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...

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...

Diborah Donada is back in the classroom to learn a skill that will help South Sudan’s economy grow from dependence on oil – English, East Africas’ business language. “As a Customs officer, I am the eyes of the nation. My job is very important to earn revenue for my country’s development, for our children’s health, for hospitals and for education. English will help me be a better officer.” She is one of around 200 staff of the Customs Service of South Sudan and National Bureau of Standards who are being taught to learn English so they can deal efficiently in the business language of the East African Community. The training is part of a comprehensive programme of skill and capacity building backed by TradeMark Africa, which has carried out similar language programmes in Francophone Burundi so that government officials can negotiate in the EAC’s key language. Surprisingly, for many visitors, the language of day-to-day South Sudan is Arabic the language of the mainly Arab North from which the country gained independence in 2011 after almost 30 years of war. Around two million South Sudanese left Arabic-speaking jobs in Khartoum and now form the backbone of civil service positions, according to the Director-General of CSSS, Maj-Gen Mikaya Modi. “English is vital,” he says. “It is the language of business in East Africa.” Linda Nansubuga, one of the English-language trainers, says many of her candidates have little background in English and are given remedial and extra tuition. “Skill levels vary a great...

The symbols of South Sudan’s key challenges boom overhead every 15 minutes, briefly denying Juba residents the chance of sensible conversation, making paperwork on desks flutter and shake and dust rise on the streets. They are aircraft, commercial flights carrying businessmen and aid workers, and United Nations transport craft ferrying food and people to staunch the needs of more than a million made homeless and thousands killed since renewed internal conflict erupted in December 2013. Residents of Juba have become used to the noise but recognise that the aerial traffic encapsulates the dilemma facing the world’s newest nation as it tries to develop and tap its undoubted potential. “Peace. For South Sudan to really begin to grow, we need peace more than anything else,” says Caesar Riko, the policy and advocacy advisor of South Sudan Chamber of Commerce. “We can grow, even in conflict, but not the way we could if there was peace.” The world’s newest nation was born in July 2011 in jubilation after almost 30 years of war with the Khartoum government in the North but descended into internal conflict in December 2011 when President Salva Kiir accused his deputy, Riek Machar, of plotting to overthrow him. That simmering conflict shut down South Sudan’s key oil fields in the North of the country and has highlighted in cruel focus the need for the country to diversify away from 98% dependence on petroleum for the revenue with which to develop a country of around 12 million people. The...

The biscuits came from Iran in modern, airtight packaging, the list of ingredients displayed on the back, an appetizing picture of the snack on the front. [caption id="attachment_6922" align="alignleft" width="500"] Jacob Matiop, South Sudan National Bureau of Standards head at Nimule, shows some of the expired imported goods impounded at the border.[/caption] The problem was that their expiry date was the week before they crossed the border from Uganda. They were inedible, potentially harmful for the consumer, and duly rejected by South Sudan’s embryonic National Bureau of Standards (SSNBS). “There was a whole consignment like this,” says Jacob Matiop, SSNBS head at Nimule, through which 90% of the nation’s goods arrive through the East African Community’s Northern Corridor from the Kenyan port of Mombasa. “So we seized them, and we will destroy them. The owners are upset but South Sudan will not let itself become a dumping ground for sub-standard or expired goods of any sort, and that means everything from biscuits to computers.” Matiop is young, determined and enthusiastic about establishing a system of standards of the sort that many EAC states already have or are, like his own country, building with help from TradeMark Africa (TMA) to protect consumers and streamline trade. “Of course traders get upset. They are not used to the idea of standards. One trader even pulled a pistol on one of my officers but we are protecting our young nation and our consumers. It is a duty.” Standards are a key part of the...

They live in a state of suspension under plastic sheets or twigs, under tents if they are lucky, out in the open if they are not. Women and children, men and boys; the only certainty in their lives is uncertainty. These are the human flotsam from South Sudan’s unresolved internal conflict, which erupted in December 2013, sending more than a million running for shelter, food and security, killing 10,000. “It’s a critical emergency,” says World Food Programme (WFP) Logistics Cluster head Fiona Lithgow. “Just getting relief to these people in a country of this size is an enormous challenge, but we are winning.” Relief flights leave Juba airport daily, airlifting or airdropping supplies to U.N. and NGO teams dotted around the compass points of one of Africa’s biggest countries, and the newest country in the world. Almost all of that aid comes by road from faraway Mombasa, or the U.N. logistics base at Entebbe, Uganda. It now gets fast-track clearance under a programme supported by TMA and its partners which has reduced clearance time to one or two days from four-five days before. “The paperwork has been hugely reduced for aid trucks,” says Bennet Obwoya, who oversees the comings and goings of the aid convoys in a small containerized office at the corner of the Nimule Customs area. “The need for proof of payment of taxes for aid, which is tax exempt, has been done away with. Verification of cargoes has been speeded up a lot and things have improved...