MWEA, Kenya – It’s the end of term school prize-giving day and the atmosphere is expectant and excited. One by one the pupils’ names is announced. They walk out in their best clothes to get their certificates, a handshake and a warm round of applause. It’s a typical scene. Except that these pupils are mostly middle-aged farmers, both men and women, whose livelihoods depend on them putting lessons learned into practice and growing crops according to the standards of the Good Agricultural Practice Code (GAP). “Smallholder farmers hold the solution to hunger and poverty in rural areas,” says Napthaly Kariuki of the Horticultural Produce Marketing Association of Kenya (HPMAK). “To get accepted in international markets, both the European Union (EU) and East African, you need to grow according to the best practice, and that means GAP." There are about 250 certificates awaiting distribution on the desk set up by the Fresh Produce Exporters Association of Kenya (FPEAK), which is spearheading the campaign to help farmers across the East African Community (EAC) grow food for tables in EU states and in neighbouring countries. “I am so happy today. I have learned things that will help me make my shamba (smallholding) grow better produce to sell for me and my family. This is like getting a prize at school,” said Grace Wambui, who grows beans and tomatoes nearby. “Growing fresh produce employs about one million people in Kenya, and it’s one of the top three export earners. Smallholders account for about 70...

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...

They sneak across the border back to Burundi, putting one foot quietly in front of the other on unmarked forest trails and secret tracks. The enemy is the authority. The goal is tax evasion. And the reason is ignorance. These are the women traders of Burundi who risk the wrath of the law to escape paying taxes on the food and small goods they carry in their nylon baskets from Uganda or Rwanda to sell to ready customers in border villages and further afield. It is much the same story across much the East African Community (EAC) – women traders running needless risks because of rumour and misinformation about punitive border taxes, expensive permits and baffling bureaucracy. “Women traders are the ones who face, every day, the problems of not knowing what their rights are in today’s EAC,” said Burundi’s minister for East African Community Affairs Hafsa Mossi. “Most of them haven’t a clue about their rights or their obligations.” With support from TradeMark Africa (TMA) that situation is changing. Partnering with NGOs, the government and the media, the borderline informal sector is learning that much of what they feared held no threat, and that clarity on tax obligations and paperwork can make their lives, and their profits much better. “Women traders are at the front line in disputes with the authorities at the borders,” said Floride Ahintungiye, Programme Director of the International NGO Search for Common Ground (SFCG). “With help from TradeMark Africa (TMA) our staff went to the...

Trader Jeremie Kayobera had his life changed by a radio broadcast. It wasn’t a religious broadcast, or a political one, but a nuts and bolts broadcast about how to take advantage of Burundi’s membership of the East African Community (EAC). Until that December 2011 radio show, he had bought maize flour in Tanzania or Uganda, Burundi’s economically powerful neighbours, imported it, paid his border dues and sold the staple foodstuff in his home country. Why not? It’s a pattern of business repeated across the whole spectrum of Burundi’s trade relationships with its EAC neigbours: buy across the frontier, import, and sell. Every market place in even the smallest community bears witness to this pattern of doing business. That changed overnight. He heard a radio programme explain to him that he could take advantage of start-up help from the government’s API Investment agency; he heard how much or how little he would have to pay in tax to the state’s Office Burundais des Recettes (OBR), the revenue authority. Today he has realized a dream and established his own maize mill in Kanyanza. Goodbye paying taxes on imported foodstuffs. Hello the opportunity to make bigger profits milling from local produce, and to export. “It doesn’t matter where you go in the countryside, you find that people know almost nothing about the benefits of EAC membership or the steps the government is taking to help business compete in the EAC,” says Davy Rubangisha, Programme Manager at the RPA radio, Burundi’s private and biggest...

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...

KOBERO, Burundi – Burundi, one of the world’s poorest states, has been ranked one of the world’s top 10 economic reformers in a World Bank survey that honours its drive to modernize trade and infrastructure. The award, in the bank’s yearly Ease of Doing Business report, acknowledges Burundi’s efforts to attract foreign investment by unraveling age-old procedures that snarled commerce in paperwork, queues and wasted time. “We are delighted to be among the top reformers in the world, having moved up 13 places this year on top of having moved up eight places last year,” said the country’s Second Vice President, Gervais Rufyikiri. The index, topped by Singapore for the seventh successive year, measures how countries perform on a range of indicators from the time it takes to get a building permit to how long it takes to get across borders. Time, especially in the East African region is money, and Burundi’s modernization efforts have been helped by targeted expertise from TradeMark Africa (TMA), a donor-funded organisation helping the region to grow prosperity through smoother and increased trade. Modernity gleams through the rain at Kobero, a four-hour drive from Bujumbura and Burundi’s lifeline border crossing into Tanzania and the distant port of Dar es Salaam. Or, a two-day drive for the 80-odd trucks that pass here every day from Dar es Salaam. Here, in the middle of a fairly typical African frontier crossing – tiny kiosks, a foreign exchange dealer, and truckers’ cheap hotels – is a large white prefabricated...

Few parts of the world have pioneered the cell phone with such ingenuity as East Africa. You can pay bills with it, check crop weather with it and, when you’re not checking your bank balance, talk to your auntie in Kisangani or Kigali or Kericho. But now, for the first time in East Africa, the humble cell phone is being used as a beacon to champion free, smoother and cheaper trade across the region by naming and shaming unnecessary or duplicated barriers to the free movement of goods. 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. Such is the beauty of the system that it has been nominated for the award of Best Project of the Year by the International Chambers of Commerce and World Chambers Federation, a grouping of senior business, trade and commerce experts. “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 through its nomination in the finals, is an evidence that what we do as a private sector in creating favorable business environment adds value to the lives of people; not only because the world...