The EAC spirit needs to be saved

The EAC exists to protect East Africans from existential threats. But when we were faced with the coronavirus pandemic, we were unable to leverage the bloc to defend ourselves. FOTOSEARCH 

What you need to know:

  • The issue: East African Community.
  • Our view: All these warning signs are a cause for worry about the health of EAC. This is evidence that the spirit of the EAC is dead, and any efforts to resuscitate it must start now or it will be too late.

The East African Community (EAC) is in a bad state at the moment. Many of the employees at the headquarters in Arusha demand wage arrears and the reading of the organisation’s budget has been postponed by a month until the end of July due to lack of financing.

Only Kenya is up to date with its annual remittances of $8m (Shs30b) per year, which each of the six member states has to pay, with the other five member states in arrears. South Sudan and Burundi are the worst defaulters.

That South Sudan and Burundi have not been able to remit their contributions for two years is not the biggest issue, for each of the countries may have good reasons for that, given their circumstances.

The most important issue is that as the region confronts the threat that is the coronavirus, the EAC has not come into play in any significant way to help the member countries confront it.

Each of the countries has pursued a varied agenda, with Tanzania disregarding most of the strict lockdown measures, which its neighbours adopted to contain the virus. Each of the member states is independent, of course, and differences of policy may occur.

But even when that happens, it should be expected that the member states will act in full recognition of and respect for their neighbour’s varied courses of action. What we have seen happen, however, are spats spilling over, especially between Tanzania and Kenya.

The feud between Uganda and Rwanda has also lingered, with at least one Ugandan being shot dead during the lockdown period, for crossing into Rwanda to vend merchandise. The virtual talks between the two countries over the reopening of the Gatuna border post have hit a snag and there is no indication as to when it will end.

All these warning signs are a cause for worry about the health of EAC. The bloc was formed basically to increase the bargaining power of East Africans in the cruel international system, since each of our small states would in theory have less bargaining power than a united East Africa.

We can, therefore, conclude that the EAC exists to protect East Africans from existential threats. But when we were faced with the coronavirus pandemic, we were unable to leverage the bloc to defend ourselves. This did not happen even when we saw powerful countries like Italy and USA being ravaged by the virus!

This is evidence that the spirit of the EAC is dead, and any efforts to resuscitate it must start now or it will be too late.