A renewed sense of urgency to get things done characterised last Friday’s inter-state council meeting of ministers from Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania and DR Congo as they discussed how to make the central corridor, East Africa’s hotbed for trade.

The meeting, held in the serenity of the Lake Kivu Serena Hotel in Rubavu District, saw ministers approving more than 20 ambitious projects to be jointly implemented by the Central Corridor partners.

Perhaps the most exciting of the projects is the proposed multi-billion dollar standard gauge railway connecting Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi and DR Congo to Dar es Salaam port whose construction is to be launched in August 30.

Also, this month, Dar es Salaam port will open offices in Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda.

Initially to be housed at the Tanzanian embassies in the respective countries, the move is aimed at getting the port closer to traders, said Dr Shaaban Mwinjaka, the permanent secretary in Tanzania’s transport ministry.

With Kenya ports authority already running an office in Kigali, renewed efforts to improve trade facilitation on the Northern and Central Corridors is gradually giving way to healthy competition between East Africa’s two ports of Mombasa and Dar es Salaam.

That competition, according to analysts, will boost regional trade and ease transportation costs and lead to a positive effect on the final prices of goods and services.

A good example is the recent launch of block trains bound for Uganda and Rwanda via Isaka-Mwanza and to Burundi and DR Congo via Kigoma, seen as an attempt by Tanzania to reposition Dar es Salaam against an increasingly competitive Mombasa port.

Anchored by Tanzania’s port of Dar es Salaam, the Central Corridor is the principal transport route for the five countries but inadequate infrastructure and inefficiency in trade facilitation had pushed the cost of doing business on the course very high for traders.

In 2006, the Central Corridor Transit Transport Facilitation Agency (CCTTFC), a multilateral agency by the five nations, was formed to turn a new page of efficiency on the route.

Rukia Shamte, the executive director of CCTTFC, said her secretariat begun work in November 2010, aiming at making transforming the corridor into a trade route of choice for eastern and central Africa. But not much had been achieved by end of 2014.

The establishment in July 2013 of the Northern Corridor integration infrastructure projects initiative to smoothen Rwanda and Uganda’s access to the Kenyan port of Mombasa posed a potential threat to the future role of Port of Dar es Salam.

Ambitious projects on the Northern Corridor, headlined by the standard gauge railway, inspired deep political will kept alive by quarterly meetings of heads of state of the three countries plus South Sudan to take stock of their joint efforts.

That political will has yielded early dividends for Northern Corridor countries including the one network area, a single tourist visa; identity card powered cross-border travel and cozier diplomatic ties among the partners as they jointly work to implement projects.

‘Inspired Kikwete’

On March 7, President Kikwete attended, as an observer, the 9th summit of Heads of State of the Northern Corridor Integration Projects hosted by Rwanda in Kigali.

Sources privy to the meeting say that the Tanzanian president was impressed and inspired by what he had observed during the meeting and, two weeks later, he convened the first ever Central Corridor Heads of State summit in Dar es Salam.

Since then, Shamte admits that things have been smoother for her secretariat and last week’s meeting in Rubavu was aimed at taking stock of what has so far been achieved ahead of the next presidential summit expected sometime this month.

The summit’s venue is yet to be determined.

It’s quite possible that had Kikwete convened the first presidential meeting earlier than March, Shamte and her secretariat would have achieved much more than she will with Kikwete’s remaining few months in office (he leaves office later this year).

"We are confident that the next president will take forward the initiative but in the meantime, we have to move fast to benefit from the current momentum,” she said during a lunch break in Rubavu.

Amb. Valentine Rugwabiza, Rwanda’s minister for East African Community Affairs, echoed a similar message in her speech when she said that political will has provided the countries with a grand opportunity to make things happen.

"Major strides have been made since March but we need to do more in order to translate the political will into tangible results,” Rugwabiza said, adding that it was possible to unlock potential on the central corridor.

Regional trade routes

The minister’s message was re-emphasised by other speakers from the other countries, including Uganda’s minister of state for transport Stephen Chemoiko Chebrot, who said that more than 95 per cent of Uganda’s trade is currently done via port of Mombasa and that an alternative was badly needed.

"To us, there’s no question about the importance of the central corridor, it’s just prudent to have an alternative just in case of instability, to avoid inconveniences,” he said.

For Rwanda, statistics indicate that 70 per cent of the country’s cargo is handled through Dar es Salaam and her traders have suffered the brunt of inefficiency in trade facilitation and any improvement would eventually ease the cost of doing business on the corridor.

According to Vincent Bakire-Nzoyisaba, Burundi’s transport ministry permanent secretary, public works and equipment, nearly 80 per cent of his country’s international trade is handled through Dar es Salaam.

In eastern DR Congo’s case, Dar es Salaam is the shortest and most convenient port for trade, the other options are expensive and far hence making them very unreliable.

In fact, like the South Sudanese on the Northern Corridor, a key message from DR Congo was that there has been renewed demands for their country to apply for admission into the East African community to cement benefits from regional integration.

Regional observers say that although some of the countries might have frosty geo-political relationships with each other, the central corridor unites them behind a common cause which gives them an opportunity to work together and deepen their diplomatic relations.

Such an analysis bestows the leadership role on Tanzania, as Dar Port’s host country, to be at the vanguard of all efforts to make the central corridor better.

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Quick wins

Before he goes into retirement, President Kikwete has a chance to witness baby steps for the Central Corridor scheme in way of quick wins from some of the more ambitious projects lined up.

As a precursor to the ministers’ meeting in Rubavu, senior technocrats from the five countries met in Kigali and identified ten development clusters of which each country was handed two clusters to coordinate; Rwanda was placed at the vanguard of ICT and Aviation clusters.

Under each cluster, countries then identified potential projects that could be implemented from each of the ten clusters. Over 20 projects were proposed and will be presented to the Presidents for approval during their planned summit later this month.

In Rubavu, DR Congo minister of transport who was represented by Justin Kamwanya Kalemuna handed over the chairmanship of CCTTFC inter-state council of ministers to Rwanda’s transport minister Dr Alex Nzahabwanimana.

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