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...

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...

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...

An innovative training program for clearing agents is growing a new breed of professionals to spur trade and prosperity in East Africa. “Where you see trade grow you see prosperity take root. By training the key people in the freight forwarding business, we are helping move goods quicker, save time and money and help the region develop” said Silas Kanamugire of TradeMark Africa (TMA). Run by the East Africa regional freight forwarding governing body (FEAFFA), the program is quickly churning out a fresh generation of professionally trained freight forwarders to quickly expand the ever-growing potential for trade within the East African region. With TradeMark Africa (TMA)’s support, FEAFFA aims to transform the job of freight clearing and forwarding into a recognized profession and to standardize and regulate this key position to streamline the process of doing business in the five-nation bloc. “My clients are now satisfied with the fast clearance of their goods. We are now not seen as unreliable or barriers to the trade process, but rather partners who can help grow the prosperity of this region”, Said Xavery Komba, CEO of Victorius Tanzania Ltd, one of the trained agents. “With more than 40% of business costs accruing to transport and logistics, there is increasing appreciation of the importance of the sector in international trade. I am pleased this program will raise professional standards in the industry with the aim of increasing trade and prosperity in the region,” said the Federation’s Regional Executive Officer, John Mathenge. Up until recently,...

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...

Villagers in Ruziba say the old government Health Centre was “precarious.” Photographs of it suggest stronger adjectives, such as ramshackle, tumbledown or dilapidated. The new Health Centre is far from precarious. It is smart, solid and a source of local pride. And it was built on the foundations of a revolution sweeping Burundi – tax payments. “It was built with our tax returns,” says Dr Bellejoie Louise Iriwacu. “I am very, very proud of it.” The Rubiza Health centre, and dozens like it, was funded by a streamlined tax-gathering system adopted by the government to maximize revenue in an economy that sits near the bottom of the world’s least-developed. When she qualified as a doctor a year ago and got hired by the government, one of her first acts was to go to the Office Burundais de Recettes (OBR) – the country’s tax-collection authority – to register to pay tax on her modest salary. OBR was created in 2009 with assistance from the British government’s DFID aid wing and then through an organization called TradeMark Africa (TMA), which is helping East African Community (EAC) states modernize and integrate their economic infrastructure. The EAC groups Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi and is home to 160 million people. Some young workers might have baulked at making a system to deduct tax from their salary a priority as they began a new life and a new career. Not Dr. Iriwacu. “Not paying taxes means no money to make the country live, to...

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...

Truckers yearn for it. Some are even prepared to break the rules to get it. But in Uganda actually obeying the rules and signing up for a computerised system has put truckers where they and their cargo want to be - in the fast lane. “Although many business people in Uganda still believe that money is made by cutting corners and doing the wrong thing, you can now make good money by doing the right thing, which is more sustainable,” says Jennifer Mwijukye, founder and MD of Unifreight, a cargo handling company. She is talking about the pilot launch in Uganda of the Authorised Economic Operators (AEO) scheme, which gives approved companies preferential treatment to sail through the Ugandan border all the way to the importers’ premises without being stopped anywhere for Customs checks. The programme, fully funded by TradeMark Africa (TMA), allows authorized companies like Jennifer’s to operate smoothly by clearing merchandise electronically and calculating taxes due, which can be paid at the click of a mouse. “I can tell you today that I am saving at least $300 per container in processing costs, to say nothing of the handling time which has drastically reduced,” she says. Clearing at least two containers a week, she now saves $31,200 a year (78 million Uganda shillings). Time is money, not just for freight companies but also for East Africa’s 140 million consumers who have to help cover the cost of one of the most expensive transport systems in the world. Transport...

South Sudan is barely one year old. But this new state is laying the foundations on which to build a future with a streamlined customs collection system that has increased revenue by more than 1,000 percent in the past six months. “This money will help us build the nation,” says Lt. Col. Emmanuel Goya Simon at the steamy Nimule Border with Uganda, the lifeblood entry point for nearly all of South Sudan’s import-dependent economy. “The revenue will help us in security, health and education. It will help the nation grow and breathe,” says Simon, second-in-command of Customs at Nimule. “We are already well on the way.” Outside huge trucks carrying everything from chewing gum to electric kettles and sugar, park to begin the laborious process of registering with half a dozen authorities, declaring their contents, being inspected and paying duty. “It’s a muddle. All the work is manual now, but not for much longer,” says Eugene Torero, the representative in South Sudan of TradeMark Africa (TMA), a donor-funded organization helping the East African community modernize trade and sow the seeds of new prosperity. Across the East African community TradeMark Africa (TMA) is helping countries accelerate away from ways of doing business and trade that have barely changed in the decades since the independence wave unfurled in the 1960s – paperwork, and lots of it. At Nimule, for example, TradeMark Africa (TMA) is in the process of computerizing form filling so that truckers will be able to sit at a laptop...

Truckers yearn for it. Some are even prepared to break the rules to get it. But in Uganda actually obeying the rules and signing up for a computerised system has put truckers where they and their cargo want to be - in the fast lane. “Although many business people in Uganda still believe that money is made by cutting corners and doing the wrong thing, you can now make good money by doing the right thing, which is more sustainable,” says Jennifer Mwijukye, founder and MD of Unifreight, a cargo handling company. She is talking about the pilot launch in Uganda of the Authorised Economic Operators (AEO) scheme, which gives approved companies preferential treatment to sail through the Ugandan border all the way to the importers’ premises without being stopped anywhere for Customs checks. The programme, fully funded by Trademark East Africa (TMA), allows authorized companies like Jennifer’s to operate smoothly by clearing merchandise electronically and calculating taxes due, which can be paid at the click of a mouse. “I can tell you today that I am saving at least $300 per container in processing costs, to say nothing of the handling time which has drastically reduced,” she says. Clearing at least two containers a week, she now saves $31,200 a year (78 million Uganda shillings). Time is money, not just for freight companies but also for East Africa’s 140 million consumers who have to help cover the cost of one of the most expensive transport systems in the world....