The Minister for Natural Resources, Dr Vincent Biruta (L), and Dr Josua Dione, senior advisor to the African Union Commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture, sign the 'Kigali Declaration' that paves way for the establishment of the Climate Application and Prediction Centre for Central Africa in Kigali on Monday. / Timothy Kisambira Rwanda has become the first country to sign up to a framework that paves the way for the establishment of the Climate Application and Prediction Centre for Central Africa, which will serve the 11 member states of the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS). The centre, whose creation was agreed upon during the last ECCAS Heads of State and Government Summit held in Chad in May, last year, will provide much needed support to the bloc’s member states in terms of recording data, as well as forecasting and sharing information related to weather and climatic conditions. The centre, which will be hosted in Cameroon, is expected to start operations next year. Rwanda on Monday signed up to the Kigali Declaration on the Establishment of the Climate Application and Prediction Centre for Central Africa on the sidelines of a meeting of the Organisation for Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) User Forum in Africa, a gathering of global climate specialists and meteorologists. Participants follow proceedings at the EUMETSAT meeting in Kigali. / Timothy Kisambira The declaration represents the strongest commitment to date to make the centre a reality, officials said. Other member states are expected to sign the document...

Heads of two leading travel agencies in Kigali say they have sustained major financial losses due to the border closure between Burundi and Rwanda. In late July, the Burundi government suspended food exports to Rwanda – allegedly due to drought – and Burundian security officers have since prevented passengers’ buses from crossing the border. Relations between Burundi and Rwanda have soured since Burundi’s President Nkurunziza, who was elected for a controversial third term in July 2015, accused Rwanda of supporting rebels in Burundi. Volcano Express and Yahoo car Express, which carry passengers between Burundi and Rwanda, and Uganda and Kenya, have seen a sharp decline in business. Movement is virtually at a standstill; there are no passengers, some bus routes in Burundi have stopped, and businesses are no longer making cross border transactions. Olivier Nizeyimana is the Managing Director of Volcano Express. Some of his buses registered in Burundi are simply waiting inside the country, doing nothing. “Our buses are locked there. Some escaped by other borders, but they were empty. The government should respect our business, as we are paying taxes”, he says. On July 30th, Burundian Vice President, Joseph Butore ordered the Police to prevent all traders from taking products into Rwanda. Previously, many passengers were businessmen from the region, as well as relatives of families that have fled to Rwanda and Uganda due to crisis. No more fruits on Rwandan market Since the closure of border, Rwanda is experiencing significant shortages of food imported from Burundi, including...

IN SUMMARY “Countries in this region have big infrastructure projects going on. These must in future be consistent with the EAC macroeconomic and monetary union convergence criteria,” he said. Mega infrastructure projects in East Africa may stop once the monetary union is put in place seven years from now to avoid breaching the regional fiscal deficit and debt policies. East African Community (EAC) countries will be forced to stick to the three per cent maximum fiscal deficit as opposed to the current situation where Kenya is at 9.4 per cent deficit — largely due to the construction of the standard gauge railway (SGR). Bank of Uganda (BoU) deputy governor Louis Kasekende said countries in the region would have to ensure their infrastructure or other spending ambitions are in line with the fiscal deficit ceiling set under the monetary convergence criteria. “Countries in this region have big infrastructure projects going on. These must in future be consistent with the EAC macroeconomic and monetary union convergence criteria,” he said. The BoU deputy governor was speaking during a symposium called by the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) as part of its celebration of 50 years since it was set up. In Kenya’s case the fiscal deficit has been hovering around 8-11 per cent in the past few years, though it is projected to come down in the coming years. READ: EAC's mounting debt, a recipe for regional crisis The fall in the deficit is associated with the conclusion of the SGR. Kenya borrowed...

Plans are underway along the East African coast to expand existing maritime terminals and to develop new terminals, in particular along the Kenyan and Tanzanian coasts. Infrastructure developments including dredging operations and rail links, could make a significant difference to the economic outcomes. While development of a new terminal located to the northeast of Mombasa at Lamu is underway, the recently elected new Tanzanian Government has opted to curtail expenditures involved in developing a new port to the northeast of Dar es Salaam and has chosen to increase the size of the existing port. Dredging is underway at the Port of Maputo in Mozambique from 11 meter (36 foot) keel depth to 14.2 meter (46.6 foot) keel depth. Port of Maputo The container terminal quay at Maputo is allocated a berth/quay of 300 meter (984 feet) in length and dredging would allow a vessel such as the 337 meter (1,106 foot), 9,200 TEU container ship MSC Pamela that sails with 12.8 meter (42 foot) draft and 46 meter (151 foot) beam to call at Port of Maputo. In the future, port authorities may need to explore allocating additional berth/quay length to the container terminal. Railway lines connect Maputo to Pretoria and Johannesburg in South Africa as well as Lusaka in Zambia and Harare in Zimbabwe. The Maputo – Johannesburg railway distance is almost identical to the Durban – Johannesburg railway distance. While Port of Durban is sub-Saharan Africa’s largest and busiest container port, the overland connections to the very populous...

East African nations have the most powerful passports in the continent outside South Africa, a 2016 Index by World Economic forum shows. The power of a passport is measured interms of the number of countries one can travel to visa free. Kenyans can travel to 65 countries in the world while Tanzanians can travel to 62 countries with Ugandans able to travel to 58 countries around the world without a visa. Nigerians can only travel to 44 countries in the world with Senegalese being able to travel to 56 countries, Ghana 61, and 51 for Sierra Leone. The nationals of Mauritania can travel to 54 countries. South Africans lead the continent with access to 91 destinations visa free. The strength of the passport depicts a country’s diplomatic strength and also its tourism potential. Somalis can travel to 31 countries. The 2016 ranking puts Germany and Sweden at the top of the passport league. Holders of German and Swedish passports can visit 158 countries without the need for a visa. “The least powerful passports are issued by poor countries, often mired in conflict. The people of Afghanistan can only visit 24 countries without applying for a visa,” WEF  said in the latest survey. Pakistan fares little better, with just 31 countries offering visa-free travel. The passport of the world’s newest nation, strife-torn South Sudan, only allows visa-free access to 36 countries. Source: The Exchange

By Louis Kolumbia Dar es Salaam — Tanzania will lose $865 million (Sh1.7 trillion) in revenue during the 25 years of implementing the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) should the East African Community sign the pact with the European Union (EU), according to opposition politician Zitto Kabwe. Referring to renowned economist Jacques Berthelot, Mr Kabwe said statistics from Eurostat and the International Trade Centre (ITC) showed that EAC would lose 3.6 billion euros in revenue as a bloc. "Losses will mainly be caused by contractual demands requiring Tanzania to scrap tax barriers by 90 per cent on non-agricultural products from the EU and by 10 per cent on agricultural products," the ACT-Wazalendo leader said in a statement. "This means that Tanzania will remain a supplier of raw material and a market to value added products from the EU." Mr Kabwe also said Tanzania would lose anticipated revenue following removal of value added tax (VAT) payable as import duty to products from the EU. Relaxing import duty barriers would lead to trade diversion whereby products from the EU will tend to remove products from foreign countries, thus denying the country revenue, he added. The Kigoma Urban MP cited Section 99.1 of the contract, saying the partners recognised challenges that would lead to revenue losses, and suggested that a solution could be sought through introduction of a compensation system. Section 100 of the contract says following revenue losses, the EU will negotiate with partner countries on taxation policy changes, cooperate in changing revenue...

In this monthly column called “The Indicator”, we take a economic or financial statistic from East Africa and break it down into bite-sized nuggets of knowledge for investors. This month’s Indicator is a sad one, dedicated to the loss of a good friend of the authors, Mohamed Mtaturu Mkonongo, and is intended to be a note of caution. 43,164 is the number of traffic accident fatalities found for the latest year studied in the East African Community countries, except for Burundi due to lack of available data. What do you mean by road traffic fatalities? Car, truck, motorcycle, and other automobile crashes on roadways that ended the life of a person are counted as road traffic fatalities. How big of an issue is road traffic for public health? The World Health Organization reports that “road traffic injuries are the leading cause of death among young people, aged 15–29 years and 90% of the world’s fatalities on the roads occur in low and middle income countries, even though these countries have approximately half of the world’s vehicles.” Weighted by population, each year EAC countries have 2.9 people die from road traffic per every 10 thousand people in the country. Which EAC country has the most and least per capita road traffic fatalities? Tanzania has the highest per capita traffic accident fatalities in the EAC at 3.2 for every 10 thousand citizens. Rwanda is close behind with 3.0 traffic deaths per 10 thousand people. Uganda has the lowest per capita rate at...

NAIROBI (HAN) September 12.2016. Public Diplomacy & Regional Security News.By DICTA ASIIMWE. The East African Community is not spending a third of the money it receives, despite the Secretariat’s complaints about underfunding. The Community has consistently complained about inadequate financing and has been pushing the Council of Ministers to come up with sustainable funding mechanisms. One of the options that was discussed by the Council of Ministers sitting in Arusha on September 5, include a hybrid of a levy and equal contribution by partner states with a commitment to increase the Community’s budget. The levy is expected to increase the Community’s financing, while the option of equal contribution is meant to retain the principles of equity, solidarity and equality as included in the Treaty. But even as the Council of Ministers considers these options, an accountability report by the EAC Audit and Risk Committee found that institutions and projects of the Community, whose budget for the 2014/15 financial year was $125.6 million, only spent $81.4 million. The report, which was discussed by East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) on September 2, found that the money spent represents just 65 per cent of what had been budgeted. Having utilised just 27 per cent of the total budget allocated, the African Peace and Security Architecture was one of the worst performing projects, despite the Community being a region with a large number of peace and security challenges. These challenges include the conflict in Burundi and the effects of conflicts in the Democratic Republic of Congo...

Migration is a priority issue all the way from Oslo to Cape Town, so the EU and Africa need to work together more effectively in order for it to be better managed in the future. Aderanti Adepoju describes how this can be done. Professor Aderanti Adepoju is the founder and coordinator of the Network of Migration Research on Africa (NOMRA). At present, over 31 million Africans are migrants who live outside the country of their birth, the majority within the African continent itself. In 2015, about 14% of arrivals in Europe were African migrants. Several migrant related events in recent years, most notably perhaps the April 2015 shipwreck that claimed the lives of 800 Africans off the coast of Italy, have significantly raised the discourse on migration to centre stage in both public and political arenas, leading to the Valletta Euro-Africa Summit in November 2015. The challenges posed by African migration are many; stretching from risks of brain drain to a lack of orderly, legal and effective labour migration. The question is therefore what the EU can do to support Africa to properly manage migration? In the study ‘Migration within and from Africa’, published today (12 September) by the Swedish Migration Studies Delegation (Delmi), I argue, among other things, that the EU should focus more on regional governance in Africa. Africa now experiences all types of migratory configurations within and outside the continent. More than half of Africans that migrate internationally do so within Africa, and only 27% go to...

East African heads of state met the capital of Tanzania, Dar es Salaam, on Thursday, September 8, to discuss the ratification of the European Partnership Agreement (EPA). Tanzanian president John Magufuli (pictured above), who is also chair of the bloc demanded more time to assess the impact of the agreements before the actual signing takes place. The day-long meeting concentrated on Tanzania's reluctance in signing the trade deal with the EU. The "Daily News" of Tanzania has quoted Magufuli as saying: "There are a number of questions to be looked upon, why are we signing the agreement while the EU has imposed sanctions on Burundi? Why are we signing while UK has pulled out of the EU?" According to Honnest Prosper Ngowi, an economics lecturer at Mzumbe University in Tanzania, the country needs investment in areas of roads, water and power for it to compete in European markets. "I think, what Tanzania has done means that it wants to assess the situation so that it does not lose out once it joins," he said. South Sudan is the newest member of the East African bloc Kenya would pay more taxes Out of the six EAC countries, Kenya stands to lose the most if the deal is not signed. Other member states, like Tanzania, Burundi, Uganda, would still be elligible for duty and quota-free access under EU's Everything But Arms initiative for teh world's "Least Developed Countries". Kenya does not fall under this category. "If the EPA is not signed and...