Fried fish, fried beef, chicken and fried bananas; oils and fats are as much part of East African life as blue skies and rain showers. But until recently, what you bought in Uganda to prepare your matoke with and what you used in Tanzania to fry your fish might have looked the same from the label but have been of vastly differing qualities. And none of East Africa’s 140 million citizens might have been the wiser. But not for much longer, the East African Community (EAC) Secretariat, with support from TradeMark Africa (TMA), met in the Burundian capital, Bujumbura; in March, for a regional technical committee meeting on oil seeds, edible oils and fats sector held to harmonise standards of this key ingredient of the daily diet. “Harmonisation of standards for all sorts of things is one of the building blocks on which to build a strong, integrated East African Community,” said José Maciel, Director of Trade Facilitation (Non-Transport), at TradeMark Africa (TMA). “It’s one of the reasons that the European Economic Community has become the power house that it is. You need to agree on basic standards for goods to create a level playing field on which traders and consumers will both benefit.” The edible fats and oils sector is a part of the larger food and beverage industry that commands a US$ 2 billion East African regional market value and, like the regional economy itself, is fast growing. There is strong demand for oils and fats but not...

Trader Jeremie Kayobera had his life changed by a radio broadcast. It wasn’t a religious broadcast, or a political one, but a nuts and bolts broadcast about how to take advantage of Burundi’s membership of the East African Community (EAC). Until that December 2011 radio show, he had bought maize flour in Tanzania or Uganda, Burundi’s economically powerful neighbours, imported it, paid his border dues and sold the staple foodstuff in his home country. Why not? It’s a pattern of business repeated across the whole spectrum of Burundi’s trade relationships with its EAC neigbours: buy across the frontier, import, and sell. Every market place in even the smallest community bears witness to this pattern of doing business. That changed overnight. He heard a radio programme explain to him that he could take advantage of start-up help from the government’s API Investment agency; he heard how much or how little he would have to pay in tax to the state’s Office Burundais des Recettes (OBR), the revenue authority. Today he has realized a dream and established his own maize mill in Kanyanza. Goodbye paying taxes on imported foodstuffs. Hello the opportunity to make bigger profits milling from local produce, and to export. “It doesn’t matter where you go in the countryside, you find that people know almost nothing about the benefits of EAC membership or the steps the government is taking to help business compete in the EAC,” says Davy Rubangisha, Programme Manager at the RPA radio, Burundi’s private and biggest...

Theodore Murenzi’s truck ground to a halt in Rwanda. So did the business it was supposed to be doing, hauling stone and earth to feed the appetite for construction that is changing the face of East Africa. It needed brake linings, oil and fuel filters and new clutch plates to get back on the highway and earning money. All the parts were readily available, in a warehouse in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, a couple of hundred miles away. A few years ago that might have meant being off the road and out of action for days, even weeks, locating the parts, ordering them, paying for them, getting them cleared at two customs posts and delivered to his yard in Kigali, the Rwandan capital. But in December 2012, thanks to a systematic campaign by Rwanda to overturn the Non- Tariff Barriers (NTBs) to trade with its East African Community (EAC) Partner States, the whole process took less than 24 hours. “I ordered them in Kampala, paid for them by Western Union, filled out a simplified declaration form, went up to the border at Katuna, paid my V.A.T. and had a cup of tea with the police there while my stuff was loaded onto another truck. The truck was back in business the next day.” Theodore speaks not just for his own business. He is head of the Long Distance Truck Drivers Association of Rwanda, which has 4,700 members and plies the two main corridors on which landlocked Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda...

An English revolution is sweeping across Burundi, transforming this French-speaking nation to a multi-lingual nation. The demand for the language has resulted in several English language colleges sprouting up all over the capital city. While the EAC Treaty provides English and Kiswahili as the official languages in the Community, the bigger majority of the Burundian population, including Government officials lack the requisite skills to conduct business and meetings in English. This situation has resulted in significant challenges for the Burundi population in relation to the rest EAC partner states, including difficulties in common understanding and in-depth negotiations during EAC council and sectorial meetings follow up on agreed decisions or coordination of Burundi’s EAC policy implementation. On 1st July 2007, Burundi officially acceded as a member state of the East African Community (EAC) and committed itself to a widening and deepening co-operation with Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda in the political, economic, social, and cultural fields. Today, the EAC has become the fastest growing block in Sub-Saharan Africa. Through the establishment of a Customs Union, Common Market, Monetary Union and ultimately a Political Federation, Burundi, with the other four partner states is set for increased trade and development. One of the major challenges for Burundi has been that it is the only EAC country with the predominance of the French language. Since 2012, TradeMark Africa (TMA) has been supporting the Ministry at the Presidency in Charge of the East African Community Affairs,to establish and implement a two year project titled ‘Enhancing...

It looks like a secret still making illegal alcohol. It’s tucked away in a hidden fold of Rwanda’s rolling hills, a long and bumpy 150km from the Rwanda capital, Kigali. A brush fire bubbles under a vat. A bewildering network of pipes channel the steam to holding vessels, where mysterious liquid condenses. The raw materials of dried leaves is stacked around the site, awaiting immersion and transformation. But the smell that comes off this apparatus isn’t the chemistry of grain meeting yeast and sugar to ferment liquor. It’s a pleasant perfume and could be the sweet smell of success for its owners, and for the Rwanda government’s drive to export high quality products. Ikirezi, a manufacturer of essential oils such as geranium and patchouli, operates the plant. And it could be one of the companies to benefit from Rwanda’s determination to set high standards that will be accepted on local and international markets. “We want to be a model of high standards,” says Rwanda Bureau of Standards (RBS) Director-General Mark Cyubahiro Bagabe. “We want to help the East African Community improve the quality of their products to access international markets.” “Rwanda wants to be the Switzerland of Africa,” explains TradeMark Africa (TMA) Country Director Mark Priestley. “To do that, you need to compete on quality, not volume, and to do that you need trust, and testing goods and applying standards is all about trust.” The government has adopted measures for a market-oriented economy supported by increases in industrial and agricultural...