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Allan Brian Ssenyonga |
By Allan Brian Ssenyonga
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.
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