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tralac’s Daily News Selection
The selection: Tuesday, 7 June 2016
Underway, in Gaborone: SADC, EAC, COMESA Tripartite Free Trade Area operational meeting
Starting tomorrow, in Naivasha: PS trade retreat Ministry’s HOD’s and its state agencies heads, 8-10 June 2016 (via @ExportsKenya)
On Thursday, in Maseru: SACU consultations by President Zuma
Featured policy document: Strategy for jobs for youth in Africa, 2016-2025 (pdf, AfDB)
‘Jobs for Youth in Africa’ is a Bank-wide strategy which will create 25 million jobs and positively impact 50 million youth over the next decade. To accomplish this goal, the Jobs for Youth in Africa Strategy 2016-2025 aims to increase inclusive employment and entrepreneurship, strengthen human capital, and create durable labour market linkages by making use of three strategic intervention areas: integration, innovation, and investment.
Rwanda: MPs approve Bill on free movement of labour, services (New Times)
Members of the Lower House yesterday kicked off the second Ordinary Session of the year with the approval of the Bill relating to free movement of labour and services within the COMESA member states. Having ratified the protocol in 2009, although the genesis of the bloc dates way before that, Rwanda is among the four countries along 19 others in that bloc to have signed Article 4 and 6 of the Treaty requiring member states to remove obstacles to the free movement of persons, labour and services, right of establishment for investors and right of residence within the common market.
SADC-PIDA acceleration pilot: Beira and North-South Corridor taskforce meeting update (NewsDay)
SADC official, Remmy Makumbe said, on the Memorandum of Understanding, that the stakeholders would continue working for Beira, North-South corridors. He said countries such as the DRC, Malawi, and Zambia want to join the Beira corridor and the signing of the MoUs would be done in October this year. He said for the North-South corridor, the countries have agreed on all other issues in the past four years, but South Africa is still finalising some issues and by October they will be done.
Zimbabwe: ‘Let’s adopt the rand’ (The Herald)
Bankers and industry have recommended the adoption of the South African rand as the major transacting currency to reduce concentration of risk associated with heavy reliance on the United States dollar currently accounting for 95% of all transactions. In separate presentations before the portfolio committee on Finance and Economic Development yesterday, representatives from the Bankers Association of Zimbabwe and the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries, said the adoption of the rand would be one of the measures needed to address the cash challenges the country is facing. “It is recommended that the South African rand be used as the major transacting currency. This reduces concentration of risk associated with heavy reliance on US dollar transactions (that account for 95% of all transactions up from 60% 2010),” BAZ president Dr Charity Jinya said. “In 2015, Zimbabwe lost $1,8 billion to externalisation. It is further recommended the US dollar be reserved to make offshore payments and local electronic payments only,” she said. [Central Bank to force businesses to deposit their cash]
Unease of doing business costs Namibia millions (New Era)
The Singaporean team, who have been working with the Ministry of Industrialisation, Trade and SME Development since their first visit to Namibia last year, identified a litany of stumbling blocks which they say needed to be rectified urgently, or the country will slip further down the ranks. Bad ranking scares away potential investors. Namibia, through the Harambee Prosperity Plan, aims to become Africa’s most competitive economy by 2020 – but the visiting experts, from Singapore Cooperation Enterprise, say this would be a pipe dream unless the country loosens the shackles of doing business, including registration of companies. [Namibia no longer donor recipient - Britain (New Era)]
Uganda loses top slot as buyer of Kenya’s exports on 35% fall (Business Daily)
Exports to Uganda have dropped by 35% in the first quarter of the year, ending the landlocked state’s dominance as top destination for Kenya’s exports. Provisional data produced by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics indicate that exports to Uganda dropped to Sh8.58 billion in the first three months of 2016 compared to Sh13.3 billion the same quarter last year. For the first time in more than a decade, Uganda falls to fourth position after Netherlands which tops the list with Sh11.89 billion worth of goods followed by UK which ordered Sh10.79 billion and US which accounted for Sh9.06 billion. [Leading Economic Indicators April 2016]
Kenya's Sh150m plan to lure visitors from East Africa (Daily Nation)
Kenya is racing to reverse a drop in visitor arrivals from Tanzania, Uganda and Rwanda with a Sh150 million marketing campaign following last year’s success with travellers from Nigeria and South Africa. Tourism data shows that visitors from Tanzania dropped from 17.3% to 17,752 last year, Ugandan travellers to Kenya reduced by 8% to 29,038 while those from Rwanda narrowed 1.3% to 11,242.
Kenya to help locals tap into maritime trade (The Standard)
The Government is developing policy guidelines to facilitate local investors seeking to venture into the maritime industry, currently dominated by international firms. According to Maritime Commerce Principal Secretary in the Transport ministry, Nancy Karigithu, Kenyans have ceded the lucrative local maritime industry to foreigners. Kenyan investors have complained on several occasions that foreign firms were elbowing them out by establishing a one-stop shop for all maritime services.
Tanzania: CTI decries arbitrary increase of tax rates (IPPMedia)
The Confederation of Tanzania Industries says the government’s habit of always increasing tax rates and introducing new charges in new budgets is detrimental and should be avoided. Manufacturers say the tendency denies businesses the opportunity to expand operations, invest in growth and development, frustrates efforts to create new jobs and undermines the competitiveness of local products and services. “Raising tax rates and imposing new taxes may be problematic depending on the base on which they are anchored. Thus, a careful planning and consideration of likely effects due to elasticity and buoyancy of different combination of taxes will be critical,” the head of poverty alleviation think tank Repoa, Dr Donald Mmari told Smart Money last week.
Kenya's Budget 2016 from an industry perspective (Daily Monitor)
Much at stake over AGOA for SA in US presidential polls (Business Day)
Many questions remain unanswered concerning the future of US-SA trade relations under the next US president. Yet, despite current antitrade sentiment sweeping over the campaigns, it is almost certain that these populist appeals will soften once the election ends. Still, none of the candidates look to be as favourably disposed towards free trade as was Obama. Additionally, for South African policy makers it is also relevant to consider just how important South African trade is in the grand scheme of US trade interests. [The author: Chelsea Markowitz]
Indian private sector investments in African healthcare (ORF)
The increasing range of cross-boundary health issues has prompted the integration of health into the discipline of diplomacy, and this trend is reflected in India-Africa partnership. India's development partnerships are, however, predicated on the idea of development effectiveness, which requires active private sector engagement. By focusing on four opportunity sectors — medical tourism, tele-health, frugal innovations, and the pharmaceutical industry — this paper examines the nature of Indian private sector investments in African healthcare. Given their common health challenges, India and Africa must work towards crafting innovative low-cost healthcare models, and invest in the production and research of pharmaceutical products especially for neglected diseases.
Central Africa Backbone project: update (pdf, AfDB)
In addition to its regional focus, the project aims to complete the missing links in the national optical fibre backbone. It will help to extend the national optical fibre network coverage in this region and to Congo’s borders with Cameroon and the Central African Republic. The links with neighbouring countries (especially Cameroon) will offer them an alternative service for international traffic through submarine cables with landfall points in Cameroon. Thus, the cost of international connectivity should be reduced by introducing these new international outlets.
DRC: AU, UN and partners urge ‘spirit of responsibility’ among stakeholders (UN)
In a joint statement, the AU, UN, EU and the International Organization of La Francophonie (IOF) said they are closely following the situation in the country, where there have been reports of increasing political tensions linked to the uncertainty surrounding the electoral process.
IGAD develops a mediation strategy (IGAD)
This meeting is to introduce a new mediation strategy informed by lessons learnt from previous mediations in order to enhance IGAD’s capacity for preventive diplomacy and mediation, and move away from ad-hoc mobilization of mediators in times of crisis. The strategy is aiming at guiding efforts in order to deal with peace and security challenges both at intra-state and inter-state conflicts but also at local national and regional levels. This will focus on building preventive and responsive capability of IGAD and Member States for conflict resolution and peace building at all levels including local, national and region structures.
Consolidating geological and mineral information across Africa (UNECA)
The purpose of the GMIS Strategy [being discussed this week in Dar] is to compile, collate, process and store existing geodata in a single repository located in Africa. In support of this, the AMV proposes a mechanism be established to obligate all private exploration companies to lodge all geo-information with their national geo-survey entity, in addition to the necessary support the Strategy requires on the part of government, universities, and other geoscience agencies.
Related: Managing natural resources for development in East Africa: examining key issues with the region’s oil and natural gas discoveries (Brookings), AU to launch African Minerals Development Centre and Commodities Strategy
The false debate: choosing between promoting FDI and domestic investment (World Bank Blogs)
Many developing countries have been able to harness FDI to build their industrial base with some success. However, fewer are at a stage where they can leverage outward FDI as China and other BRICs (Brazil, Russia and India) have, thanks to the growing number of large firms capable of competing internationally. But there is no reason why more developing economies will not be able to follow the same path eventually. [The authors: Cecile Fruman, Xavier Forneris]
The first aim of this paper is to map where trade-related elements are found in the 2030 Agenda. The second aim is to describe the architecture for follow-up and review that could support these commitments, and to map where it exists or could be built. The 2030 Agenda in itself will not cause anything to change, let alone ensure policy coherence, but the review process might. The contribution of trade to the 2030 Agenda is diffuse, which means follow-up and review will be a challenge, but it need not be overly burdensome, and it will be useful. This paper presents options for how progress towards these trade-related commitments could be reviewed over the next 15 years.
Kenya sets sights on fruit exports (Daily Monitor)
Eight SADC competition authorities sign MOU for competition enforcement cooperation
Kevin Watkins: What would a Brexit mean for EU development assistance? (Devex)
A new global standard for measuring food loss and waste (Thomson Reuters Foundation)
A record breaking year for renewable energy: new installations, policy targets, investment and jobs (REN21)
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