Sorry Mr Nesbitt, it is ugly rule, corruption killing EAC

What you need to know:

  • Concern. Mr Nesbitt expressed concern that an integrated East Africa is not being realised as quickly as (EALA) legislation suggests. Many old government bureaucratic obstacles and methods that lead to a ‘lack of trust’ remain, driving away investors. He wants the “very high” cost of all telephone/internet-related services to come down.

As the general manager of IBM Eastern Africa, chairperson of Kenya Private Sector Alliance (KEPSA) and chairperson of the East African Business Council (EABC), Mr Nicholas Nesbitt is a big man. He recently talked to journalists from several media houses in the East African region. Excerpts, ‘Trumpism’ Killing EAC Integration, says Business Executive”, appeared in Sunday Monitor, October 14.

Mr Nesbitt expressed concern that an integrated East Africa is not being realised as quickly as (EALA) legislation suggests.
Many old government bureaucratic obstacles and methods that lead to a ‘lack of trust’ remain, driving away investors.
He wants the “very high” cost of all telephone/internet-related services to come down.

He wants to see technical experts moving and working between the different EAC member countries without restriction.
And his mouth waters when someone talks specifically about the need for a single electronic cargo tracking system, because his IBM has the software technology to bridge the existing different systems, making them communicate as one.
Yet, unfortunately, but naturally, being a businessman, Mr Nesbitt seems to have avoided emphasising the effects of bad governance and corruption on the EAC project.

He attributes the regional stagnation in the business sector to ‘Trumpism’, a kind of protectionism linked to nationalism.
US president Donald Trump may be the readiest punchbag, but the Indians, the Chinese and all those Asian Tigers were fiercely protective long before Trump came along.

The liberal ethos in 20th Century America made that nation the assumed supreme ‘donor’, and the country that sometimes bent backwards not to force her advantage in international trade arrangements.

But American liberalism did not kill American greed for big corporate/shareholder profits, or the hunger for cheap consumer goods. It is a paradox. American generosity and American greed tossed huge opportunities to Eastern man and gradually weakened American industry, until China et al became strong enough to provoke a corrective pendulum swing in the American mindset. Hence Donald Trump.

In contrast, some of East Africa’s ruling elites have used the internal resources freed by the inflow of American/Western generosity to build personal fortunes and strengthen anti-democracy mechanisms instead of developing the socio-economic environment to improve efficiency and make their goods (and their citizens!) more competitive, needing less protectionism.

Differently power hungry, differently inefficient, differently corrupt and their people differently demoralised by inequality, these ruling elites are more assured of enjoying their impunity under national sovereignty than under an expanded and more transparent regional authority that could start flirting with technologies like ‘blockchain’ and carry data-sharing mischief too far up the pyramid of authority.

These internal diseases are probably the real danger to a deeper East African Inc., with Trump fever only an excuse for Mr Nesbitt not to lecture the chiefs when he meets them, that “You, your governments are ugly. They are translating into layers of taxes and reckless repression. They are leaving the people in your region poor, parochial and unable to make us, IBM, richer and bigger.

“Okay, we have huge scars and unhealed wounds from the battles we fought over desktops with other Silicon Valley behemoths, but we are a perfect match for Africa’s political big men. You smile, we smile, but we can be equally cynical. We know that your people are crying: Foreigners…foreigners… But, ultimately, they are your citizens, not ours. They cannot prevent us from cutting State-to-corporate and corporate-to-corporate deals; like that cargo tracking thing dangling right in front of my nose. Just make sure the natives do not seriously harm us and our interests.”

Mr Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator.
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