To develop effective trade patterns, Africa must embrace structural and regulatory reforms and enhance financial integration to accelerate efforts that have led to increased exchanges with emerging countries in the rest of the world and between its own countries and regions. African countries must foster macro-economic stability and improve the investment environment to strengthen the role of pan-African banks in facilitating trade finance and boosting capital markets. Success in stimulating trade and growth depends on the policy and investment climate, depth of financial integration and commitment to reform. Africa’s trade with the rest of the world has remained high, except with the United States. From 2000 to 2008, Africa’s trade increased by an annual average of 16%. Because of the 2008-9 global financial crisis, trade fell sharply by 24% from that period. Since 2010, Africa’s exports have recovered, growing by an annual average of 8,5%. Trade with the United States has persistently declined, however. In 2015, trade with the United States fell to $70,5 billion from a peak of $ 124,6 billion in 2011, an 11% decline. Historically, oil, gas and petroleum products have dominated US imports from sub-Saharan Africa. In 2007, these accounted for 93% of US imports. By 2013 the figure had declined to 67% as the United States stepped up its campaign for energy self-sufficiency and increased production of domestically produced oil to avoid imports. Africa’s exports to emerging economies are dominated by China and mainly comprise oil, metals and other primary products. This exposes the continent...

The East African Community has developed a new scorecard to monitor progress and address challenges facing integration of the five-nation bloc. Launched on Monday, the EAC Common Market Scorecard 2016 will focus on the progress made towards the implementation of free movement of goods, capital and services, and identifies a number of barriers to intra-regional trade. It further recommends a raft of measures for individual partner states meant to promote regional prosperity. This is likely to boost the seven year-old East Africa Common Market under the EAC Treaty, whose implementation has been slowed down by noncommittal member states and non-tariff barriers. The World Bank and Trade Mark East Africa supported initiative follows up on the first scorecard developed in 2014. It focuses on monitoring and stimulating implementation of the freedoms and rights enshrined in the EAC Common Market Protocol. They include free movement of goods, persons and Labour. It also paves the way for the right of establishment, residence, free movement of services and free movement of capital. East African Community and Labour Cabinet Secretary Phyllis Kandie expressed concern over the steady decline in intra EAC trade, whose value dropped to $5.1 billion (Sh523.5billion) in 2015, from $5.6 billion (Sh574.8 billion) in 2014 and $5.8 billion (Sh595.4billion) in 2013. She attributed the decline to “weak capacity within individual EAC partner states to resolve most of the non tariff barriers”. Kenya’s EAC Integration Principal Secretary Betty Maina called for renewed efforts in promoting intra-EAC trade. The region has a market of...

Uncertainty hangs over plans to build a cross-border standard gauge railway (SGR) after Beijing failed to respond to a request for a joint meeting with Kenyan and Ugandan officials. The two states had requested for a meeting in China on February 28, with Kenya’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs sending reminders mid last month, but Beijing went mute. As a condition for funding the Kenya-Uganda SGR, Exim Bank of China requires a joint commitment from the two states that each will extend their line to the Malaba border post. China’s delay to respond to a request for a joint meeting is likely to interfere with official timeline for the Kisumu-Malaba-Kampala SGR. Officials from Kenya’s ministries of Finance and Works, and Uganda’s Finance minister Matia Kasaija had been scheduled to travel for a meeting on February 27, but they postponed after China failed to give them a confirmation. “China has not responded to the request that the joint delegation of Kenya and Uganda made to them in regard to having a meeting with the Exim Bank on February 28,” said a source close to the matter. “Exim Bank of China, which is the financier of the project for both countries, had committed to extending credit to Uganda on condition that Kenya is ready to extend its section of the railway to Malaba and this is the commitment that they were to make in Beijing,” the source added. Mr Kasaija confirmed that they did not travel to China because they were yet to...

It started off in December as an unexpected question from a stranger. I had just made a brief stopover at Nyamasaria in the outskirts of Kisumu town when a man waylaid me. “Where do you offload next? Well, being a rural area, ignoring people just because they don’t look familiar is out of question. So the man’s intrusive question became a natural talking point the moment I crossed into a makeshift eatery in the area. And true to village wisdom, I was in a school of sorts, listening to strange tales and gathering story leads. First, the man had a perfect sense of what he was talking about, only that he had mistaken me for a truck driver after I parked at the wrong place. Two, he could be hinting that some truck drivers offload untaxed imports at undesignated places from where ‘trusted agents” collected them. Because nearly every speaker seemed to have just a fleeting sense of the subject matter, I would still have brushed them off as heresies had it been for news heard previously. There were reports early last year that cars bearing Uganda registration numbers were being seized in western Kenya by police and customs officials. The agencies never quite made public what they gathered during the crackdown launched early last year. However, if cars in question were imports, as local dealers thought, then somebody apparently diverted them in the fashion suggested by the stranger in Kisumu. Claims of sugar, rice or cement destined for landlocked...

South Sudan has remained tight-lipped on the fate of Kenyans and other East Africans working in its territory, five days after it introduced prohibitive work permit charges to lock foreigners out of its labour market. On Thursday, the country’s labour ministry announced that permit to engage in professional services like setting up a hospital, law firm or advisory services will cost Sh1,020,000 million ($10,000). White collar jobs also attract the same amount of fees per person. Cost of permit to engage in blue collar jobs goes up to Sh204,000 while casual workers now have to part with Sh102,000 to remain in South Sudan. Having joined the East African Community’s common market last year, South Sudan has an option to exempt the bloc’s citizens from the stringent work permit rules. It could also go the Tanzania way to retain the work permit fees but at reduced cost to EAC nationals. Tanzania, for instance charges East Africans $500 for work permit, just a quarter of the $2,000 it collects from other foreigner categories. At the South Sudan Embassy in Nairobi, officials declined to comment on the charges saying they needed clarification from Juba. The acting chairman of Kenyans working in South Sudan Anthony Kanyi however said the move would hurt formal sector employees. “It is going to be difficult for Kenyans working here as they will have to part with a lot of money to secure the work permits,” said Mr Kanyi. Mr Kanyi wants Nairobi and Juba to discuss the increment...

East African Community (EAC) is finalising plans for the transnational highway, which measures 450 kilometre-long, and expected to cost 600 million US dollars (over 1.2tri/-). The highway moves from Malindi, through Mombasa and Lunga Lunga on the Kenyan side, before crossing into Tanzania (Tanga), through Pangani and Saadani to Bagamoyo. The project was the centre of deliberations between EAC Secretary General, Ambassador Liberat Mfumukeko and Executive Directors of the African Development Bank (AfDB) over the weekend when the highpowered delegation of 10 directors paid a courtesy call at EAC Secretariat here. During their mission to EAC headquarters, AfDB directors also discussed the bank’s collaboration with the regional block since the signing of a cooperation agreement in 1998. The agreement has resulted in the funding of several regional projects by the bank, mainly in the transport and energy sectors. The AfDB had agreed to fund the Malindi-Mombasa- Tanga to Bagamoyo Highway and that it would allocate the first tranche of money to the construction, which is expected to start anytime from now and take three years to completion. The road project will entail the rehabilitation of the 250- kilometre Malindi-Lunga Lunga Road and upgrading to bitumen standard the 175-kilometre stretch that links Tanga to Bagamoyo. The coastline road is expected to boost regional integration, cross-border trade, tourism, and socio-economic development, as well as improve road transport infrastructure along the Kenya and Tanzania coastlines, particularly between Mombasa and Bagamoyo. Apart from the proposed Malindi-Bagamoyo road, AfDB also funded the Arusha-Namanga- Athi River...

Dar es Salaam. The World Bank Group says it will support Tanzania’s industrialisation by focusing on deepening the EAC Common Market which is crucial in expanding the market for the manufactured goods. Steven Dimitriyev, World Bank Lead Private Sector Specialist for Tanzania said last week that if well utilised the East African Common Market can serve as a crucial market for the country’s industrial goods and services but restrictions remain that make trade in the region more difficult. And that is why the WB and other partners such as TradeMark Africa are ready to help Tanzania and other EAC partner states to work on all those issues that still hinder the full implementation of the Common Market protocol. “Our reasoning is that industrialising the Tanzanian economy will be achievable only if the EAC market becomes easily accessible for Tanzanian goods, services and labour which can be exported and traded across the region, on account of the large size of the market and the opportunities it presents for trade and business development,” Mr Dimitriyev, who was reacting to the Common Market Scorecard 2016 that indicated that EAC partner states still lag behind in some key aspects of integration, said last Wednesday. He added that the WB, therefore, intends to support EAC trade integration by including it in its package of assistance to Tanzania’s second Five Year Development Programme, which prioritizes industrialization as the approach to creating large number of new and better jobs for the population, especially the youth. The EA...

Tourism between East Africa and the granted Kenya’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport as Category One status is expected to herald the new beginning of direct flights to America from Nairobi, with a new chapter of growth in regional tourism. After Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) won Category One status from the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) last month, there are new hopes heralding East African tourism, looking for faster growth through the Kenyan entry point. By attaining the highest International Aviation Safety Assessment status, Kenya is now standing as East Africa’s aviation hub for American tourists booked to the East African Community (EAC) member states most of whom are lacking key tourist services. Kenya’s Transport Cabinet Secretary, James Macharia, was quoted by The EastAfrican as saying that Kenya Airways and other interested local operators will fly directly from Kenya to the United States once the necessary approvals and last point of departure (LPD) rights are granted. Mr. Macharia said that with the attainment of Category One status, Kenya Airways will immediately apply for approval to codeshare with US airlines while concurrently pursuing approval for direct flights. RwandAir, the other major airline in the EAC says going through Kenya is also an opportunity the airline can explore. Jimmy Musoni, the Head of Commercial Planning at RwandAir, noted, however, that they were yet to undertake a study to weigh their options. Direct flights to the US will significantly reduce the time taken between the US and East Africa to as little...

The East African Community (EAC) has made positive strides to anchor economic development. Most of the investment seems to be under infrastructural development interventions, including the Northern Corridor Integration Projects (NCIP) – covering railways, roads and energy sectors. This is one step. The East African Community has been among the fastest growing regions with about 6.5 % economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa in the past decades. Regional integration has been at the fore of this growth, as the Member states to foster economic development. The EAC economies by way of household employment are dominated by agriculture which is the core economic sector employing 90% of their respective populations and accounting for 24% to 46% of gross domestic product (GDP). Meanwhile, the EAC remains a net importer of manufactured products. So how do we reverse this and anchor locally based industrial sector? What would it take for local manufacture and assembly of electronics like motor vehicles, electric circuit breakers and fittings, cookers, dry cells, solar panels and machine parts? How do we leverage petroleum related products such as plastics and other products? Whereas opportunities do exist in large scale farming, irrigation, value addition; processing, pre-packing and specialization, in order to exploit regional and international markets, the opportunity for industrial growth is not being strengthened in locally producing quality inputs for use in the agricultural sector. With our good soils and fresh water in EAC, why would the region import processed animal feeds, chemicals given our fertilizer deposits, cement or even ceramics...

At Friday’s opening of Bank of Kigali’s service centre on Kigali Heights, I was honoured to meet several eminent gentlemen and a lady that loyally follow this column, the best motivation for any writer; they also gave me some honest feedback regarding my profile picture. “It makes you look like a giant,” said one gentleman. Disclaimer: I am only half a giant. “You actually look older in the picture,” said another gentleman. I am actually 360 months old, a long time if you are polite enough not to convert it into years. Another gentleman teased me about the green jacket and the striped shirt. The banter left me in such a great mood that I could have written a wonderful romance essay that night. To be fair, the feedback on Friday about my profile picture is consistent with what others have told me before. Pictures are lovely. They are a form of writing and a good way of advancing viewpoints. In media framing, pictures are the best tools of composition and currently, the best case study is the media’s pictorial representation of the cantankerous US President Donald Trump. Based on the feedback, I will be changing my profile picture, soon. But it is not only me with a picture to fix; East Africa’s picture of regional integration is increasingly becoming blurry as members place more focus on their respective national priorities. Originally, the picture we drew from East Africa’s rhetoric on regional integration was that member countries were harmonizing their...