Rwanda is blazing a trail for the rest of East Africa to follow by launching sub-Saharan Africa’s first one-stop electronic trade clearance system, a computerized scheme that saves time, shoe leather and money. “This is a ground breaking scheme to cut the red tape snarling trade and I am confident it will pave the way for similar systems in EAC countries as well as making Rwanda an even cheaper place to do business,” Ben Kagarama, Commissioner General of the Rwanda Revenue Authority said at the launch August 3rd, 2012. Called the Rwanda Electronic Single Window (RESW), the system gathers under one electronic roof all the agencies needed to clear, approve and charge duty on imports and transit goods transparently, quickly and efficiently. “It’s one of our most important areas of support – an I.T. solution to improve the administration of the whole process of clearing goods and bring Kigali one day closer to Mombasa.” said Mark Priestley, Rwanda Country Director of TradeMark Africa, which helped deliver the system. “It has huge implications and offers great possibilities for other countries in the EAC, several of whom are adopting the same system.” In the past, the landlocked country of Rwanda cleared goods using hard copy documents that were physically moved from office to office and across a variety of organizations – the Rwanda Revenue Authority (RRA), the Rwanda Bureau of Standards, the Health Ministry, the Airlines and the Rwanda Development Board (RDB). Now the process has been streamlined and computerized and can...

In the international TV reality show “The Apprentice,” ambitious contestants pit their wits against a business mogul to win a chance to work alongside him and make their fortune. But in a real-life version, bright young Rwandan graduates are handpicked to advise and shape government policy to help turn one of Africa’s smallest countries into an export-driven Switzerland of Africa. “We came here as fresh new graduates,” says Patrick Manirampa, beaming confidently in the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MINICOM), where he works. “It was a golden opportunity.” He is one of the eight graduates selected for a scheme known as the Young Professional Programme which seeks to educate, train and build the effectiveness not just of the individual but of the government institution to which he or she is attached. These Young Professionals are currently integrated into three different institutions in Rwanda: two in MINICOM, four others work in the Ministry of East African Community (MINEAC) and two in the Private Sector Federation (PSF). The Programme is funded by TradeMark Africa (TMA) as part of the different funding agreements it has with these partner institutions. Patrick, and fellow Young Professional Jonas Munyurangabo, are enjoying the first formal jobs of their young lives and have helped shape trade policy at both the national level and at the negotiating table with large trade blocs including the East African Community (EAC), European Union (EU), Southern African Development Community (SADC), Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the United States of...

It’s 1,200 km from the Kenyan port of Mombasa to the Ugandan capital, Kampala and another 525 to the capital of Rwanda, Kigali. But with a few strokes of the politicians’ pens and some clicks on a mouse, that distance just got dramatically shorter. “It used to take 18 days or more for one of our trucks to get here from Mombasa,” said Kassim Omar, Chairman of the Uganda Clearing Industry and Forwarding Association (UCIFA). “Now the same journey takes four days, sometimes even three.” The reduction is due to the decision at a Northern Corridor infrastructure summit by the Presidents of Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda to speed rapidly growing freight along their key trade route and the implementation of a variety of hi-tech systems that have slashed paperwork and time. The combination has stripped away a lot of the bureaucratic red tape that snarled the free flow of trade in the East African Community and contributed to some of the highest transport costs in the world, accounting for up to 40% of the price of goods to consumers. In October 2013, Presidents Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya agreed to implement a Single Customs Territory (SCT) between them as members of the East African Community. Tanzania and Burundi, say they followed suit at the Summit in November 2013. At a stroke, the agreement removed multiple weighbridge, police and customs checks along the Mombasa-Kampala-Kigali route and introduced computerized clearance and electronic tracking and...

It’s the same formula that dating agencies use: bring suitors in search of partners together with partners thinking about suitors. Contrive series of intensive get-togethers and exchanges of information. Sprinkle lightly with expectation and good wishes. Stand back and wait to see what happens. But in this version of the story the suitors are Rwandan companies looking for markets in Uganda. And the Matchmaker is the Rwandan Development Board (RDB) with help from TradeMark Africa (TMA) and the Irish government NGO Traidlinks. Rwanda imports three times as much as it exports. Its private sector, government and backers fear that the country might get economically swamped by the more modernized Partner States like Kenya when all tariff barriers eventually come down in the creation of an economically integrated zone. “Imports don’t make us rich! We have to look at new products and new markets. We need to diversify. We need to look beyond traditional markets. And most of all, we need to think differently,” says Kaliza Karuetwa, Director-General of Trade at the Rwandan Ministry of Commerce. The RDB, Traidlinks and TradeMark Africa (TMA) all wanted to help Rwandan companies think differently and put together an intensive programme for a small group of Rwandan CEOs or top management officials to go to Kampala to try to find customers. Why Uganda? Why not a less economically daunting prospect than its oil-rich neighbour? Why not Burundi, or the Democratic Republic of Congo? “We already do sell to both countries but it’s more re-sale of...

They are as much a feature of Africa’s borders as immigration officials, barbed wire and bureaucracy. They are the service stations of Africa’s highways and the pit stops of commerce from Cape Town to Cairo. They gravitate to the frontiers where trucks stop, truckers break and travelers take on food and water for their journeys. Their shop fronts are brimming baskets and their cash registers are pockets and purses. They are the women traders who make a living by selling wares at Africa’s myriad borders and TradeMark Africa (TMA) is helping them to get organized, to know their rights and to reap the fruits of East African (EA) integration. “As cross border traders we carry the ignition key to transform our communities,” said Hadijja Sserwanga, a champion of the rights of Uganda’s border traders, regional Chairperson of the East African Women Cross Borders Traders Association (EAWCBTA). She describes herself as a politician, activist, teacher and community development worker fighting to overturn the sexual harassment, exploitation and marginalization by the (largely male) people who run and operate EA borders. She’s been a border trader herself since 1987, operating on the Uganda-Tanzania frontier at Mutukula, and has seen and experienced the problems women traders run into by not knowing their rights under EA integration or being bamboozled into paying unnecessary fines, taxes and bribes because they don’t know better. “I have a lot of passion for women’s empowerment and being a cross border trader. I feel we can transform ourselves from being...

Nairobi – After 10 years of stop-go discussions, three East African states are on the verge of launching a single tourist visa to ease the path of visitors across national borders and make it easier for the tourism industry to offer multi-destination packages. “It’s taken a while. There were concerns about how to split the revenue, about possibly losing money and about screening visitors, but Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya have seen that the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages,” said Waturi Matu, coordinator (Kenya) of the East African Tourism Platform. Moves to facilitate tourists across East African Community borders was given fresh impetus in June when the presidents of Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda met and agreed to strengthen integration and cooperation to spur the growth of trade. “Rwanda will be in charge of designing the visa, and the plan is to have it launched in January next year with Tanzania and Burundi free to join at any time,” she said. Long a lobbying goal of East Africa’s tourism industry, the single visa will enable a tourist to buy a visa for the three countries for $100 instead of three visas for $150. The savings for couples and couples with children, the main tourism unit, is therefore substantial. “Tourism is a key source of income for the East African Community and we support the East African Tourism Platform precisely so it can lobby to make the borders between members states ‘thinner’ and less bureaucratic,” said Frank Matsaert, CEO of TradeMark Africa. The...

Fried fish, fried beef, chicken and fried bananas; oils and fats are as much part of East African life as blue skies and rain showers. But until recently, what you bought in Uganda to prepare your matoke with and what you used in Tanzania to fry your fish might have looked the same from the label but have been of vastly differing qualities. And none of East Africa’s 140 million citizens might have been the wiser. But not for much longer, the East African Community (EAC) Secretariat, with support from TradeMark Africa (TMA), met in the Burundian capital, Bujumbura; in March, for a regional technical committee meeting on oil seeds, edible oils and fats sector held to harmonise standards of this key ingredient of the daily diet. “Harmonisation of standards for all sorts of things is one of the building blocks on which to build a strong, integrated East African Community,” said José Maciel, Director of Trade Facilitation (Non-Transport), at TradeMark Africa (TMA). “It’s one of the reasons that the European Economic Community has become the power house that it is. You need to agree on basic standards for goods to create a level playing field on which traders and consumers will both benefit.” The edible fats and oils sector is a part of the larger food and beverage industry that commands a US$ 2 billion East African regional market value and, like the regional economy itself, is fast growing. There is strong demand for oils and fats but not...

Theodore Murenzi’s truck ground to a halt in Rwanda. So did the business it was supposed to be doing, hauling stone and earth to feed the appetite for construction that is changing the face of East Africa. It needed brake linings, oil and fuel filters and new clutch plates to get back on the highway and earning money. All the parts were readily available, in a warehouse in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, a couple of hundred miles away. A few years ago that might have meant being off the road and out of action for days, even weeks, locating the parts, ordering them, paying for them, getting them cleared at two customs posts and delivered to his yard in Kigali, the Rwandan capital. But in December 2012, thanks to a systematic campaign by Rwanda to overturn the Non- Tariff Barriers (NTBs) to trade with its East African Community (EAC) Partner States, the whole process took less than 24 hours. “I ordered them in Kampala, paid for them by Western Union, filled out a simplified declaration form, went up to the border at Katuna, paid my V.A.T. and had a cup of tea with the police there while my stuff was loaded onto another truck. The truck was back in business the next day.” Theodore speaks not just for his own business. He is head of the Long Distance Truck Drivers Association of Rwanda, which has 4,700 members and plies the two main corridors on which landlocked Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda...

It looks like a secret still making illegal alcohol. It’s tucked away in a hidden fold of Rwanda’s rolling hills, a long and bumpy 150km from the Rwanda capital, Kigali. A brush fire bubbles under a vat. A bewildering network of pipes channel the steam to holding vessels, where mysterious liquid condenses. The raw materials of dried leaves is stacked around the site, awaiting immersion and transformation. But the smell that comes off this apparatus isn’t the chemistry of grain meeting yeast and sugar to ferment liquor. It’s a pleasant perfume and could be the sweet smell of success for its owners, and for the Rwanda government’s drive to export high quality products. Ikirezi, a manufacturer of essential oils such as geranium and patchouli, operates the plant. And it could be one of the companies to benefit from Rwanda’s determination to set high standards that will be accepted on local and international markets. “We want to be a model of high standards,” says Rwanda Bureau of Standards (RBS) Director-General Mark Cyubahiro Bagabe. “We want to help the East African Community improve the quality of their products to access international markets.” “Rwanda wants to be the Switzerland of Africa,” explains TradeMark Africa (TMA) Country Director Mark Priestley. “To do that, you need to compete on quality, not volume, and to do that you need trust, and testing goods and applying standards is all about trust.” The government has adopted measures for a market-oriented economy supported by increases in industrial and agricultural...