Ugandan goods are actually East African goods

This weekend lots of vehicles drove from Kigali to Musanze for the iconic Gorilla Naming ceremony that has become the biggest annual event in the country. For another year, Rwanda Development Board has managed to keep the event alive and entertaining. The list of people selected to name the gorillas featured names from across the world with some famous ones being Jeffrey Sachs, Ramzy the Nigerian actor as well as Isaiah Washington an American film star who of late indentifies himself as a Sierra Leonean. The event clearly puts Rwanda’s tourism sector on the world map. However it is also time to seriously diversify the tourism menu that Rwanda has to offer. I am no expert in this field so I will not prescribe. I just wish to see more people visiting for more varied reasons. The tour caravan idea was a great addition to the KwitaIzina event this year. Away from Rwanda, news that Kenya’s Uhuru Kenyatta was finally cracking the whip as far as the delays concerning transportation of cargo from Mombasa port was very encouraging. The port of Mombasa handles most of the cargo that is consumed by the East African community and yet it known more for the massive delays than anything else. These delays not only lead to cargo being stolen or damaged but also increase the end users costs as business people seek to push the cost of the delay to the consumers. The near uselessness of the Kenya-Uganda railway has meant that over 90 per cent of the cargo is transported by road. Uganda is Kenya’s biggest trading partner but this fact is largely based on the fact that the so called Ugandan-destined goods are actually East African in nature. Goods from Mombasa to Uganda often simply transit and continue to Rwanda, Burundi, Eastern DRC as well as South Sudan. The delays emanating from Mombasa and exacerbated by the Non Tariff Barriers also known as useless roadblocks, weighbridges and of course the bad sections of the roads have compelled some importers to give up on Mombasa and import from Dar es Salaam port. The Chinese are already talking with Tanzania on building a new massive port at Bagamoyo. All these developments have forced the Kenyans to wake up and Pres. Uhuru Kenyatta is now talking tough. He has directed that the movement of goods from the port of Mombasa to the border point with Uganda at Malaba should take a maximum of five days. Currently, a container from Mombasa takes an average of 18 days to reach Kampala. To further show how serious he is, Kenyatta has scheduled a meeting in three weeks’ time to assess the implementation of his order. The move by Kenyatta to improve the efficiency of Mombasa port is clearly a commendable one. Rwanda’s Pres. Kagame has on several occasions complained about these delays since Rwanda is a landlocked nation. It is not a surprise that Rwanda has gradually moved to using the Dar es Salaam port in order to get its goods faster. On these pages I have on several occasions argued that nothing will solve this problem faster than fixing the railway system and transporting most of the cargo by train. I know they are not as fast as the trucks but they do not have to deal with traffic clogging. More importantly if we had most of the cargo being transported by trains then our major roads would last longer than they currently do. The heavy trucks are always damaging the roads and we spend lots of money usually borrowed, to fix these roads every so often. Talking about transportation, the other day I was talking about how the people of Nairobi were taking the game a notch higher by installing free wifi in their commuter taxis popularly referred to as Matatus. Safaricom has signed a deal with the Matatu owners association to fix free wifi in about 200 matatus. In my column last week I wondered whether Rwandans were going to borrow this same idea seeing that many Nyamirambo bound taxis look like Nairobi ones. Before the week could end, I got news that the Jaguar Executive buses that some refer to as ‘Jaguari’ have started installing free wifi for their passengers. Yes, the buses that have for years been used by travellers between Kampala and Kigali with their brand name almost becoming a generic term have already installed it in their top end 9am buses. Way to go guys. At least Rwandans can expect to enjoy the free service.