An atmosphere of calm welcomes you as you enter the lobby of the Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Authority (RURA). This wasn’t always the case, according to Francois Gatete, the Director for Information Systems at RURA. Before 2019, RURA, which regulates all public utilities in Rwanda, struggled with the mundane, time-consuming manual processes of issuing out licenses, resulting in a crowded and chaotic lobby. To understand how complicated the scenario was, imagine this: a vendor would initiate a license request, but the finance department, trapped in an information void, couldn’t know, or track the progress of the application. This opaqueness made the process frustrating and inefficient, and many traders would visit RURA offices daily to follow up on the all-important piece of paper. David Butera, Programme Manager, TradeMark Africa (TMA), pointed out that a scoping exercise that sought to identify and resolve trade barriers in Rwanda highlighted RURA as one of the agencies that was still using manual processes; with traders saying this was a big problem that made trading difficult and costly. “We used to have silos in the application chain as there was no way for a team, say, finance to gain visibility on the status of the license application in the pipeline,” Gatete recalls of the disjointed processes. Trying to manually serve over 20,000 businesses led to many deadlocks both for RURA and the businesses. Innocent Twahirwa, who runs Jali Transport, remembers submitting thousands of paper forms and making numerous follow-up visits to RURA offices to get licenses for...

The mobile phone has become a critical platform for elimination of Non-Tariff Barriers in TZ. One of the biggest challenges the business community in East Africa face are non-tariff barriers. According to the East Africa Community, non-tariff barriers (NTB’s) cost the member countries close to US$490 million in 2010.  Some of them like land border procedures; port procedures, police roadblocks, weighbridges and bureaucratic administrative procedures restrict trade and consequently increase the cost of doing trade. To overcome this challenge, the Tanzania Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture (TCCIA) with support from TradeMark Africa (TMA) introduced a NTBs SMS reporting system, an innovative tool that allows truckers, transporters, clearing and forwarding agents, report any obstacles along the road. Once a user lodges an SMS complaint, focal points from TCCIA relevant departments immediately call the sender and automatically notify responsible government agencies and private sector of the NTB complaint for further action. Truck drivers like Juma Ahmed recognise the benefit of the SMS system saying, "This SMS text messaging system will help report some problems I experience. For example, when taking my load from Dar es Salaam to Kampala; each weighbridge records something different to what I have on my documents, which means I am often held up until we come to some sort of agreement regarding the axel load." Partners have been raising awareness on the SMS texting system and there exists an even greater opportunity to train people on how to effectively use it. The online NTBs SMS system encourages...

In order to achieve the Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Strategy (EDPRS2) and 2020 Vision’s objective to commercialize and diversify agriculture, the Government of Rwanda has been involved in promoting trade in different crops by creating a conducive environment to facilitate the export of these key agriculture products but also by ensuring Rwandan products get access to potentially lucrative foreign markets. Honey for export Previous reports on the honey sector have been for some time highlighting the export potential for Rwandan honey and other bee products. The quality of the Rwandan honey and wax was considered good and it was evident that it could meet the quality standards and specifications of foreign markets In this respect, honey was considered as one of the products to be promoted both regionally and internationally. In Rwanda, honey production has been considered for a long time as a past-time activity carried out by older men and in many respects has been neglected. Information on apiculture was scattered and most of what was available amongst various sector stakeholders were merely assumptions due to the lack of data and a well-defined monitoring and evaluation system. In the recent past, however, apiculture (the rearing of bees for commercial purposes), has been brought to the forefront, playing an increasingly significant role in transforming the lives of former gatherers of honey at a very small scale into farmers complying to national and international standards at every level in the production chain towards export. “Although the government puts in a...

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...

The East African Community (EAC), headquartered in Arusha Tanzania, is defined as the regional intergovernmental organisation of the Republics of Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, the United Republic of Tanzania, and the Republic of Uganda. Heads of Partner States meet at a special summit twice a year when they give “general directions and impetus as to the development and achievement of the objectives of the Community” . However, the first item on the agenda of any EAC summit is to review past decisions by member states and monitor their implementation progress: have they been implemented, are they ongoing or has no action been taken? The obligation to review past decisions, as the first item on the agenda of every EAC Summit, was passed at the November 2013 Summit. That responsibility has now been made easier by the introduction of the East African Monitoring System (EAMS), a computerised system that records all decisions made since 2001 up to the present day and which focuses on those decisions that still need to be implemented – presented in dashboard format. Holding Partner States accountable The East African Community Secretariat, with support from TradeMark Africa (TMA) and GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit - Germany’s government-supported development agency),developed EAMS capture the progress of implementation of EAC Council of Ministers decisions, by Partner States. . This fosters accountability by the Partner States on the decisions they make. Delays in actioning decisions that have been agreed by all Partner States, such as removing non-tariff barriers, can be both...

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...

Whenever I talk or write about East African integration I use this picture of three boys sharing a lollipop. I don’t know where the photo came from or who the boys are, but I do know that it speaks volumes about the way trade could lift millions out of poverty. These three little boys in Kigali are sharing a lollipop. They lick it in turns. The lollipop is imported, so 45% of its cost is due to transport and allied costs. It might have been made in Kenya or Tanzania or even further afield, and it has travelled thousands of kilometres and several borders. So whichever of the boys bought that treat, he’s paying part of the freight clearance charges, handling charges, insurance, fuel costs and the salary of the trucker who got it to the Rwandan capital. It’s no wonder that the boys cannot afford to buy their own lollipops but have to share one. Transport costs in East Africa are among the highest in the world. This is largely due to infrastructure and regulatory constraints but the major reasons for the high costs are policy, legal and regulatory constraints, not infrastructure. It’s not only the slow ports or bad roads that up the price, its old policy and legal habits and slow border crossings. It takes 28 days and $600 to move a 40-foot container from the port of Shanghai, China to Mombasa, Kenya. It can take almost the same amount of time for the same container to...

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...