President calls on EAC to expand markets to guarantee prosperity

President Yoweri Museveni has called on the East African Community States to solve the issue of market size, if the region is to prosper.

The President had traveled to Arusha, Tanzania on Thursday for the East African Heads of State Summit on the Common Market Protocol .

During the summit, President Museveni said its impossible for the region could achieve prosperity if it doesn’t solve the issue of market size. 

 “The more goods people can buy from you, the better,” said President Museveni, adding that the global trend over the past 200 years was to expand markets to guarantee prosperity.

President Museveni also said that a robust policy framework was key to attaining economic growth in all sectors. 

He said the current fuel price crisis was another opportunity for the EAC and Africa to take charge of their destiny by shifting to cheap and cleaner energy sources.

He also mentioned that the current fuel price crisis was another opportunity for the EAC and Africa to take charge of their destiny by shifting to cheap and cleaner energy sources.

President Uhuru Kenyatta, the EAC Chairperson said that East Africa would only attain the Common Market if its citizens were able to communicate easily and move and ferry goods freely across the region.

He mentioned  infrastructure development as critical in attaining the region’s objective of being one big market stretching from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean. 

Uhuru said that the massive infrastructure development including modern railroads on both the Northern and Central Transport Corridors was meant to reduce the cost of movement of people and goods across the region. 

“If the region is not interlinked through infrastructure, it would remain a market for other nations and blocs, not a producer of commodities for sale,” President Uhuru said 

Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan called for intensive agriculture through irrigation and rainwater harvesting to double food production in the region and boost food security. 

Hassan disclosed that Tanzania was determined to increase its maize production from 6 million tonnes for the current year to 18 million tonnes in 2023, adding that through proper planning, the region has the capacity to feed itself with a surplus for export.

Burundi’s President Evariste Ndayishimiye said  that the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) of which Burundi is a member was not interlinked due to a lack of cooperation in infrastructure development.

Rwanda’s Prime Minister Édouard Ngirente, who represented President Paul Kagame, said that the high cost of air tickets in the region would only be reduced by the Partner States removing all restrictions on air transport services.

South Sudan’s Presidential Affairs Minister Barnaba Marial Benjamin,  said that the country was a virgin territory with enormous resources including wildlife and livestock.  

Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud made an appeal to the Heads of State to have his country admitted as a member of the bloc. President Mohamud said that his country had made an application to join the bloc in 2014 but added that the circumstances did not allow the application to be processed.

President Mohamud said that Somalia has had a long-time dream of joining the bloc with which she shares strong historical, cultural, linguistic and economic links. President Mohamud said that Somalia had a lot to contribute to a stronger and more prosperous EAC including 10 million acres of arable land.