Benedict Musengele is the Director Trade Policy and Facilitation in TradeMark East Africa(TMEA). He is responsible for coordinating the alignment of trade policy and international trade practices and goals to TMEA’s strategy and ensuring that the linkages between trade policy and facilitation are streamlined in all aspects of the Trade Environment Work Streams and clearly linked to organisational objectives at both the national and regional levels. He provides technical leadership on trade policy and facilitation related support to country offices and partner organizations as needed, including the Integrated Border Management, work around the post Bali WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement; the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) and related Trade in Services components.

Previously, Benedict was a Senior Research Fellow and the Head of Research in the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) Secretariat in Lusaka, Zambia. He was also the coordinator for the COMESA/ACBF project on enhancing COMESA’s capacity in economic and trade policy analysis and research. Mr. Musengele has worked as the Chief Technical Officer in M.A. Consulting Group, an Assistant Policy Analyst for the Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis (KIPPRA), a consultant for the East African Community and was an independent ILO evaluator for the public procurement and social economy project in South Africa.

Some of his achievements in COMESA included undertaking various demand driven studies, supporting the Tripartite and AfCFTA negotiations through undertaking policy studies, initiating and operationalizing the COMESA Virtual Masters Degree Programme in regional integration, initiating and sustaining the COMESA Annual Research Forums, reviving the innovation awards, sustaining the COMESA flagship publication on key issues in regional integration and developing the Kenya sugar safeguard quota allocation formula as well as facilitating implementation of the safeguard.

Mr. Musengele was an Economist in the review and update of the port of Mombasa Master Plan, the EAC single Customs Territory Study, the Intra-COMESA trade potential study, the socio-economic impact of Covid-19 in COMESA, the Comparative assessment of the competitiveness of the sugar sector in COMESA, a comprehensive audit of NTBs and their impact on intra-COMESA Trade among others. Mr. Musengele has a wealth of experience in regional integration in particular trade and customs issues, and investments based on his working experience on trade, customs, capacity building in economic and trade policy analysis and research in various RECs as well as his academic background mainly in international trade, investments and public-sector economics. He holds a Master’s degree in Economics from the University of Malawi and is currently a PhD final year student in Economics at Kenyatta University, Kenya.