EAC PRESIDENTS MEET IN ARUSHA TO MARK 25 YEARS OF REGIONAL INTEGRATION

East African Community (EAC) Heads of State are meeting in Arusha today to mark 25 years of the relaunched regional bloc, amid tensions among some of the partners as well as trade barriers despite a common market protocol hammered out several years ago. As we went to press, senior officials and the Council of Ministers were busy during the week fine tuning the agenda likely to revolve around the four pillars of regional integration. They are Customs Union, Common Market Protocol for the free movement of people, goods and labour within the region, Monetary Union and ultimately Political Federation. In a video clip seen by ‘The Arusha News,’ EAC Secretary General (SG), Ms Veronica Nduva, said the Heads of State meeting shall take into stock all that has happened since EAC was relaunched on November 30, 1999. The Summit is being held under the theme: “Promoting Trade, Sustainable Development and Peace and Security for Improved Livelihoods.” However, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni hates the phrase, “sustainable development,” terming it as being basically hollow. He prefers measurable outcomes. The EAC adopted a monetary union protocol in 2013 in accordance with the EAC treaty. The protocol set a 10- year timeline for the bloc’s currencies to converge into a single currency and the establishment of a regional central bank. There is no indication that the currencies shall converge soon. Critics often point to the Bloc’s rapid membership expansion from the original partners of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania to eight currently, including Burundi, Rwanda, South Sudan, Somalia and DR Congo. Former University of Dar es Salaam Don, Dr Azaveli Lwaitama says even the Community’s name should now change to embrace its geographical reality. However, the former Private Secretary to Tanzania’s Founding President, the late Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, Mr Samuel Kasori says EAC partnership should be founded more on “brotherly understanding” than strict “diplomatic niceties,” which he equates to narrow national interests. “Instability in the DR Congo has negative impact on Tanzania’s prosperity as well,” he says. “On a very small scale, think of how our ports and railways are negatively impacted by the instability in DR Congo,” he adds. A Customs Union Protocol, which has been in force since 2005, has admittedly helped to improve trade in the region with goods moving freely as long as they complied to certain EAC Rules of Origin. However, EA is still far from being a “Single Customs Territory” to benefit fully trade and industrialisation, health, immigration and labour flows, tourism and wildlife management as well as infrastructure development. The EAC Common Market Protocol (CMP) was signed and entered into force in 2010. It was expected then that by December 2015, East Africa would be a fully single market. The deadline was never met and partners still struggle to realise that ambitious dream. As the post 2024 Summit funfair finally ebbs, East Africans could wake up to the reality that they still have a long march to the promised land.