The Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCTA) seeks to integrate African economies and pull together a market with a consumer spending power of $1.4 trillion by 2020, and increase intra-African trade by $35 billion by 2022. While some countries may have issues with the AfCTA, most governments are behind it and momentum will continue to build to make it a reality. AfCTA is viewed as a game- changer that will allow the free movement of goods and services across the continent, allowing African businesses to tap deeper into the sizeable and growing markets. However, there are a few risks that ought to be managed going forward. The first has to do with the financing of infrastructure that will interconnect the continent. Africa has an annual infrastructure financing deficit of about $93 billion. An obvious next step will be the business of raising funds to build the infrastructure Africa needs because without it, AfCTA will remain a good idea with no lived benefits on the ground. Given concerns with rising debt levels of African countries, coupled with queries on the management of public funds, there is a risk that AfCTA can facilitate a debt binge to finance infrastructure in a context of poor institutional controls and capacity to ensure projects are efficiently financed and developed. African governments have to manage this by ensuring infrastructure plans are financed responsibly, that money reaches the projects and that they are completed in a timely manner. Without these controls, the sheer scale of financing that...

The East African Community is pushing for an amendment to the Customs Management Act to allow Customs officials to get advance information regarding goods being moved across national borders ahead of their arrival on carrier vessel. This would enable Customs officials to detect high-risk consignments and take appropriate action, and expedite clearance of legitimate cargo. Section 24(1)(a) of the East African Community Customs Management Act requires shipping lines to submit their vessel manifest at least 24 hours before their arrival at a port. Approval The Council of Ministers has approved the amendment for submission to the East African Legislative Assembly. It will then be forwarded to heads of state for approval and enforced by the Customs Directorate. It is expected that the law will curtail trade in illegal goods across partner states as authorities will have to co-operate and share information on money laundering, drug, arms and human trafficking, dealings in counterfeits and infringement of intellectual property rights. This will be the third time the Act is being amended since 2004, when East African Community Customs Management came into force. Source: The East African

In 2017, 37 per cent of Kenya’s exports went to an African country, down from  40 per cent the previous year. This caused a near flat growth in export earnings, particularly from East Africa which accounts for more than half of Africa’s total trade with Kenya. These declining trade levels have spurred interest in the establishment of policies and structures that can boost intra-Africa trade. Trade Mark East Africa (TMA) has been working with East African Community member states on trade facilitation, with the goal of establishing borderless commerce. Business Daily’s Laban Cliff Onserio talked to TMA’s chief executive, Frank Matsaert, on the future of regional trade and what can be done to expand it. Your organisation has been supporting trade and investment in East Africa for more than 10 years and is about to go into Strategy II. What do you have to show for your efforts in phase 1 and what should we expect from this latest initiative?  Our big aim is to encourage job creation through increased trade. I would like to go for a target of about one million jobs. We want to increase trade in the region by reducing the cost of trade. What is different about this latest phase is that we are going to do some pilots to bring in anchor investment aimed at diversifying exports. The potential for Kenya to attract investment in labour-intensive manufacturing is strong so we want to help that process as part of the President’s Big Four Agenda initiatives....

Dar es Salaam — Delay in port clearance of 70 buses worth $18.2 million (about Sh41.1 billion at the prevailing exchange rate) owned by Usafiri Dar es Salaam Rapid Transport (Udart) is due to lack of official communication with the regulator, The Citizen has learnt. Speaking to The Citizen in a phone interview on Wednesday, Dar es Salaam Rapid Transit (Dart) public relations manager William Gatambi said that his office was unaware of the matter. "We are unaware of the matter. Udart did not ask us for the clearance permit," he said. He went further to explain, contrary to their contract with Dart, Udart did not even consult the former about the purchasing of the18-meter "articulated" buses, which were meant to reduce the challenge of overcrowding in the city. But Udart Head of communications Mr Deus Bugaywa is positive that their consignment would be cleared by June because of a high end meeting that will happen on that month. "The country expects to host the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP)'s annual Sustainable Transport Summit organized in partnership with the Volvo Research and Education Foundations in June. I don't think the government will let its guests witness the current situation," Mr Bugaywa said. Things are not good on the grounds, when passengers board Dar's rapid buses in the busiest routes in the city, in peak hours, it is rare to find an open seat or a place to stand comfortably as they are always full. The problem is acute...

Speaking during the launch of the Presidential Infrastructure Champion Initiative workshop, East African Community and Northern Corridor Development Cabinet Minister Peter Munya notes that African states are underutilizing the vast resources in the continent. “The level of cross-border infrastructure especially the modes of transport is a challenge. We also have technological challenges that lead to most of the African projects being outsourced from other continents. There is also uncertainty in the political climate that affects long-term investments in the continent.” “These challenges affect the tapping of resources in Africa especially in reference to the population of 1.2 billion people that offer a very compact market for most of the goods and services being produced,” the CS said. Munya, however, said with the political goodwill shown by African Presidents with the agreement of the Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA) by 44 African countries in March this year, there was hope in the realization of continental development. The CS also expressed confidence in East Africa regional development and referred to the Lamu Port, South Sudan, Ethiopia Transport program (LAPSSET) which he said is 48 per cent complete, as an example of regional growth. Munya further said the pipeline connecting Kenya and Uganda was set to be discussed during the Northern Corridor Summit later this month, with plans of re-launching the project being on course. “I can assure that the LAPSSET program is on course and major milestones have been achieved by the three countries.” “The issue on the pipeline with Uganda is almost...

The average dwell time for local containers for the last five years at the Dar es Salaam Port has missed the five-day target set by the Big Results Now (BRN), the Annual Performance Monitoring Report 2017 shows. The report, Promoting Efficiency in Transport, Logistics Value Chain and Trade in the Region for April 2018, revealed that the average dwell time in 2013 was 9.94 days, 7.74 days in 2014, 3.58 days in 2015, 3.73 days in 2016 and 5.58 days in 2017. “This shows that according to BRN’s target of five days, the local dwell time in 2015 and 2016 met the target, but there was an increase in 2017,” according to the report. The average transit container dwell time continued to decrease from 2013 to 2016, but records shows that it increased hugely in 2017. The averages recorded are 12.1 days, 11.7 days, 8.84 days, 8.82 days and 12.08 days from 2013 to 2017 respectively. The report suggests that a brief survey should be conducted to find out what caused an increase on average for transit dwell time in 2017 and why the set target has been unattainable. When comparing 2016 and 2017, an increase of 3.26 days was observed, which is equivalent to a 37 per cent increase. According to the report, the rise in dwell time may have been caused by increased transit cargo at the Dar es Salaam Port in 2017, delays caused by duties payment under the Single Customs Territory (SCT) as well as extended...

Arusha — The East African Community (EAC) aviation body has been voted the second best in the world in spearheading safety and security enforcements. The Civil Aviation Safety and Security Oversight Agency (Cassoa) earned the slot after being voted by the International Civil Aviation Organization (Icao). The Entebbe-based institution of the EAC emerged second in the votes on performance involving 17 other similar aviation oversight bodies across the world. "Cassoa was voted as the second best safety and security aviation agency in the world", affirmed the organization's acting executive director Emile Ngunza Arao over the weekend. He told the EAC secretary general Liberat Mfumukeko who visited the headquarters of the facility that the organization was doing well in discharging its duties despite a host of challenges. Cassoa was established in 2007 as one of the institutions of the Community and mandated to make air transportation in the region safe, efficient and profitable. It was also tasked to adopt common policies for the development of civil air transport in the region comprising of six partner states. Additionally, it was mandated to harmonise civil aviation rules and regulations and coordinate maintenance of high security. The safety and security oversight obligations and responsibilities fall under the EAC Treaty and the Chicago Convention which established Icao, a specialized agency of the UN. The Convention established rules of airspace, aircraft registration and safety and details the rights of the signatories in relation to air travel. As of November last year, the Convention, revised eight times...

Following its launch late last year, US-based technology and trade firm Kountable is partnering with SMEs within the East Africa region in its bid to secure early traction. Kountable has already signed an agreement with the Kenya National Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KNCCI) to open the platform to its SME members to ensure their businesses do not fail in supply by matching them to other companies offering the same goods and facilitating the trade. The company is focused on ICT, healthcare, industrial and energy equipment, and plans to cover other verticals. "At the end of the day, it is how quickly you can make goods trade faster and make transactions in the supply chain easier," said Bramuel Mwalo, Kenyan Country Manager at Kountable. Speaking at the Global Trade Review Africa conference in Nairobi, Mwalo said, "The supply chain trade in Africa is at US$3 trillion. Banks in trade finance only finance thirty percent of that. Some of the SMEs do not have collateral or the power to move supply goods from offshore countries." "These are the reasons why banks and financial institutions are unable to finance them. They do not take performance risk," he added. Kountable makes heavy use of cleaned data to ensure that SMEs fit the financing profile. They then pay upfront for the supplies and ensure they are successful. Mwalo said the lack of data in Africa represents a challenge to companies trying to establish a strong credit history, effectively locking them out of finance. "We...

Since the start of the new millennium, sub-Saharan African economies have undergone a dramatic boom. This surge has been marked by rapidly increasing trade and investment on continent – sometimes described as the “new scramble for Africa,”, which has seen competition between the US, European nations and China. China, however, leads on many fronts, and its sharpening global competition with the U.S. is likewise playing out on the African continent. For the US, imperial tensions have been expressed most recently in the growing trade war with China. But China’s rise as a global power has accelerated this rivalry for several years. Beyond a struggle for mere access to resources, imperialism is the competitive drive for control over resources and markets. Africa is a critical component of China’s strategic objectives for economic growth and hegemony. China’s expansion across the continent has been dramatic, from trade to extraction to manufacturing. Chinese companies are responsible for approximately 12 percent of the continent’s industry, at a value of around $500 billion. In 2012, China became Africa’s largest trading partner and U.S.-Africa trade began to decline, with the U.S. making a sharp turn away from African oil imports to domestic production. Jobs created by Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) in 2016 doubled from the year before and are more than triple the number created by U.S. investment. But as Brookings describes in a recent report, “China’s role on the African continent has been defined by the financing of more than 3,000, largely critical, infrastructure projects…. China has extended more...

Dar es Salaam — The average dwell time for local containers for the last five years at the Dar es Salaam Port has missed the five-day target set by the Big Results Now (BRN), the Annual Performance Monitoring Report 2017 shows. The report, Promoting Efficiency in Transport, Logistics Value Chain and Trade in the Region for April 2018, revealed that the average dwell time in 2013 was 9.94 days, 7.74 days in 2014, 3.58 days in 2015, 3.73 days in 2016 and 5.58 days in 2017. "This shows that according to BRN's target of five days, the local dwell time in 2015 and 2016 met the target, but there was an increase in 2017," according to the report. The average transit container dwell time continued to decrease from 2013 to 2016, but records shows that it increased hugely in 2017. The averages recorded are 12.1 days, 11.7 days, 8.84 days, 8.82 days and 12.08 days from 2013 to 2017 respectively. The report suggests that a brief survey should be conducted to find out what caused an increase on average for transit dwell time in 2017 and why the set target has been unattainable. When comparing 2016 and 2017, an increase of 3.26 days was observed, which is equivalent to a 37 per cent increase. According to the report, the rise in dwell time may have been caused by increased transit cargo at the Dar es Salaam Port in 2017, delays caused by duties payment under the Single Customs Territory (SCT)...