Regional experts meeting in the Madagascan capital, Antananarivo, have described the Northern Corridor initiatives as a quick path to harnessing of a blue economy.

Blue economy is a design theory intended to bring natural ecosystems and the economy into harmony and create jobs.

The four-day meeting was organised by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, Sub-Regional Office for Eastern Africa (Uneca, SRO-EA) to draw plans of how to harness the blue economy for Eastern Africa’s development.

The notion of blue economies recently gained attention as an avenue for development in Africa.Antonio Pedro, director of Uneca Eastern Africa, said in the current interlinked global economies, what happens in coastal and island countries matters also for landlocked states.

One of the challenges to land locked countries, according to Pedro, is the amount of money spent on transport of commodities.

"Landlocked countries currently spend about 40 percent of their export earnings to finance transport costs…Regional transportation corridor solutions are therefore needed. The impetus we are witnessing in the Northern Corridor to address these challenges should be emulated across the sub-region,” he said.

The Northern Corridor is the transportation channel linking the land locked countries of Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi with Kenya’s maritime port of Mombasa.

Similarly, the Northern Corridor serves the eastern part of DR Congo, South Sudan and northern Tanzania. Thus, Northern Corridor infrastructure connects all the five countries of the East African Community and beyond.

The Corridor is a multi-modal channel, encompassing road, rail, pipeline and inland waterways transport.

The main road network runs from Mombasa Sea Port through Kenya and Uganda to Kigali in Rwanda, Bujumbura in Burundi and to Kisangani in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Benefiting from blue economy

According to Aime-Claude Ntahorwamiye, an advisor with the Burundian ministry of finance and planning, the best way for landlocked countries to benefit from blue economy is through infrastructure development.

"Blue economy is a new concept that we are collectively looking at so that we can reach out to the sea and export waters,” Ntahorwamiye said.

"To achieve that, we need acces to the sea and we can only do that through infrastructure development.”

However, accessing the sea is one thing but also conducting trade in and along the seas is another thing.

Contemporary marine challenges involve social threats such as pirates. Piracy incidents in the Indian Ocean peaked in 2011 but have been declining since.

Ahmed Muhamed, an economic advisor in the Somali ministry of planning and international cooperation, noted that the Eastern African region is facing severe poverty challenges and sustainable economic growth is imperative for the region’s development.

He said collective efforts such as railways can contribute to attracting foreign direct investment in landlocked countries.

The blue economy can provide opportunities, for example, in the last few years in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania have discovered large quantities of commercially viable oil and gas deposits, with the potential for even more discoveries as more aggressive prospecting continues in other countries like Rwanda.

"Development of the ‘blue frontier’ thus provides great potential for accelerating structural transformation and creating inclusive and sustainable growth in the Eastern African region,” he said.

Presidents Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya, Salva Kiir Mayardit of South Sudan and Burundi’s Second Vice President Gervais Rufyikiri will today join President Paul Kagame in Kigali for a summit on the implementation of projects under the Northern Corridor Integration Projects.