‘The gateway to East and Central Africa’ and ‘the regional hub of international trade’ is how the Kenya Ports Authority website proudly introduces the port of Mombasa on Kenya’s coast. It goes on to declare that the port is ‘Growing business, enriching lives’ - a commendable role which should have equally laudable consequences for the people of East Africa as successful trade translates into reduced poverty. Yet it wasn’t always so. While the port has been the gateway to East Africa for the last 100 years, there were times when business in the region was obstructed due to congestion and delays at the port that resulted in overdue consignments, often of raw materials needed for manufacturing. Anthony Weru, Senior Programmes Officer of the Kenya Alliance of Private Sector Associations (KEPSA) recalls December 2012. “Some of our members had to lay off staff”, he said, “Because there were no raw materials to process. They were all at the port.” Only 18 months later Weru is telling a different story. “For the last six months we have seen a tremendous change and improvement in efficiency at the port due to political will,” he said. “Cargo clearance, either to or fro, is now taking an average of four days to its destination (in Kenya) when it used to take 14.” All depends on port efficiency. For the private sector, which in Kenya consists of up to 90% of the work force, the ability to forecast when raw goods will arrive makes all the...

Mombasa-Kampala-Kigali Highway It’s 1,200 km from the Kenyan port of Mombasa to the Ugandan capital, Kampala and another 525 to the capital of Rwanda, Kigali. But with a few strokes of the politicians’ pens and some clicks on a mouse, that distance just got dramatically shorter. “It used to take 18 days or more for one of our trucks to get here from Mombasa,” said Kassim Omar, Chairman of the Uganda Clearing Industry and Forwarding Association (UCIFA). “Now the same journey takes four days, sometimes even three.” The reduction is due to the decision at a Northern Corridor infrastructure summit by the Presidents of Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda to speed rapidly growing freight along their key trade route and the implementation of a variety of hi-tech systems that have slashed paperwork and time. The combination has stripped away a lot of the bureaucratic red tape that snarled the free flow of trade in the East African Community and contributed to some of the highest transport costs in the world, accounting for up to 40% of the price of goods to consumers. In October 2013, Presidents Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya agreed to implement a Single Customs Territory (SCT) between them as members of the East African Community. Tanzania and Burundi, say they followed suit at the Summit in November 2013. At a stroke, the agreement removed multiple weighbridge, police and customs checks along the Mombasa-Kampala-Kigali route and introduced computerised clearance and electronic...

Whenever I talk or write about East African integration I use this picture of three boys sharing a lollipop. I don’t know where the photo came from or who the boys are, but I do know that it speaks volumes about the way trade could lift millions out of poverty. These three little boys in Kigali are sharing a lollipop. They lick it in turns. The lollipop is imported, so 45% of its cost is due to transport and allied costs. It might have been made in Kenya or Tanzania or even further afield, and it has travelled thousands of kilometres and several borders. So whichever of the boys bought that treat, he’s paying part of the freight clearance charges, handling charges, insurance, fuel costs and the salary of the trucker who got it to the Rwandan capital. It’s no wonder that the boys cannot afford to buy their own lollipops but have to share one. Transport costs in East Africa are among the highest in the world. This is largely due to infrastructure and regulatory constraints but the major reasons for the high costs are policy, legal and regulatory constraints, not infrastructure. It’s not only the slow ports or bad roads that up the price, its old policy and legal habits and slow border crossings. It takes 28 days and $600 to move a 40-foot container from the port of Shanghai, China to Mombasa, Kenya. It can take almost the same amount of time for the same container to...

An innovative training program for clearing agents is growing a new breed of professionals to spur trade and prosperity in East Africa. “Where you see trade grow you see prosperity take root. By training the key people in the freight forwarding business, we are helping move goods quicker, save time and money and help the region develop” said Silas Kanamugire of TradeMark Africa (TMA). Run by the East Africa regional freight forwarding governing body (FEAFFA), the program is quickly churning out a fresh generation of professionally trained freight forwarders to quickly expand the ever-growing potential for trade within the East African region. With TradeMark Africa (TMA)’s support, FEAFFA aims to transform the job of freight clearing and forwarding into a recognized profession and to standardize and regulate this key position to streamline the process of doing business in the five-nation bloc. “My clients are now satisfied with the fast clearance of their goods. We are now not seen as unreliable or barriers to the trade process, but rather partners who can help grow the prosperity of this region”, Said Xavery Komba, CEO of Victorius Tanzania Ltd, one of the trained agents. “With more than 40% of business costs accruing to transport and logistics, there is increasing appreciation of the importance of the sector in international trade. I am pleased this program will raise professional standards in the industry with the aim of increasing trade and prosperity in the region,” said the Federation’s Regional Executive Officer, John Mathenge. Up until recently,...

It’s 1,200 km from the Kenyan port of Mombasa to the Ugandan capital, Kampala and another 525 to the capital of Rwanda, Kigali. But with a few strokes of the politicians’ pens and some clicks on a mouse, that distance just got dramatically shorter. “It used to take 18 days or more for one of our trucks to get here from Mombasa,” said Kassim Omar, Chairman of the Uganda Clearing Industry and Forwarding Association (UCIFA). “Now the same journey takes four days, sometimes even three.” The reduction is due to the decision at a Northern Corridor infrastructure summit by the Presidents of Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda to speed rapidly growing freight along their key trade route and the implementation of a variety of hi-tech systems that have slashed paperwork and time. The combination has stripped away a lot of the bureaucratic red tape that snarled the free flow of trade in the East African Community and contributed to some of the highest transport costs in the world, accounting for up to 40% of the price of goods to consumers. In October 2013, Presidents Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya agreed to implement a Single Customs Territory (SCT) between them as members of the East African Community. Tanzania and Burundi, say they followed suit at the Summit in November 2013. At a stroke, the agreement removed multiple weighbridge, police and customs checks along the Mombasa-Kampala-Kigali route and introduced computerized clearance and electronic tracking and...

It’s a Friday afternoon at Busia border between Uganda and Kenya. Ugandan immigration staffs are busy clearing travellers when a tall young man marches to the counter and demands an entry stamp in his South Sudanese passport. The immigration officer has a number of queries before he can clear him, and the impatient young man starts getting angry and belligerent. Kenya has cleared his exit and he doesn’t see why the Ugandans should waste his time. The immigration officers enlist the help of police to overpower the young man and escort him back to the Kenyan side. Ugandan and Kenyan officers examine the case, and compare notes and finally give him clearance to travel to Kampala. The Ugandan officer in charge of immigration, Margaret Obong, regrets the amount of time lost on such individual cases when immigration officers of both countries walk across to compare notes and meet with their counterparts. This time-consuming exercise will be dramatically reduced when a One Stop Border Post (OSBP) becomes operational. This innovation is going up in many parts of East Africa to speed human and goods traffic, save time and money, and allows the private sector to generate more money and less paperwork. [caption id="attachment_177" align="alignleft" width="407"] The Uganda-Kenya Busia border can be a contentious place[/caption] With funding from Britain’s development arm DFID, the Dutch, Danish development agency (DANIDA), Sweden development agency (SIDA) and Belgium, TradeMark Africa has helped institute a complete reconfiguration of the border processes including physical construction of the new...

They are as much a feature of Africa’s borders as immigration officials, barbed wire and bureaucracy. They are the service stations of Africa’s highways and the pit stops of commerce from Cape Town to Cairo. They gravitate to the frontiers where trucks stop, truckers break and travelers take on food and water for their journeys. Their shop fronts are brimming baskets and their cash registers are pockets and purses. They are the women traders who make a living by selling wares at Africa’s myriad borders and TradeMark Africa (TMA) is helping them to get organized, to know their rights and to reap the fruits of East African (EA) integration. “As cross border traders we carry the ignition key to transform our communities,” said Hadijja Sserwanga, a champion of the rights of Uganda’s border traders, regional Chairperson of the East African Women Cross Borders Traders Association (EAWCBTA). She describes herself as a politician, activist, teacher and community development worker fighting to overturn the sexual harassment, exploitation and marginalization by the (largely male) people who run and operate EA borders. She’s been a border trader herself since 1987, operating on the Uganda-Tanzania frontier at Mutukula, and has seen and experienced the problems women traders run into by not knowing their rights under EA integration or being bamboozled into paying unnecessary fines, taxes and bribes because they don’t know better. “I have a lot of passion for women’s empowerment and being a cross border trader. I feel we can transform ourselves from being...

South Sudan is barely one year old. But this new state is laying the foundations on which to build a future with a streamlined customs collection system that has increased revenue by more than 1,000 percent in the past six months. “This money will help us build the nation,” says Lt. Col. Emmanuel Goya Simon at the steamy Nimule Border with Uganda, the lifeblood entry point for nearly all of South Sudan’s import-dependent economy. “The revenue will help us in security, health and education. It will help the nation grow and breathe,” says Simon, second-in-command of Customs at Nimule. “We are already well on the way.” Outside huge trucks carrying everything from chewing gum to electric kettles and sugar, park to begin the laborious process of registering with half a dozen authorities, declaring their contents, being inspected and paying duty. “It’s a muddle. All the work is manual now, but not for much longer,” says Eugene Torero, the representative in South Sudan of TradeMark Africa (TMA), a donor-funded organization helping the East African community modernize trade and sow the seeds of new prosperity. Across the East African community TradeMark Africa (TMA) is helping countries accelerate away from ways of doing business and trade that have barely changed in the decades since the independence wave unfurled in the 1960s – paperwork, and lots of it. At Nimule, for example, TradeMark Africa (TMA) is in the process of computerizing form filling so that truckers will be able to sit at a laptop...

Nairobi – After 10 years of stop-go discussions, three East African states are on the verge of launching a single tourist visa to ease the path of visitors across national borders and make it easier for the tourism industry to offer multi-destination packages. “It’s taken a while. There were concerns about how to split the revenue, about possibly losing money and about screening visitors, but Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya have seen that the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages,” said Waturi Matu, coordinator (Kenya) of the East African Tourism Platform. Moves to facilitate tourists across East African Community borders was given fresh impetus in June when the presidents of Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda met and agreed to strengthen integration and cooperation to spur the growth of trade. “Rwanda will be in charge of designing the visa, and the plan is to have it launched in January next year with Tanzania and Burundi free to join at any time,” she said. Long a lobbying goal of East Africa’s tourism industry, the single visa will enable a tourist to buy a visa for the three countries for $100 instead of three visas for $150. The savings for couples and couples with children, the main tourism unit, is therefore substantial. “Tourism is a key source of income for the East African Community and we support the East African Tourism Platform precisely so it can lobby to make the borders between members states ‘thinner’ and less bureaucratic,” said Frank Matsaert, CEO of TradeMark Africa. The...

MWEA, Kenya – It’s the end of term school prize-giving day and the atmosphere is expectant and excited. One by one the pupils’ names is announced. They walk out in their best clothes to get their certificates, a handshake and a warm round of applause. It’s a typical scene. Except that these pupils are mostly middle-aged farmers, both men and women, whose livelihoods depend on them putting lessons learned into practice and growing crops according to the standards of the Good Agricultural Practice Code (GAP). “Smallholder farmers hold the solution to hunger and poverty in rural areas,” says Napthaly Kariuki of the Horticultural Produce Marketing Association of Kenya (HPMAK). “To get accepted in international markets, both the European Union (EU) and East African, you need to grow according to the best practice, and that means GAP." There are about 250 certificates awaiting distribution on the desk set up by the Fresh Produce Exporters Association of Kenya (FPEAK), which is spearheading the campaign to help farmers across the East African Community (EAC) grow food for tables in EU states and in neighbouring countries. “I am so happy today. I have learned things that will help me make my shamba (smallholding) grow better produce to sell for me and my family. This is like getting a prize at school,” said Grace Wambui, who grows beans and tomatoes nearby. “Growing fresh produce employs about one million people in Kenya, and it’s one of the top three export earners. Smallholders account for about 70...