EAC States Must Overlook Parochial Local Interests for Wider Community Objectives

The stated rallying call for formation of the EAC was to widen and deepen political, economic, social and cultural integration aimed at improving the quality of life for the people of East Africa through improved competitiveness, value added production, trade and investment.

Looking at these noble objectives, the impression created is that all was set to harness a policy convergence of all the member countries, however, all these years, that is yet a pipe dream.

Individual countries have failed to morph from parochial interests to community objectives. Member States have found it hard to reconcile domestic interests with regional aspirations.

First, the regional body was a conglomerate of diametrically different entities in all aspects; level of development, political formations, trade imbalances and variance in leadership style and personality. All these aspects have conspired to the detriment of the regional body to the extent that member countries are putting individual interests before the common good.

Initially, it was envisaged that trade within the member states would improve through inter-State protocols, facilitation of seamless cross border trade and having a system to solve any contradictions that would arise.

In all this, Kenya is turning out the most culprit at reneging on the trade protocols by employing non-tariff barriers intended to circumnavigate the laid down protocols. The intermittent friction at the Kenya –Uganda border involving farm products like Milk, maize and other food items is a true reflection of domestic interests put ahead of community benefits. Kenya domestic policies have subsidies on most of the agricultural products. This means that there is an official policy of distorting the market mechanism, yet in Uganda for instance, forces of demand and supply determine price.

Uganda’s cost of production for the farm products is far cheaper compared to Kenya that has poor soils with a limited surface area of arable land. This forces farmers to apply a lot of fertilisers to realise better yields, thus pushing up the cost of production resulting in higher prices.

Naturally, Ugandan products must be cheaper. So, in order to protect their farmers from cheaper products, Kenya employs, non-tariff barriers by creating flimsy excuses of aflatoxins, poor quality milk etc. surprisingly, this only happens during the period of glut. As a way of subsidization, Kenya has a policy of guaranteed minimum benefits, where the government commits to pay farmers a specific price irrespective of the market forces, so the government ensures there is an artificial shortage to shore up the demand in order to fetch more and minimize on the cost of subsidy. This system leads to curtailing cross border trade.

This has been replicated on the Tanzania border, where there are also sporadic closures of the border whenever it is harvesting time in Kenya. The sugar fights between Kenya and Uganda also reflect the attitude of Kenya towards other EAC member states. It is absolutely clear, the sugar demand is far higher than its production capacity, but due to internal politics, they choose to import sugar outside the EAC community because it turns out to be cheaper and sometimes, unscrupulous traders take advantage to import adulterated sugar, like recently when thousands of tones of toxic sugar was impounded, but was smuggled out of Kenya Revenue Authority warehouses and put on market endangering the lives of the people.

Just a few days ago, Kenya banned cargo planes from Tanzania as a non-tariff barrier to block farm products from TZ. In retaliation Tanzania also banned Kenya Airways from landing in Dares Salaam. It is a harvesting season in Kenya, with the new of policy of subsidizing production and not consumption, there is a bumper harvest of more than a 40% increase in crop yield as a result of cheaper fertilisers supplied to farmers.

Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania have had a couple of fights leading to Uganda- Rwanda border closure for a long time. The cause may have been political, but Rwanda looked at trade as the means to settle a political score. It of course affected both countries especially communities that depend on cross-border trade. Trade was supposed to be the rallying call for the member states, but instead it is used to settle political scores. Both countries lost immensely though Uganda came out more bruised losing millions of dollars.

The same scenario has played out on the Uganda-Tanzania border, there has been a fight about sugar and Rice. Tanzania banned Ugandan sugar and there were calls to the government by traders to retaliate by banning rice which currently is one of the leading exports to Uganda.

It took a sober intervention of the president who refused to heed the calls, reasoning that Uganda stands to suffer more than Tanzania as a result of the shortage of rice that would push the prices higher.

The entry of DRC in the community has conflated matters of internal politics with the relationship with regional neighbours. Rwanda and DRC must find an amicable working nexus if DRC entry has to make any meaning. By virtue of their geographical positioning, they both stand to lose more fighting each other than striking a balance to co-exist. Accusations and counter-accusations arising from political dissidents on both sides don’t help the situation. A volatile border between the two countries doesn’t foster trade and investment. Cross-border movements are curtailed thus no trade. The unfortunate thing is that conflicts spill over to Uganda when nationals are forced to seek refuge every time fighting erupts.

The fights between Rwanda and Burundi have not helped the situation. Intermittent border closures affects the movement of people and goods. Ethnic tensions fomented by political rhetoric affects tribal cohesion, pitting one group against the other. Unfortunately, the two major tribes cut across the national borders. So, the politics at national level, may not fully resonate with the local populace that has lived together for ages.

The EAC is likely to remain a pipe dream if the member states don’t subjugated domestic interests to regional aspirations. The success of the regional body can only be achieved by ceding some powers to Arusha without looking inwards to protect parochial interests.