A new report has called for increased efforts to boost industrial development in the region, particularly through design and implementation of well-ground strategies and action plans, in order to achieve industrialisation objectives at both regional and East Africa Community (EAC) partner state level. Exploiting opportunities offered a the dynamic EAC market, and diversifying and upgrading through realistic, well-defined and comprehensive strategies are some of the relevant and concrete policy recommendations listed in a new regional industrial competitiveness report. Others are: strengthening of forward and backward linkages to boost industrial and overall economic growth, and supporting development of key industrial drivers to boost production and exports. The draft of the first regional Industrial Competitiveness report which is set to be officially made public in October by the EAC Secretariat is a joint initiative with the UN Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO), aimed at tracking industrial development performance in the region. Alphonse Kwizera, the assistant executive director of Rwanda Association of Manufacturers (RAM), was a member of the team of experts from partner states that compiled the report. He said it was developed to provide a compass to help the region navigate its way towards the industrialisation goals of the Community. Kwizera said: “It shows the competitiveness of our industries, as an entire region, and also highlights how countries trade; which products are mostly exported… and all this is to help industries to strategise. “It will help us determine what additional strategies can be used to increase competitiveness in the region. It will,...

Kenya’s move to adopt a regional electronic passport is on track after the government announced that electronic passports would be rolled out from September. The new generation passports are aimed at easing travel for East African residents. Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda are also set to roll out the electronic passports. They will feature a microchip containing details of the owner and will allow information contained in it to be verified with information displayed on the passport. One of the major hurdles to the integration of East African Community member states has been failure to ease travel, which hampers movement of goods and people as a result. According to the Immigration Department, the current passports in use will be phased out over two years. The electronic passport has been touted as a great step in curbing fraud and easing clearance at international passports. The new look passport will also curb counterfeit travel documents and tampering. Eradicating trade barriers is the only way that the EAC member states can help foster business in the region. The adoption of the electronic passport by the EAC member states will hasten the free flow of goods from one point to another and attract investment. Among the major hurdles to regional trade are bureaucracy and corruption. While trade in the bloc has increased exponentially after the launch of the Common Market Protocol in 2010, there is still a lot more that needs to be done. For the economies of East African Community member states to grow, there...

Maize from neighbouring Uganda is flowing into the country, setting the stage for a reduction in grain prices. According to the Eastern Africa Grain Council (EAGC), Kenya has imported 1,396 tonnes from Uganda in the past week. The maize, which is retailing at an average Sh2,846 for a 90-kilogramme bag and Sh2,499 at wholesale, is expected to help bring down the price of flour. “Uganda’s crop is harvested twice a year and this is their most recent yield. The impact from Uganda is significant because it helps Kenya bridge its deficit,” said the EAGC executive director, Gerald Musila. The council’s Regional Agricultural Trade Intelligence Network (Ratin) said the spike at the Busia border kicked off with 6.5 tonnes on Thursday last week to a high of 703 tonnes this week on Tuesday. Ratin’s second quarter regional trade report indicated that maize exports from Uganda to Kenya (56,000 tonnes) were 119 per cent higher than in the first quarter, attributed to attractive high prices. “The prices encouraged farmers and traders to put more marginal supplies into the market before the expected seasonal drop in prices following the June-July harvest,” reads the East African Cross Border report. The high prices in Kenya also attracted exceptional supplies from Ethiopia - 24,000 tonnes - which were higher than in 2016. Agriculture Cabinet Secretary Willy Bett announced that the State subsidy that has seen the two-kilo maize flour packet retail at Sh90 may be extended to September. Kenya is still grappling with delayed and inadequate...

The Kenya National Highway Authority (KeNHA) is now set to oversee the construction of a new high-speed highway that will cost Sh230 billion. Bechtel International, a US based engineering firm, will do the construction after signing the agreement with the Kenya's Highway Authority. "Bechtel has been selected to build the first high-speed expressway in Kenya. The 473-kilometre highway will improve connectivity and safety," KeNHA's director general Peter Mundinia  told reporters. The US Export-Import and overseas Private Investment Corporation will finance the project. "The highway will have four lanes with provisions for future expansion to six  and 19 interchanges, It will reduce time taken to Mombasa from Nairobi to roughly four hours" Mr.Mundinia said. KeNHA says that the project has been structured in such a way that it will be completed in time to allow motorists to use it soonest possible. Bechtel is among the largest construction companies in the world and it has already set up it African office in Nairobi. Source: The Standard Media

The East African Community (EAC) has declined to establish another institution, citing financial constraints. Proposals to upgrade the EA Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (EACREEE) into a full-fledged body under the Community hit a wall after the technocrats said it was short of funds for the purpose. "The original plan of the Community was to have EACREEE as an EAC institution. However, due to financial constraints other innovative ways were devised", said the deputy secretary general (Productive and Social Sectors) Christophe Bazivamo. He said instead the College of Engineering,Design, Art and Technology (Cedat) of the Makerere University in Uganda was selected to host the renewable energy facility as one of its centres of excellence. Mr Bazivamo revealed this last weekend when he was addressed the board meeting of the centre whose creation received support from the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (Unido) and the Austrian Development Agency (Ada). The principal of Cedat Prof Henry Alinaitwe informed the meeting held in Kampala that efforts were underway to formally register EACREEE as a semi-autonomous legal entity so that it can function smoothly. However, the meeting concurred that while the regional energy centre would continue to be hosted at the Makerere University, a road map should be drawn to make it a full-fledged body of the EAC. "Since its inauguration, Cedat has been working with several stakeholders to advance the centre's activities", said the Cedat principal Prof Alinaitwe. Despite failure to register the renewable energy centre as an additional institution under...

At their recent summit in July, African presidents reiterated their determination to launch the Continental Free-Trade Area (CFTA) by December. Modalities for negotiating goods and services have been agreed and adopted and a draft text for the CFTA Agreement has been put on the table for negotiation. Some believe the job is more or less done and two or three negotiation sessions are needed before the CFTA can be launched at the end of the year. The stakes are high. If it is not launched in 2017, Africa will be the laughing stock of the world for failing to meet the deadline that was set in 2012. There is a sense of pride and duty. The agreement must cover the essential elements — establishment, principles and objectives, nondiscrimination, tariff elimination, customs and trade facilitation, standards, transparency and notification, institutions, disputes and the usual final provisions. Outstanding work such as details of trade remedies can be continued afterwards. A good strategy for quick progress is to construct the CFTA Agreement using the provisions already available in the agreements of the African regional economic communities that countries have been using over the years. To supplement this, instruments on customs and trade facilitation and health and technical standards can be constructed on good practice from the World Customs Organisation and global standards-setting bodies. African administrations and regulatory agencies happily use instruments and documents from these organisations. There are areas of difference among regional economic communities, such as the settlement of trade disputes. This...

Local banks are on the front row in enhancing inter-regional trade through pan African banking, a report by PwC shows. The Global Economic Watch, released early this month, shows that the total shares of exports to sub-Saharan Africa across four economies including Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Togo increased from 12 per cent in 2007 to 23 per cent in 2016. The increase is an equivalent of $11.7 billion (Sh1.21 trillion). Locally-grown banks Equity and Kenya Commercial Bank dominate the large cross-border banking group in terms of size and subsidiaries with each having a presence in six and seven countrys respectively. This growth has made Kenya the largest beneficiary of the share of SSA trade, having the highest percentage of 35 per cent. A large part of this portion is from trade within the East Africa Community. The two banks have largely leveraged their expertise in agent and mobile banking services to expand to other countries by targeting the underbanked in the East African Community. Other banks with a bigger presence in terms of cross border banking include Standard Bank and Ecobank. While the number of crossborder subsidiaries of African banks has almost tripled since 2002, there are now 10 Pan African Banks with a presence in at least 10 SSA countries, and one with a presence in over 30 SSA countries. PwC’s economist James Loughridge attributes the fast growth to expansion of SSA markets between countries, that has seen banks follow corporate client abroad, and secondly to the global...

Are you curious what the most economically developed countries in Africa are? You don’t need to search on the internet because Insider Monkey has investigated it for you and published an article about this topic. When talking about certain countries and their development, it is of enormous importance to discuss their economy in order to get to know the overall picture.  In African case, this is even more important, because it will also help us to break the wrong picture of this amazing continent. n order to get the relevant data related to the economic development, the gross domestic product (GDP) is the most important indicator to look at.  In very simple words, this stands for the overall dollar value of everything that is produced in a certain period, and it is usually expressed in comparison to the previous period, making it easier to follow the potential development or possible decline. Later in the same article that explains what GDP actually is, there is also the explanation on how it is actually measured. Apparently, and if I may say, quite logically, this can be done only by economists, taking into consideration two aspects; what everyone earned in a year and what everyone spent. This is called income approach and expenditure method. Now without a further ado let’s see what Insider Monkey has investigated for us. We have picked two counties from their list. Tanzania is the first now. Nominal GDP is $45.899 billion. This country has been through a lot in the past...

The EAC Industrial Competitiveness Report 2017states that these growth rates, as measured by the Manufacturing Value Added (MVA) and manufacturing trade growth rates, fall short of some of the targets set in the EAC industrialisation policy. They are also below similar regional economic communities in sub-Saharan Africa, including Ecowas. Discounting by population size, the report shows that the EAC is still registering a low level of industrial production. And, based on the current growth rate, the region would only attain an MVA per capita level of about $87 in 2032, which is well below the goal of $258 set in the EAC Industrialisation Policy, and would not allow it to reach SADC’s production capacity of 2015. The report comes as the EAC Industrialisation Action Plan (2012-2017) comes to an end. It shows that MVA growth has slowed down in recent years, from 5.3 per cent between 2005 and 2010, to 4.6 per cent between 2010 and 2015, thus falling short of the 10-15 per cent annual growth rate projected in the EAC Industrialisation Policy and Strategy and below the sub-Saharan Africa average. Missed opportunities Analysis of the cotton and leather sub-sectors shows missed opportunities at the level of high value-added products in the value chain, such as for cotton apparel and leather footwear. Meanwhile, the analysis of industrial drivers has pointed to a number of key constraints to industrial competitiveness. Nonetheless, although EAC’s exports of the top regionally demanded products generally grew since 2010, it did not happen at the pace...

Three ships with 163.6 million bags of maize are among 23 vessels yet to dock at the Port of Mombasa as the facility experiences a huge ships traffic snarl up due election jitters and upsurge in the import of cereals. On Monday,  Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) said the off-take of cargo at the port dropped last week after truck owners withdrew their vehicle for fear of election related violence. But security officials in Mombasa and cargo owners said that no single case of either attack on trucks or theft of cargo passing through the northern corridor to or from the port of Mombasa. A spot check on list of vessels posted at the KPA website indicate that some of the vessels arrived in the country mid last month but they are yet to dock and offload. Other vessels that are yet to get space to dock are those with wheat, sugar and fertilizer and KPA attributed the ships snarl up to the increased volume of duty free maize. "Since the government waived maize import duty there has been an increase in the volume of maize. The other reason is election jitters," said KPA Public Affairs Manager Bernard Osero. He said that the port services were hampered after transport companies withdrew their trucks which transport over 94 percent of the total volume of the cargo from the port of Mombasa. The Port of Mombasa, the biggest harbor in East and Central Africa, handles cargo for the local market and other countries...