Stabilise EAC neighbours to boost trade and investment opportunities

Any oil and gas found in EAC countries along the western rift as has happened in Uganda and Rwanda can be expected to be duplicated in equal quantities on the DRC side.

Last month, I was seated in a Bujumbura lakeside hotel in front of a pristine sandy beach. Across Lake Tanganyika, one could see the expansive sleeping giant of Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

It made me think of how times have by-passed the DRC and what opportunities a modernised and peaceful DRC would offer to the East African Community (EAC).

Of the five countries of EAC, four of them border DRC, presenting a wide geographical contact for an expanded regional market.

The DRC is a country with many resources that are the envy of rest of Africa and an attraction to the resource-hungry global industrial countries.

The country has failed to get its political and economic governance structures right ever since 1960 when the country became independent from its Belgian colonisers, and indications are that they have a long way to go.

It is easier for eastern DRC to access Mombasa and Dar es Salaam than their Kinshasa capital, making eastern DRC essentially and naturally part of EAC infrastructure and market.

The Katanga side of southern DRC has its logistics and trade links pegged to South Africa while the western Atlantic side of DRC has different trade orientations.

Discoveries of oil and gas in Uganda and Kenya, and methane gas in Rwanda are all located in the Rift Valley’s geographical and geological features that now seem prone to hydrocarbon deposits.

The Western branch of the Rift Valley forms nearly most of the eastern border between EAC and DRC, and stretches from the southern tip of Lake Tanganyika to Lake Albert in Uganda.

Any oil and gas found in EAC countries along the western rift as has happened in Uganda and Rwanda can be expected to be duplicated in equal quantities on the DRC side.

If DRC remains unstable, opportunities for inter-state cross-border joint ventures and synergy for oil and gas development will be missed. Further, potential for conflicts will always be there.

DRC is just one of the countries around EAC which when politically stabilised will provide extended markets for the EAC.

We have the newly independent South Sudan whose continued conflicts with Sudan have become a major disappointment.

South Sudan borders mainly Uganda and also Kenya and has applied to join EAC.

South Sudan is part of the justification for the LAPSSET (Lamu Port) corridor project that plans to establish petroleum, rail, highway and fibre optic infrastructure to link South Sudan to the proposed new Lamu economic zone and corridor.