The Rwandan government has expressed satisfaction with transit freight improvement along the central corridor through which over 80% of the country’s inbound and outward-bound cargo transits.

“Tanzania and Rwanda are not only neighbors, but we are also relatives”, asserted Rwanda’s High Commissioner to Tanzania, Major General Charles Karamba during his meeting with Tanzania’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and East African Cooperation, Prof. John Aidan Mwaluko Palamagamba Kabudi in the country’s capital, Dodoma.

He further noted that Rwanda considers the Port of Dar es Salaam as its own harbor and will continue using it for shipping.

Statistics from the International Association of Ports and Harbors show that Dar es Salaam port is the fourth largest port on the Indian Ocean coastline in Africa after Durban, Mombasa, Maputo and is a major gateway for commerce and trade for landlocked states such as Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia.

The envoy had paid a courtesy visit to the host Foreign Minister and the two seized this opportunity to exchange on a number of bilateral and multilateral issues of mutual concern such as trade, investment and business relations between the two countries; the forthcoming Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) scheduled for June 2021 in Kigali, among many others.

The CHOGM is a biennial high level consultative and policy orientation gathering whose last meeting held in London in 2018 selected Rwanda as host for the next summit then slated for June 2020 but was postponed to June 2021 owing to the Covid-19 global pandemic.

On his part, Prof. Palamagamba Kabudi assured Rwanda’s envoy that Tanzania continues to create a conducive business and investment environment to facilitate trade with neighboring countries.

He noted that Tanzania exports fresh fish and fillets using RwandAir planes and plans are underway to purchase own cargo planes that will be exporting the products directly from Tanzania, a move that will boost trade within the East African region.