SUMMARY Kenya’s expenditure on imports in July rose 14 per cent month-on-month to Sh138.76 billion, signalling increased trade activity in the economy as countries continue to ease measures put in place to reduce the spread of Covid-19. Data from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) also reveals a continuous increase in the country’s export earnings to Sh52 billion in July from a low of Sh43 billion April. July’s consumption of imported goods was the second-highest this year after January’s Sh155 billion. The country’s import bill fell to a low of Sh108 billion in May as a result of the pandemic. Kenya’s expenditure on imports in July rose 14 per cent month-on-month to Sh138.76 billion, signalling increased trade activity in the economy as countries continue to ease measures put in place to reduce the spread of Covid-19. Data from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) also reveals a continuous increase in the country’s export earnings to Sh52 billion in July from a low of Sh43 billion April. July’s consumption of imported goods was the second highest this year after January’s Sh155 billion. The country’s import bill fell to a low of Sh108 billion in May as a result of the pandemic. Consequently, due to the lower imports in the April to June period, the trade deficit for the first seven months of 2020 narrowed by 19.5 per cent to Sh546 billion from Sh678.9 billion reported over a similar period last year. At the onset of the pandemic global trade...

International trade and investment have always relied on the cross-border mobility of individuals. Transporting goods across borders involves humans, and will do so for the foreseeable future despite important technological advances. In addition, face-to-face contact continues to play a critical role in addressing some of the information and transaction costs involved in trading goods internationally. Physical proximity between producers and consumers is essential for many types of services trade. In some instances, this proximity is achieved when individuals cross international borders. Indeed, the temporary cross-border movement of natural persons is one of the four modes (i.e. mode-4) through which services may be traded in the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), while services purchased abroad by consumers is another (mode-2). Individual mobility is also a factor beyond these two modes, since business travel is frequently part of services provision through the establishment of a commercial presence abroad (mode-3) or remotely, for instance online (mode-1). Indeed, the modes of supplying services are often bundled, with varying degrees of substitutability amongst them. In this sense, human mobility constitutes services trade in its own right, while also enabling trade in goods and other services. With the objective of containing the Covid-19 pandemic, governments around the world have imposed temporary travel or immigration restrictions, which have severely restricted the cross- border movement of individuals. While these mobility-related measures are not motivated by trade considerations, but by public health reasons, they have a significant impact on trade. Perhaps paradoxically, this has brought into sharper...

In the Business Think Tank today, Smart24 TV’s Kamweya Tushabe will encourage our panel of experts to talk about the ‘Economic Contribution of Women in Informal Cross-border Trading’. The panelists are: Jane Nalunga, the executive director of SEATINI Jacob Siminyu, the spokesperson of the ministry of Internal Affairs Connie Kihembo, the CEO of Uganda Women Entrepreneurs Association Limited (UWEAL) Sarah Jesca Agwang, programme coordinator (Women’s Economic Justice and Empowerment) at Uganda Women’s Network (UWONET) Sheila Kawamara, the chief executive of EASSI ( The Eastern African Sub-Regional Support Initiative for the Advancement of Women. Follow this link to watch the event live Before Covid-19, Uganda enjoyed a booming cross-border informal trade, 80% of which was being done by women as their sole source of income. Research by the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD), (2018) notes that informal cross-border trade is still rampant at over 40% of all intra-regional trade Over the past decade, increasing the participation of women in cross-border trade has been a key focus area for stakeholders in trade, including the Government, through the ministries of trade and the East African Community affairs and development partners, including TradeMark Africa (TMA), USAID and the Eastern African Sub Regional Support Initiative for the Advancement of Women. Policies have been instituted to increase the participation of informal cross-border women traders to boost their incomes, improve living standards, and contribute to the country’s overall economic development. Data from the Bank of Uganda (BOU) indicates that informal cross-border exports fetched the country...

Unlike anything before it, the Covid-19 pandemic has underlined the importance of harmonising legislation governing the transport of goods across borders. This was the message from all four speakers at the second webinar hosted by the Southern African Transport Conference (SATC) earlier this month. The webinar explored Covid-19’s impact on freight and logistics, and was addressed by Transnet group chief executive Portia Derby, TradeMark Africa senior director of transport Abhishek Sharma, and International Road Transport Union senior advisors Jens Hügel and Kazeem Asayesh. The view of every speaker was that harmonising the legislation that governs cross-border good transit would bolster economies by reducing transport and warehousing costs, and thus increase individual countries’ resilience in the face of economic crises. Sub-Saharan Africa had taken several hard knocks due to the pandemic, which had caused significant supply chain disruptions that had led to shortages of vital commodities such as food and medicines, said Sharma. “The sub-Saharan region is not the only one to feel the negative effects of the pandemic on freight and logistics,” said Hügel. The IRU is a global road transport organisation representing companies that provide transport, mobility and logistics services in more than 80 countries across the world. Globally, movement restrictions, health screening, and border controls and closures – put in place to ward off the virus that caused Covid-19 – had led to an estimated 18% average decline in annual turnover for goods transported by road, Hügel said. The Asia-Pacific and Middle East-North Africa regions are the worst...

Despite Africa’s informal sector employing more than 80 per cent of the workforce, it receives little or no attention when it comes to government’s policy plans implementation. This neglect leaves it exposed to the ravages of unavailable financing or expensive credit which slows down the achievement of the sector’s full potential in growing the various economies. While this is the general view, it gets even worse for women-owned enterprises which struggle from age-old patriarchal approaches to doing business as well as the delicate balancing act that women have to innately learn since they are the ones who also run their homes in many cases. But despite all these challenges, women in business have a big role to play in a post-covid-19 Africa and could significantly reduce the continent’s high dependence on imports of essential food, medical and pharmaceutical items. The UN Economic Commission for Africa’s Mama Keita who is the Director of ECA in Eastern Africa says, “As we are building back our economies after covid and are seeking to turn vulnerabilities into opportunities, let us recall that intra-Africa trade is still very low at less than 20 per cent and that women entrepreneurs have a big role to play in boosting this.” Speaking in a virtual meeting organized by the Office of the Special Envoy for the Great Lakes, Keita who presented the socio-economic effects of covid-19 in the Great Lakes Region emphasized how reduced economic activities stemming from lockdowns, curfew and disruption in international trade affected the region. She...

Last week, the Africa Trade Policy Centre (ATPC) of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) in collaboration with the UK-based Overseas Development Institute (ODI) has released a working paper entitled “Africa trade and COVID-19: The supply chain dimension”. The paper investigates the impacts of the pandemic on trade and value chains in Africa, with a special focus on Ethiopia and Kenya, and the pharmaceutical sector. It also makes specific policy recommendations on how the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) can be reconfigured to reflect the new realities and risks of the 21st century. In this article, we focus on Chapter 2, which examines the impact of the lockdown and social distancing policies – in response to the COVID‑19 crisis – on trade volumes, commodity prices, services and investment. I. Impact on cross‑border trade In the fight against COVID‑19, almost all African countries, albeit to a differing degree, have now suspended international flights, introduced a14‑day quarantine for entrants into the country and closed land and/or maritime borders. A total of 38 of Africa’s 54 countries have now announced land closures of some form, and 17 countries have announced the closure of maritime borders. Typically, these closures are targeted at the movement of people, and there are exemptions for the movement of emergency and essential freight supplies under very strict conditions, including mandatory testing, the sanitisation of trucks, limited crew members on trucks and designated transit resting areas. This has led to an abrupt slowdown and delays in cross‑border trade,...

Kenya will not cancel the traffic rights for Tanzanian-based Precision Air that will resume flights to Nairobi Thursday amid a standoff that has seen Dar es Salaam stop three Kenyan airlines from flying there. Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA) director-general Gilbert Kibe said Precision Air has an existing traffic rights that will not be nullified on the account of the stalemate between Kenya and Tanzania. Kenya Airways, whose traffic rights to Tanzania were still valid at the beginning of this month when the carrier resumed international flights, were revoked by the Tanzanian authorities on retaliatory grounds after Nairobi excluded Dar from the list of safe countries. “Precision Air has an existing traffic rights and to the best of my knowledge it will not be cancelled,” said Mr Kibe in an interview with the Business Daily. Mr Kibe said he is still engaging with his counterpart in Tanzania to resolve the current blockade imposed by Tanzania. Tanzania has banned three more Kenyan airlines from its market as a tit-for-tat trade war between the two countries escalated over the management of the coronavirus pandemic. The latest blockade came after Nairobi, for the second time in a row, retained Tanzania on the red list of nations with high risk in coronavirus cases—a position that means travellers from the neighbouring country will continue facing a mandatory two-week quarantine to curb the spread of Covid-19. Travellers from 130 nations are, however, now free to enter Kenya unrestricted following a second review in which the government added...

NEW AFRICA BUSINESS NEWS (NABN) Accra, Ghana– The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), East Africa Community (EAC), and Southern African Development Community (SADC) have developed a regional electronic Corridor Trip Monitoring System (CTMS) which will allow cross border road transport operators, drivers, regulators and law enforcement agencies to record and monitor driver wellness data such as COVID-19 test results has been approved by the Tripartite group. The CTMS will also enable operators to track the driver, crew and truck movements against preapproved route plans. The CTMS is supported by the current legal and regulatory framework existing both at regional and national level, which include inter-alia: REC Treaties, Protocols and Agreements, Corridor Agreements, Bilateral Road Transport Agreements as well as National COVID19 regulations being implemented by Tripartite Member/Partner States. The system will eventually be reinforced by the legal provisions in the Tripartite Multilateral Cross Border Road Transport Agreement adopted by the Tripartite Sectorial Ministerial Committee on Infrastructure held in Lusaka in October 2019. Director of Infrastructure at COMESA Secretariat Mr. Baptiste Mutabazi revealed in Lusaka that the CTMS will enable operator, vehicle and driver information to be readily available along regional transport corridors at the roadside and at border posts to all regulatory and law enforcement agencies. New Africa Business News Africa’s Fastest Growing Global Newspaper. Forward www.newafricabusinessnews.com He added that the CTMS is being developed and deployed in a phased manner and was first released in June this year. It will be piloted on a section of the Trans...

Africa loses an estimated $670 million in rejected exports annually due to contamination by aflatoxin. Contamination of the cereal products by the highly-poisonous chemical results in the exports failing to meet the required standards. By wreaking havoc in food stores, the highly poisonous also causes huge losses in trade revenues. This was revealed early this week during the signing of an agreement by two international organizations to fight aflatoxin in Eastern Africa. The pact by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and the Eastern African Grain Council (EAGC) will focus aims to contain aflatoxin contamination in the grains. “This will ensure the grains are safe for human and livestock consumption and meet export standards,” IITA said yesterday in a statement. Aflatoxin is a highly poisonous chemical produced by a naturally occurring fungus known as ‘Aspergillus flavus’ and has lately wreaked havoc on the food stores. The fungus is found in soils and attacks important crops such as maize and groundnuts while in the field and in storage when they are not dried and stored properly. Besides negative impact on export trade and food security, the chemical poses a serious health threat to both human beings and animals as a result of consuming contaminated foods. “An estimated $670m is lost in rejected export products from Africa is lost each year due to contamination by aflatoxin,” said the Partnership for Aflatoxin Control in Africa (PACA). The lobby is currently spearheading the fight against the fungus whose havoc has also adversely impacted...

According to the report from the survey among the top three challenges faced by African countries during the pandemic are reduced opportunities to meet new customers drop in demand for products and services, as well as lack of cash flow. African businesses are shifting towards new technologies in response to the ongoing pandemic, according to a new report published by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA). The UNECA and the International Economics Consulting Ltd jointly published the report which is the second comprehensive survey on the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic impact across Africa, according to UNECA. The online survey was conducted from June 16 to July 20 to provide insights into the effects of the pandemic on economic activity for businesses across the region. The survey mainly identified challenges encountered by African businesses as well as their responses to mitigate the adverse impact of the pandemic. According to the report from the survey among the top three challenges faced by African countries during the pandemic are reduced opportunities to meet new customers drop in demand for products and services, as well as lack of cash flow. “Companies have faced serious disruptions in both supply and market due to COVID-19, with unfair pricing seen as a major concern,” the report read, while feedback from companies about government assistance “is mixed with nearly two-thirds of the respondents indicating from moderate to no satisfaction,” it said. According to the report, “companies are currently working at about half their capacity” while...