development. He said without well-developed infrastructure the EAC may fail to attract more international investors. “We are committed to raise the funds from our development partner’s because 80% of them are willing to offer their support after we proved capacity in effectively utilising the little resources they have given us,” said Mukuruki. This was during the TMA -2014/2015   Annual performing report release in Kampala. The $1billion will be used to support identified projects in the EAC countries Namely Uganda, Kenya, Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania and the newly incorporated South Sudan. Without naming the projects TMA will finance in the upcoming five years, Mufuruki said the projects will be developed by the member’s states and must be in line with supporting trade and improving social services in the region. Some of the development partner’s TMA hopes to raise the $1billion funds to finance the projects in the EAC Economic block includes   Sweden Embassies, United Kingdom’s DFID, Canada and USIAD among other financiers. The above mentioned partners have been Influential in supporting TMA in the last five years.  “The results  are  truly  impressive .TMA,s support  for the Modernisation  of ports  in Mombasa and Dare Salam  and its  one stop  border posts  are  transforming  trade  and  driving  integration across the region. The time it takes to move goods from Mombasa to Kampala has been...

The implementation of the East African multi-entry single tourist visa is being hampered by the differences in national visa policies and regimes in Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda. Speaking at a recent stakeholder forum in Kigali, a senior tourism development officer from Uganda Anne Awori, said that member states are forcing tourists holding the pass to pay extra upon entry into their countries. “We have come across many cases of officials asking tourists who have obtained the single entry visa from Uganda to pay entry fees in Rwanda or Kenya,” said Ms Awori. “A recent case is when Rwanda charged a 13-year-old tourist who was issued a regional visa from Uganda an additional $60.” Earlier, Uganda had blamed Kenya and Rwanda for breaching the visa agreement by issuing their own local visas to tourists instead of the single EAC tourist visa. At one time, Ugandan tourism officials were quoted by the local media as threatening to pull out from the visa project. “A visa is supposed to be issued by the first country of entry. For a Congolese for instance, Rwanda is their first entry country. But when we issue the visa, Uganda raises questions and makes them pay again for the pass,” said a Rwandan official. The heads of state from the three countries launched the single tourism visa in February 2014 under the Northern Corridor Infrastructure Projects. The idea is to allow tourists to move freely within Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda without applying or paying for another visa. Tourism...

KILOSA, Tanzania (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The huge stock of maize Jumanne Masele put aside last year was enough to spare his family from hunger and earn him cash to repay his debts - or so he thought. A short while after Masele had finished stuffing the grain into a traditional storage cocoon, he realized much of it had been infested by fungus as ground moisture from heavy rain seeped in through the bottom of his store made of dried soil, sticks and grass. “There was nothing I could do to salvage my grains - it was a total loss,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Despite a bumper harvest, the farmer, 44, from Mbumi village in the east Tanzania district of Kilosa lost most of his crops, threatening his family’s food supply.  “I still don’t know how to store my harvests - traditional techniques are no longer effective as the grain easily rots when we get unexpected extra rains,” Masele said. Agriculture is the backbone of Tanzania’s economy, providing work for more than four fifths of the population. The rural sector accounts for over half the country’s gross domestic product and export earnings, according to national statistics. Yet as Tanzanian farmers struggle to market their crops, nearly 40 percent of grains are lost to poor storage and extreme weather, costing the nation $332 million every year, the government says. Efforts are underway to curb these losses. Since 2013, smallholder farmers in nine African countries have been getting help to...

The Office of the secretary General at the East African Community looks pleased with the progress the inter-Burundi dialogue has achieved so far. According to a recent statement from The East African community body, the mediator, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, Facilitator, Benjamin William Mkapa, former President of the United Republic of Tanzania have so far done a recommendable job in ensuring that peace and stability in Burundi is received soon through the Inter-Burundi Dialogue (IBD). However, the office of the secretary General seems not pleased with local and international media that seem to be misleading the general public on the progress of the dialogue and hence forth has released a detailed statement on a few basics as reproduced below; The Office of the Secretary General would like to set the record straight as follows: As put clearly by the Facilitator, the Inter-Burundi Dialogue is an EAC-led process under the Mediatorship of H.E President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, a Member of the EAC Heads of State Summit. The Summit appointed former President Benjamin William Mkapa of the United Republic of Tanzania as the Facilitator of the Dialogue to support the Mediator. As per the EAC Treaty requirement, the EAC Secretariat implements Council and Summit Directives. Therefore, the EAC Secretariat headed by the Secretary General, who is also the Secretary to the Summit of the EAC Heads of State, has the obligation to give technical and logistical support to the activities of the Facilitator.  However, the Facilitator is fully responsible for the conduct of...