In 2016, the African Union (AU) announced plans to introduce a new African Union passport that would travel across the continent much easier. “The scene seems to be set to realize the dream of visa-free travel for African citizens within their own continent by 2020,” the AU said in a statement announcing the launch. However, in 2018, crossing borders remains a difficult process for the vast majority of Africans. Even now, African citizens on average need a visa to travel to more than 50% of nations across the continent. This makes travelling in Africa significantly easier for Americans, Brits and various other nationalities than it does for the majority of Africans. It’s not only African citizens that feel the constraints of travel difficulties either. Business travel is a painful process between African countries and the impact on trade between the continent’s nations is undeniable. So why are Africans still waiting for visa-free travel? Progress is being made The visa-free travel dream in Africa is taking longer than some African union optimists might have hoped but true progress is being made. In November last year, six nations – Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and the Republic of Congo – announced visa-free movement for citizens among their nations under the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC). Meanwhile, Kenya became the latest country to relax visa requirements from citizens from African nations, who no longer need to get a visa prior to their arrival. According to the African Development Bank, which monitors visa openness...

Arusha — Performance of the recently established one stop border posts (OSBPs) in East Africa will come under scrutiny during an on the spot assessment by the regional lawmakers. Fresh from the recent session in Kampala, the East African Legislative Assembly (Eala) members this week began a mission to assess the progress of the regional institutions including OSBPs. The jointly operated and shared facilities on the visit schedule include the famous Namanga and Holili on the Tanzania/Kenya border as well as Malaba on the border between Kenya and Uganda. Others are Katuna/Gatuna on the Uganda/Rwanda borderline, Kabanga/Kobero (Tanzania and Burundi) and the Rusumo OSBP along River Kagera that separates Tanzania and Rwanda. "The on-spot assessment commenced yesterday (Monday) and runs up to February 23rd", said Bobi Odiko, the spokesperson for Eala, adding that the visit will cover other infrastructure projects. One of the two groups will inspect projects along the northern corridor; Mombasa through Nairobi and Kampala to Kigali while another will do the same on the central corridor; Dar es Salaam to Bujumbura. OSBPs which are being established along the key routes at the borders of the East African Community (EAC) member states to lessen time in exiting one country and entering another have come under scrutiny for some time especially from the regional MPs. For instance, an on the spot assessment carried out in 2015 by Eala members found out that some of them can turn into 'white elephants' due to unwarranted delays to complete the basic structures...

As anticipated, the standard gauge railway (SGR) is going through “market entry” rigours that any new business has to undergo. We have seen SGR adjust its operations, systems and tariffs to penetrate a logistics arena that has been a virtual monopoly of road transportation. Transport dynamics are essentially market driven, with the client (cargo owner and passenger) having a major input on choices. The SGR business can be segmented into three logical phases— the Nairobi destination, Western Kenya, and transit into Uganda— defined by the project completion times. There is also a classification into cargo and passengers which are either from or to Mombasa. In the case of cargo it is imports, exports or local transfers. Each one of these areas has unique opportunities and challenges requiring different approaches to maximise business value. And from what we read, SGR appears to be working on the right solutions to penetrate the market. The cargo owners are interested in the least total freight cost, and the shortest cargo turnaround time. The passengers are keen on both the fare cost and trip convenience. As and when SGR enters Uganda, it will open up cargo transit opportunities with Rwanda, Eastern DRC and South Sudan. Rail transport economics are favoured by the longest possible distances as these substantially reduce unit operating costs while multiplying revenues. For this reason, transit business should always remain the ultimate prize for SGR with the government of Uganda being a highly valued partner. The main pushback and competition for SGR...

Exporters using the standard gauge railway to transport cargo to Mombasa incur huge losses because it arrives after vessels have departed. The SGR freight services schedule does not coincide with the schedule of vessels’ docking at the Port of Mombasa. Kenya International Freight and Warehousing Association (Kifwa) national chair William Ojonyo said on Monday that most of the time trains arrive at the port when vessels have already weighted anchor. Then they incur additional storage costs, can’t meet orders and thus lose their orders abroad. Ojonyo said Kenya Railways has not given exporters a proper schedule of the SGR freight services. He said KR is supposed to load the cargo at the Nairobi Internal Container Depot and move it to Mombasa in readiness for export, but there has always been a delay in loading “On many occasions, the export containers are delayed getting to the port in time for export vessels, since KR lacks logistical capacity,” Ojonyo said. SGR has inherited the perennial logistical hitches from the Rift Valley Railway and therefore cannot be relied upon for efficient facilitation, he said. He said exporters will continue using trucks that can be monitored directly along the logistics chain without depending on a third party, as they await stakeholders engagement. “As logistics experts, we are yet to be assured how the empty containers will get back to appointed depots for the interchange to facilitate deposit refund,” Ojonjo said. The Kenya Shippers Council said, however, they have not received any complaint from exporters...

The East African Business Council (EABC) board met in Kigali, last week, to discuss strategies that will help encourage the implementation of key projects by East African Community (EAC) states that seek to improve the business environment. This comes on the back of a lot of frustration among the business community because of the slow pace by partner states in the implementation process despite Heads of State directives for the projects to be prioritised. Lilian Awinja, the EABC chief executive officer, says the fact that some partner states are backtracking on some of these projects when others are undertaking the projects is very discouraging and unfortunate. Speaking in an exclusive interview with Business Times’ Peterson Tumwebaze after the meeting, Awinja said the delay is costing the region in terms of trade, investments, jobs and economic prosperity. Excerpts: You held an EABC board meeting in Kigali last Friday. Briefly tell us what it was about We mainly wanted to discuss issues affecting regional businesses and how we can address them as a region. Some of these issues are policy challenges, while others are financial in nature. For example, the directives that were issued by Heads of State for immediate implementation across the region are yet to be enforced. This is very discouraging for us as a business community. Awinja says delay in implementation of some EAC projects by states is hurting the business community. / Net. We still have a long list of pending projects aimed at improving doing business in...

Although appetite for energy infrastructure remains high in East Africa, financiers are wary about the region's political, economic and environmental risk factors. These issues were highlighted at the recently held East Africa Energy and Infrastructure Summit held in Kampala, Uganda. Lungile Mashele, energy specialist at the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA), told the EastAfrican that development banks also consider the perceived risks in the region when looking at projects to finance. Mashele revealed that after having successfully funded 21 projects, contributing a total of 2,512MW to South Africa's national grid, the bank is now looking at projects in Rwanda and Ethiopia. Read more... The two countries are said to be “politically stable,” and have also been posting impressive growth figures for the past 10 years. "As a bank we have the mandate to go where no one wants to go, but there is a risk to that. We may pay the price for political risk if elections are not held on time. Then there is economic risk, like unstable currencies, which means there is the possibility that we may not get our money out," Mashele said. Also speaking at the event, Attilio Pacifici, head of the European Union Delegation to Uganda, announced that the union has financing instruments under its External Investment Plan (EIP) which targets Africa, with sustainable energy being one of its five priority sectors. "Despite the rapidly rising cost-competitiveness of renewable energy technologies, financing of projects is still difficult in many parts of the world. Transformation of...

The East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) is looking to develop policies that will among others increase resource allocation for the expansion of the Port of Mombasa to further improve efficiency at the port. The Assembly also targets construction of more Special Economic Zones across the region to enhance trade activities. The Mombasa Port remains one of the busiest economic hubs across the East Africa Community region with the Kenya Ports Authority having handled about 27 million tonnes of cargo in 2017. Kenya has been investing in the expansion of the port to increase capacity and decongest traffic, with the first phase completed in September 2016, and phase two set to begin this year. The assembly noted that it is also keen to push for policies that will support the construction of more Special Economic Zones across the region to support expansion of trade activities as well as the creation of job opportunities. The Assembly is also calling for reduced cargo clearance fee at the port to boost trade activities. The EALA is on an assessment tour of institutions under the East Africa Community on the Northern Corridor. Source: KBC

The International Trade Centre (ITC), a joint agency of the United Nations and World Trade Organization (WTO), will open a centre in Dubai on Tuesday to foster female entrepreneurship across the Middle East and North Africa (Mena), in partnership with Dubai Exports, a unit of the Department for Economic Development. “Our main aim globally is to connect more women to the economy because we know there is a specific market failure there: women are having more difficulty in business than men,” said Arancha Gonzalez, executive director of the ITC. “In the world there are 1 billion women disconnected from the economy [according to McKinsey & Company], which is an economy the size of the US and China. This tells us we have a big source of growth countries are not tapping,” said Ms Gonzalez in an interview with The National at the World Government Summit in Dubai. Despite impressive higher education rates among women, the region has lower rates of female labour force participation than the rest of the world. Women make up 49 per cent of the Mena population and, in some countries, up to 63 per cent of university students. Yet they represent 28 per cent of the labour force compared to over 50 per cent in the US, according to the World Bank. A 2017 study by UN Women and Promundo, a Brazilian lobby group to promote gender equality among boys, claimed more than two-thirds of Mena men support the notion that a woman’s most important role...

Visitor arrivals into Kenya from East Africa has grown substantially in the past three years, official data shows, partly signalling the benefits of an open visa scheme for the region. Kenya last year recorded a combined arrival of 95,845 visitors from Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda, up from 80,841 in 2016. In 2015, some 58,032 visitors arrived from these countries. “Uganda topped the list of Kenya’s top source markets in Africa, growing by 20.6 per cent to 61,542 arrivals,” Kenya’s Tourism ministry said in its sector performance report for 2017. Arrivals from Tanzania also grew by an impressive 21.8 per cent in last year to 21,110 compared to 2016. Visitors from Rwanda increased to 12,193 in 2017 from 11,658 the previous year. Uganda saw its share in Kenya tourism arrivals nearly double in the past three years. Data by the Kenya’s Tourism ministry showed that Uganda was Kenya’s third largest source market for tourism with an overall share of 6.4 per cent last year compared to 3.9 per cent in 2015 and 5.8 per cent in 2016. East Africa has implemented multi-entry single tourist visa since February 2014. This visa enables visitors travelling in Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda to travel across all the three regions using a single permit that can be obtained in any of these countries. The move is a way of encouraging integration of citizens and cross-border trade. East Africa contribution The contribution of visitor arrivals from East Africa helped grow Kenya’s overall tourism arrivals to 1.47 million...

Climate change is pushing governments and players in the energy sector to innovate and diversify their sources of power. Power producers are now lighting homes, businesses and public buildings using off-grid innovations. For farmers who rely on rain-fed agriculture, off-grid solar solutions have enabled irrigation, a breakthrough that will help beat the effects of harsh weather conditions ravaging the continent. The Uganda Solar Energy Association (Usea), the apex body for solar companies, last week hosted the Africa Energy Forum, an exhibition in Kampala, with support from USAid through its Power Africa initiative. More than 40 local and international solar companies gathered to showcase off-grid solutions, which, according to Usea chairman Emmy Kimbowa, will catalyse economic growth. Uganda’s electricity generation capacity is 870MW, with peak demand at 550MW. Demand is increasing by 10 per cent every year so electricity shortfalls are expected until more power generation facilities are brought onto the grid. With the bulk of grid electricity generated through large hydro sources (about 85 per cent), Uganda’s power supply is susceptible to drought, intermittent rainfall, and reduced river flows — factors that are expected to become more acute with climate change. In addition to the 600MW Karuma and 183MW Isimba hydropower projects set to come onstream later this year, Uganda is also pursuing a more diversified energy mix in order to meet its target of increasing installed capacity to 2,500MW by 2020. The country is making greater use of other renewable sources including medium and small-scale hydropower, biomass, solar, and...