EAST AFRICA GETS US$16 MILLION FUND TO EASE TRANSPORT COSTS

Cargo trucks line up at the Malaba border awaiting clearance.

East African states are set to benefit from a $16 million fund launched by Trade Mark East Africa (TMEA) in Kampala, on Tuesday.

Dubbed Logistics Innovation for Trade (LIFT), the fund has been opened for innovators who can develop a strategy to help in reducing the cost and time of transporting goods and logistics in the region. According to Mr Isaac Njoroge, the LIFT manager, the fund has already been launched in Kenya, Rwanda and Burundi.

It will provide grants ranging from $200,000 to $750,000 to winning proposals from innovators across the world but whose ideas will be implemented in East Africa.

“The challenge fund comes in to help private businesses and innovators to mitigate the risk of high return projects that are risky and have not been tested,” said Mr Njoroge.

He added that the wining projects and products will help in reducing the cost of transport by 15 per cent along the Northern Corridor of Mambasa-Kampala-Kigali route and the Southern corridor of Dar-es-Salaam to Kigali by 2016.

Currently, according to Mr Njoroge, East Africa has the highest freight and transport costs in the world, with more than 50 per cent higher than the US and Europe per kilometre.

TMEA country director Susan Asiimwe said: “High costs of freight and transport seriously erode the competitiveness of goods exported by East African countries and raises the cost of living, reducing trade, economic growth, job creation and poverty reduction.”

The East African