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...

Listen! What’s that sound bubbling up from the basement of the Ministry at the Presidency of East African Community Affairs (MPACEA) in the Burundi capital, Bujumbura? It sounds like a large group of people talking away to themselves in English. Is it some kind of foreign meditation group? Or perhaps a cocktail party organized by the British embassy? Far from it. It’s a group of men and women sat at computer terminals learning how to speak English so that Burundi will not be linguistically challenged by the dominance of English as the language of business in the East African Community. “We knew we would have to learn English to integrate with the EAC,” said MPACEA minister Hafsa Mossi. “Our government recognised the need to add English to our language abilities so now we have an English Language Laboratory in the basement.” She jokes (in English) with a group of students emerging from the basement. “How did it go?” she asks. “It was hard at first, but it is getting easier every time I come,” says one male student, with barely a trace of an accent. The first students, in a programme supported by TradeMark Africa (TMA), were ministers, permanent secretaries and civil servants, all of whom will add some knowledge of English to the local language, Kirundi, and French, a leftover from Colonial times. The programme, carried out by Williams Academy of the United States, aims to train up 2200 Burundians in groups of about 300 students with three-month intensive...

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...

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...

It used to be six or seven trips, eight days traipsing around town and a lot of shoe leather in the clammy lakeside capital of Burundi to complete the paperwork needed to register for a building permit. Now it’s one trip, six flights up in a Finance Ministry building by elevator and a mere 24 hours or less. That’s because of a One-Stop Shop approach Burundi has adopted, an innovation that has made the country of nine million people one of the top 10 economic reformers in the world, according to the World Bank. The World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) paid tribute to Burundi’s zeal in its annual Doing Business in East Africa report, which made the country the only African state to figure in the league of the world’s top 10 economic reformers. “Burundi is among the top 10 improvers for the second consecutive year, with four regulatory reforms in starting a business, in dealing with construction permits, registering property and trading across borders,” said the IFC report. Only four steps are required to register a business, half the number needed on average by the rest of sub-Saharan Africa. They include submitting all documents, obtaining a registration certificate and registering the company. It also includes making a company seal needed by some banks to issue loans. Although the Government is now proposing to abolish this step, combining the first two so as to remain with only two steps. "The One-Stop Shops are important for Burundi's economy and economic...

World Chambers of Commerce have honored a Tanzanian-designed scheme to use cell phones to identify and help overturn barriers to free trade across East Africa. The scheme won second prize in the World Chambers of Commerce competition for the best project amongst a field of other groundbreaking innovations from Britain, China, the Slovak Republic and Turkey. The short messaging system (SMS) online non-tariff barrier (NTB) reporting and monitoring mechanism was developed by the Tanzania Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture (TCCIA) to get the business community not just to grumble about NTBs but to log them, report them and get them referred to those with the power to overturn them. “Already within East Africa other countries are expressing interest in the system. To get that international recognition for a project designed and driven by the private sector is great,” said Pauline Elago, Country Manager of TradeMark Africa, which backed the scheme. It is the first of its kind in East Africa and is a beacon in the battle against NTBs, regulatory or official hurdles which slow free commerce and add to the cost of transporting goods to the region, which already has the highest transport costs in the world. ““It is a great pleasure to see that the in-house innovation can stretch its wings to the international community. The recognition that the NTBs SMS and online reporting and monitoring system has received is evidence that what we do, as a private sector, in creating favorable business environment adds value to...

It’s a Friday afternoon at Busia border between Uganda and Kenya. Ugandan immigration staffs are busy clearing travellers when a tall young man marches to the counter and demands an entry stamp in his South Sudanese passport. The immigration officer has a number of queries before he can clear him, and the impatient young man starts getting angry and belligerent. Kenya has cleared his exit and he doesn’t see why the Ugandans should waste his time. The immigration officers enlist the help of police to overpower the young man and escort him back to the Kenyan side. Ugandan and Kenyan officers examine the case, and compare notes and finally give him clearance to travel to Kampala. The Ugandan officer in charge of immigration, Margaret Obong, regrets the amount of time lost on such individual cases when immigration officers of both countries walk across to compare notes and meet with their counterparts. This time-consuming exercise will be dramatically reduced when a One Stop Border Post (OSBP) becomes operational. This innovation is going up in many parts of East Africa to speed human and goods traffic, save time and money, and allows the private sector to generate more money and less paperwork. [caption id="attachment_177" align="alignleft" width="407"] The Uganda-Kenya Busia border can be a contentious place[/caption] With funding from Britain’s development arm DFID, the Dutch, Danish development agency (DANIDA), Sweden development agency (SIDA) and Belgium, TradeMark Africa has helped institute a complete reconfiguration of the border processes including physical construction of the new...

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...

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...