Simplification works.  Exporters, and importers of fresh or dry produce to Kenya are required to register with Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Service (KEPHIS). Until recently, this registration took between 10 to 28 days with the traders completing a total of 10 steps and filling in 13 documents. A time-consuming effort that was also costly. Simplification of processes by KEPHIS have reduced the number of steps by half - to 5- and requirement to submit only 3 documents, translating into a 62 % reduction of traders’ transactional costs The Information for Trade in Kenya Portal (InfoTradeKE) serves as a one-stop shop for information on trade-related procedures, from various government directorates, and provides a step-by-step guide on foreign trade procedures from the user’s (exporter/importer) point of view. It was implemented by Kenya Trade Network Agency (KenTrade) in partnership with TradeMark Africa (TMA) through funding from United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Netherlands and with technical support from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). The Portal has approximately 10,000 visitors each month. It has proven to be an ideal tool for regulators to analyse interventions in the export and import chain, providing insights on bottlenecks and barriers to trade that need to be dealt with to make the trader’s experience more efficient. The results from the simplification of the procedure to register as an exporter of fresh and dry produce with the Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Service (KEPHIS) provides a perfect illustration of the power of this...

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...

Slowly, but perceptibly, sediment forms out of a white substance and gathers at the bottom of a test tube in a small laboratory off the main road in Bujumbura. The sediment’s name is fraud. “What you are seeing is the analysis of a milk sample we took from a street vendor,” says laboratory assistant Benoit Glaud. “It’s been diluted with flour and with water, which is no surprise to us. Basically, Burundians are victims of massive fraud in foodstuffs. Glaud is a consultant working to modernize the tools and methods of the Burundi Bureau of Standards and Quality Control (BBN) to help exporters compete in the East African Community (EAC) market and to accustom producers and consumers to the idea that standards are not an extra tax but a guarantee of quality and safety. “Having the BBN stamp on your product is vital for the free movement of goods within the (East African) community,” says Damien Nakobedetse, BBN’s Director-General. “Without laboratory test results and the BBN stamp, it is very difficult to sell a product beyond the local market. Without certification, many countries will refuse imports or demand further analysis, which is expensive.” BBN has been around for two decades but its mission gained added urgency with membership of the EAC and the need for strict standards in the emerging single customs area the bloc is establishing. It was a case of standardize to survive. Across the community, TradeMark Africa (TMA) is helping national standards offices modernize, develop and introduce...

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...

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...

Rwandan food producers are submitting themselves to the most stringent of global tests –good enough even for astronauts in space - to get a stamp of approval that will enhance their standing in world markets and help increase badly-needed exports. “This certification has increased consumer confidence and our confidence too,” says Dative Giramahoro, of Sosoma Ltd, which mills maize. “We sell in Kenya’s Nakumatt supermarket in Kigali, so now there is no reason why we cannot sell to any Nakumatt in Kenya,” she says. The certification is part of a programme overseen by the Rwandan Bureau of standards (RBS) to help the local food industry eat into the country’s 4-1 trade deficit with the rest of the world by increasing exports to the East African Community (EAC) and beyond. “There is no doubt that the certification we have received will help us increase exports and we see the European Union (EU) and Canada as primary targets, even the United States,” says, Anna Uwiganza, head of Kinazi Cassava Plant ltd. The standards are out of this world. They were pioneered by the U.S. Pilsbury Company, the U.S. army and the U.S. space programme NASA to guarantee the safety of any food that astronauts might consume in space. Called Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP), the system is a set of preventive analyses to prevent bacteria getting into the food chain at every point from harvests to packaging and is the most widely used food safety standard in the world today....

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...

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...