Customs officials are betting on the efficiency at the Taveta one-stop border post (OSBP) to boost transit cargo and increase cross-border trade. The Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) border post manager Daniel Nyambaka said the OSBP has already started paying dividend, saying trucks take 30 minutes to cross the border compared to up to five hours previously. Under an OSBP, customs and immigration procedures are undertaken by officials from the bordering countries housed under one roof. Mr Nyambaka said a joint verification of goods, which is also undertaken at the facility, making the process faster as traders no longer have to waste time moving from one post to the other. The OSBP has been operational for a year now. It is expected to boost transit cargo that pass through Mombasa Port to landlocked countries like Burundi and Rwanda, which have in recent years reduced Kenya-bound imports. Passengers who use the border post frequently said clearance was now faster. According to Jah Ramzan, a driver with Tahmeed Bus Company which operates from Mombasa to Dar-es-salaam, whereas they would spend more than five hours waiting for passengers to clear with immigration at both posts, the time has reduced to less than 15 minutes. “Initially we would park the bus at the Tanzania border and clear passengers then come to Kenya where we would repeat the exercise. But with all the officers under one roof, it takes one person about five minutes to clear,” he said. According to a recent report by the East...

Cargo clearance time at the new Taveta-Holili border post has been reduced significantly from eight hours to 15 minutes, improving intra-trade between Kenya and countries along the Central corridor. The Kenya Revenue Authority has attributed the faster service to the newly launched One Stop Border Post. Under the OSBP framework, officials from Kenya and Tanzania are stationed on either side of the two borders, reducing bottlenecks and avoiding duplication of clearance procedures for goods and people. Taveta customs and border control manager Daniel Nyambaka said the reduction in clearance time has increased the inflow of goods into Kenya, mainly cereals from Mozambique, Zambia and Tanzania. “Clearing agents had to walk for a long distance from the Tanzanian border to the Kenyan one to clear their goods. After this facility was brought up, it only takes 15 minutes to clear a truck heading to Kenya from Tanzania,” Nyambaka told journalists at the border on Saturday. Project manager Daniel Muturi said the previous process could take up to 33 hours to clear cargo trucks. Clearing of passengers now takes about 10 minutes from five hours. “A joint verification is done at the OSBP thus reducing the time,” Nyambaka said. “The facility will soon get scanners and a dog unit to ensure quick scrutiny of goods and people.” Tourism stakeholders and business people have welcomed the project launched on March 2. It became the first OSBP to be operationalised among the 15 OSBPs being set up regionally, funded by TradeMark Africa. “The initiative...

Partnerships, Unions, Associations and such other groupings (including marriage) which are formed for a common purpose, have key ingredients for success some of which include commitment and perseverance. Even when things do not seem to be working well and when difficulties arise, the option should not be to leave but rather find solutions to deal with the difficulties. In some circumstances, however, this is not an option. The United Kingdom decided by majority vote to leave the European Union (EU) as a sign of disgruntlement regarding a number of difficulties arising from their membership. I will not comment on options that could have been pursued but rather lessons that the EU could learn from the East African Community. While the EU has been around for four decades and has provided experiences that the EAC has learnt from, this time round, the EAC has something to teach the EU. The main issue for UK's departure from the EU was immigration. Their membership to the EU led to large migration of various EU nationals into the UK. It was felt that this was putting a strain on their economy and services such as health including job scarcity for UK citizens. In my research, l found various unofficial statistics regarding numbers of migrants with conservative estimates of about 5 per cent of the population constituting of migrants. Migration on its own should not be a problem because migrants bring benefits to the economy. By their membership to the EU, the UK should have...

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta urged African nations to re-engage with Israel as its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, tours the continent pursuing business deals and support in world forums. In turn, Netanyahu exhorted a group of some 80 Israeli executives in his entourage to explore new business ventures in Kenyatta’s country and help strengthen political alliances in Africa. The Israeli leader later told reporters that part of his Africa strategy is to pressure Palestinians to resume peace negotiations by demonstrating that Israel is breaking out of its political isolation. “Come closer, come and invest in Kenya,” Netanyahu told the Israelis in Nairobi who mixed with hundreds of Kenyan executives at a business forum to explore potential deals. “We have strategic interest, we have national and international interests, but I wouldn’t be asking you to do this if I didn’t think that you would benefit.” As the first Israeli prime minister in 29 years to visit sub-Saharan Africa, Netanyahu said he’s asking for political support from countries that have largely sided with Arab nations on resolutions critical of Israel in the United Nations and African Union. “My goal is to bring the Palestinians back to the negotiating table for direct talks and prevent them from automatically turning to the international community to gain support to pressure Israel to reach peace on their terms, without negotiations,” Netanyahu, 66, told reporters traveling with him on the four-country tour. ‘Head in Sand’ Kenyatta, 54, made his own trip to Jerusalem in February. He said on...

Regional governments have been urged to invest in capacity building of technocrats involved in international trade negotiations to enhance their skills and ensure they bargain for deals that will benefit citizens. According to Henry Kimera of Consumer Food Education Trust (Uganda), with commercial oil and gas deposits being confirmed in almost all the six East African Community (EAC) countries, government must sharpen negotiation skills of technocrats so that they are able to negotiate better deals to ensure maximum benefit for countries. Kimera added that most regional technocrats negotiate from a point of weakness since they are not well-versed with international trade negotiation and other economic agreements, including oil deals. He was speaking during a two-day regional conference on how EAC can achieve structural transformation and sustainable development that was organised by Southern and Eastern Africa Trade Information and Negotiations Institute (SEATINI-Uganda) in Kampala last week. The conference, under the theme “Achieving Structural Transformation in the context of Regional Integration and the EU-EAC EPA: Implications and way forward for the EAC” attracted government officials and the private sector players, as well as East African Legislative Assembly MPs, and academia from across the region. Commenting on the EPAs, Kimera said EAC governments alone cannot guarantee the success of the deals, the reason why other stakeholders should be involved in the negotiation process. “We are the consumers, we work with the citizens, and know what’s best for them and the challenges they face mostly. This is why the signing and the ratification of...

Britain referundum decision to exit the European Union under the so-called Brexit has no long-term consequences on East African Community, Robert Mathu, the executive director of Capital Market Authority in Rwanda, has said. Before and after the voting, the Pound Sterling continued to lose value compared to the last 30 years. The capital markets in UK also incurred losses and have lost value that has made the future of EU uncertain thus the departure of the UK. Mathu said some of the effects might reach the regions that have an economic relation with Britain and the British investment. “Brexit is a problem for the whole world since the reason as to why most countries come together for economic purposes, is to allow investment and businesses to freely operate in the member countries,” he said. Mathu and other analysists worldwide, confirm that the first worry of the Brexit is capitalist countries will spread the ideas of exit making globalisation a major priority while other countries want to put extra security on the immigrants and control the movement. “It will affect the globalisation and the citizens and investors who have been travelling to the UK will encounter problems. Normally, you would find people traveling to UK and other countries with ease,” Mathu said. He added that Brexit will not affect the payment of the $400 million that Rwanda got on the Eurobond market since it got the loan in Dollar currency and not a Pound currency. EAC remains uncertain Mathu said the...

Windhoek – It may be too early to calculate the potential damage to SADC, and Africa, from the unprecedented earthquake that ripped through the European Union – following the exit of the United Kingdom – and the seismic waves of political and economic uncertainty that are unfolding. Until now the EU has been widely held as the world’s best functioning political economic union model, to which even SADC and other African regional blocs had looked up, as they embark on regional integration. What is becoming clear though is the fact that just like with many US companies who found themselves with no contingency plans for an EU without the UK, the 15 Southern African Development Community (SADC) member states, as well as the rest of Africa, are now scrambling to assess the post-shocks and establish contingency plans. And there are serious implications for SADC and the rest of the continent. To start with, this past week Professor Ian Scoones penned an opinion paper that the European Union (EU) Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with SADC that was inked on 10 June in Kasane, Botswana, has to be renegotiated, especially for SADC countries to eventually have free trade access to the United Kingdom, or Great Britain, that is no longer a member of the                      EU. “Now, all these arrangements have to be renegotiated bilaterally with each of the other 162 World Trade Organisation members. It will be a slow and costly readjustment,...

Today’s indicator figure is 8,481,740,000  8,481,740,000 of what? 8,481,740,000 ($8.5 billion USD) is the total amount in current US dollars that is provided as Official Development Assistance to countries in the East African Community (EAC) in the most recent year reported.  What do you mean by Official Development Assistance? According to the World Bank, Official Development Assistance (ODA) consists of “disbursements of loans made on concessional terms and grants by official agencies of the members of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC), by multilateral institutions, and by non-DAC countries to promote economic development and welfare in countries and territories in the DAC list of ODA recipients”. In other words this money is grants and low interest rate loans from donor countries and institutions (think UN, World Bank, GIZ in Germany, USAID in the US, African Development Bank, and so on) to less developed countries like those in the EAC. This figure does not include personal or religious charitable donations which would certainly increase the figure of financial support to EAC nations. How does this compare to other regions of the world? In the history of ODA tracking, the most a single country ever received was Iraq in 2005 taking in $22.0 billion USD with the next highest being Nigeria in 2006 with $11.4 billion USD in support. Beyond that, recent years show that Sub-Saharan African countries receive the most aid assistance of any region and three EAC countries, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda were listed as the top ten recipients of foreign aid...

We would like to take this opportunity to welcome the two governments’ initiatives to cement bilateral cooperation on various fields, including revenue collection and cargo handling, among others. Tanzanians have attached great importance to President Kagame’s visit as it continues taking the two countries to new heights of bilateral cooperation. We, therefore, would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the two leaders for this landmark decision in which the two countries will move to another level of cooperation by incorporating centralised revenue collection system, opening up the Tanzania Port Authority (TPA) to Rwanda and establishment of Rwanda Inland Container Depot (ICD) in Dar es Salaam. In a world that has recently been hit by the Brexit effects, which have sent some of the world’s economies tumbling following UK referendum, in which people voted to leave the European Union, it is heartening to see that unity remains to be the East African spirit. This spirit of cooperation has set high standard bar in the region. While some economies as we have seen recently, have faced some challenges, compelling them to think of disintegration or even conducting referendum to the effect, the two leaders have been exemplary by demonstration to the world that countries can go far if they remain united. We would like to echo what President John Magufuli said when welcoming President Kagame that the latter advised him on the need to establish a single revenue collection centre that will be handling and keeping track of all government’s earnings....

East African countries have been asked to reject the impending trade deal with the European Union. Kenya and the four other nations of the EAC are required to ratify the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) before the end of the month, gradually grating unlimited market access for exports from the EU. While Kenya reluctantly signed the accord in 2014, the agreement, which the civil society and the United Nations have cited as dangerous, is yet to be approved by Parliament. “We must critically analyse what this agreement means for the EAC, it is dangerous for our trade,” said Nathan Irumba, the executive director of the Southern and Eastern Africa Trade Information and Negotiations Institute (Seatini). He was speaking at the close of a trade conference seeking to examine the impact of the EPA on the East African countries. EAC has been negotiating with the EU as a trading bloc. Failure to sign up would mean steep taxes on commodities such as flowers produced in Kenya, which is classified as a lower-middle-income economy. Kenyan flower exports were heavily impacted when the EU slapped heavy taxes of up to 12 per cent some two years ago after the lapse of the preceding agreement, forcing President Uhuru Kenyatta to sign the agreement. Other EAC nations are classified as Least Developed Countries and would still qualify for preferential treatment in trading with the rest of the richer World. The impending exit of the United Kingdom from the EU, commonly cited as Brexit, has already reduced...