South Sudan has joined the African Trade and Insurance Agency (ATI), a multilateral financial institution providing export credit insurance, political risk insurance, investment insurance and other financial products to member countries. The world's youngest nation becomes the 14th member country of ATI after a six-year wait. The trade body, with both commercial and development mandates, supports African countries by covering risks to companies and investors doing business in member countries. It also covers investment and trade risks ranging from breach of contract to non-payment and government expropriation. John Lentaigne, ATI Chief Underwriting Officer, told Xinhua on Tuesday that the East African country was able to complete its membership in late 2017 with an initial share capital subscription of 7.8 million U.S dollars provided by the African Development Bank (AfDB). Lentaigne said South Sudan's membership in ATI can help boost trade and foreign investment because the 7.8 million dollar capital contribution can reduce risks of doing business in the war-torn country. "We have a range of products that can mitigate a country's risks whether it is real or perceived. For example the risk of a government not honoring their contractual commitment, risk of war, political violence, inability to convert current and payment risk whether on the government or the private sector," he said. South Sudan depends on oil revenue for 98 percent of its budget, but production decreased significantly due to civil war that erupted in December 2013, causing most oilfields in the country's oil-rich northern region to shut down. Oil...

Several businesses in the East African Community region stand a chance to win awards at the inaugural East African Business Council (EABC), inaugural Business Excellence Awards. EABC is an apex body of business associations of the private sector and corporates from the six East African Community partner states. The awards were organised as part of events marking its 20th anniversary. November 2017 marked 20 years since the establishment of the EABC and its Secretariat has outlined a number of activities and events. According to the EABC Executive Director, Lilian Awinja, the awards are aimed at showcasing and celebrating businesses that have achieved excellence in various aspects of their operations across East Africa, keeping with the spirit of the EAC integration. She said: “The business sector is a driving force in East Africa’s economy through the creation of jobs and opportunities that enable citizens to earn a living and thrive as well as being a major player in the integration process.” “The idea to host these awards was thus born out of the need for a platform upon which the Council will honour businesses that have achieved success through their vision, operations and business ethics.” Award categories The inaugural EABC Business Excellence Awards will be organised across three categories, the first will recognize one company as Overall East African Regional Company. The second category will recognise business that excelled in cross cutting categories, namely manufacturing, services, SME, woman owned enterprises, green economy, innovation and corporate social responsibility. The third category will...

... as a 10bn/- project for two bus terminals in Arusha is on the drawing board as part of a drive to add a notch to Arusha as the seat of the East African Community (EAC), its civic leadership is in the process of establishing two large bus terminals here, which will link all six member states of the regional bloc by a road network. The project cost is estimated at around 10 billion/- . The Arusha City Director, Mr Athumani Kihamia has revealed that locations for the proposed terminals had been earmarked, Moshono being the envisaged host of the larger one, to cater for buses traveling between Arusha, Nairobi and Mombasa (Kenya) as well as Kampala (Uganda), plus linking the region with Dar-essalaam, Tanga and Morogoro. The second one will be constructed in Olasiti Ward and become the main station for passenger vehicles traveling between Arusha and Kigali (Rwanda), Bujumbura (Burundi) via the Great North Road which connects Cape Town (South Africa) to Cairo (Egypt). The station will also serve routes linking the northern zone with the lake zone regions (Mwanza, Shinyanga, Simiyu and Kigoma) as well as Manyara, Dodoma, Singida, Tabora and Iringa as well as southern highlands regions. "We have written to the President's Office (Regional Administration and Local Government (TAMISEMI) seeking permission for applying for loans in the range of 10 billion/- from the African Development Bank (AfDB) to fund the proposed projects," said Mr Kihamia, adding that the works at Moshono would commence in March....

The world’s largest container shipping firm A.P. Moller-Maersk is teaming up with IBM to create an industry-wide trading platform it says can speed up trade and save billions of dollars. The global shipping industry has seen little innovation since the container was invented in the 1950s, and cross-border trade still leaves an enormous trail of paperwork and bureaucracy. Success of the platform, which will be made available to the ocean shipping industry around mid-2018, depends on whether Maersk and IBM can convince shippers, freight forwarders, ocean carriers, ports and customs authorities to sign up. Blockchain technology powers the digital currency bitcoin and enables data sharing across a network of individual computers. It will help manage and track tens of millions of shipping containers globally by digitizing the supply chain process from end to end, the companies said. “The big thing that is missing from this industry to digitize and unleash the potential of the technology is really to create a form of utility that brings standards across the entire ecosystem,” Maersk’s Chief Commercial Officer Vincent Clerc said in an interview. A shipment of refrigerated goods from East Africa to Europe can go through nearly 30 people and organizations and involve more than 200 different communications, according to Maersk. Documentation and bureaucracy can be as much as a fifth of the total cost of moving a container. “There is a strong push from the end-customer to see this change. We may meet initial resistance form one part of the ecosystem,” Clerc...

Reluctance by individual East African Community (EAC) countries to fully open their borders is hurting trade and growth of local manufacturing firms, a regional business lobby group has said. East African Business Council acting chairman Jim Kabeho said partial harmonisation of trade rules by the six EAC states has hurt expansion in regional trade. Some EAC countries, he said, are still erecting non-tariff trade barriers at official borders such as refusal to recognise certificate of origin for some goods, more than seven years after the Common Market Protocol was enforced on July 1, 2010. The pact allows for free movement of goods, people, labour, services and capital among the six partner states — South Sudan being the latest member. “There are many positions we (EAC) have agreed upon which are not being implemented. Individual countries do not want to give away their authority to the common market,” Mr Kabeho told the Business Daily in Nairobi. “We do not have a common market per se as far as I am seeing in trade. We still have official borders being non-tariff barriers.” Kenya and Tanzania, for instance, continue to disagree partly over certificates of origin at the Namanga border. The Kenya Association of Manufacturers has blamed the Tanzania Food and Drugs Authority’s for demanding that some of the products from Kenya be registered, re-labelled and retested. The suspicion among EAC states, Mr Kabeho said, has provided room for an influx of cheaper goods available in the region into the bloc, largely from China and...

Six years ago, African leaders decided to establish the Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA), a flagship project of the African Union’s Agenda 2063 aiming to fast-track the continent’s economic growth and development by creating one gigantic market of more than 1.2 billion people with a combined GDP of US$2.19 trillion. Prudence Sebahizi, the Chief Technical Advisor and Head of the CFTA Unit at the AU Commission’s Department of Trade and Industry, talked to The New Times’ James Karuhanga about the project’s progress ahead of the upcoming 30th AU Summit, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia later this month. Excerpts: You say the CFTA is a game changer for Africa and its people. For readers who might not have followed developments, what is this CFTA and how is it a game changer for people on the continent? The Continental Free Trade Area is a continental geographic zone where goods and services are supposed to move with no restrictions among member states. Once established, there shall be no administrative barriers at any country’s borders in regards to movement of goods and services. The CFTA will be established by a comprehensive agreement to be concluded by African Union Member States within the broader framework of continental integration agenda and the Abuja Treaty Establishing the African Economic Community. The CFTA aims to achieve a comprehensive and mutually beneficial trade agreement among member states covering trade in goods, trade in services, investment, intellectual property rights and competition policy. It is a game changer in the sense that it will be...

NAIROBI, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- The apex body of business associations in the East African Community (EAC) on Wednesday said food, drugs and cosmetics are the most affected by non-tariff barriers in intra-EAC trade. East African Business Council (EABC) Executive Director Lilian Awinja told Xinhua in Nairobi that trade barriers of most other products have been resolved and these goods are freely flowing across the EAC member states. "The main reason why food, drugs and cosmetics face trade barriers at the EAC border points is due to lack of harmonized standards across the three sectors," Awinja said during a media briefing. EABC draws membership from private sector organizations in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi. The regional body has already established an East African Private Sector Standards Platform that addresses trade barriers faced by suppliers in intra-regional trade that are caused by differences in technical regulations among EAC member states. Awinja noted that while Kenya and Tanzania have foods standards bodies, Uganda is yet to fully operationalize its organization. "This has resulted in different laws on food safety that have hampered intra-EAC trade," she said. The East African Legislative Assembly has already endorsed the EAC Standardization, Accreditation and Conformity Assessment (SACA) Bill that seeks to harmonize foods, drugs and cosmetics standards across the region. The heads of states of the EAC partner countries are set to sign the bill so that it becomes law later this year. Source: Xinhua

Dar es Salaam. Economic growth in the Africa region is projected to continue to rise to 3.2 per cent in 2018 and to 3.5 in 2019, on the back of firming commodity prices and gradually strengthening domestic demand. However, this growth will remain below pre-crisis averages, partly reflecting a struggle in larger economies to boost private investment. According to the World Bank latest analysis of Global Economic Prospects (GEP), South Africa is forecast to tick up to 1.1 per cent growth in 2018 from 0.8 per cent in 2017. “The recovery is expected to solidify, as improving business sentiment supports a modest rise in investment,” reads the report. However, policy uncertainty is likely to remain and could slow needed structural reforms. Nigeria is anticipated to accelerate to a 2.5 per cent rate this year from 1 per cent growth in the year just ended. An upward revision to Nigeria’s forecast is based on expectation that oil production will continue to recover and that reforms will lift non-oil sector growth. Growth in Angola is expected to increase to 1.6 per cent in 2018, as a successful political transition improves the possibility of reforms that perfect the business environment. The regional outlook is subject to external and domestic risks, and is tilted to the downside. “Although stronger-than-expected activity in the United States and Euro Area could push regional growth up due to greater exports and increased mining and infrastructure investment, an abrupt slowdown in China could generate adverse spillovers to the region...

Players in the shipping and logistics business have spoken on the rocky start of the cargo train on the standard gauge railway, including delays tied to limited cargo. They have blamed efficiency hiccups and lack of a clear agreement between the SGR operator and cargo owners for the cargo shortage that has hit the SGR goods haulage launched on Monday, forcing Kenya Railways to delay the daily service. Performance of the rail freight sector needs to be stimulated by improving customer service to boost uptake of the service. Shippers reckon the cargo shortage is an artificial one caused by unclear operational steps. For example, they say, it is not clear who between the Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) and the railway firm will handle the cargo invoices. After the expansion of the Mombasa port, it was anticipated that growth in volume of cargo would automatically boost hauling. “But this is not the case because of technical hitches in sections of the value chain despite the SGR launching its goods haulage business just the other day,” said a maritime operator. These reservations have been registered despite assurances by Kenya Railways Corporation that the offloading of cargo at the Mombasa Port, transport and delivery is “now very efficient.” Delays were reported to have hit the second cargo train that finally arrived at the newly expanded Embakasi Inland Container Depot (ICD) in Nairobi on Saturday. KR said the train was stuck at Mombasa port awaiting containers, raising fears that investors were still opting for...

Now that the laws allowing for the use of drones for commercial purposes, it is only a matter of time before we see the unmanned aerial vehicles dotting skylines as they deliver goods, unshackled from our snaking traffic. This is the future of logistics, transportation that is driven by technology and with minimal human assistance. What will this will mean for Kenya’s logistics industry? First, it is worthy to note that Kenya is not the pioneer on the use of drones in the region. The crown goes to Rwanda which is already using the aerial vehicles to deliver blood, medical supplies and other life critical inputs. In Kenya, a good example is in the delivery of national examination papers. The Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) failed to take off on time in parts of Narok County as rains made road transportation unusable. Expanding our imagination even further, would drones have been used to deliver election materials for the General Elections? Going back to costs, would drones deliver these goods in a timely and more cost effective manner? These are some situations where the government ought to seek the services of technology-driven logistic companies. The private sector can also use this technology for parcel delivery, especially at a time when more Kenyans are embracing online shopping. Again, one area that needs to rapidly adopt technologically-driven logistics is the booming retail sector. Retailers often cite that one of the biggest costs they incur is shrinkage or losses that are the result...