L-R: Arena and Ward are opposed to the EPA trade deal, saying it favours European markets against EAC industrial development. / Nadege Imbabazi. In recent weeks, a common topic in discussion of East African Community’s future has been a trade deal between the bloc and the European Union. The Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), which has been under negotiation since 2007, seeks to create a deal giving EAC products a duty- and quota-free access to the EU market. However, there has been some hesitance among several East African countries, who fear that the trade deal could adversely affect the bloc’s goals of industrialisation. The New Times’ Collins Mwai caught up with two European Union Members of Parliament, Marie Arena and Julie Ward, who are opposed to the trade deal, saying, in its current form, it is not good for East African countries and their emerging industries. Excerpts;- East African Heads of States recently asked for an additional three months to consider the EU-EAC trade deal before agreeing on a unanimous decision on the way forward. What is your take on the Economic Partnership Agreement? We think this kind of agreement is unfair for the region. Europe has pushed a hard negotiation and Europe has taken Kenya as a leader as they are the only ones with key interests in the agreement. Kenya is not a least developed country to be able to access the European Market, which is not the case for Tanzania, Uganda and Burundi, who have access to the...

Deputy President William Ruto on Tuesday asked the US to stop issuing travel advisories against parts of Kenya and other East African countries. The DP said the travel advisories have hurt tourism yet terror attacks in Kenya are similar to those Europe and America have suffered. Ruto said strife in neighbouring countries should not give the US reason to give a blanket ban. However, there is no ban, only an advisory over parts of Lamu and areas bordering Somalia. The Deputy President spoke in New York during the East African Heads of State and CEOs roundtable. He urged the US to swiftly introduce direct flights to the region. “You have more legitimate reason to invest in East Africa. We have the requisite infrastructure. What we need are direct flights to make it easy for investors to get there,” Ruto said. The DP joined several East African leaders at the meeting, including Presidents Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and Rwanda’s Paul Kagame and Ethiopian PM Hailemariam Desalegn. The leaders asked American companies to invest in the region, saying East Africa has a comprehensive set of bankable infrastructure projects. “East Africa is the place to invest. It is the place to be. Security is good. But you should stop this travel advisory issues,” Museveni said.s Kagame said the region has plenty of areas for investment, some untapped, for the private sector. He said leaders have facilitate movement of people through a single-entry visa. Desalegn said the region is developing infrastructure that links the...

The East African Community wants to remove all non-tariff trade barriers in an effort to cut down on transportation time and reduce the cost of moving products and services between the six member countries — Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and South Sudan. Non-tariff barriers include road blocks along highways meant to check issues unrelated to paying taxes or custom duties. These include checking the weight of goods on trucks and trailers, identifying the type of goods being transported, and checking for identification of traders. They also include traffic police checking the condition of vehicles. On Jan. 14, 2016, the East African Community members agreed to refrain from introducing new non-tariff barriers, and also on start reducing existing road blocks and weighbridges, among others. All the countries have so far co-operated, but now they want all barriers removed. The 20 barriers between Mombasa and Kampala have been reduced to about nine. There are 14 barriers remaining between Mombasa and Kigali, Rwanda. From Dar-es-Salaam to Burundi there are more than 10 barriers. A process meant to eliminate all non-tariff barriers has kicked off with blessings from all member countries, said Silver Ojakol, Uganda’s Commissioner for External Trade, at a Sept. 2 press conference following the East Africa Business Council meeting in Kampala. A joint technical committee has been set up to help identify and eliminate non-tariff barriers. Ojakol did not provide a deadline. Removing non-tariff barriers is meant to reduce the time taken to transport goods from coastal ports to members states, according to trade ministry officials from the member countries. Apart from Kenya and Tanzania, the rest of the East...

DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "African Infrastructure Tracker - Tanzania" report to their offering. Tanzania is one of the most rapidly growing economies in Sub-Saharan Africa, mainly driven by agriculture, banking, industry, construction, services, energy, mining, and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sectors. It is an active member of the East African Community (EAC), the Southern African Development Community (SADC), and the Open Government Partnership (OGP). Significant efforts are underway to upgrade and develop new infrastructure in Tanzania to enhance its trade activities and facilitate better access to high-quality living standards. The Government of Tanzania has introduced an enhanced private participation to facilitate rapid developments in the roads, rail, ports, airports, ICT, and social infrastructure of the country in the next 5 years. Source: Business Wire

Friday, September 23, 2016 Sandler, Travis & Rosenberg Trade Report U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker hosted Sept. 20 a roundtable in New York with East African heads of state aimed at accelerating regional integration through practical and actionable private sector driven proposals in the areas of infrastructure, agribusiness technology, and travel and tourism. The Department of Commerce indicates that the East African leaders agreed to support these proposals, which are viewed as critical steps to expanding the bilateral trade and investment relationships between their respective economies and the United States. East African countries represented at the roundtable included Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya. In the area of infrastructure, for example, East African leaders and Secretary Pritzker agreed to work together to address challenges in building large-­scale infrastructure with the goal of convening an infrastructure summit with U.S. investors and companies across the infrastructure value chain focused on specific projects in the critical areas of electricity, transport and water infrastructure. According to the DOC, the roundtable built on the achievements from the CEO regional integration roundtable that Secretary Pritzker co-chaired with Rwandan President Kagame in January 2016 during her trip to Africa with members of the President’s Advisory Council on Doing Business in Africa (PAC­-DBIA). The DOC also announced this week the appointment of 23 private sector leaders to the PAC­-DBIA, which is tasked with advising the president on strengthening commercial engagement between the U.S. and Africa. Specifically, the council provides information, analysis and recommendations that address the following issues. -...

DEVELOPING countries are set to dump controversial trade agreements with the European Union en masse following the Brexit vote, leading economists have said. Up and coming nations in Africa and the Caribbean will no longer see any worth in being tied to dictatorial Brussels policies now that the UK is no longer part of the bloc. And they could be about to torpedo the EU’s roll-out of Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA), which are designed to create a free-trade zone between Europe, Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific. That is the view of top academics Christopher Stevens and Jane Kennan, from the Overseas Development Institute, who say Brexit has given many governments an excuse to pull out of the deeply unpopular scheme. Tanzania has already ditched a proposed deal between Brussels and the East Africa Community (ECA) countries, citing the “turmoil” engulfing the EU following the Brexit vote and the skewed terms of the agreement. The country’s Foreign Affairs permanent secretary Aziz Mlima blasted: “Our experts have established that the way it has been crafted, the EPA will not benefit local industries in East Africa. Instead it will lead to their destruction as developed countries are likely to dominate the market.” And now the two trade experts have predicted that a number of other African and Caribbean countries will follow suit, because for most Commonwealth countries Britain is by far the biggest market for their exports. In an essay on the future of Britain’s trade policy post-Brexit, the pair wrote: “Although...

The proposed Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between the East African Community and the European Union is not ideal for the region and could stifle the infant industries if passed as it is, some European Union Members of parliament told The New Times, yesterday. The agreement, they said,  could pose a risk to regional economies as their infant industries will face unfair competition due to products from the European Union. Marie Arena, a European Parliamentarian, told The New Times that the agreement was unfair as it is and, if enforced in its current form, it could promote unfair competition in the region. She pointed out that the European Union had pushed a hard bargain in the deal largely by ‘arm twisting’ Kenya which risked to lose access to the European market. “I think this kind of agreement is unfair for the East African region. Europe is pushing a very hard satance and they have taken Kenya as a leader. Kenya is the only one that has interest in this trade agreement because they are not a least developed country. They (Kenya) need the agreement to maintain access to the European market,” she said. There were fears that if the deal is not signed by September 30, 2016, Kenya could lose its access to the European Union market as it is not grouped among Least Developed Countries like her partners in the bloc who are granted duty free access to the EU for all products, except arms and ammunition. Arena, who is...

On Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker hosted the East African Heads of State roundtable in New York City. Held alongside the United Nations General Assembly meeting and the U.S.-Africa Business Forum, the roundtable brought together East African leaders to discuss business development, investment opportunities, and economic growth in their respective countries. Hailemariam Desalegn, Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, President of Uganda, Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda, and William Ruto, Deputy President of Kenya participated, along with multiple U.S. and African CEOs from companies doing business in the region. The roundtable built on the achievements from the CEO regional integration roundtable Secretary Pritzker co-chaired with President Kagame in January 2016 during her trip to Africa with members of the President’s Advisory Council on Doing Business in Africa (PAC-DBIA). Secretary Pritzker facilitated yesterday’s discussion aimed at accelerating regional integration through practical and actionable private sector driven proposals in the areas of travel and tourism, agribusiness technology, and infrastructure. The East African leaders agreed to support these proposals, which are critical steps to expanding the bilateral trade and investment relationships between their respective countries and with the United States. The impact of the travel and tourism sector on the economic and social development of a country can be enormous. Given this, Secretary Pritzker facilitated an agreement among the East African leaders and the U.S. Departments of Commerce and State to launch an annual rotating U.S.-East Africa Travel and Tourism Dialogue to promote East Africa as a top global travel...

Africa’s immense economic potential, increasing integration into global markets, expanding infrastructure, and demographic boom provide a remarkable opportunity to enhance U.S. trade and investment ties across the continent.  African countries are tackling economic challenges by diversifying their economies, streamlining regional and global economic cooperation, and innovating to overcome barriers to trade and investment.  The United States is committed to being a partner in these efforts, including through initiatives such as the Doing Business in Africa Campaign, Power Africa, and Trade Africa.  Taking into account these and other efforts, at the 2014 U.S.-Africa Business Forum (USABF) co-hosted by the U.S. Department of Commerce (Commerce) and Bloomberg Philanthropies, $33 billion in commitments, including $14 billion in private sector deals and commitments, were made to support economic growth across Africa.  Over the last two years, Commerce has tracked nearly $15 billion in additional private sector deals reached between U.S. and African partners, and from 2008 to 2015 U.S. direct investment in Africa rose from $37 billion to $64 billion on a historic-cost basis - an increase of more than 70 percent.  That’s more than double the total global official development assistance that went to Africa in 2015.  ‎Today’s U.S.-Africa Business Forum builds upon the partnerships created in 2014 with new commitments to mobilize an additional $9.1 billion in trade and investment to support the development of Africa’s consumer goods, construction, energy, healthcare, manufacturing, telecommunications, and transportation sectors. The U.S. Government has Expanded its Presence and Economic Engagement in Africa Since 2008, Commerce has doubled...

Clearing your closet of last season’s gently worn clothes and donating them to an aid group probably makes you feel pretty good. After all, you may be helping someone in need and breathing life into items that might otherwise decompose in a landfill. But a number of countries in East Africa are fed up with the onslaught of secondhand items they receive from Western nonprofits and wholesalers, and want to ban such imports altogether. In 2014, a handful of East African countries imported more than $300 million worth of secondhand clothing from the United States and other wealthy countries. The used items have created a robust market in East Africa and thereby a decent amount of jobs. But experts say the vast amount of these imports have devastated local clothing industries and led the region to rely far too heavily on the West. In March, the East African Community, which is made up of Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda, proposed banning all imported used clothing and shoes by 2019. The goal is to stop relying on imports from rich nations, boost local manufacturing and create new jobs. However, the law is unlikely to pass. There is resistance from the U.S., which unloads hordes of secondhand clothes all over the world, and from sellers in East Africa whose livelihood depends on these shipments, as well as from experts who think an outright ban won’t be enough for these countries to restore production at home. Proponents of the ban say it...