Power is a top-three cost for East African manufacturers, and the tariff schedule is negotiable terrain. How tariff classes, time-of-use windows, and self-generation reshape factory economics.
BUBU reserves public demand for local firms. The policy is real, the preference margins are real, and most SMEs still cannot collect. The Tender Ladder shows what qualification takes.
Every East African government now sells a one-stop shop for investors. What the model fixes, where the queue re-forms behind the counter, and how a founder tests the difference.
One-Stop Investment Centres: The Promise vs the Queue Read More »
The EAC’s four-band tariff, its stays of application, and its country-specific exemptions decide an importer’s margins before any negotiation. A survival map for the small firm.
The EAC Common External Tariff and the SME Importer: Politics You Pay at the Port Read More »
Continental tariff cuts mean nothing without a certificate of origin. Why AfCFTA’s real barrier is documentary capability, and how an SME builds the Origin File.
AfCFTA Rules of Origin: The Paperwork Is the Product Read More »
Government startup programs multiply across East Africa, measured on cohorts trained, not firms scaled. Why outcomes, not ceremonies, must be the contract.
What Government Accelerators Owe the Founders They Graduate Read More »
DPI debates obsess over citizens and privacy. But the bigger economic prize is firm-facing rails, registration, licensing, procurement, credit APIs. Treat the cost of formality as an index and DPI becomes SME industrial policy.
eCitizen Economics: Digital Public Infrastructure Is Industrial Policy Read More »
Kenya is structuring a $500M diaspora bond to tap $4.9bn in remittances. Why diaspora bonds are governance products, not patriotism products, and what Nigeria’s success and Ethiopia’s failure teach.
The Diaspora Bond Comeback: How Africa Prices Its Risk Read More »
Billions are mobilised for women founders, yet women-led African firms get under 7% of venture funding. Why the $42bn ‘gap’ conflates two different problems, and the honest sequencing fix.
Gender-Lens Investing: Capital First or Capability First? Read More »
Governments are committing billions to a fresh industrial-parks boom, on a model with a documented 20-year failure rate. Why zones fail when you build the fence before the firms, and what to measure instead.
East Africa’s Industrial Park Boom Is Repeating SEZ Mistakes Read More »