TMA is supporting SEATINI in Uganda to build capacity for export trade, specifically for maize and sesame, two key Uganda staples. The project is recording wins: hundreds of Farmers in Uganda’s Nakaseke district are now earning UGX 700 from 400 UGX for graded and sorted maize, according to an independent evaluation.   As Kamya Kirubira leads us through a syrup-coloured maize field in his home district of Nakaseke in Central Uganda, the hard leaves scratch gently against our skin, assuring us the crop is as dry as it looks. Juxtaposed against a powder blue sky, the rows of maize are an idyllic scene that could have come straight from the front of a well-branded breakfast cereal box. This is Nakaseke today. Maize is in high demand in East Africa. It is the foundation of every staple food, in every country in the region. Every morning, afternoon and evening, middle class families sit down to eat maize, whether in the form of a roasted maize cob, a bowl of ugali (maize porridge), a fried chapatti, or an intoxicating local brew. Kenya is opening up to Ugandan maize and other markets will surely follow, but only if the maize makes the grade. In fact, the demand for this cereal crop far outweighs its production in East Africa. Yet, by Kamya’s own accounts, he wasn’t always the 40-acre owning commercial farmer he is now, and Nakaseke wasn’t always hailed as a model district for maize growing. In fact in 2013, when the World...

From her small metal fabrication workshop in Kitwe, a Kampala suburb on Entebbe Road, Annie Nakizibu Mirembe has multinational ambitions. Her small business employs a workforce of Ugandans and Kenyans to make metal furniture, which she ships locally and into neighbouring Rwanda. Her steel is Ugandan and the sisal fibre she uses for cushions comes from Kenya. Mirembe now has her sights set on expanding across the border into Burundi after capturing the markets in Uganda, Kenya and Rwanda—capitalising on the opening up of regional markets resulting from the political and economic integration of the East African Community (EAC). The EAC’s Common Market Protocol allows for the free movement of goods and services, labour and capital across the borders of the region’s states. Despite the efforts at the political level to reduce friction for traders seeking to expand regionally, barriers still remain—not least a lack of knowledge amongst the population. Studies show awareness of the existence and benefits of a regional market are low in Uganda. In fact, small scale businesses like Mirembe's find it difficult to access information that would inform them of how to access and conduct themselves in neighbouring countries markets. “The first time I received a worthwhile order from Kigali—the Rwandan capital—I was nervous but also extremely excited. At that point, I did not know how to export steel products to neighbouring country, so I had to take time to research,” she says. Mirembe’s experience mirrors the challenge most citizens face across the EAC states in recent years. It is a need that...

Assiimwe Allan is a 22-year-old student in his second year at the Makerere University, in Kampala, Uganda. He is pursuing a Bachelor of Science degree, taking statistics as his major and mathematics as his minor. In August 2015, Allan teamed up with five fellow hardworking students to form a transformation movement project called Coffee Max which will be operationalized through the registration of a business company at the Makerere University. The Coffee Max project intends to develop a new generation of young people to embrace and enjoy coffee in its full diversity. As a result, this will increase domestic coffee consumption amongst the young people and integrate them more along activities in the coffee value chain. Allan began this project with the aim to popularize coffee as a trendy beverage amongst university students which, in turn, would reduce alcoholism. He and his team participated in the annual Uganda coffee festival that was hosted in November 2015 and organized by NUCAFE in conjunction with the Uganda Coffee Developed Authority (UCDA). In addition, Allan developed a strong passion to boost his fellow young people, especially his fellow university students with entrepreneurial skills to assist them to be self-employed which in turn will reduce the overwhelming youth unemployment rate in Uganda. The project will start with the purchase of automated coffee vending machines that will offer a wider variety of coffee beverage. This will be followed with a vigorous coffee club at the Makerere University and accompanied by trendy promotional materials for awareness...

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...

Mission of the Uganda National Bureau of Standards: “To provide standards, measurements and conformity assessment services for improved quality of life.” How much do you know about the quality of your television set? Or your washing powder? Even your toothpaste? You probably did some research before handing over the money for your TV, perhaps asking your friends, comparing costs, or even checking online. But did you bother to check that your washing powder actually does what the packet says it does, and won’t bring you out in a rash? As for your toothpaste, which you put in your mouth at least twice a day, how do you know it won’t poison you? In Uganda, the Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS) is the organisation that ensures that consumer products meet current standards including safety. In 2010 the UNBS, with assistance from the Sweden International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) and TradeMark Africa (TMA) began a five year Quality Infrastructure and Standards Programme (QUISP)worth US$2.7 million, to establish and strengthen the standards development and implementation capacity of the country. The programme is designed to assist not just Ugandan producers, but also importers who suffer delays due to product testing. QUISP has five components: to put in place a national standards and quality strategy; to develop a legal framework for quality infrastructure;to coordinate the different players, especially regulators, standards developers and standards implementers; to build the capacity of the above players in terms of training and equipment; and to raise awareness of and...

Abdul Mohamed is a small business owner based in Dar es Salaam Tanzania. He owns and drives his own truck, which he uses to export plastic chairs to neighbouring Burundi. On Tuesday 9 September 2014 Abdul leaves Dar es Salaam at 7.00 AM carrying almost 2,000 chairs bound for a retailer in Bujumbura, the capital city of Burundi. The following day at 1.00 PM after 30 hours on the road, Abdul arrives at the border post of Kobero, just inside Burundi territory. Abdul Mohamed has been exporting chairs to Burundi for the last three years, a five-day return journey covering nearly 2,400 Km. He has made good time on this journey and he expects to spend up to four hours at the border post before getting back behind the wheel and on the road. But it wasn’t always so. Just four months before, Abdul would have had to make the same journey with two border stops, the first at Kabanga on the Tanzanian side of the border, then at Kobero. The procedure was lengthy. Abdul would, through the services of a clearing agent, declare his goods to the customs officers who would make a physical inspection of his cargo. That could take up to 12 hours as he waited in line with the many other truck drivers who use the central corridor to carry goods inland from the port of Dar es Salaam. Then, having completed that procedure, Abdul would go through immigration procedures before finally being allowed into the...

One of TradeMark Africa’s (TMA) objectives, towards its ultimate goal of reducing poverty by increasing trade in East Africa, is improved cross border processes for small traders, especially women. Empowering women in the East African Community as part of the regional integration process is essential to TMA’s goal of improving business competitiveness. Its long-term aim is, through policy change, to eliminate barriers that affect women in trade. In Uganda, TMA is contributing to this by advocating for policy change that will assist women cross border traders and by building capacity, specifically through women’s organisations. “Women need help because of their historic marginalisation”, said iCON Programme Director, Ben Matsiko Kahunga. “They need both confidence and means. If a woman is processing and packaging juice what does she need to cross borders? How does she access quality certification? How can she get advice about packaging, branding and standards?” That is a question that had never occurred to Esther Kabengano, a 37 year old mother of two, living in the Ugandan capital Kampala, where she runs a small business processing and selling fruit juice. She was just too busy trying to survive. By any standards, Kabengano’s business is small, operating from her home where she makes 10 litres of juice at a time (10 litres being the size of the container she uses to hold it) and which she sells on the streets of Kampala by the cupful. Her profit is Ush 4,000 per day - about US$1.5. The profits are not enough...

The five Partner States of the East African Community (EAC) are currently involved in activities related to the conformity of products traded within the region. The process which includes the preparation, approval and adoption of the standards related to those products is undertaken by the different national standards bodies in each one of the partner states. A common definition of a standard is a document approved by a recognized body that provides for common and repeated use rules, guidelines or characteristics for products or related processes and production methods, for which compliance may or may not be mandatory. Standards play an important role in regional integration. “Standards are vital to integration,” says José Maciel, Director of Non-Tariff Barriers (NTBs) and Standards at TradeMark Africa (TMA). “In addition to safeguarding the health and safety of the consumers and the environment, standards can cut the cost and time of doing business by huge amounts. In that sense, they are central to the future wealth of the EAC.” All across the five-nation regional economic bloc, TMA is helping national partners harmonize the standards of the most commonly traded goods in the region so that they can cross borders unimpeded by questions about their authenticity or reliability or origin. These include some of the most-traded goods in the EAC such as tea, coffee, iron, petroleum and edible fats and oils. TMA is assisting the EAC national bureaus of standards, the private sector and the EAC Secretariat on two levels: national and regional. At the...

The thefts were well planned; wait for the truck to get to a hill, open the doors and steal merchandise. However, the thieves did not know that the trucks were being monitored. No sooner had they tampered with the electronic seals than messages were sent to the central monitoring center (CMC) in Nakawa, Kampala. The incidents, according to Customs officer, Dunstan Luwaga, occurred last Wednesday and Thursday night. [caption id="attachment_3494" align="alignleft" width="624"] Kambali Kilondelo, a truck driver talks to the press at Nakawa[/caption] Whilst on duty, an officer in the CMC Wednesday night received an alert from a truck travelling on the Gulu highway, according to Luwaga. The driver, he said, was told to stop to ascertain what had happened. “When I walked to the back, the padlock was broken and the seal had been tampered with,” John Muteba the driver of the vehicle carrying merchandise stated. “I am so glad that the Electronic Cargo Tracking System (ECTS) helped me save the cargo. I would probably be in jail now.” He was headed to South Sudan. And on Thursday night, a similar incident happened between Matugga and Bombo on the same highway. Driving sugar to South Sudan, Kambali Kilondelo’s truck was vandalized.   [caption id="attachment_3495" align="alignleft" width="393"] John Muteba and his colleague stand outside their vehicle[/caption] Like Muteba, he was notified and he stopped. He walked to the back of the truck to the sight of 15 bags of sugar scattered on the road. The sugar, which had been grabbed...

Mombasa-Kampala-Kigali Highway 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 computerised clearance and electronic...