The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) Secretariat recently hosted a four-day workshop in Kigali aimed at building capacity for National Monitoring Committees and Non-Tariff Barriers (NTBs) Focal Points across the COMESA region in different areas of NTBs management, including identification, reporting, resolving, and monitoring mechanisms towards elimination.

Representatives from COMESA member states, primarily policy-makers in trade institutions, participated in the workshop from April 3 to April 6, to learn about the ongoing issue of non-tariff barriers and their impact on trade.

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According to Alice Twizeye, a senior trade officer at COMESA, the organisation is trying to ensure that national focal points can navigate their country’s systems and understand the regulations related to NTBs. By doing so, stakeholders can discuss the removal of any pop-up NTB and ease trade.

Twizeye commended Rwanda for its success in easing cross-border trade and acknowledged the country’s efforts as a member of COMESA.

She emphasised the importance of mutual learning and the exchange of ideas between countries to further enhance trade facilitation across the region. "Rwanda is doing quite well in terms of easing cross-border trade, and being part of COMESA, we’ve done a lot, but still, other countries can learn from us, and vice versa,” she said.

The workshop aimed to increase and create awareness of the NTBs regulations and working procedures among all NTBs Focal Points and members of National Monitoring Committees, and to monitor the progress of the agreed regional work programme for the implementation of the regulations.

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Jacob Makambwe, Secretary General of Southern Africa Cross Border Traders Association (SACBTA), said the post-Covid period has seen a rise in new trade sanctions worldwide, including new NTBs in COMESA.

"This workshop brought us, stakeholders, to speed on implementation and resolve NTBs, as we have received training before on resolving these particular non-tariff barriers,” he said.

However, the persistence of non-tariff barriers remains a significant challenge for many countries according to Hellen Mlotha Mithi, Principal Trade Officer at the Ministry of Trade and Industry in Malawi.

She pointed out that being part of other regional blocks often contributes to difficulty in eliminating all NTBs.

"Rwanda is part of the East African Community, which means it belongs to some EAC trade blocks. In Malawi, we’re part of the Southern African Development Community and we’re in COMESA as well. So, for countries to maintain what they agreed in COMESA, it’s a bit difficult because they have to apply what they agreed in other regional blocks also,” Mithi explained.

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Trade stakeholders from COMESA member states also identified the need for functional NTBs structures in member states, empowerment, and capacity-building to achieve their mandate and the resolution of persisting NTBs in the COMESA region and advocacy for their removal and elimination.

The workshop was part of COMESA’s efforts to eliminate NTBs and ensure the smooth flow of trade across the region. The organisation has previously emphasised the importance of providing advance notification on the introduction of new NTBs that impact intra-COMESA trade, as well as the need for a permanent mechanism for the expeditious resolution of issues arising from NTBs.