Assiimwe Allan is a 22-year-old student in his second year at the Makerere University, in Kampala, Uganda. He is pursuing a Bachelor of Science degree, taking statistics as his major and mathematics as his minor. In August 2015, Allan teamed up with five fellow hardworking students to form a transformation movement project called Coffee Max which will be operationalized through the registration of a business company at the Makerere University. The Coffee Max project intends to develop a new generation of young people to embrace and enjoy coffee in its full diversity. As a result, this will increase domestic coffee consumption amongst the young people and integrate them more along activities in the coffee value chain. Allan began this project with the aim to popularize coffee as a trendy beverage amongst university students which, in turn, would reduce alcoholism. He and his team participated in the annual Uganda coffee festival that was hosted in November 2015 and organized by NUCAFE in conjunction with the Uganda Coffee Developed Authority (UCDA). In addition, Allan developed a strong passion to boost his fellow young people, especially his fellow university students with entrepreneurial skills to assist them to be self-employed which in turn will reduce the overwhelming youth unemployment rate in Uganda. The project will start with the purchase of automated coffee vending machines that will offer a wider variety of coffee beverage. This will be followed with a vigorous coffee club at the Makerere University and accompanied by trendy promotional materials for awareness...

Coffee and tea are Rwanda’s largest agricultural exports, but while most tea is grown on large plantations, coffee is produced by thousands of smallholder farmers whose livelihoods depend on their crop. Coffee exports, therefore, can really make a difference to the lives of Rwandan farmers Connecting business to business and boosting Rwanda’s exports “We love Rwandan coffee,” a Rwandan newspaper quoted a Starbucks vice-president as saying when he visited the country in May 2015. The executive and his team, apparently there to negotiate an increased order, had just paid a courtesy call to President Paul Kagame - a hint perhaps of the importance of coffee exports to the Rwandan economy. Coffee and tea are Rwanda’s largest agricultural exports, but while most tea is grown on large plantations, coffee is produced by thousands of smallholder farmers whose livelihoods depend on their crop. Coffee exports, therefore, can really make a difference to the lives of Rwandan farmers. According to Rwanda’s National Agriculture and Export Development Board (NAEB), in 2014 Rwanda’s green (unroasted) coffee exports were worth almost US$60 million, up on the previous year and buoyed by good global prices. Buyers generally prefer green coffee, allowing them to roast and blend to their own specifications. However, while a container of green beans is sold for about US$8,000, a container of roasted, ground and packaged coffee is worth 12 times that amount. No wonder then, that the coffee sector, in its export strategy, has prioritised value addition activities, such as roasting and packaging...

Environmental degradation is bad for trade and business growth especially when it directly affects the health and productivity of workers and neighbouring communities. The Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) with technical and financial assistance from TradeMark Africa (TMA) has initiated an elaborate Green Port Policy that will transform the port of Mombasa into a premier port of ‘clean fuels’ in Africa. Locals call it the ‘river of death’. In its thick foam, it gushes through the rocks and with a mournful murmur spills over a cliff into the sea turning the water below into a smelly gel. Another hot stream with an offensive smell flows gently through the Port of Mombasa. Along its long winding journey, the small stream picks up domestic and industrial effluents before spewing its load of putrid waste into the vast ocean. Similar ‘rivers of death’ spring from different parts of the City of Mombasa, pouring their deadly cargo into the Indian Ocean. Children, oblivious of the dangers posed and inured to the stench swim and play in the ocean waves breaking over the shore close to the point of discharge. Abdi Hassan, a fisherman from Likoni knows all too well the impact these rivers have on his trade. He walks the beach picking up sticks, which he hurls into the sea as if to deflect his thoughts from the reality he faces: “Many times we find dead fish floating in the water. They are normally bloated and smelly having died from the poisons of the industrial...

For years the yard resembled a dilapidated city abandoned to destruction. Large swamps inhabited by rodents and other creatures covered this muddy section of the port of Mombasa known as Yard Five. In the rainy season, the place would be extremely muddy and too soggy to be used by heavy container moving machines. In the dry season, the earth would crack and burst into loose soil emitting mountains of dust and creating a visibility challenge. In all weather, Yard 5 was a health hazard and unfit for human utilisation. However, the intervention of TradeMark Africa (TMA) has seen the Yard rehabilitated, paved and modernised. The dust is gone and so is the mud, replaced by a modern all-weather container yard. “For close to a 100 years, Yard 5 was an abandoned area. We could not use it for more than two weeks in a row in any given month,” says Kennedy Nyaga, Senior Project Engineer at KPA. The rehabilitation of Yard 5 has tremendously improved the business space at the port: “We are now able to stack the 293 20-foot containers at a height of four per slot in an average of four days.” The additional capacity created per year is 77,800 20-foot equivalent units (TEUS) at the KPA yard. This brings about an annual capacity of 1.32 million TEUs. “No wonder in 2014 we broke through the 1 million TEUs mark!” remarks Engineer Nyaga. The Editor of Our Ports Magazine, a publication of the Port Management Association of Eastern...

The adoption of a Single Customs Territory (SCT) in January 2014 has contributed to an 11.5 per cent increase in volume of goods handled at the port of Mombasa. Rwanda and Uganda have saved a combined $400 million in clearance and inland shipping costs from the port. The five member states of the East African Community are working for towards greater economic integration, are building a single, coherent and efficient market in the region in keeping with their obligations under the EAC Customs Union. Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda Protocol launched a pilot SCT in January 2014, unifying the Customs procedures along the Mombasa-Kampala-Kigali route, to create a flow of freight from Mombasa port to the interior and back. Under the SCT, several weighbridges and Customs posts have been streamlined or removed altogether to allow for the free movement of goods. For instance, oil consignments intended for Uganda and Rwanda are now cleared in bulk of up to 1 million litres in a single transaction. This results in operational cost savings and the exporting companies are no longer required to submit or clear each truckload individually. “We are able to load out trucks from the port of Mombasa, which was not the case before. This has increased our supply volumes. We are able to pay for the cargo well in advance since there is no longer any fear of diversion of the commodity locally,” said Sam Bukenya, supply co-ordinator for Vivo Energy Uganda. The time taken to clear fuel shipments from...

It’s a busy lunchtime at the Grand Legacy Hotel in Kigali and Vincent Safari, Technical Adviser with TradeMark Africa (TMA) in Rwanda, is attending a meeting of Central Corridor member states. The Central Corridor is a transport highway used by trucks to carry goods between the port of Dar es Salaam and the states of Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. Vincent Safari is attending the meeting not only as a TMA technical advisor, but also as coordinator of the Rwandan National Monitoring Committee on non-tariff barriers, a group made up of representatives from the government, private sector and civil society and chaired by the Ministry of Trade and Industry. Safari explains that although Rwanda has had a National Monitoring Committee since 2008, it was not effective because there was no national strategy in place to eliminate non-tariffs barrier (NTBs) and no full-time coordinator. In 2011 TMA became involved, assisting the Ministry of Trade and Industry to revamp the National Monitoring Committee so that it could become a driving force to eliminate NTBs at both national and regional level. “Before TMA got involved it used to take about 15 to 17 days to get to Kigali from either Dar es Salaam or Mombasa,” explains Safari. “Now from Dar it is between three and six days. And from Mombasa between five and seven days.” This significant reduction was achieved through a series of major interventions that emanated from partnerships between TMA and East Africa’s governments, including Rwanda....

It was the launching of the modern Ipatagwa irrigation scheme in 1999 that spurred Jeremiah Mwasanyila to go into rice farming in 2000.  He had two acres of land on which he was growing assorted vegetables but decided to devote it all to rice instead. His first harvest later that year yielded 16 bags and he felt he could keep at it. Later, in 2006, when Mwasanyila and fellow villagers around Ipatagwa, were introduced to the idea of using fertilizer to improve their yields, he collected 24 bags from the same plot. In 2013, with a total of five acres under rice cultivation, Mwasanyila was expecting a yield of 70 bags from that year’s harvest. “But in the end I got only 48 bags,” he says. “The fertilizer brand that I bought turned out to be fake and it caused me a lot of problems.” However, as the harvest season got underway in June, Mwasanyila and many of his peers soon realized all was not well. Not only was the buyer traffic into Ilongo lighter than usual, but also the few buyers arriving were not offering attractive prices. “Where are all the buyers, everyone was wondering,” says Mwasanyila. “The few we got were offering as little as Sh60,000 for a 150kg bag and they wouldn’t budge. At such a price it’s as if you worked for nothing, but you are also under pressure to settle your debts now that you have harvested. I opted to try looking for my own...

Faustini a father of six is a coffee farmer in Rwanda. He has been growing coffee for 20 years. He started with 200 trees he inherited from his father who was a traditional coffee smallholder. In 2005, at a time when a coffee-drinking culture was rapidly expanding across the globe, the Musassa Coffee Co-operative was formed in Ruli District - located in Rwanda’s verdant hills, a slow and steep two-hour drive from Kigali. The establishment of the cooperative represented a promise of access to markets and this encouraged Faustine to take coffee growing more seriously. He increased his trees to 1700 and over time hired extra help of 5 workers. Musassa Coffee Co-operative represents 2,000 smallholder coffee farmers, 60% of them women. The farmers take their beans to designated collection points in the district from where they are delivered to the washing station, for washing, drying and grading. Almost all Rwandan coffee is exported in the green (unroasted) state because the buyers prefer to roast it themselves, sometimes blending it with other coffee types from various origins. “My life improved very well,” he says, “before we had so many problems related to production and management of coffee trees. The co-op came with solutions in the form of efficient supply chain and now we are making more money.” Faustini has done well over the 11 years he has been part of the Musassa co-operative. While his father lived in a house made of mud, Faustini’s is brick and has electricity. His...

Question: How can Customs authorities and importers work together so that tax revenues increase while importers save money? It sounds like a contradiction in terms. How can importers hope to save money when the more products they import the more tax they pay? Yet it is happening in East Africa where Customs reforms, facilitated by TradeMark Africa (TMA), are not only encouraging importers to be tax compliant, but are also helping them to save money on transport and related costs. Robert Bapfakurera, founder and Managing Director of Roba General Merchants in Kigali Rwanda, is a good example. His company imports fast moving products such as rice, cooking oil, sugar and soap, from countries as close as Uganda and as far away as Pakistan and Indonesia. For a landlocked nation like Rwanda, importing products from overseas used to be a stop-go process, a minefield of bureaucracy combined with a plethora of barriers that included weighbridges, roadblocks and unofficial payments at borders. Today, thanks to expertise and training provided by Rwanda Revenue Authority (RRA) in collaboration with TMA, the journey is less stressful, with a reduction in transit time of an incredible two thirds. For Bapfakurera the change began in 2012 when he was chosen by the RRA to become one of only three Authorised Economic Operators in Rwanda, referred to as ‘AEOs’. AEOs, are accredited importers and exporters benefiting from preferential treatment and incentives because they have demonstrated a history of compliance. The new status gives Roba General Merchants the right...

Laurent Demuynck has a passion for mushrooms. He calls them “the meat of the poor” because of their high nutritional value. As founder and CEO of Kigali Farms, a Kigali based mushroom processing company, he wants to see Africa catch up with the rest of the world when it comes to growing mushrooms. In fact, he has a vision that in 10 to 15 years, thousands of people in Africa, maybe hundreds of thousands, will be making an income from mushrooms. Kigali Farms is one of 21 Rwandan food and agricultural companies that have recently benefited from global training, known as HACCP, that ensures standards in food safety are reached and maintained. HACCP, or Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point, is an effective tool to prevent biological, chemical and physical contamination of food, and should eventually lead to a company receiving widely accepted certification. Funded in Rwanda by TradeMark Africa (TMA) and implemented by the British Standards Institution (BSI) in partnership with the Rwanda Standards Board (RSB), the HACCP training aims to provide safety in every part of the food chain from the farmer, to the processor, to the retailer, through to the final consumed product. For the food producers of Rwanda, HACCP certification is one more step towards the coveted goal of exporting their products to the East African Community and beyond. Exports are critical to reducing Rwanda’s trade deficit, yet until recently it had limited scope to test products for mycotoxin (fungal infection) contamination. Instead, they were sent...