Modesta Nekesa, 31, has been a farmer for most of her adult life. However, it was not until two years ago that she started making money from her land by cultivating and selling a crop that was unfamiliar in her community - chilli. Ms. Nekesa lives in Busia, a town on the Kenya-Uganda border where she moved to after getting married at 17. She was widowed at 23 with three children. Her late husband, Michael Oluoch had bequeathed her five acres of land, but inheritance tussles saw half of it taken away by her brothers-in-law. And so, destiny subjected her to a life of subsistence, cultivating maize, beans, and occasionally sweet potatoes. She barter-traded some for other household utilities and the largest portion was consumed by her young family. "We fed off the land, and for years, I never had a shilling to my name. Any little money I got from selling part of my (not-so-good) harvests was immediately spent on books, pencils, uniform repairs or other such immediate needs," she said. All this changed after Ms. Nekesa accepted an invitation from a friend to attend an agriculture seminar organised by the Joyful Women Organization (JOYWO), an implementing partner of TradeMark Africa’s (TMA) Women and Trade programme. This course opened her eyes to a world of farming entrepreneurship. [caption id="attachment_55052" align="alignnone" width="640"] "We fed off the land, and for years, I never had a shilling to my name. Any little honey I got from selling part of my (notso-good) harvests...

It took a traffic jam of a couple thousand trucks at the Malaba border between Kenya and Uganda to fully visualize both the health and trade issues at stake when borders operate at optimum. The COVID-19 crisis has revealed both hairline fractures along borders in East Africa and the potential to solve them through better regional coordination. The East African Community (EAC) to date has been a grand experiment in more than just free trade between Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda. It also seeks to transform the region into a single market that allows free movement of goods, people, services, labour and capital, and create a single investment area. The coronavirus pandemic has curtailed this dream in the short-term but the experience has been a learning curve, and UNCTAD, TradeMark Africa (TMA) and other regional partners have used the moment to help the region’s national trade facilitation committees (NTFCs) improve their skills and work more effectively by offering them ground-breaking online training. “It’s a complicated situation due to the necessity of imposing health controls and measures to manage COVID-19 on one hand, while still ensuring trade flows, especially of essential goods, on the other,” said Shamika N. Sirimanne, UNCTAD’s director of technology and logistics. “The situation has been extremely challenging for everyone from policymakers to customs officials; truck drivers to traders,” she added. “Training is one of the solutions to this challenge.”   [caption id="attachment_54331" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Trade facilitation in East Africa is critical during COVID-19[/caption] Trade...

Transport and trade routes are believed to be major infection conduits and present a significant threat to the entire East Africa region, disrupting health, the economy, and regional and national economic supply chains. Governments have responded by introducing important and essential containment measures that must be implemented on the main trade corridors to make them safe, allow goods to keep moving, and to save lives. Without the ability to continue to implement these measures, the risk of border closures, truck driver stigmatisation and escalating disputes among neighbouring countries remains looming. Malaba and Busia One Stop Border Posts (OSBPs) are the busiest inland entry ports on the Northern Corridor and handle over 95% of cargo destined to Uganda, and transit cargo to Rwanda, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and South Sudan. Trade facilitation initiatives by TradeMark Africa (TMA) and other development partners through construction of the OSBPs have greatly improved infrastructural development and coordination of border agencies. This has resulted in faster clearance since all regulatory agencies required for clearance of goods sit under one roof, reducing turn-around time for traders and more importantly lowering cost of doing business. Traffic has increased from 1,500 trucks per day to an average of 3,000 trucks both inbound and outbound at Busia and Malaba OSBPs and border clearance time has dropped substantially. With the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic in the region, the smooth flow of cargo at the border crossing had been greatly disrupted.  Requirements by the Government of Uganda for all...

Simplification works.  Exporters, and importers of fresh or dry produce to Kenya are required to register with Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Service (KEPHIS). Until recently, this registration took between 10 to 28 days with the traders completing a total of 10 steps and filling in 13 documents. A time-consuming effort that was also costly. Simplification of processes by KEPHIS have reduced the number of steps by half - to 5- and requirement to submit only 3 documents, translating into a 62 % reduction of traders’ transactional costs The Information for Trade in Kenya Portal (InfoTradeKE) serves as a one-stop shop for information on trade-related procedures, from various government directorates, and provides a step-by-step guide on foreign trade procedures from the user’s (exporter/importer) point of view. It was implemented by Kenya Trade Network Agency (KenTrade) in partnership with TradeMark Africa (TMA) through funding from United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Netherlands and with technical support from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). The Portal has approximately 10,000 visitors each month. It has proven to be an ideal tool for regulators to analyse interventions in the export and import chain, providing insights on bottlenecks and barriers to trade that need to be dealt with to make the trader’s experience more efficient. The results from the simplification of the procedure to register as an exporter of fresh and dry produce with the Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Service (KEPHIS) provides a perfect illustration of the power of this...

The Editorial of Burundi’s Jimbere Magazine recently remarked that the TradeMark Africa (TMA) Women in Trade programme has, “Offered hundreds of Burundian women and girls the opportunity to learn and achieve their dreams. It has restored their pride in earning incomes, enabling them to become taxpayers and therefore contribute to the development of the country. Before the interventions, these women lived in fear of authorities and dreaded the day their businesses would be closed for non-compliance.” TMA has supported Burundi women traders since 2012, and formally launched a Women in Trade project in 2017 with funding from Netherlands. This progamme continues to train women traders in basic business practices and regional trade laws, as well connecting them to new markets. One of the implementing partners is Association Des Femmes Entrepreneurs Du Burundi (AFAB), a local association that advocates for the interests of businesswomen in the country. AFAB brings together various women-owned businesses and, “of the 400 men and women entrepreneurs targeted to benefit from training, 318 have been reached,” says Immaculalee Nsengiyumva, the AFAB Executive Secretary. AFAB’s success cuts across the country impacting the women cross border traders at Kobero-Kabanga border to those living further afield in Gasorwe. Zirfa Hamissi, business woman at the Kobero-Kabanga border When AFAB started training women traders around Kobero-Kabanga border, the crossing point between Tanzania and Burundi, a vocal and sceptical Zirfa Hamissi was among its first beneficiaries. “I had a hard time believing in stories told by AFAB and other trainers. But AFAB came...

Authorised Economic Operator programme earns rewards for traders [caption id="attachment_52541" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Bollore team with their award as best AEO within the clearing and forwarding industry in 2017[/caption] For business owners, time is money and delays that hold up delivery of goods represent loss of potential earnings. In Uganda, an AEO programme funded by United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID) through TradeMark Africa (TMA) is helping businesses overcome delays by encouraging voluntary compliance. Richard Lubuulwa, inbound Logistics Manager at Nice House of Plastics, a leading manufacturer in Uganda, recounts the costly delays he used to face importing goods from Kenya to Kampala before his company acquired Authorized Economic Operator (AEO) status with the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA). “Whenever we had a truck coming from Kenya, I would personally travel to Malaba or Mombasa to ensure that the truck was cleared. I spent a lot of money making such travels because whenever we let the truck driver deal with the authorities, we would experience days and days of delays. It was costly and tiresome.” This changed once Nice House of Plastics became an AEO five years ago. AEO is a voluntary compliance scheme aimed at facilitating global trade anchored on the World Customs Organisation (WCO) framework of standards.   [caption id="attachment_52549" align="aligncenter" width="683"] A customs officer at Malaba OSBP inspects goods stored in a bonded warehouse[/caption] Built upon the World Customs Organisation SAFE Framework of Standards to Secure and Facilitate Global Trade (SAFE Framework) AEO programme’s goal is to enhance...

[caption id="attachment_52401" align="alignleft" width="367"] Rwandan farmers drying their maize after harvest[/caption] For many farmer cooperatives across Rwanda, especially those that farm staple crops, access to finance has always been an issue and this is complicated by post-harvest losses that discourage finance providers from investing in agriculture. Positively, the government of Rwanda is undertaking improvement in infrastructure such as cold storage facilities, road and air transport to eliminate post-harvest losses and make agriculture value chains an exciting investment prospect. Joshua Rugema, Country Director, The East Africa Exchange EAX states that, “right now, Rwanda’s agriculture export revenue is an average of USD 500,000,000 per year and I believe that with the investments being undertaken, we will easily get to US$ 2bn in 2023 by embracing innovative agricultural value chain strategies, and utilising the conducive environment government has created.” TradeMark Africa is supporting these efforts and has partnered with EAX to reduce risks by training farmers in production, post-harvest handling, cooperative governance, while at the same time providing equipment for grain management and building linkages to markets. Two years into the programme, farmers now access larger markets, have reduced rejection rates for their grains by over 70% and access loans against their grains. ----------------------------- [caption id="attachment_52409" align="aligncenter" width="445"] EAX-Florence Niyikuze, Trainer and member of Ramba Gatunda Cooperative[/caption] EAX is a regional commodity exchange established to link smallholder farmers to agricultural and financial markets, secure competitive prices for products, and facilitate access to financing opportunities. EAX in Rwanda has maize, beans and soya farmer...

Like many Kenyans, George Adulu an Information Technology (IT) professional from Nairobi, religiously takes a hot cup of tea with his breakfast, paying homage to an age-old Kenyan tradition. Tea is a breakfast staple, a ten o’clock break beverage and a night cap. Many households brew it with milk and water until it acquires a golden colour. The case is repeated across many Eastern African countries. The popularity of tea makes it the second most consumed drink in the world after water. In 2018, global consumption of tea amounted to about 273 billion litres and is forecasted to reach 297 billion litres by 2021. George’s home country, Kenya and its neighbors in East and Central Africa regions are not only big consumers of tea, but also leading producers who trade most of their black tea at the Mombasa Tea Auction. This is the largest black crush, tear and curl (CTC) tea auction center in the world that accounts for 32 percent of global tea exports. The Mombasa Tea Auction (MTA) centre is known for high quality teas that are brought in from across other African tea growing countries including Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Madagascar and Mozambique. Every Monday and Tuesday, the auction is a buzz of activities governed by the strike of a hammer as numerous papers are exchanged between buyers, sellers and their intermediaries and tea hauled into ships afterwards. Tea trading at MTA is everything but seamless. That’s about to change....

1. Background TradeMark Africa’s (TMA) mission is to promote regional trade, economic integration and competitiveness in East Africa. The region faces significant long-term risks from climate change (CC) because the economies are highly dependent on climate sensitive sectors such as agriculture. This proposed Climate Change Strategy complements TMA’s Corporate Strategy 2018-2023 by building climate resilient trade and economies, improving environmental management and reducing Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions within core TMA sectors in the EAC region. 1.1. Global climate change framework Escalating climate change related threats and continued increase of GHG contents in the atmosphere give evidence that the globally planned actions may be inadequate and too late to reverse the trend. Poor people are more vulnerable to climate change impacts and therefore more disadvantaged by climate than the well off. Women commonly face higher risks and greater burdens from the impacts of climate change in situations of poverty, and many of the world’s poor are women. As a result of the Paris Agreement in 2015, 190 countries, including all the EAC countries, made commitments to reduce national greenhouse gas emissions and achieve specified adaptation outcomes through their national climate change strategies, the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). However, the submitted NCDs are far from enough and more action is required. Although inadequate funding has become the major restriction, new opportunities in climate funding for developing countries have emerged public and private. 1.2 Climate change and East Africa Continuing robust economic growth in Eastern Africa is essential to reduce poverty and build...

How can Rwanda get more of its domestic products to international markets? A key element in achieving this goal requires applying rigorous requirements to food, animal and plant exports, known as Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) measures set by importing countries to address food safety, animal health and plant health risks that may be carried by traded products. Working with the Rwanda government, TradeMark Africa’s (TMA) Standards, Technical Regulations and SPS Measures project continues to support interventions that will enable Rwanda producers to meet these rigorous requirements. On the one hand, the TMA interventions support regulatory bodies to improve their capabilities and authority to implement requirements to access export markets through acquisition of modern laboratory equipment building inspection capacities and automating trade processes to reduce costs and time involved in certifying products. On the other hand, the interventions focus on private sector by training of value chain players from farmers to pack houses to exporters, to ensure quality and safety is adhered to from the farm gate. Combined, this is contributing to reduction of standards related barriers to trade and rejection of Rwanda’s agricultural exports due to SPS concerns. Improving Businesses Diego Twahirwa an exporter in Rwanda knows too well the losses that follow non-compliance to SPS measures. The thirty-one-year-old businessman is the founder and owner of Gashora Farms, a leading chili export firm based in Bugesera District. In September 2019, he signed a five-year agreement with a Chinese firm – GK International Enterprises – to supply 50,000 tonnes of dry Chili...