Editorial

German Government’s development cooperation has been heavily engaged in East Africa for a long time. Between 2014 and 2016 Kenya and Tanzania receive funds amounting to Euro 138, respectively 159 million as part of this cooperation.

From 1998 to 2015, the East African Community (EAC), i.e. the confederation of Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, benefited from the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development’s (BMZ) financial contributions at the amount of Euro 213 million. For the years 2016 to 2018, the BMZ has assured another EUR 37 million in favour of EAC.

East Africa – Ethiopia and the EAC member states – is characterised by fairly reform-orientated governments, high economic growth and increasing imports from Germany.

sequa as an implementing agency operating beyond the bilateral development cooperation is currently active with 14 projects in East Africa: four cross-border BMO capacity building projects and five TVET partnership projects, two subcontracts from GIZ, two develoPPP.de-projects and one component of the Import Promotion Desk. The Federation of German Industries (BDI), the Chamber of Industry and Commerce (IHK) of Giessen-Friedberg, Chambers of Crafts based in Rhine-Main, Cologne, and Koblenz as well as the Bavarian Training Centers (BBW)  and the Building Trade Associations (BGV) are currently engaged in the region.

The core topics of our projects in East Africa are private sector development, employment promotion, TVET, sustainable energy supply and economic reforms.

In this edition of sequaForum we present three of these exciting projects.

Gebhard Weiss, Managing Director