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...

Kenya’s horticultural farmers are being trained in good agricultural practices. History has shown us the social and economic transformation that is possible when people can grow enough food. It has also confirmed that when the same people access markets to sell excess produce, generations will feel and enjoy the impacts. Thus, the ability to improve livelihoods is what makes agriculture a business and not just a development initiative. A group of Kenyan farmers are now demonstrating this by financially supporting their local community health centre.  Farmers from Kangai Horticulture Marketing Co-operative Society in Kirinyaga County, in the central region of Kenya, built a maternity wing and a laboratory in their local health centre with proceeds from the sale of string beans and baby corn. The enterprising group struck a deal with exporters, that for every kilo of produce sold, a shilling is invested in the hospital project. Currently, the health centre attends to 150 to 200 patients daily. “We receive services we couldn’t receive before, such as TB (tuberculosis) and CCC (Comprehensive Care Centre) for HIV and AIDS patients,” explains Mary Wambui, a technical adviser with a local fresh producer organisation, adding that the number of staff in the health centre has grown from 4 to 22. The hospital extension is Peter Kanyuiro Ngigi’s proud legacy, together with his Fresh Producers Association of Kenya (FPEAK) certificate. This certificate, he explains, has been the key to his ability to access international markets, a market that has in many occasions locked out...

TMA is supporting SEATINI in Uganda to build capacity for export trade, specifically for maize and sesame, two key Uganda staples. The project is recording wins: hundreds of Farmers in Uganda’s Nakaseke district are now earning UGX 700 from 400 UGX for graded and sorted maize, according to an independent evaluation.   As Kamya Kirubira leads us through a syrup-coloured maize field in his home district of Nakaseke in Central Uganda, the hard leaves scratch gently against our skin, assuring us the crop is as dry as it looks. Juxtaposed against a powder blue sky, the rows of maize are an idyllic scene that could have come straight from the front of a well-branded breakfast cereal box. This is Nakaseke today. Maize is in high demand in East Africa. It is the foundation of every staple food, in every country in the region. Every morning, afternoon and evening, middle class families sit down to eat maize, whether in the form of a roasted maize cob, a bowl of ugali (maize porridge), a fried chapatti, or an intoxicating local brew. Kenya is opening up to Ugandan maize and other markets will surely follow, but only if the maize makes the grade. In fact, the demand for this cereal crop far outweighs its production in East Africa. Yet, by Kamya’s own accounts, he wasn’t always the 40-acre owning commercial farmer he is now, and Nakaseke wasn’t always hailed as a model district for maize growing. In fact in 2013, when the World...

It’s a busy lunchtime at the Grand Legacy Hotel in Kigali and Vincent Safari, Technical Adviser with TradeMark Africa (TMA) in Rwanda, is attending a meeting of Central Corridor member states. The Central Corridor is a transport highway used by trucks to carry goods between the port of Dar es Salaam and the states of Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda. Vincent Safari is attending the meeting not only as a TMA technical advisor, but also as coordinator of the Rwandan National Monitoring Committee on non-tariff barriers, a group made up of representatives from the government, private sector and civil society and chaired by the Ministry of Trade and Industry. Safari explains that although Rwanda has had a National Monitoring Committee since 2008, it was not effective because there was no national strategy in place to eliminate non-tariffs barrier (NTBs) and no full-time coordinator. In 2011 TMA became involved, assisting the Ministry of Trade and Industry to revamp the National Monitoring Committee so that it could become a driving force to eliminate NTBs at both national and regional level. “Before TMA got involved it used to take about 15 to 17 days to get to Kigali from either Dar es Salaam or Mombasa,” explains Safari. “Now from Dar it is between three and six days. And from Mombasa between five and seven days.” This significant reduction was achieved through a series of major interventions that emanated from partnerships between TMA and East Africa’s governments, including Rwanda....

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...

The biscuits came from Iran in modern, airtight packaging, the list of ingredients displayed on the back, an appetizing picture of the snack on the front. [caption id="attachment_6922" align="alignleft" width="500"] Jacob Matiop, South Sudan National Bureau of Standards head at Nimule, shows some of the expired imported goods impounded at the border.[/caption] The problem was that their expiry date was the week before they crossed the border from Uganda. They were inedible, potentially harmful for the consumer, and duly rejected by South Sudan’s embryonic National Bureau of Standards (SSNBS). “There was a whole consignment like this,” says Jacob Matiop, SSNBS head at Nimule, through which 90% of the nation’s goods arrive through the East African Community’s Northern Corridor from the Kenyan port of Mombasa. “So we seized them, and we will destroy them. The owners are upset but South Sudan will not let itself become a dumping ground for sub-standard or expired goods of any sort, and that means everything from biscuits to computers.” Matiop is young, determined and enthusiastic about establishing a system of standards of the sort that many EAC states already have or are, like his own country, building with help from TradeMark Africa (TMA) to protect consumers and streamline trade. “Of course traders get upset. They are not used to the idea of standards. One trader even pulled a pistol on one of my officers but we are protecting our young nation and our consumers. It is a duty.” Standards are a key part of the...

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....