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...

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...

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,...

DAR ES SALAAM – Tanzania’s government and freight industry is mounting a multi-pronged attack on an army of barriers slowing cargo traffic on its lifeline central corridor highway to boost regional growth and development through smoother trade. “There is no doubt that provision of improved transport infrastructure and services are a process which is critical for ongoing growth and development, “the Executive Secretary of the Central Corridor Transit Transport Facilitation Agency (CCTTFA), Rukia Shamte said. She spoke at the launch of the Central Corridor Transport Observatory, an I.T.-based system aimed at identifying the innumerable procedural and physical roadblocks that slow traffic within Tanzania and to neighbouring countries, raising the eventual cost to consumers. The Observatory is one of several initiatives backed by TradeMark Africa (TMA) to accelerate and increase trade within the East African Community (EAC) and beyond to grow prosperity for its 140 million citizens by lowering costs and improving access. “We’re helping set up modern computerized systems and databases to amass all the evidence needed to help the government and private sector overturn Non-Tariff Barriers (NTBs) to trade and cut the cost of imports, which can be as much as 45 percent in landlocked countries,” said Scott Allen, Deputy CEO of TradeMark Africa (TMA). The initiatives track transport delays and holdups so that they can be logged and followed in real-time and then forwarded to the relevant government department or private sector agency for a solution. “If 45 percent of anything, even the cost of a lollipop for...

DAR ES SALAAM – Tanzania has embarked on a major shake of its ports, railway and road networks to handle surging cargo traffic caused by its own economic boom and similar expansions in neighbouring countries. “We’ve set specific timeline targets for every sector, port, road, rail – the lot. And if these targets are not met, then heads will roll, including mine, and I am rather keen to keep it where it is,” Tanzanian Transport Minister, Harrirson Mwakyembe said. The Programme, called Big Results Now, marks a determination by the government and its development partners to modernise its infrastructure to cope with current and projected demand as East African economies grow at rates that would make the United States envious. Tanzania is growing by around eight percent a year and similar rates are being enjoyed by all its East African Community (EAC) partners, driving demand for construction and consumer materials from Dar es Salaam to the shores of Lake Kivu. In contrast to previous plans, the Minister said that targets set by the National Key Result Area (NKRA) of the plan would be regularly scrutinized because “periodic measurement of performance is of critical importance, as is adherence to targets.” This will not be a grandiose five-year-plan to gather dust and be replaced by another. “An efficient transport sector is essential for the sustainable development of any country, so ability to keep track of level performance cannot be over-emphasised,” he said. The plan, built with assistance from donors, including TradeMark Africa,...

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...