Igihe

Author: b_igi_adm1n

  • EALA: Another Resolution on EPA Passed

    A newly passed Resolution urges the EAC Council of Ministers to engage the European Union (EU) to address pertinent concerns and contentious issues raised by the Assembly, prior to the conclusion of the talks.

    According to the Resolution, EAC suffers from chronic supply-side constraints and challenges and if implemented, the economic bloc stands to lose tariff revenue amounting to approximately USD 301 million yearly. Kenya alone, shall lose tariff revenue amounting to USD 193.8 Million a year.

    The resoliution was passed Wednesday by The East African Legislative Assembly (EALA).

    The Assembly is calling for a status report by the Secretary General every four months until the deliberations of the EPA talks are concluded and signed.

    The Resolution was read by Hon Gervase Akhaabi on behalf of its mover, Hon Dr James Ndahiro. The Assembly once again raised a number of areas of concern in the on-going EPA.

    The Assembly cited among other areas, the high level of liberalisation the EU is asking of the EAC and noted that the Most Favoured Nations (MFN) Clause would have an impact on the ability to have south-south co-operation and other trade agreements.

    Other concerns that the Assembly mentioned include: Europe’s refusal to integrate additional and binding agreements and the refusal of the EU to address their yearly 80+billion Euro domestic support even as they want EAC to develop commercial agriculture markets in the region.

    During debate, Hon Mugisha Muntu reiterated the need for the Council to pay particular attention to the EAC-EPA talks. He said the House had intervened on a number of times on the EPA talks in an attempt to right the concerns in the agreement.

    Hon Muntu cited the example of the over 2900 tariff lines for which the EAC lacks local production capacity saying it was time for the region to implement the EAC Industrialisation Plan. Such plans and policies the legislator added, would guide the region in its negotiations with bilateral and multilateral partners.

    Hon Kimura on her part noted that the Republic of Kenya as a non- Least Developing Country (LDC) would lack access to certain quotas that other Partner States in the EAC would access. She urged the Council of Ministers to engage their counterparts in Europe so that information sharing and experiences are shared.

    ‘There is need for mutual relationship between the region and Europe and not merely a one-sided arrangement’, Hon Kimura noted. The legislator urged the House to pass the Resolution and to forward the same to the European Parliament.

    On her part, Hon Safina Kwekwe stated that the EAC and other African countries have supply challenges and that market entry was hampered despite the access on paper. ‘We have access due to the Cotonou agreement and the AGOA but I am not sure this has translated to market entry. I am not sure the European market shall change this mode once we sign the EPAs’, Hon Kwekwe remarked.

    The EAC Secretary General, Amb. Richard Sezibera noted that the EAC negotiators had already taken into consideration the concerns that Members expressed on the floor and that the desire of the EAC to address the same had partly led to the delay in completion of the talks.

    Amb Sezibera noted the region had requested for amendment on Market Access Regulation (EC 1528/2007). The Secretary General affirmed that there was no stalemate in the technical negotiations but added in certain areas the negotiators were yet to arrive at consensus, one of which is the MFN clause.

    The Secretary General stated that during the briefing session of Permanent Secretaries on the EAC-EU- EPA negotiations held in Mombasa, Kenya on 14th May 2012, the Permanent Secretaries noted that Economic and Development Co-operation (EDC) is the cornerstone of the EPA negotiations.

    They ascertained that areas of divergence should be taken up to the political levels where the policy makers could engage with their counterparts in the key EU Member States.

    On the impact of EPAs on regional trade and production, the Secretary General informed the House that the EAC would liberalise 82% o its market access offer to the EU through a gradual reduction over a 25 year period and noted that such reductions would be based on the Common External Tariff (CET).

    The Secretary General noted that 17.4% of EAC imports from EU were excluded from liberalisation to shore up promotion of food security, contribution to government revenue and trade competitiveness. Products include live meat, dairy produce, honey, eggs, live trees, cut flowers and ornamental foliage among others.

    Amb Sezibera said the implication of market offer on agricultural development was not affected by the EPAs since they are excluded from liberalisation. In the long run, he said only seven products sourced from the EU shall be liberalised.

    The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for EAC in Uganda, Rt. Hon Eriya Kategaya reminded the House that it was important for the region to continue to negotiate as a bloc. He stated that the EPAs should give the region an opportunity to collectively negotiate on what it wants since the objective of integration was to enable the EAC to transform its economies.

    This is the fourth Resolution passed by EALA on EPAs. In February 2009, a Resolution urging the Council to review the process of EPAs was tabled by Hon Valerie Nyirahabineza. In December 2010, Hon Dr Ndahiro moved a Resolution adopting a Position paper of the Committee of Communications, Trade and Investment urging the EAC to pursue a position on the EAC-EU papers.

    Last year in May, Dr Ndahiro again moved a Resolution on EPAs. This time, the Resolution to the Council of Ministers sought to correct the record on EALA’s position on the EPA funding as used to seek a Summit directive to the 9th EAC Summit of Heads of State.

  • Driving Tests for Illiterates Launched

    Over 1856 illiterate citizens from Gatsibo and Nyagatare districts participated in an oral- provisional driving test on Tuesday at the first ever special motor cycle driving test in Eastern Province.

    All the participants passed the oral test and later undertook practical riding tests.

    Traffic Police Commander, Chief Superintendent (CSP) Celestin Twahirwa said, “the new system of conducting driving tests was part of Traffic Police efforts to ensure road safety is maintained in all parts of the country.”

    The test was organized to facilitate people in Eastern province who initially operate motor cycles in their daily activities but, do not have driving licenses simply because they cannot read and write in order to undergo the normal driving exam.

    CSP Twahirwa noted that acquiring driving license by the illiterate will help them get registered by life insurance companies.

  • Felicien Kabuga: Special Evidence Hearing Concluded

    The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) Tuesday concluded defence special evidence hearing for the most wanted genocide fugitive, Felicien Kabuga.

    “Special deposition for Kabuga was completed Tuesday and a total of six witnesses have testified for the defence,’’ Tribunal’s Spokesman, Roland Amossouga said Wednesday.

    Kabuga’s Duty Counsel, Bahame Nyanduga commenced fielding his witnesses on April 23, 2012.The prosecution’s special deposition hearing began on May 23, 2011 and was concluded on October 28, 2011.

    The alleged sponsor of the 1994 genocide is accused of 11 counts, including conspiracy to commit genocide, genocide, complicity in genocide and direct and public incitement to commit genocide.

    The special deposition hearings are being conducted to preserve evidence for future use if the fugitives in question were to be arrested.

  • Africa To Produce More Oil Than Middle East

    Very soon Africa will produce more oil than the Middle East as the continent becomes a focal point in global business.

    The remarks were made by Rwanda’s Commercial Attaché in DC, USA, Bonny Musefano while addressing students at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA).

    “Africa offers the highest return on foreign direct investment in the world, far exceeding all other regions,’’Musefano remarked.

    Musefano represented the Ambassador of Rwanda HE. Eng. James Kimonyo as the keynote speaker at the 7th Annual Symposium “Business of Africa” May 18-19, 2012 hosted by the African studies Center.

    Citing various business success stories in Africa, he said, this is the decade for Africa to shine.

    He passionately told of how Rwanda, a small, over populated country in the heart of Africa is the third easiest country in Africa to conduct business after South Africa and Mauritius and that Rwanda seeks to become a business hub for the wider great lakes region.

    Bonny further argued that Africa offers the highest return on foreign direct investment in the world, far exceeding all other regions. While petroleum products are the driving force behind those returns, other sectors offer impressive growth.

    “There is no reason why we should be the world’s suppliers of cheap commodities and yet remain a vast market dependent on the outside world for most of our consumable goods”.

    He was confident that when African countries address the problem of insufficient energy, improve transport network, easy access to good quality internet, enhance the business environment by reducing beaurcracy and good governance, Africa will out compete many continents in business endeavors.

    During the Question and answer session, Musefano attributed the success of Rwanda to the resiliency of the Rwandan people and the outstanding leadership of President Paul Kagame.

    He noted that Rwandese chose to look forward and restore the pride of their country. Rwanda has zero tolerance to corruption, consistent accountability mechanisms have been put in place, and investors feel secure to do business at home.

    He also attributed the success of Rwanda to vibrant domestic and foreign private sector which has steadily boosted Rwanda’s economy.

    Dr.Francoise Lionnet, the Director of the African Studies UCLA was optimistic that time had come for Africans to spearhead development strategies of their own continent.

    She acknowledged that part of Africa’s challenge was capacity development which has steadily improved and that Africa was now ready to compete on the global market.

    The two day conference was opened by entertainment from the World Arts and Culture department UCLA as well as Rwandan Students dancing group of California Baptist University.

    The African Studies Center at UCLA is one of the oldest and the biggest departments in USA with various academic disciplines that focus on Africa.

  • Rwanda Hosts 10th Annual Meeting of EAC Judges

    Rwanda is hosting the 10th Annual meeting of Judges and court clerks from the five member states of the East African Community. Rwanda is hosting this meeting for the first time after joining the regional bloc in 2011.

    The Three-day meeting is being held under the theme, ‘Universal Competence and Africa’

    Representing the President, Dr. Pierre Damien Habumuremyi the Prime Minister officially opened the meeting saying that Univesal competence is the best way to deal with culture of impunity.

    Dr. Habumuremyi noted that many fugitives are hiding in different countries. He urged countries hosting such suspects to try them in their justice system or repatriate them to countries where they committed crimes.

    Angeline Rutazana a High court judge and president of the association of judges and court clerks in rwanda noted that Rwanda being new to the EAC bloc,the meeting will enhance Rwanda’s understanding of issues relating to Univesal competence.

  • Can Rwanda Develop Sustainable Knowledge Based Economy?

    Rwanda being one of East African countries that are not richly endowered with natural resources, it has envisaged its human capital as the only available resources it has and therefore its engine in first tracking the socio-economic development agenda.

    This notion is relevant to vision 2020 where human resource development and building of a knowledge based economy are fundamental pillars.

    Developing knowledge infrastructure by massive investments in education and training are taken as a benchmark in facilitating the acceleration and possible increases in skills, capacities and competences of Rwandan people has become apriority issue in the recent years.

    This is further manifested in the 2011 world bank indicating that, over 4.7% of Rwanda’s GDP is spent on education hence validating the urgency and prioritization of this critical sector.

    However, the key underlying issues requiring attention are; how sustainable, relevant and productive is the Rwandan human capital base if at all is available anyway?

    While human capital theory has existed since 1960’s by Schultz a senior Economists who argued that, investing in people through education is like any other investment in physical capital which he calls (human capital) and hence having a positive correlation to general economic development of every economy.

    Human capital development is seen as a key ingredient for socio-economic transformation.

    Rwanda believes that it’s through this human capital development that a sustainable economic growth and development will be realized in the long-run, as a higher stock of skilled human capital will trigger more productivity in the economy hence positively impacting the national income of Rwanda.

    However, in analysing and addressing key issues, has Rwanda with all its extra-ordinary efforts to build a knowledge based economy tackled the fundamental challenges of making its human capital base more sustainable and relevant to its development score card?

    With the concept of human capital being broad that encompasses, welfare of the population, health and education, my line of argument will only dwell on one factor of education and specifically higher level of education which is usually taken as the fountain of a capable and productive labour force.

    While am proud to give a lot of credit to Rwandan government policies in addressing the key parameters of its human capital with health being at fore front where by tangible achievements have been recorded in improving the general welfare of Rwandan community, reducing drastically the rampant diseases like malaria and HIV Aids, family planning programs, addressing infant mortality rates, improving the life expectancy of Rwandese among other evident demographic trends in the health discipline.

    The education frontline needs more to be desired and addressed, while the tremendous efforts to upgrade and uplift education sector are very promising in Rwanda today, from universal primary and secondary education systems, government scholarships to higher education, student loan schemes, presidential awards, government patternships with donor funds, private sector led initiatives, technical vocational and education training (TVET) programs mention them, almost all these have addressed the issue of supply side, hence a pragmatic and demand led competency based policies should be put in place to address the demand needs of the labour market.

    Strategic frameworks and policies should be put in place to address these challenges, which may include continuous prioritization of government expenditure on education especially on higher education by focusing on those critical areas that are highly relevant to key priority sectors of government.

    Taking the recently released national skills survey in the private sector report 2011-2012 by RDB that emphasised on ICT, Mining and Energy, there is no training institutions and universities in Rwanda that offer mining training programs for professionals and technicians like mine engineers, Geologists, Geophysicists and Geochemists when actually mining sector is one of the fastest growing sectors in the country.

    This validates the actual skills gap in the demand and supply in relation to education.

    Even in the key sectors like ICT where Rwanda is highly applauded, notable skills like software development, digital electronics and mobile software engineering are majorly lacking in the country.

    Finally, on the subject of brain drain, while most Rwandans tend to benefit from government funding through scholarships and credit schemes, it would be unfortunate to find out that, majority of them especially those who get rare chances to study abroad for quality education rarely come back to significantly contribute to their country’s socio-economic development.

    Some don’t even pay back their return on investment as a result of government’s expenditure of its scarce resources on them, this needs well formulated actions to be put in place so as to ensure the value for money on the beneficiaries by ensuring that, these people (even my self) come back and enormously contribute to our country’s development agenda if our long-term dream of building a vibrant and sustainable Knowledge based economy is to be realized.

    The writer is a Rwandan student doing masters in the Netherlands

    Contact author ::: [email protected]

  • World’s Tallest Tower Opens to Public in Tokyo

    skytree.jpg
    The world’s tallest tower is the fabulous SKY TREE of Japan. It measures 634 meters into the sky making it the biggest new landmark. It opened to the public on Tuesday.

    Nearly 8,000 visitors were expected to take high-speed elevators up to the observation decks of the 634-meter (2,080-foot) tower to mark its opening.

    Some reportedly waited in line more than a week to get the coveted tickets for a panoramic view, though Tuesday ended up being cloudy in Tokyo.

    Skytree is recognized by Guinness World Records as the tallest tower, beating out the Canton Tower in China, which is 600 meters (1,968 1/2 feet).

    The world’s tallest structure is Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, which stands 828 meters (2,717 feet). That’s in a different category because it’s a skyscraper, not a tower.

    The Skytree will serve as a broadcast tower for television and radio, along with being a tourist attraction. It replaces the 333-meter-tall (1,092 1/2-foot-tall) Tokyo Tower — a symbol of Japan’s capital since 1958 — as the broadcast hub.
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  • MTN Listed in ‘BrandZ ‘Top 100 Global Brands’

    Millward Brown one of the world’s leading research agencies and expert in effective advertising has announced that MTN brand is the first African brand to be listed (now being ranked No.88) on the ‘BrandZ Top 100 Global Brand’ listing.

    The announcement was made public Tuesday by Milward Brown.

    MTN has previously received a number of brand accolades. However, this is the most prestigious to date since it is the first time, an African Brand has made the BrandZ listing ever.

    The BrandZ listing is one of the most prestigious rankings that players in the industry follow closely on a global level.

    In March 2012 MTN moved up 12 places to the 188th position in the ‘Brand Finance Global 500’ grading, another valuable world brand ranking and maintained its position as Africa’s only company to be listed.

    The improvement in MTN’s brand value rankings reaffirms the mobile operator’s growing prominence and continued relevance in the lives of its 164.6 million subscribers across its 22 markets in Africa and the Middle East.

    In Rwanda, MTN is the market leader and has close to 3 million subscribers.

  • Investiment Promotion Agencies Less Responsive to Investor Inquiries

    Investiment promotion Agencies are reportedly less responsive to direct investor Inquiries than they were three years ago even as countries compete to attract investments.

    “Skilled investment promotion agencies can give economies a competitive advantage by helping investors choose a suitable location and set up operations that create jobs and promote growth.”

    According to the World Bank Group’s Global Investment Promotion Best Practices 2012 report, 80% of national investment promotion agencies are failing to respond to investor inquiries in the key sectors of agribusiness and tourism.

    The report assesed 189 economies’ responsiveness to investors. It found that that investment promotion agencies are less responsive to direct investor inquiries than they were three years ago.

    In the areas of inquiry-handling and website performance over the past two years, two regions showed improvement—the Middle East and North Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean.

    “In difficult times, governments may be tempted to cut funding for investment promotion. However, this can cost them opportunities to secure investments and jobs,” said Pierre Guislain, Director of the Bank Group’s Investment Climate Department.

    The report shows that limited resources need not be an obstacle to effectiveness.

    The report was produced by the Investment Climate Department of the World Bank Group (which includes IFC, MIGA, and the World Bank) and sponsored by ProInvest, a European Commission partnership program for the countries of Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific, and by the government of Spain.

  • Rwandans Living On Steep Hillsides to be Relocated

    Rwandans living on steep hillsides will soon be relocated to other safer places in a bid to protect them from falling victim to mudslides and other disasters.

    17 people have since died because of the problem of land slippage caused by recent heavy rainfalls.

    The Prime Minister Dr. Pierre Damien Habumuremyi has said that in a period not exceeding one year, the census of people living on steep hillsides will be completed and decent places found where they can live.

    Dr. Habumuremyi made the statement during a meeting held Monday with members of the Taskforce established by the Government, to prevent the impacts of disasters.

    The Government of Rwanda has implemented various programs aimed at adressing extraordinary disasters including those caused by heavy rainfalls.

    The meeting involving various authorities sought ways on how to implement the programs in order to limit the damage.

    The meeting focused on general measures necessary to put in execution to address the problem of flooding, protect infrastructure and manage land.

    Participants at the meeting also revisited the importance of meteorology in time of heavy rainfalls as those that knows the current Rwanda, the protection of the environment and population growth which is causing habitat inappropriate.

    The Prime Minister has thus established a special committee to accelerate implementation of the programs.

    The committee comprises of the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources, the Ministry of Local Government, the Ministry of Infrastructure, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Department of Defense.

    Dr. Habumuremyi said census of all persons residing on the steep hills should be complete in one year for them to find a suitable place where they should live.