What is the economic outlook for the region in 2015, and what are the risks? We expect sub-Saharan Africa to register a growth of 4.7 per cent, accelerating to 5.2 per cent in 2016. The risks include the slow growth environment in advanced economies particularly the Euro area and Japan; the potential volatility and financial disruption as a result of monetary policies operating at different places in the cycle; geopolitical risks and any others that suddenly hit the globe. For example, a year and half ago, we never talked about Ebola because it wasn’t an issue. Now it has affected countries in West Africa. There are concerns about debt with the International Monetary Fund. Kenya, for instance, has been borrowing from the IMF. What are the long-term solutions to foreign exchange support loans for African countries? Kenya asked for a precautionary loan — it is a progression that we observe concerning Kenya and one that is moving in the right direction because it is an indication that the country is more solid economically. A country such as Kenya, depending on how the oil market pans out, could find itself with a good balance of trade and improve its balance of payments. Given that domestic resources in the region remain meagre, how can countries avoid accumulating high debt while addressing infrastructure gaps? The critical choice hinges on what infrastructure projects are prioritised and how they will provide a return that helps the country financially so that it is on a stronger...

South Sudan and Somalia’s applications to join the East African Community (EAC) is one of the main agendas the regional heads of States will be discussing today in Nairobi. The 16th Ordinary Summit of the East African Community Heads of State will be held Friday at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre, Nairobi. “Negotiations for the admission of the Republic of South Sudan into the EAC, verification of the application of the Federal Republic of Somalia will be priority matters on agenda,” EAC secretary general Dr Richard Sezibera said. Last year, the government of South Sudan pleaded with the EAC member states not to reject them because of the violence that had engulfed the country. The Vice President of the Republic of South Sudan, Mr James Wani Igga, while meeting the EAC high level technical mission, said: “South Sudan, being a young nation, still needs support and integration from the “older” nations within the region”. In June 2011, South Sudan applied to join the bloc, and a verification Committee from the EAC visited the country a year later to establish its level of conformity to the EAC regulations. However, in April last year, South Sudan halted negotiations because of the war that broke out towards the close of 2013. Source: The East African

East African Community (EAC) Heads of State on Friday took note of a revised roadmap for the completion of the EAC institutional review exercise and directed the Council of Ministers to ensure that the process was finalized within the revised timeframe. They made the call during the ordinary Summit held in Nairobi, Kenya, which, according to a final communiqué, directed the Council of Ministers to submit final recommendations during the next Summit. Nathan Ngoga Gashayija, Director of the EAC Programmes Coordination Unit in Rwanda’s Ministry of EAC Affairs, said that ministers had recommended that the exercise is finished as soon as possible. “In the ministerial meeting, before the Summit, it was recommended that the exercise is done by April but I don’t know if this was later changed,” Gashayija said, adding: “Everybody wants this concluded”. The Council in 2009 directed the Secretariat to undertake a comprehensive study and propose institutional reforms to boost efficiency. Last month, the Accounts Committee of the East African Legislative Assembly (Eala) established that the long overdue review to align EAC institutions with the expanding mandate of the bloc was costing the Community a lot of money. MP Peter Mutuku Mathuki (Kenya), a member of the Eala Accounts Committee, said the exercise was basically about assessing the capacity of personnel and resources. The Assembly noted that the delay was negatively impacting on the implementation of the Common Market Protocol, the second stage of the regional integration process that involves free movement of goods, labour, services and...

Charges for telephone calls across East Africa are set to reduce in July, when countries abolish roaming fees following a directive by the heads of state. The East African Community Heads of State Summit in Nairobi resolved that, following the implementation of the One Network Area by Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda, all the EAC countries should harmonise their calling rates on all networks by July. Calls within the network have already reduced by 12 US cents per minute while there are no charges for incoming calls since the One Network Area was implemented last year. “We acknowledge that the high cost of roaming calls within the East African partner countries is unnecessary and an impediment to trade and communication in our Community. It is unacceptable that calling outside our continent is much cheaper than communicating within the region. In the spirit of East African integration, innovative interventions leading to substantial reduction of calling charges are overdue,” said Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta. There have been ongoing negotiations to remove the interconnectivity fees charged by operators for international voice and data traffic, with roaming charges within the EAC to be cut by 60 per cent. To meet the deadline set by the EAC presidents, the Council of Ministers has already adopted the principles and methodology for determining reduced, harmonised EAC roaming rates and a plan of activities that will ensure the reduced rates are in place by the set date. “The implementation of One Network Area by Rwanda, Kenya and Uganda is...

NAIROBI, Kenya, 20th February 2015 – The East Africa Community member states have unveiled a state of the art video conferencing system which is aimed at drastically reducing the staff and travel costs at the EAC secretariat and member states and ensuring cost-efficiency gains in communication and decision-making. The launch which was held during the 16th Ordinary Summit of the East African Community Heads of States at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre, was presided by the chair of the summit H.E Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete, President of the United Republic of Tanzania, and flanked by his fellow heads of state from the region; H.E. Pierre Nkurunzinza, President of Republic of Burundi, H.E. Uhuru Kenyatta, President of Republic of Kenya, H.E. Paul Kagame, President of Republic of Rwanda and H.E. Yoweri Museveni, President of Republic of Uganda. Also in attendance was Amb. Dr. Richard Sezibera, Secretary General, EAC, Phyllis Kandie, Cabinet Secretary of Tourism, Commerce and East African Affairs and Frank Matsaert, CEO, TradeMark Africa (TMA). TMA provided funding for the system to a tune of $1.8million. Since 2011, TMA has been implementing a programme of support aimed at strengthening the technical and institutional capacity of the Secretariat. As part of a broad institutional reform programme that is on-going, and particularly as part of the Secretary General’s drive to realise cost-efficiency gains in communication and decision-making, the Council approved the acquisition and installation of a Video Conferencing System (VCS) for the Community. The key benefits are enhanced efficiency in communication and savings...

Kenya: East Africa Heads of State will tomorrow appoint a committee of experts to draft a constitution to guide the establishment of a political federation in the region. The move to appoint the committee with members drawn from the five countries is part of the 30th extra-ordinary meeting of the Council of Ministers report to be presented to the presidents for consideration and approval tomorrow. The meeting will be held at Kenyatta International Convention Centre (KICC). The Secretary General East African Community ( EAC) Secretary General Richard Sezibera said the Heads of State will approve the initiation of a constitution-making process and a road map for the regional bloc political federation. “Negotiations for the admission of the Republic of South Sudan into the EAC, verification of the application of the Federal Republic of Somalia, progress towards establishment of a one area network for East Africa and implementation of the directive of the summit on extension of jurisdiction of the East African court of justice are priority matters to be discussed,” he said.. President Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania, Pierre Nkurunziza of Burundi, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni of Uganda and Paul Kagame of of Rwanda are expected to join President Uhuru Kenyatta at the 16th Ordinary Summit of the EAC Heads of State. EAC secretariat A senior official at the EAC secretariat, who did not want to be quoted as the matter is yet to be discussed by the Presidents, said the proposal to select a committee of experts was agreed during the...

Kampala/ Malaba- Seven years after the plan was first made public, Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) has finally taken charge of the Malaba one-stop border post, a facility expected to speed up clearance of Uganda-bound cargo and goods transiting through the country. Despite the usefulness of the Shs15.8 billion facility, which includes, among others, enhancing regional trade and partly reducing the cost of doing business in the country, senior government engineers say without the access road connecting Uganda and Kenya border points, the initiative will in a long run prove useless. The nearly 3km access road joins the Kenyan to the Ugandan sides of the border posts, where trucks will be quickly cleared. “These facilities (one stop border posts) cannot operate without a road network. The road component is part of the design but it was omitted during implementation due to insufficient funds on the credit,” the project coordinator, Mr Benon Kajuna, said during the handover ceremony in Malaba on Wednesday. He continued: “The estimated cost is Shs11 billion for Malaba and Shs4 billion for Busia access roads. We have been in discussion with Uganda National Roads Authority and ministry of Finance but funding is yet to be approved.” In an interview with the URA commissioner for Customs, Mr Richard Kamajugo, it emerged that this is a short term challenge. He said: “We are aware about the challenges we are likely to face but we will work around it as funding to work on access roads is being finalised.” He continued:...

The government has approved a draft law that seeks to impose a new levy on goods imported from outside the East African Community (EAC) in order to collect funds needed for regional infrastructure projects. The draft law establishing the Infrastructure Development Levy on imported goods was approved by last week's Cabinet meeting. According to the proposed law, all imported goods (from outside EAC), except those exempted under the law, are subject to a levy of 1.5 per cent on the customs value of imported goods. The government says the levy "is intended to mobilise funds for regional infrastructure projects that will assist in improving the infrastructure and reduce the cost of transport and the cost of doing business in the region." The regional infrastructure projects to be funded include the railway and energy networking infrastructure such as electricity grids and oil pipelines, which are being pursued under the Northern Corridor Integration Projects initiative. "To run these big projects, countries need huge financing. With the view to overcome this problem, EAC Heads of State introduced the idea to establish a levy on imports from outside the bloc to finance the projects," a Cabinet paper, a copy of which The New Times has seen, reads in part. The draft law approved by the Cabinet says the levy on goods imported will be collected at Customs points by Rwanda Revenue Authority in accordance with the customs legislation and deposited into a sub account of the Treasury. Although the draft law is yet to...

Arusha — The Secretary General of the East African Community, Amb. Dr. Richard Sezibera this morning engaged, in a dialogue, Chief Executives Officers (CEOs) of Businesses in the Republic of Kenya on how to improve the integration process and the business-operating environment in the EAC bloc. While hosting over 50 CEOs for breakfast dialogue at the Sarova Stanley Hotel in Nairobi, the Secretary General noted that the intra-regional trade expanded from US dollars 1617.1 million in 2005 to US dollars 3800.7 million in 2010, and that the EAC total trade with the rest of the world maintained an upward trend by posting a growth rate of 8.3 percent in 2013 compared to what was recorded in 2012. On the investment front, the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to EAC increased by 6.6 percent to US$ 3.7 billion in 2013 compared to what was recorded in 2012. He said that in order to maintain this momentum in the integration process, improvement in EAC's competitiveness has to be given the due attention by all stakeholders. He urged the private sector to dedicate this year 2015 to issues that affect the business environment in the region that could be brought to the attention of the EAC Heads of State for their interventions at their Summit on 30 November. Amb. Sezibera urged for the support of the private sector in ensuring that headways are made in areas not limited to total liberalization of free movement of labor and services (removal of work permit) and the...

The Saana Institute partnered with the Trade Out of Poverty All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) to organise a seminar on trade, development and poverty reduction in East Africa on the 11th of February at the House of Commons. The event featured Frank Matsaert, Chief Executive Office of TradeMark Africa (TMA), Patrick Obath, Board Director for TMA and Director of the Kenya Private Sector Alliance (KEPSA), and Lisa Karanja, Senior Director, Business Competitiveness at TMA. The debate was chaired by Robin Walker, Member of Parliament and the Trade Out of Poverty APPG. TMA is a pioneering $600 million Aid for Trade initiative, focused on increasing physical access to markets, enhancing the trade environment, and improving business competitiveness in the region. Funded by the Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States, TMA works on reforms to improve border management, product standards, transport and distribution that will bring about vast benefits for East African economies by significantly lowering trade costs. In his presentation, Frank Matsaert highlighted some of the structural transport and trade issues hindering the growth of East African economies – poor road and port infrastructure, delays at border posts, low capacity of customs agencies, corruption and roadblocks. It can cost more than $5000 to import and export a container to and from Rwanda, in comparison to $300 for inland China. As showcased by Mr Matsaert, TMA’s approach has been to focus on the main trade arteries of the region, the North and Central Corridors. It...