ICF Newsletter

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Wednesday October 21, 2009 : Issue 01

Hello – and welcome to the first edition of the Investment Climate Facility for Africa’s quarterly newsletter. This newsletter is aimed at providing ICF’s supporters with a regular update on our activity and progress as we work to make Africa an even better place to do business.

As the only pan-African body explicitly and exclusively focused on improving the continent’s investment climate, ICF works with receptive African governments, together with development and private sector partners, to systematically remove constraints to doing business. Since our inception, we have seen recognition of the importance of healthy investment climates steadily increase and we are encouraged by the increasing demand for ICF services from governments across the continent, many of whom should be commended for taking practical action to address and remove barriers to investment in their respective countries. Practical struggles with bureaucracy, regulation, red tape and infrastructure pose some of the most critical challenges to establishing long-term economic growth across the continent and now, more than ever, need to be urgently addressed.

Within two years from becoming operational, we have been able to develop a robust portfolio of 25 signed projects, including four pan-African projects, and four further special initiatives in partnership with 10 African governments and a number of regional organisations. We are particularly pleased to report that many of these projects are already delivering tangible improvements to businesses and investors across the continent. Our strategy is to take the learnings from our established projects and use them to stimulate wider progress and improvement across the rest of the continent. More detail on our existing project activity can be found below – and we look forward to sharing further updates in the coming months.

I hope you will enjoy reading this first newsletter - if you have any comments on the content, including suggestions for future editions, please do get in touch. In the meantime, many thanks for your continued support and interest in ICF.

Kind Regards,

Omari Issa
Chief Executive Officer, ICF

IN THIS ISSUE

Government of Cape Verde and ICF announce Business Life Cycle Services partnership
ICF to establish new commercial courts and improve judicial systems in Burkina Faso
ICF supports regulatory framework and transport infrastructure rehabilitation to improve Freetown airport transfers
ICF and Government of Rwanda Announce New Project to Modernise Tax Administration

ALSO THIS MONTH

Find out more

We have been busy updating the collateral that supports ICF's work including our annual report; our website, which now features a new interactive project map; a corporate brochure which explains more about ICF’s work, and we've also been refreshing our photo library. Most of these materials are available in English, French and Portuguese, and are either downloadable below or via our website:

www.icfafrica.org

Click on the image below to download the latest ICF Corporate Brochure

Click on the image below to download the latest ICF Annual Report

Click on the image below to download the latest ICF Project Fact Sheet

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NEW PROJECTS

Government of Cape Verde and ICF announce Business Life Cycle Services partnership

ICF has recently approved an 18 month project with the Government of Cape Verde to improve business life cycles that are required when registering, licensing or closing a business. The project builds on the Government's existing efforts to make Cape Verde's public operations more transparent and efficient. Previous initiatives include the development of an internet based financial management system that has improved the country's investment climate by reducing the time and administrative procedures it takes to register, licence and close businesses from months to hours.

ICF will enhance, complement and extend, to the rest of the country, the pilot phase that has already delivered tangible results in three locations where the number of business registration procedures have been reduced from 12 to one, and the number of days it takes to register a business has been cut from 52 to just one. Furthermore, 729 businesses have been 'created' using an online business registration portal.

ICF to establish new commercial courts and improve judicial systems in Burkina Faso

ICF’s Board of Trustees recently approved funding for a new project in Burkina Faso which will establish two commercial courts in Ouagadougou and Bobo-Dioulasso, with the aim of reducing the time and costs associated with resolving commercial disputes. Bringing commercial cases to court currently takes 214 days in the Ouagadougou region, an area that handles six in ten of the nation's commercial hearings.

The 20-month project is a joint collaboration between ICF, the Ministry of Justice and the Chamber of Commerce of Burkina Faso. This project represents the first ICF initiative to transform the judicial sector in Francophone Africa.

Previous activity by ICF in Burkina Faso has resulted in significant improvements to land and business registration, and the provision of construction permits. Starting a business in Ouagadougou and Bobo-Dioulasso now requires six procedures, takes 18 days and costs 82% of GNI per capita, as opposed to 12 procedures, 40 days and 150% of GNI per capita in 2006.

ICF supports regulatory framework and transport infrastructure rehabilitation to improve Freetown airport transfers

ICF is working on an infrastructure facilitation project, in partnership with the Government of Sierra Leone and the private sector, to make troublesome airport transfers a thing of the past for visitors to the West African country’s capital city.

The two year airport transfer project aims to drastically improve connections for air passengers between Freetown and Sierra Leone’s International Airport, 176km away from the capital city by road. This journey currently takes up to seven hours, with many roads still severely dilapidated due to damage and neglect inflicted during the civil unrest of the 1990s.

Other alternative transfer options, which include ferry, hovercraft, helicopter and taxi boats, are generally considered expensive, unreliable or inconvenient. Services are often not compatible with international flight times, leading to long waits at the airport. In response to this situation, ICF is supporting a regulatory and administrative framework and transport infrastructure rehabilitation project which will enable and encourage the private sector to invest in improved transport means.

ICF believes a more modem and reliable transfer system between Freetown and the international airport will provide a significant boost to the country’s investment climate. The two-year project will set up an Airport Transfer Unit (ATU) to oversee the licensing and monitoring of transfers to and from the airport, as well as looking into training and capacity building. The project will also improve jetties and terminal facilities and encourage the private sector to provide more competitive and reliable ferry and boat services.

ICF is also working on three other projects in partnership with the Government of Sierra Leone. The first aims to improve the efficiency of land registration in Freetown, the second will establish a fast track commercial court in the capital and a third will modernise the Office of the Administrator and Registrar General (OARG). The above projects will reduce the time and costs of doing business in the country.

ICF and Government of Rwanda Announce New Project to Modernise Tax Administration

An ICF project, in partnership with the Government of Rwanda, will modernise the country’s tax administration. The project, which is ICF's third in Rwanda, will improve customer services and communications at the Rwanda Revenue Authority (RRA) and establish an online electronic filing and payment system, further reducing the time and costs associated with doing business in the country.

This latest project builds on the considerable progress achieved by the Government of Rwanda to date, as highlighted by Rwanda being named the first ever Sub-Saharan African economy to become a “top reformer” in the World Bank’s Doing Business 2009 report, as referenced below. ICF has also registered considerable commercial justice achievements which are also detailed below.

OTHER NEWS

Annual General Meeting

ICF held its second Annual General Meeting in Cape Town on 9th June 2009. ICF’s Board of Trustees and Management Team provided an overview of progress to date, and also shared the future strategy and plans. Following the meeting, the ICF 2008 Annual Report was released, which provides an overview of ICF activity and related financial performance up to 31 December 2008. Copies of the Annual Report can be downloaded by clicking on the image in the left hand column or hardcopies are available by contacting ICF's head office (contact details are at the bottom of the page).

ICF delivering tangible improvements for Africa’s investors

ICF is designed as a facility to catalyse change, recognising that for any intervention to be successful it needs to be fast and flexible. With this in mind, our focus has always been on delivering tangible results and we are pleased to report that despite only being operational for two years, several of our projects are already demonstrating very real, visible improvements. For example:

• In Senegal, we are working in partnership with the Government and the implementation agency GAINDE 2000 to streamline and refine the existing system of paperless electronic customs administration. Since ICF intervention, it now takes a maximum of between three and seven hours for the pre-customs declaration to be completed, as opposed to two days. The number of certificates of origin processed has increased from 853 in 2007 to 1,983 in 2008. We have now launched the programme’s second phase, which will reduce the time associated with the custom clearance process by a further 50 per cent, from an average of 18 to just 9 days. An improvement of this scale will put Senegal’s customs administration system on a par with international best practice.

• In Rwanda, a three year partnership with the Government to improve commercial justice systems has already led to significant improvements within two years. Four new commercial courts and a library with 800 books are now operational, and a backlog of 3,000 pending cases has been cleared as well more than 1,000 more cases addressed.

• In Lesotho, a pilot project to simplify and rationalise the assessment, administration and collection of VAT has led to fewer and simpler VAT payments for businesses, helped by the introduction of a simple payment system via high street banks. As a result, the VAT return lodgement and paying process now takes 20 minutes, as opposed to the 324 hours referenced in the 2009 World Bank Doing Business Report.

ICF was commended at July's G8 meeting in L'Aquila

ICF was commended in the G8 Leaders Declaration: Responsible Leadership for a Sustainable Future released during July's G8 summit in L’Aquila, Italy. The commendation described ICF's work as “a model of African-led reform”. Please see below for a link to the report

http://www.g8italia2009.it/G8/Home/Summit/G8-G8_Layout_locale-1199882116809_Atti.htm

(page 49 of the report)

Africa's most ambitious journalist training programme ends its first phase

ICF's pan-Africa journalist training programme, which was established at the beginning of 2009 to increase the financial reporting skills of African journalists and, ultimately, improve investors' perceptions of doing business on the continent, has drawn to a close. The first phase of the training programme, which has been run in partnership with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, has delivered introductory training to nearly 75 financial journalists, in French, Portuguese and English, at sessions held in Nairobi, Kenya; Dakar, Senegal; Lusaka, Zambia; Lagos, Nigeria; Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire and Maputo, Mozambique.

Lenny Njau, a journalist from Kenya's People Daily newspaper, participated in the inaugural training course in Nairobi and was one of many journalists to provide ICF with very positive feedback. He said, "The course was a brilliant idea and the timing could not have been much better. At a time when the world is engulfed in financial crises, nothing is more important than giving people the most accurate information."

An advanced training programme is being offered to the 20 journalists who showed the most potential on the introductory courses – two courses are being held, in London and Paris, and we will share an update of them in our next newsletter.

(Featuring in the photograph, Dipak Patel, ICF Trustee, addresses journalists in Lusaka, Zambia)

ICF commends Rwanda for being named "top reformer” in the World Bank’s ‘Doing Business 2010 report

Earlier this month, ICF commended Rwanda for becoming the first Sub-Saharan African economy to be named “top reformer” in the World Bank's Doing Business study that tracks the ease of doing business in 183 countries around the world. The report saw Rwanda jump from 143rd to 67th place in the rankings, with Liberia also being named among the “top ten reformers”. Other African countries noted for improving their ease of doing business rankings include Burkina Faso, Liberia, Mali, Sierra Leone, Zambia and Cape Verde. Please refer to this link to read full press release [editor's note: link to be added].

Please click here to read the press release in full.

ICF ON THE ROAD

ICF representatives continue to attend high level events with a view to increasing demand and appetite for investment climate improvements. ICF has recently participated in the following events:

* iPAD (Infrastructure Partnerships for African Development) East Africa 2009 Conference, Dar es Salaam - 12 August 2009 - www.spintelligent-events.com/ipad-east2009/en/index.php
* EAC (East African Community) Investment Conference, Nairobi - 29 July 2009
* Business Fights Poverty event, co-hosted by Business Action for Africa and DFID, London – 23 June 2009 - www.businessfightspoverty.ning.com
* East African Business Council and AWEPA (Association of European Parliamentarians for Africa) meeting, Dar es Salaam - 15-16 June 2009 - www.awepa.org/resources/tackling-challenges-for-the-east-africa-region_en.html
* Africa World Economic Forum, Cape Town, which included a panel session on ‘Investment Climate: A Better Way of Doing Business’ - 9 - 11 July 2009 - www.weforum.org/en/events/ArchivedEvents/WorldEconomicForumonAfrica2009/index.htm
* UK House of Commons, Investment Africa Ready, London – 19 May 2009
* London Business School’s Africa Day Conference, London – 16 May 2009 - www.londonafricaclub.org/africaday.htm

ICF COMMUNICATIONS UPDATE

Through news announcements, interviews, opinion led articles and features, 2009 communications activities to date have already generated 179 media hits for ICF (91 in African media and 81 in international press), equating to a total estimated reach of more than 200 million.

Key ICF coverage highlights include a series of regular articles in African Business, as well as interviews with CNN, CNBC, Reuters, Bloomberg, Financial Times' This is Africa, BBC, The Nation and The Citizen.

The communications team also capitalised on ICF’s attendance at the World Economic Forum to ensure the issue of investment climate improvements was firmly on the agenda of attending media. Omari Issa appeared on SABC TV's News@1 show and CNBC Africa, and interviews were arranged with The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Reuters and The Financial Mail.

INVESTMENT CLIMATE FACTS

• African commercial courts spend an average 60% of court proceeding time manually transcribing the proceedings and sentencing;

• The cost of transporting a container from Kenya to the neighbouring country, Rwanda, is three times more expensive than shipping it to Singapore;

• Synchronising the opening and closure times of border posts between Rwanda and border countries can increase the clearance of goods by 30%;

• Electricity sourced from generators is eight times more expensive than power taken off the national grid. Generated power can be cost prohibitive for smaller businesses and unreliable national supplies can hamper small business growth, in particular.