The benefit of having an effective trade body to oversee public-private freight corridor and border crossing developments has become quite apparent through the involvement of Trade Mark East Africa (TMEA), says Mike Fitzmaurice.The CEO of the Federation of East and Southern African Road Transport Associations (Fesarta) told FTW that TMEA had played an instrumental role in the success of the East African Community (EAC).Widely regarded by trade experts as possibly Africa’s best economic community, the trading bloc, which comprises Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and South Sudan, when the latter is not at war with itself, has a lot for which to thank TMEA, Fitzmaurice claims.“They oversee one-stop capacity building, related developments and ensure that continuity is established for the movement of all types of freight across the EAC.”It involves, he says, continually training up new personnel to take over from Customs officials and the like whenever staff turnovers pose disruption to border crossing efficiencies.“That’s how continuity is established – not by designing systems, implementing them, and then walking away thinking they will take care of themselves.”The presumption that well-devised border posts will self-manage, mainly because of the systems on which they run, has been the case at Chirundu, Zambia’s important crossing into Zimbabwe on the north-south road corridor.Once regarded as an important test case for a one-stop border post (OSBP) in Africa, Chirundu has gone from an almost free-f lowing crossing for road hauliers to a choke point, regularly resulting in truck queues stretching for kilometres on either side of the border.One of the problems, says Fitzmaurice, is staff.“You need people to make sure things run smoothly. “What has happened at Chirundu since the OSBP was established more than 10 years ago is that we have had large staff changes. It means that employees who were originally trained in one-stop procedures were redeployed, and new staff coming in were not properly incorporated into capacity building.”In comparison, TMEA looks at avoiding such disruptive occurrences across the EAC, making it one of the most effective economic communities on the continent.As such it’s an important benchmark bloc, highlighting efficiencies in the run-up to the African Continental Free Trade Area which is currently being tested and due to go live by the middle of the year.Fitzmaurice warns though that for freight to easily f low as freely as possible across the continent, with unnecessary tariffs and non-tariff barriers to intra-Africa trade removed, more oversight bodies like TMEA should be created.“We used to have a privately run body here in South Africa but it was closed down. Nobody knows why. The problem is, if you don’t have an oversight body to intervene, seeing to things working on an ongoing basis, systems and services generally start falling apar t.”At the moment there is a South African body that looks at promoting intra-African trade – Trade Invest Africa, an initiative of the Department of Trade and Indust r y.Thing is, can government be trusted with overseeing government-run affairs?
INSERT: You need people to make sure things run smoothly. – Mike Fitzmaurice