COMESA Regional Investment Agency was launched in 2006 to promote COMESA Member States and to increase awareness on their investment incentives, opportunities, legislation, practices, major events affecting investments and other relevant information in view of attracting FDI for the sustainable economic development of the COMESA region, in particular infrastructure development.

The objectives set-out in COMESA RIA’s Charter are as follows:

• To make COMESA one of the major destinations for regional and international investors while simultaneously enhancing national investment; and
• To carry out other activities in investment promotion, facilitation and advocacy in conformity with the COMESA Treaty.

Moreover, in terms of functions, the Charter mentions:

• Gather and disseminate information including creation and maintenance of a database and website. RIA will collect and disseminate, through publications and its website, detailed information on policies affecting the business environment, cost of doing business, investment procedures, investment opportunities and other relevant information in Member States.
• Identify and promote investment opportunities, with special focus on projects with regional impact; RIA shall identify and promote infrastructure projects and other investment projects with regional impact.
• Provide training and development support for National Investment Promotion Agencies in Member States and facilitate capacity building programmes at a regional level.
• Support the improvement of the national investment environments in Member States by identifying best practices. RIA shall identify constraints in the investment environment of Member States and make recommendations as appropriate for their removal.
• Promote COMESA as a common investment area; RIA will proactively promote the COMESA and Common Investment Area through several activities including image-building activities abroad, investment missions, website, advertisement and tailor made public relations programmes.

Beyond what is stated in its Charter, COMESA RIA’s working missions since its inception have been to promote the COMESA region as an attractive investment destination and to build the capacity of COMESA Member States Investment Promotion Agencies (IPAs) to attract investment.

Furthermore, while COMESA RIA’s main stakeholders are COMESA Member States’ IPAs as reflected in its Board of Director composition, COMESA RIA’s main targets have been private sector and main final beneficiaries the general COMESA population.

The COMESA Region
COMESA is Africa’s largest Regional Economic Community. It was notified as a Regional Trade Agreement (RTA) to the World Trade Organisation under the Enabling Clause on 29th of June 1995. As of 2019, COMESA became a fully functioning free trade area.

The COMESA Common Investment Area (CCIA) was launched in 2007 and its Customs Union in 2009, both of which are yet to be operational. Moreover, COMESA is working towards becoming a Common Market and a full Economic Community. COMESA is one of the eight regional economic communities recognised by the African Union as the building blocks of the wider African Economic Community, and of the Continental Free
Trade Area which was launched in June 2015. COMESA Member States are Burundi, Comoros, DR Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Kenya, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Rwanda, Seychelles, Somalia, Sudan, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) Secretariat and the European Union (EU) have signed a Grant contribution agreement of EUR 10,000,000 financed under the 11 European Development Fund (EDF), for the implementation of the Regional Enterprise Competitiveness and Access to Markets Programme (RECAMP).

The RECAMP is a four-year action that aims at contributing to increased private sector participation in regional and global value chains. The Programme Overall objective is to contribute to the deepening of regional economic integration in the COMESA region through enhancing the competitiveness of the private sector with the Specific objective to increase private sector participation in sustainable regional and global value chains
by increasing access to markets and improving business and investment climate. RIA in collaboration with COMESA Secretariat is implementing specific activities under the RECAMP, of which this activity is expected to be funded.