East Africans urged to be tolerant on integration

As the journey to putting the East African common market in place has just started, East Africans were over the weekend asked to be tolerant because realising the full potential of the market will take years.

The East African Community (EAC) secretary general, Ambassador Juma Mwapachu, called for a galvanised political will and the commitment of East Africans towards shared integration goals.

“The journey to putting a common market in place has just started and the challenges will be many,” cautioned ambassador Mwapachu when officiating at the celebrations marking 10 years of the founding of Mwananchi Communications Limited (MCL) and commissioning the firm’s $4million (about Sh320million) new state-of-the-art printing press at Tabata Relini in Dar es Salaam.

He appealed to the media to be at the forefront in helping to promote better understanding of the complexity of the common market instead of being purveyors of shortcomings and pointing accusing fingers at some EAC partner states for lack of commitment. The EAC partner states are Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi.

“The EAC has stepped into a common market (or single market) only on July 1 this year. Yet you read in the media all kinds of perceptions about the market as if it were 10 years old,” he told his audience of high commissioners, ambassadors, heads of diplomatic missions and directors, management and staff of the Nation Media Group (NMG) and MCL.

He said the economic benefits of the common market will be huge, especially flowing from trade in services and shared human resource capacity.

Ambassador Mwapachu also noted that the free movement of capital would trigger incentives for private equity funds to step into the region and bringing down the cost of risk capital.

“Now do not take me for a pessimist. I am totally sold to what the EAC common market can do to unlock the potential of our economies,” he said adding that this could be best realised when the media supports the efforts being undertaken, always respectful of national conditions.

He quoted a recent report titled: A New Strategy for the Single Market—At the Service of Europe’s Economy and Society, which catalogues serious challenges confronting the European Union’s 18 year-old single market.

Ambassador Mwapachu said after 18 years of the single market in Europe only 2.3 per cent of Europeans live in a member state different from their nationality, adding that freedom of movement of workers in the EU is the most contested and least used of the four freedoms in the EU single market.

The EAC boss also paid fulsome tribute to His Highness the Aga Khan who 50 years ago established the MCL’s parent company, the Nation Media Group, saying he stands out in the world as a leading pillar of democratic and human values.

He said His Highness’ intense and steadfast commitment to knowledge advancement has underlined the strategic investment of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) in the media industry and in broad-based education, amongst other ventures for social development.

He said among other grand projects, the AKDN was planning to establish an East African Institute to act as a research and dialogue think-tank for addressing East Africa’s challenges, notably in climate change, environment, energy, jobs and regional cohesion.

“I am pleased to state that under my leadership at the EAC, the project will receive utmost priority,” he pledged.

The chairman of Nation Media Group, Mr Wilfred Kiboro, also said integration process was painful, recollecting the tough times businessmen in the EAC region and himself had experienced when setting up the East African Business Council (EABC), saying there was a lot of scepticism and even serious doubt about the viability of the EAC.

“There was a lot of suspicion and mistrust among the various business sectors in the region,” said Mr Kiboro, adding: “To be completely honest, when Nation Media Group decided to invest in Tanzania about 10 years ago, we were discouraged from doing so.”

He said: “Those dissuading us from investing, told us the work ethics and culture in Tanzania were very different from Kenya’s, that the investment climate was neither supportive nor friendly to foreign investors—and particularly from Kenya, and that the Tanzania government was overly sensitive to criticism.”

However, Mr Kiboro said they ignored these prophets of doom and gloom, and in spite of the challenges they faced, Mwananchi has come a long way from very humble beginnings to become a major media player in the market.

He said Nation Media Group is not a very big company by global standards but it has invested over $10.7million (about Sh880.million) in the last ten years in Tanzania.

Mr Kiboro said the Nation Media Group is one of the very first companies that has lived the spirit of the East African integration, and urged Tanzania companies to invest in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi, in the Common Market for eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) region and across the entire continent.

The chairman of the MCL Editorial Committee, Prof Palamagamba Kabudi, said in preparations for this year’s General Election, the MCL has created an election reporting guidelines and invited members of the public to get hold of copies of the documents and read them thoroughly.

He said the guidelines provided direction to MCL journalists on how best to report election issues without bias.

“People who will feel that they have been aggrieved by our not adhering to the guidelines and reporting the electoral process and subsequently the General Election in October in a sober manner are free to complain to the MCL,” said Prof Kabudi.

The colourful ceremony was attended by high commissioners and ambassadors from Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Republic of Somalia, Vietnam, Sudan and Zimbabwe, and representatives from Republic of Korea, Cuba, Palestine, South Africa, Nigeria, Mozambique, Zambia, chief executive officers from various local and international organisations and immediate MCL Board of Directors chairman, Mr Ali Mufuruki.