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EAC: Too fast or too slow?
The East African Community (EAC) leaders meet in Burundi on February 4, 2023. PHOTO/FILE
What you need to know:
- Since its founding almost three decades ago, the East African Community has struggled to fully implement its own protocols.
When presidents Daniel Arap Moi of Kenya, Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and Ali Hassan Mwinyi of Tanzania descended on the latter’s northern city of Arusha for a meeting to revive the East African Community (EAC) on November 30, 1993, they agreed on a cautious approach that would roll-out cooperation and integration processes on a gradual basis.
“We also agreed that considering what happened in the past, this time we should proceed gradually to establish areas of cooperation and proceed step-by-step after we are satisfied that the initial step has been implemented and thus the basis for taking the next steps,” writes Mwinyi, now long retired, in his autobiography Mzee Rukhsa; Safari Ya Maisha Yangu.
Of those three original leaders, only Mr Museveni, famously a proponent of quicker integration, remains head of state. Mwinyi’s revelation of the understanding to undertake gradual steps in those foundational stages of the community suggests the bloc could be moving way faster than had been conceived.
On top of that, Mwinyi also writes that it was Tanzania that insisted on the freedom of any EAC member state to join other regional blocs. He reasoned that if the earlier collapse taught them anything, it was not to put all their eggs in one basket.
Since its founding almost three decades ago, the EAC has struggled to fully implement its own protocols.
These include a customs union and a common market, even as it has sights on attaining a monetary union and a political federation. Reflective of such failure in its own pursuits are the increasing number of bilateral joint permanent commissions that member states have resorted to in resolving disputes as opposed to the bloc’s secretariat.
While the EAC currently boasts seven member states—having expanded from the original three by admitting Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)—the bloc of 300 million people is also in advanced stages of assessing Somalia with a view of admitting the horn-of-Africa nation as its eighth member.
Moving at a different pace
Such feats have proponents like Ms Margaret Nantongo Zziwa, a former speaker of the East African Legislative Assembly (Eala), raising their confidence in the community’s current trajectory. When Sunday Monitor reached her by phone on Wednesday, Ms Zziwa launched into a passionate defence of the course that the EAC is taking and expressed optimism about its future.
“Initially, there were those who were proposing that we can actually start with converging all the countries and we start at the political federation and then we go down to integrating the other processes. But it was agreed let’s go step-by-step from the customs union to the common market, to the monetary union to the, ultimately, political federation. And that is a process which is going on,” Ms Zziwa revealed.
According to her, there are also strategic aspects that make it imperative for the region to move the way it is.
“You will also appreciate those areas—particularly what we call the key strategic aspects—for instance the security, for them they don’t have boundaries. And because they don’t have boundaries, when things go bad in DRC, people will run to Uganda. When things are bad in Burundi, they will run to Rwanda, they will run to Tanzania. When things are bad wherever they are things as you may know, it will become whatever it is,” Ms Zziwa said.
She added: “So because of that, it has been now appreciated that if we can strategically have the partner states enlarge, not because of ego, but because of protecting strategic interests such as security, interests like common transport, enlarging trade, our people are one and the same and once our people are given the opportunity to develop, to improve, to grow, we would be able to run higher as East Africans.”
A guarantor of its security
Mr Museveni sees the EAC forming an anchor for the prosperity of East Africans and a guarantor of their security. He views the common language that is Kiswahili and the inherent cultural as well as geographical links as an advantage on which to build. But differences in approach linger, sometimes threatening to derail collective action as envisaged at its founding.
Ruto to Museveni:Lead the way to EAC integration
At some point in the last decade, Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda advocated a fast-track to implementing regional protocols, forming a coalition-of-the-willing for the same while Tanzania and Burundi insisted on a gradual process. In 2016, Tanzania also abruptly pulled out of negotiations for an economic partnership agreement with the European Union. This derailed what was meant to be a collective bargain for the region.
Even though the EAC treaty has room for fast-tracking of regional projects, attempts by some members to pursue the same course tend to spark animosity and unnecessary competition.
Ms Zziwa, who once steered the region’s legislative agenda, exuded both emotion and pride as she fronted the grand idea behind EAC strategies.
“Some people may argue that what should come first? Of course when a country joins the EAC, it helps one fundamental thing—it establishes a framework under which people can operate,” said Ms Zziwa.
Still, the former Eala speaker also acknowledges that “fears are there and you can’t blame people.” The English, she adds, “have a good saying—once bitten, twice shy—there’s always a feeling that maybe they moved so fast back then. And people are looking deeply into what happened.”
Overall, the 60-year old veteran of legislative politics qualifies it all as a work in progress.
“But I think there is progress, I am very optimistic and I am very happy because maybe if we did not have the framework on the side of security, things would have been worse. If we did not have South Sudan as part of the EAC, maybe things would have been worse. So joining EAC has helped in pacifying and giving strategic direction,” Ms Zziwa said.
“You remember at one time they had said that they had overthrown Salva Kiir, others one time they had said they had overthrown [Pierre] Nkurunziza. You remember? It was the combined efforts of East Africa that helped to pacify,” she added.
Looking back
In the book, Mwinyi recalls the late October day in 1991 when he and other counterparts gathered in the Zimbabwean capital of Harare for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. There Mwinyi, Moi and Museveni exploited the opportunity to engage in their own separate conclave where they agreed to leave the antagonism of the past and pursue new cooperation.
“It was a good meeting and it was as if somebody had relieved us of the burden that was tormenting us,” Mwinyi recalls.
Many meetings would follow in the coming years where the principals agreed to establish a secretariat in Arusha.
Then, as the sun set on his presidency in 1995, Mwinyi invited his two Ugandan and Kenyan counterparts to the inauguration of his successor—Benjamin Mkapa—even as his Foreign Affairs ministry had not intended to have such guests.
Considering relations between Uganda and Kenya were not at their best, the outgoing Tanzanian leader writes that he had been so concerned the bloc’s revival plans might be reversed or lose steam in his absence that he made bringing Moi, Museveni and Mkapa together his final act as president.
He succeeded because the three hit the ground running and launched the secretariat in Arusha, a few months later on March 14, 1996. And now just as then, Mwinyi’s passion for the EAC endures; that much is evident in his book.
