Remove Africa trade barriers

Kenyans must accept that since Kenya Kwanza took over leadership, our economy is changing for the better.

Reports show Kenya’s earnings from exports to African countries for the half-year period have crossed the Sh200 billion mark for the first time. Kenyan traders have since earned Sh202.4 billion from exports to the continent.

Official statistics show a 20.30 per cent growth over a similar period in 2022. Thus, Africa accounted for a record-high 42.23 per cent of the country’s Sh49.29 billion total value exports in the review period, according to provisional trade data collated by the Central Bank of Kenya.

President William Ruto should do more in his championing the removal of trade barriers amongst African countries to ease the movement of goods, services and labour through the integration of regional trading blocs. Indeed, the trade diplomacy is a continuation of a policy initiated by his predecessor, Uhuru Kenyatta, who led Kenya in presenting documents ratifying the proposed Comesa-EAC tripartite deal to create a market of 27 countries.

Nairobi plans to lead the integration with other regional blocs—such as West Africa’s Ecowas and the Maghreb (Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia but excludes Egypt). This is entrenched in Kenya’s Integrated National Exports Development and Promotion Strategy launched in July 2018, which lists Africa, alongside China and India, as having the biggest potential for growth of exports.

Such integration would create the largest single market, of about 1.4 billion people, with an economic output of more than $3 trillion (Sh430 trillion) under AfCFTA bloc, putting Kenya among African countries with the highest share of intra-African trade. The export growth was largely lifted by Uganda, where traders trucked Sh62.49 billion goods.

Mr Njuguna is a teacher. [email protected].