Looking at the fact that Ethiopia has just launched a modern urban rail service cutting across Addis Ababa, I caught up with the feeling and indeed thoughts of the Standard gauge railway in East Africa. Many Ugandans were amazed during what was to be called the Standard gauge railway by the leaders of the East African Community. In the same way, many Ugandans were quite excited about the signing and promise of the commencement and construction of this railway. Some of the countries in the EAC have commenced the construction as some have not yet started. One of such nations is called Uganda. They came up with all amazing speeches and indeed on promises of its commencement this year (2015). The major concern here is mostly in Uganda as Kenya has taken a few steps ahead and will be able to reach the agreed upon deadline. Besides that, Kenya has managed to purchase the train to cater effectively for the needs of their society and the East African community ambitions. In fact the construction of about 609km-long rail line started in October 2013 and is expected to be completed by December 2017. With this in mind; it’s expected to create 60 new jobs for a Kilometer of the rail line or with an estimate of 30,000 jobs are expected to be created during the construction. This in turn reduces unemployment to the youth engrained in deer poverty planning to waste time in sports betting even though the government is milking...

What are the key elements in your management style as a manager? My door is always open to anyone, which works in line with the open and transparent approach at TMA. I am a very flexible and reachable but I am also a firm manager. As a manager, I ensure a very good work-life balance with responsiveness to the personal needs of staff as a way of reducing staff turnover. How do you rate the performance of Ugandan products in the East African Community (EAC) market? Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi are in an unfortunate but unique position as compared to their counterparts in the region because they are landlocked. So, Mombasa or Dar es Salaam Ports are critical for our survival. But increasingly, the markets of South Sudan and DR Congo have become critical because it’s where we export a lot.  For Uganda, the biggest cost goes to transport. The studies we have conducted indicate that for instance for a shirt that comes into Uganda at Shs10,000 at least 30-40% of the cost is on transport. Even when you import a container from China for instance, the cost of transporting the container from China to Mombasa is not as high as that from Mombasa to Kampala. So the delays along the corridors like the Northern corridor were adding a lot to the overall cost but of late we see a reduction in costs of trade across borders. Before, it used to take an average of 18 to 21 days for...

CHINA plans to develop a free trade area with African countries - to increase the continent’s exports to the far-east nation and offset the huge trade imbalance, a top official has said. Prof Hu Hailiang, the Vice-Chairman of the Social Sciences of the Ministry of Education in China, told reporters in Dar es Salaam yesterday that the envisaged free trade area falls under its new fiveyear development plan slated to begin this year. The free trade area agreement is expected to increase exports of goods from Africa to offset huge trade imbalance between the continent and China, he said “China will negotiate with individual African countries and regional blocks to develop free trade area agreement to promote exchange of goods and services and investments,” he said at a press conference organised after a seminar on new China. China’s policymakers are compiling the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020), whose proposal was adopted at the Fifth Session of the 18th Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee in October last year. The new five-year national socio-economic development will charter an explicit blueprint for the country’s development over the next five years - and provide more opportunities for the development of other countries. China is Africa’s largest trading partner, surpassing the United States in 2009. According to Brookings Education Institution, in 2012, China’s trade with Africa reached $198.5 billion, while U.S.-African trade in 2012 was $99.8 billion. China’s trade with Africa is only 5 per cent of its global trade total. More than 80...

KAMPALA, UGANDA - Most of us dread sitting for examination papers. The East African Community (EAC) at Summit level of Heads of State should be no exception. There is a big problem in the neighbourhood. This year the EAC will have to sit the paper on ‘relevance of good governance in the integration process’, because the Burundi situation is getting out of hand. Failure will be a huge setback in the aspirations for a Common Market. Success however, will make the EAC that much stronger and more competitive as a investment destination. Burundi is tittering at the edge of an abyss. Foreign investor confidence is being tested. Uncertainity does not attract money. It simply scares it away, but the Burundi opposing parties remain stuck in their uncompromising positions. This has put the rest of the EAC in a muddle. Worse still, all efforts at peace-making have been soundly rebuffed, including the manhandling of EAC Secretary General, Amb. Richard Sezibera last October. The African Union has fared no better. The Burundi government was scalding in December when the AU mooted a force of 5000. There is nothing as frustrating as being caught up in a situation that is not of your own making. Both Rwanda and Tanzania have had to take in refugess, which  puts an added strain on their national budgets. A quick response came from Germany, who offered $18 million in appreciation of Tanzania’s efforts to handle the influx. Other help is hard to come by. The United Nations High...

The dream of a unified African market took a giant leap towards reality following the signing in Cairo, Egypt, in June 2015 of a Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFTA), bringing together EAC, COMESA & SADC blocs. With South Africa and Egypt, two of Africa's leading economies, driving the 26-country TFTA participants, experts are now advocating for, among others, good governance and prudent macroeconomic policies to reap the full benefits of the agreement. For several years, experts from the three largest trading blocs in Africa — the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the East African Community (EAC) and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) — were locked in intense negotiations over a free trade agreement whose aim is to bring about a unified and liberalised single market. The talks finally bore fruit on 10 June 2015 when 26 African countries signed the Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFTA) agreement in Cairo, Egypt. "The conditions [to form the TFTA] have never been better Under this agreement, all the 26 countries, with a combined gross domestic product (GDP) of about $1.3 trillion and a population of 565 million, will merge into a common market and eliminate tariff lines and trade barriers. The participating countries will benefit from liberalised intra-regional trade, which is expected to boost the flow of goods and services. When implemented, the free trade area will constitute about half of Africa's GDP, half of its population and will cover a combined landmass of 17 million square kilometres, about the...

Arusha — Embattled Burundi President Pierre Nkurunziza may be stopped from assuming the chair of the East African Community (EAC) Heads of State Summit if a petition filed by human rights groups in Africa is given a nod by relevant regional bodies during its hearing which kicks off here today. The Pan African Lawyers Union (Palu) and other petitioners from within and outside the region want the Burundi leader stopped from taking over the rotating chairmanship of EAC until he resolves the political, human rights and humanitarian crisis in his country. The petition was submitted to the East African Legislative Assembly (Eala) and is set for hearing at the EAC headquarters beginning this morning at a time the mediation efforts among the warring parties in Burundi are yet to bear fruit and with the humanitarian crisis there worsening. President Nkurunziza, whose country is one of the EAC partner state, is expected to assume the Chair of the regional Heads of State during the coming Summit, whose date and venue is yet to be announced. He will take over from President John Magufuli. According to the EAC Treaty, the tenure of office of the Chairperson of the Summit is one year and the office of the Chairperson shall be held in rotation among the partner states. Currently there are five the others being Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya. Subject to the provisions of the Treaty, the Summit shall determine its own procedure, including that for convening its meetings for the rotation of...

For a long time, the 54 countries of Africa have been a patchwork of different languages, laws, and currencies, making travel (let alone business) on the continent quite an endeavor. Indeed, for businesses, for a long time being in Africa has required moving from country to country, which too often means more than just navigating a map and changing money—it includes meeting different standards, understanding different laws, and paying different tariffs at every (and there are many) border crossings. At the same time, African countries, many landlocked and small, face unique challenges in being able to scale industries and access markets. How might Rwanda export its coffee if it has no access to the ocean? How might a line of countries best collaborate to create a railroad or road spanning their collective land for the benefit of all? How might countries with different advantages integrate into global value chains? And so, in 1991, 51 heads of state and government signed the Abuja Treaty, which established a roadmap towards an African Economic Community to be completed by 2028. In 2013, the African Union, created Agenda 2063—a vision and action plan—which, among other objectives, sets out to better integrate the continent to circumvent and even knock down these obstacles to trade, investment, and overall economic growth. Thus, the African continent has been creating and fostering “regional economic communities” with the aim of facilitating trade and eliminating economic bottlenecks. Eight of these communities, as seen in Figure 1, are the “building blocks” of...

Logistics company Spedag Kenya will spend Sh137.8 million ($1,346,074) to develop the Malaba Railway Yard into an intermodal cargo transfer facility, a first in the region. Half of the total project funding, Sh68.9 million ($673,037), is a reimbursable contribution, coming from Logistics Innovation for Trade, managed by Trade Mark East Africa. The 18 month project, expected to begin this February and be completed in June 2017, will improve storage, handling, and consolidating of cargo from rail to road and vice versa, to reduce costs of transport logistics for cargo. “The project will not only reduce transit times for cargos transiting through the Malaba Railway Yard, but reduce the transportation costs along the Northern Corridor route – the target being a 20 per cent reduction in transit times between Mombasa and Nimule by the project’s end,” said David Mitchel, the fund manager in an email interview. He said the project's funding is awaiting the board's approval. The project will enable movement of cargo by rail from Mombasa port, then later the cargo can be loaded to trucks for onward transportation to other destinations in EAC, he said. It will link Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan to the port through rail and road. Intermodal freight transportation is movement of freight using more than one means, and all parts of the transportation network are effectively connected and coordinated. Source: The Star

Transport costs have reduced by up to 40 per cent in the last four years across the East African Community (EAC), a new report has revealed. According to the 2015 East Africa Logistics Performance Survey, improvement of Mombasa Port operations and ongoing infrastructure projects in the EAC had contributed to the trend. The report says average transport rates between Mombasa and other major towns of East Africa had been on the decline from 2011 to 2015. The reduction has been attributed to efficient operations in handling of cargo that is going parallel with improved infrastructure. “The average cost of transporting a 40-foot container from Mombasa to Nairobi gradually reduced from a high of Sh130,000 per 40-foot container to Sh100,000. “The trend is replicated on the Juba route which registered a drop from a high of Sh980,000 to a low of Sh550,000,” read part of the report. The survey further attributes this to a plunge in fuel prices which in turn increased the number of fleet trucks that lead to cut-throat competition among truckers. Decline rate “The route with the highest rate of decline was Juba at 44 per cent while the least gainer was Bujumbura with a 14 per cent increase,” it added. However, this was quite the opposite of the Central Corridor which Tanzania is part of where on average the transport rate increased by 39 per cent over the same period; Kampala rates increased by 79 per cent while Bujumbura remained relatively stable at three per cent. “EAC...

Just before the December festive season got underway last year, East African Community (EAC) Secretary General, Amb. Richard Sezibera and Arancha González, the International Trade Centre Executive Director announced a joint project to boost intra-Africa trade. Note that intra-Africa trade is less than 15% of overall African trade, which makes this project important and worthy of strong support. Dr. Sezibera said the deal will contribute to improving the global competitiveness of the EAC region and to trigger sustainable economic growth. Implementation of the five-year $8.5 million TRIP for EAC project is set to begin this month. The government of Finland has also pledged to provide initial funding. According to the EAC Secretariat, the new initiative aims to strengthen existing efforts by East African countries for closer economic integration, including the East African Customs Union, and the 2010 establishment of the EAC Common Market. ITC is the joint agency of the WTO and the United Nations. ITC assists small and medium-sized enterprises in developing and transition economies to become more competitive in global markets, thereby contributing to sustainable economic development within the frameworks of the Aid-for-Trade agenda and the UN Global Goals. The TRIP for EAC project also sets out to support the African Union's Action Plan for Boosting Intra-African Trade and the recently agreed tripartite free-trade agreement among the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the EAC and the Southern African Development Community (SADC). ITC and the EAC will intervene at three levels to provide integrated solutions to...