Southern Africa: COMESA - Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa

Contact

Secretariat General,  Mr. J.E.O. Mwencha

Address: The COMESA Centre, Ben Bella Road, PO Box 30051, Lusaka, Zambia
Telephone: (260-1) 229-725
Fax: (260-1) 225-107
Internet address: http://www.comesa.int/

Mr. Erastus J.O. Mwencha
Secretary General of COMESA

Mr. Mwencha has been serving the PTA / COMESA in various capacities since 1983. He has been Secretary-General of COMESA since 1998 and acted in this position for 18 months prior to his appointment. During his tenure, Mr. Mwencha has been closely associated with the growth and development of the PTA / COMESA and in particular the establishment of the COMESA institutions.

Prior to joining the PTA, Mr. Mwencha worked for the Government of Kenya in various capacities and was awarded the “Moran of the Burning Spear” by the President of the Republic of Kenya in recognition of his contribution to national and regional development.

Mr. Mwencha is trained as an Economist. He graduated with a BA (Hons) in Economics from the University of Nairobi and later did his postgraduate studies at York University in Canada. Mr. Mwencha is a Kenyan, aged 54 years and married with three children.

Mr. Paul Kagamé
Chairman of COMESA

Kagame was born in Gitarama in Western Rwanda on October 23, 1957. Because of the 1959 civil strive in Rwanda, Kagame, at the age of four together with his family moved to Uganda with many other Tutsis, mainly to escape the growing violence and seek refuge. Mr. Kagame grew up in Uganda. He served in the Ugandan army.

In 1985, Kagame formed the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which was composed mainly of Rwandan Tutsi soldiers based in Uganda.

RPF took power in 1994, after the genocide, Kagame was made Vice President of Rwanda and a member of the defense portfolio, with Pasteur Bizimungu as the President of Rwanda.

Paul Kagame became President in March 2000 after Bizimungu’s resignation. On August 25, 2003, Kagame won a landslide victory in the first democratic elections of Rwanda.

On April 14, 2005, Kagame was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Laws, honoris causa by the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. It is the first honorary degree bestowed upon him by any American university.

Mr Kagame eschews any form of flamboyance and is a low-key, dry public speaker. He is married with four children. Leisure pursuits include playing tennis and reading.

He made this memorable quote during the 10th anniversary memorial for the genocide victims: I start where we must all start, by paying tribute to them ( Rwanda’s genocide victims) not as statistics, not as a nameless, faceless, anonymous mass of humanity but as our mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and our children. They all should have been a part of our future, not our past.

Institutional Background

The inception of COMESA was to take advantage of a larger market size, to share the region’s common heritage and destiny and to allow greater social and economic co-operation with the ultimate objective of creating an economic community. The aims and objectives of COMESA are to facilitate the removal of the structural and institutional weaknesses of member states, so that they are able to attain collective and sustained development.

COMESA member states have agreed on the following integration strategy:

• Setting-up of a full free trade area, including the removal of all non-tariff barriers, for the free movement of goods and services produced within the COMESA region.
• Establishment of a customs union with a common external tariff structure that will be applied to goods and services imported from non-COMESA countries by 2004.
• The free movement of capital and investment, supported by theadoption of common investment practices;
• The free movement of persons supported by the adoption of common visa arrangements;
• A progressive setting-up of a payments union based on the COMESA Clearing House;
• Establishment of a common monetary union by 2025.

So far, COMESA’s main focus has been on strengthening outward-oriented regional integration (within the framework of the WTO) through removal of tariff and non-tariff barriers and adoption of trade and investment facilitation measures. Although market integration is still an unfinished agenda, recently, the integration strategy has been broadening to include supply-side areas such as transport and communications infrastructure development.

Economic Background

The COMESA region features extreme diversity in socio–economic development among countries. Per capita Gross National Incomes (GNI) range from US$100 for Ethiopia to US$7,310 for Seychelles. According to the 2003 UNDP Human Development Report, of the 20 COMESA member states, only 2, i.e., Seychelles and Mauritius, and 4, i.e., Egypt, Swaziland, Comoros and Sudan, are high and medium human development countries, respectively. This makes the majority 13–member states low human development countries, whose human poverty index ranges from a low of 34.3% in Djibouti, to a high of 56.0% in Ethiopia. The combined population of the COMESA region is approximately 379 million, with an average annual growth rate of 3.0%. Population ranges from about 768,000 in the Comoros to over 70 million in Egypt and Ethiopia.

COMESA, one of the largest regional economic groupings in Africa, has seen some achievement in trade and trade-related areas. In October 2000, COMESA member states launched the FTA, making it the only FTA in Africa. A few of the members that have not signed the FTA agreement are extending preferential duty rates of about 90% tariff reduction for trade among hemselves. Trade growth within the COMESA Free Trade Area has now reached 20 percent a year, and that it has increased from some $1 billion in the year 2000 to over $5 billion last year. Free Trade Area has reaped about US$2.5 billion and exports under AGOA have amounted to US$3.25 million.