Dennis Ndonga

As African countries work towards establishing a continental market created under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), emphasis needs to be placed on improving connectivity and regional accessibility. One-Stop Border Posts (OSBPs) are central to enhancing interconnectivity among African countries to facilitate traffic flows along Africa's transport corridors. Under the OSBP concept, all traffic stops once to undertake both exit and entry formalities when crossing into another jurisdiction. Such a framework would help alleviate border congestion and delays that adversely impact transport costs, trade flows, and trade competitiveness. However, OSBPs present their own challenges. Using the Chirundu OSBP between Zambia and Zimbabwe (which was the first of its kind in Sub-Saharan Africa) as a case study, this article examines the challenges, highlights the issues, and suggests ways to address the problems. It reviews the border management and infrastructure challenges affecting operations and success of the Chirundu OSBP and points to implementation lessons that can be drawn to inform other African countries that intend to implement, or are in the process of developing, OSBPs.

African countries are still negotiating the RoO for AfCFTA. Rules of Origin (RoO), a mechanism for determining the economic nationality of a product, are an essential part of international trade due to their use in the enforcement of preferential treatment of goods. AfCFTA member states seek to build upon RoO under their existing RECs. However, the design and implementation of RoO under the various RECs are seen as one of the obstacles to intra-Africa trade. This article examines the RoO of Africa’s key RECs, namely the EAC, COMESA, ECOWAS, SADC and the TFTA, with a view to drawing out lessons, the drawbacks that need to be addressed or avoided, and shaping the RoO of the AfCFTA to enhance the achievement of its objective of promoting intra-African trade.

The East and Southern Africa (ESA) region continues to lag in gender equality, with women remaining largely underrepresented in leadership and high-status positions compared to their sisters in other world regions. This is even though the three Regional Economic Communities (RECs) in ESA have all made efforts at incorporating gender perspectives in their customs and trade policies. This article explores the gender gap in customs and trade across ESA and concludes that the region’s member countries stand to benefit from improved organisational performance and increased global competitiveness by integrating gender perspectives in their customs and trade operations.

Over the years, Africa's share of global investment flows has been much lower compared to other world regions. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) seeks to remedy this through the Investment Protocol, which will include provisions aimed at addressing some of the non-tariff barriers (NTBs) to Africa's investment. As negotiations on the Protocol's provisions continue to take shape, a key area that has received little attention is preferential Rules of Origin (RoO). Most literature on RoO has focused on their impact on trade flows and failed to take note of their role in...

The agreement establishing the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) has been touted as an important pillar and driver for economic growth, industrialisation and sustainable development in Africa. Among its expected key benefits is the promise to increase the level of intra-African trade by eliminating import duties and other tariffs among member countries, in addition to general trade expansion. However, unlocking the AfCFTA’s full potential will largely depend on how the continent is able to restructure its exports, which are poorly diversified and remain highly dependent on primary commodities. Moreover, intra-African trade remains dominated by a few big regional players. To this end, there have been growing fears that the AfCFTA’s anticipated gains, and associated losses, are likely to accrue unevenly. Countries with large productive capacities in manufacturing or stronger supply capacities in non-manufactured products may reap more rewards than weaker landlocked and smaller economies, particularly the least developed countries (LDCs). These concerns have led to a number of countries, including Malawi, pushing for special and differential treatment in the implementation of the AfCFTA’s provisions on the elimination of import duties and other tariffs. Many LDCs, including Malawi, rely heavily on international trade taxes as a source of government revenue. There is a legitimate concern that such economies are likely to be left grappling with the negative effects of tariff cuts in the form of substantial fiscal revenue loss. This article explores the potential impact of the AfCFTA on LDCs, with a focus on Malawi. It reviews Malawi’s intra-African trade position in terms of its export potential and examines the likely impact that the AfCFTA agreement would have on the country’s fiscal revenues.

In 2015, Kenya adopted a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) policy as one of its major economic growth and development pillars aimed at attracting investments to the country's manufacturing sector. However, the current SEZ scheme is not the first of such schemes adopted by Kenya – it is the latest in a string of schemes adopted in the last five decades. As the earlier schemes were mostly unsuccessful, the question is why would this new SEZ scheme succeed? This article examines Kenya's experience with SEZ. It assesses the scheme's legal and institutional framework, offers a critique of the scheme and makes some recommendations.

Rapid progressions in cross-border e-commerce has revolutionized international trade and made it possible for businesses to transact in a borderless Internet environment. However, most international tax treaties still apply source-based taxation principles, including the permanent establishment concept, in taxing income derived from international commerce. This article examines whether source-based taxation remains theoretically valid in the territorial taxation of cross-border e-commerce income. It analyses the application of the permanent establishment concept to e-commerce corporate income and reviews some of the existing challenges and the current responses to these challenges at the academic and international level.

On December 2005, the ASEAN member states passed the ASEAN Single Window (ASW) Agreement which paved the way for the implementation of a regional single window system that would integrate the members’ National Single Window (NSW) systems. This regional system is expected to facilitate trade within the ASEAN Economic Community. However, the successful operation of these systems largely depends the presence of a legal framework that would support the cross-jurisdictional recognition of members’ electronically authenticated documents that are exchanged between the NSWs and ASW. This article explores the role of e-signatures in single window operation, and assesses the challenges facing the cross-jurisdictional recognition of e-signatures under the ASW.

THE TRADE FACILITATION (TF) benefits of Single Window (SW) systems have been well documented in academic literature. Moreover, a number of jurisdictions that have implemented these systems have registered an increase in revenue collection, a reduction in trade transaction costs and general improvement in cross-border efficiencies. Despite the fact that many Customs administrations have expressed their desire to introduce the modern SW concept, many developing countries have not taken any substantial steps to implement such systems. Granted, most developing countries are plagued by certain technological and legal challenges that have acted as a barrier to the operation of SWs; their slow progress, however, does not entirely revolve around these challenges.