Kenya President William Ruto has announced plans to remove visa requirements for African nationals traveling to Kenya for business as a first major step to remove barriers to intra-Africa trade.
Driving The News
The announcement was made on Monday, as part of Kenya’s policy for the integration of Africa, which began gathering steam during the reign of immediate former President Uhuru Kenyatta.
What They’re Saying
“I want to promise you that this might be the last time you are looking for a visa to come to Kenya because of two reasons. Number one, because this is home and number two, we support wholeheartedly the AfCFTA.
We must remove any impediments to the movement of people around our continent,” President Ruto said at a forum on African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) in Nairobi.
Diving Deeper
Kenya’s move, at the time, came in the same month Rwanda issued a similar directive in the spirit of pan-Africanism without the requirement for reciprocity from other countries.
The Bigger Picture
Africa’s under-developed transport networks have been blamed for raising cost of goods and services as much as 40%, rendering intra-African trade uncompetitive compared with trade with developed continents such as Europe.
“This is why we must take such barriers as weak transport and logistics capacity, customs related delays, rules of origin, import bans and export restrictions, quotas and levies, technical barriers, import permits and licenses, very seriously because they ultimately reverse all the depths we try to make towards a free trade area,” Dr Ruto said.
“They may look small, incremental but their sum total amounts to a reversal of what we are trying to achieve.”
By The Numbers
Africa accounted for 18.49 percent, or Sh622.56 billion, of Kenya’s Sh3.37 trillion total trade value in 2022, largely unchanged from 18.39 percent in the prior year, according to provisional data collated by the Central Bank of Kenya.
Source: Business Daily Africa
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