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TradeMark Africa (TMA) has announced its third strategic plan to support more inclusive, greener, and digital trade initiatives, in a planned $700 million (Sh97.4 billion) investment in the continent.
Formerly TradeMark East Africa, the aid-for-trade organisation has for over 13 years supported trade facilitation initiatives across East Africa, Southern Africa and the Horn of Africa.
The latest strategy covers 2023-2030 as it targets to raise and invest the $700 million over the seven-year period.
TMA has stated that it aims to contribute to a further reduction of trade costs and increase efficiency in an expanded Pan-African posture.
Specifically, it aims to facilitate an increase Africa’s share of exports as a percentage of global trade by four per cent and the value of its exports to the rest of the world from $500 billion (Sh69.6 trillion), to $650 billion (Sh90.4 trillion); whilst directly contributing to job creation.
The seven-year plan dubbed Strategy 3 is anchored on calculated efforts to support implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and the decarbonisation of trade and logistics processes in sub-Saharan Africa.
This is with an aim to leverage green investments to a tune of $180 million (Sh25 billion), while facilitating enterprises and governments through innovative automated systems, to ease cross-border transactions and hasten movement of goods across select trade and transport corridors.
Building on the successes of Strategy 1 and 2 (2010-2023), TMA yesterday said it will deepen its work on select corridors in the continent, with a focus on reducing the time and cost it takes to trade across borders and trade nodes by 15 per cent.
The strategy comes in the wake of TMA’s recent rebranding and expansion to West Africa with a new office in Ghana.
TMA Board chairman Erastus Mwencha noted that the strategy’s key focus will be to enhance trade facilitation across Africa with the goal of improving livelihoods by stimulating creation of jobs.
Other important priorities such as driving towards a sustainable greener trade environment and enhancing inclusive trade, where the marginalised, especially women and the youth are supported to trade more in value added goods through formal trade channels, take the centre stage.
“At the heart of this plan is the recognition that sustainable and inclusive trade is a powerful tool for poverty reduction and economic growth; and that trade can be a catalyst to take on major global challenges including climate change, particularly in Africa as the continent positions itself for economic take-off,” Mwencha said in a statement.
TradeMark Africa Council of donors chair, Mogens Larsen, said: “ TMA’s Strategy 3 lays out a big step forwards in facilitating increased trade in Africa through green economic growth, with the solid conviction that Africa can both develop rapidly and can do so in a climate resilient way.”
TMA will both focus on what works best, in expanding capabilities to deliver inclusive and sustainable trade across Africa, CEO David Beer said.
The strategic plan, he said, will help tackle some of the major development challenges including climate change.
“Strong partnerships and political ownership wherever TMA works will remain critical to our success, which will be reinforced through delivering measurable results and rapid changes that make a concrete difference,” Beer said.
Since its establishment in 2010, TMA has contributed to major reduction in the cost and time it takes to trade across borders in the Eastern Africa region, which has been its area of focus.
Between 2017 to 2021, the time to transport a container from Mombasa to Kampala, for instance, reduced by a third. BY THE STAR