Business leaders from across the region have called for stronger partnerships to spur national, regional and continental trade.
This was pointed out on Saturday at the East African Business Awards gala and dinner, an event organized by African Leadership Magazine.
The event brought together Africa’s leading business people to share their business experience and galvanise home grown solutions from persistent challenges faced by business people in the region to sustain East Africa’s economic growth through partnerships.
Robert Bapfakurera, the Chairperson of Private Sector Federation (PSF), said that partnerships and collaborations among East African business people are currently low calling for efforts to efforts to link private sector among various countries.
"There is still little partnership between East African business people. Often it is because of a poor mindset that they cannot take initiative to partner with their colleagues from other countries. The local businesses should embrace partnerships between either themselves or with their colleagues from the region, especially when undertaking large projectsto help our countries speed up their economic growth,” he said.
East Africa remains the fasted growing sub-region in Africa, with an estimated growth of 5.6 per cent in 2017, up from 4.9 per cent in 2016.
Growth is also expected to remain buoyant, reaching 5.9 per cent in 2018 and firming further to 6.1 per cent in 2019.
However, the sub-region, as well as Africa’s industrialisation aspiration continues to register significantly low capacity.
Experts say that sustainable growth requires strategic regional interaction, collaborations andpartnerships, among business leaders in the region and the continent at large.
The intra-trade among African business countries trade stands at only 16 per cent, estimates show.
Bapfakurera said that the pace of Rwanda’s economic growth cannot be improved when local business people are failing to implement big projects due to lack of partnerships.
"There are examples of regions have achieved a lot of progress because partnerships. A large gap needs to be bridged because a number of business people are failing to achieve their business goals because they have not yet embraced partnerships. Local business people need to work hand-in-hand, learn from others and embrace partnership if they want to realise their trade ambitions,” he said.
AU’s ambitious drive to boost intra-Africa trade stems from recent findings which show that trade volume in Sub-Saharan Africa could triple by 2030, from 102.6 million tons in 2009 to 384 million tons.
Ronald Ndegwa, the Chief Executive of Savanah Cement, a Kenyan cement factory, said that partnerships between the East African communities is unlikely to work if they continue viewing each other as competition as opposed to partners.
"We lack cooperation and partnership in business because many times we see ourselves in the face of competitors instead of seeing ourselves as partners. If East African leaders’ purpose is a better cooperation between their countries, then business our companies should do the same. We should quit focusing on small issues of competition and put them side and see together a bigger picture of partnerships,” he said.
He added that there is huge disparity among regional countries calling on countries to harmonise business laws, tax regimes to sustain the environment of doing business in East Africa.
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