President Paul Kagame is seeking to charm the political leadership of the Republic of Congo in a bid to boost ties with the resource-rich country and open the door to investment and new markets for Kigali’s exports.

At the invitation of Kagame, Republic of Congo President Denis Sassou N’Guesso paid a three-day visit to Kigali last week, with a comprehensive co-operation agreement being signed between the two countries. The agreement, signed by the foreign ministers of both countries, largely hinges on bolstering economic ties through increasing trade and commerce, and increasing political co-operation.  

“There is no limit to what we can do together as countries,” President Kagame said during a joint press briefing by the two presidents.

President Sassou N’ Guesso’s visit follows Kagame’s visit to his country last year in December, during which it was announced that Rwanda’s national airline RwandAir would soon begin direct flights to Brazzaville, the country’s capital. 

The two heads of state also made a commitment to strengthen co-operation in environment and natural resources, tourism, judiciary, air transport and public service reforms. “This visit has made it possible to deepen and strengthen our co-operation.” President Sassou N’Guesso said. 

The country is particularly keen on accessing the Congolese market for its exports of animal, agriculture and horticulture products, as it seeks to cut back its rising trade deficit. It’s trade deficit increased in the first half of this year to $587 million compared with $543.7 million in June last year.

In a move that is expected to spur trade and investment between the two countries, the government spent about $150,000 to help 30 local entrepreneurs to showcase their products in the Central African country at a trade fair in May this year.  

“There are many Rwandan products that can be exported to Congo, but for this to happen we need to have some trade logistics to facilitate this trade. The first step has been signing a commercial trade agreement that provides the framework to address a number of issues,” Minister of Trade and Industry Francois Kanimba told The EastAfrican.

Rwanda has formulated an export strategy to narrow the country’s trade deficit and is   projecting about $300 million in export revenues in 2011, up from the $250 million collected last year.

According to Mark Priestley, country director, TradeMark East Africa, Rwanda, while trade opportunities exist for the country to tap into regional markets, its current low and limited export base presents a major challenge for trade.

Rwanda’s current low and limited export base presents a major challenge for trade.

Mr Kanimba said he had been approached by some private Rwandan businesses interested in doing business in Congo, including setting up a bonded warehouse in Brazzaville.  

“After this visit, we are going to send a technical delegation to Congo in the first half of December to start working on the requests by some of our private people. But we also need to understand the procedures through Congolese borders for our exporters to have a clear sense of the challenges they have to go through,” he said. 

The minister however noted that the high cost of transport presents a major challenge for the country’s trade ambitions. “We can only go there using air transport and currently the fares are very costly. We are talking to RwandAir to see if they can offer a discount to facilitate trade,” Mr Kanimba said. 

According to Mark Priestley, country director for Rwanda of TradeMark East Africa, while trade opportunities exist for Rwanda to tap into regional markets, the country’s current low and limited export base presents a major challenge for trade.
“It is a bold move to explore trade opportunities with Republic of Congo, but the bigger challenge is that Rwanda needs to develop products to export.  The high cost of airfreight requires that Rwanda exports low value but high quality goods,” he said.  

Mr Priestley also pointed out that while the Rwandan private sector has the potential to produce competitive products for export, the high cost of transport presents a major barrier as export volumes are still limited. 

“One of the ways of bringing down the cost of transport is increasing export volumes as currently goods container come in to Rwanda full and go back empty from the ports of Mombasa and Dar-es- Salaam.”   

Rwanda has formulated an export strategy to narrow the country’s trade deficit and is   projecting about $300 million in export revenues in 2011, up from the $250 million collected last year.