Unity only choice for EA

Are there things about the East Africa Cooperation (EAC) and the question of regional integration that the media sees and could enrich public debate by bringing to the table? Yes. Are we doing it? Most people would say No.

Let me begin with two stories: First, the easiest things about EAC are what many think are the hardest. It was relatively easy to sign the protocol for the Customs Union, for example, though it was controversial. It was relatively easy to admit Burundi and Rwanda. It took a fairly short time to agree to keep border points and the Mombasa port open 24 hours.

The biggest hurdles to regional integration, however, are what most people don’t see or think about. For example, while regional governments have done all the above, they seem unable to get rid of the biggest obstacles — the roadblocks. Between Kigali and Mombasa, you have an average of 30 to 36 roadblocks. None of these roadblocks are in Rwanda — just in Uganda and Kenya. The combined time trucks lose at these roadblocks is up to six hours per trip – enough time to drive from Nairobi into Uganda. And the money that the security officers shake them down for in a year is bigger than the profits of some of the largest companies in East Africa. So, the media needs to understand that the forces that will make EAC succeed or fail are not all in East Africa’s State Houses or Parliaments.

The second story – and it was local, regional, and international all at a go — was the post-election violence in Kenya in early 2008. The violence hurt all the EAC countries as fuel and other essential supplies that pass through Kenya were disrupted. It also hit eastern DRC and southern Sudan that are not EAC members. Humanitarian supplies to Somalia and Sudan, including Darfur, were interrupted. In that context, it seemed that Kenya had gone to hell, and its prospects as a country were seriously in doubt.

However, there are those who saw many good things in the violence. For example, they argue that it was a moment of democratic triumph as Kenyans were not willing to let what they considered a subversion of democracy go unchallenged. One observer said it was beautiful to see people willing to risk all, including the integrity of their country, to save democracy. According to this view, Kenyans showed a passion for democracy that no other East African country has.

Rwanda

The lesson here is that if you look in the corners that no one else is looking, you are bound to find big surprises. So, which other East African corners can we look into?

I was looking at some World Bank data recently, and saw that an East African country – Rwanda - has made the greatest gains in life expectancy in Africa since 2000 — about 5 years. Elsewhere, we learnt that while East Africa has one of the worst deforestation rates in the world, again Rwanda has one of the highest rates of reforestation in the world. Likewise, it has the highest percentage of women represented in Parliament in the world, and recently became the first developing country to introduce mass vaccination of its children for pneumococcal diseases.

Because new EAC member Burundi has, relatively, been out of the East African mainstream than Rwanda was, and it has barely emerged out of civil war, the media – and most people – tend not to focus much on it. However, you might be surprised to learn that, according to the World Bank, Burundi has the highest participation rate of women in the labour force – an impressive 93.0 per cent. Compare that to Sudan, which has the lowest at 24.1 per cent.

Our region has the youngest percentage of population in the world. Uganda, in particular, has the highest share of population between the age 0 and 14 in Africa - 43 per cent. This is one reason Uganda has the highest dependency ratio (ratio of people younger than 15 or older than 64 to the working-age population). Uganda’s dependency ratio is 1.1, compared to Mauritius, for example, which has the lowest at 0.4.

Cults and rebels

There are many who worry that this high percentage of young people in East Africa is a source of instability, because there will not be enough jobs for them, and they will turn to crime, or join dangerous religious cults or rebel movements, and destabilise the region. This is the dominant – perhaps only - view in most of our media.

However, if you look closely, part of the reason for this is cause for celebration. First, it is not true that females are having children early in Uganda. While parenthood generally starts early in Africa, for example in Mozambique 2003 figures show that a record 58 per cent of females in the range of 15-24, in East Africa this percentage was a relatively modest 15 per cent.

One of the things that account for this shift in population is fairly improved child immunisation in the region. For an investor taking a long term view, this young East African population provides comfort that if jobs can be found for this group, the region will have a large market. A key way of assuring these jobs tomorrow though will be determined by how fast we can create that big, common market today.

Where is all this leading?

First, that the media and other observers tend to underestimate the value that each of the East African countries bring to the regional table.

Secondly, the media, intellectuals, and even politicians, might be wrong when they criticise, for example, Tanzania’s apparent determination to defend its national interests over East African integration. Governments in the region are right to focus internally, because it seems the EAC is not going to be like the European Union, where the community lifted countries like Ireland, Italy, Greece, from poverty. Ours is turning out to be a community where the bigger part is built by the strength of smaller national units. A better appreciation of this issue will reduce the anxiety about the direction of the EAC.

Again, take what started as a decision by Rwanda to remove work permit requirements for all East Africans. This action on Rwanda’s part arrived, possibly, three to five years earlier than it would have had it been left to evolve within the EAC structures. The effect was to bring reciprocation from Kenya, which granted similar rights to Rwandan nationals. My sense is that in less than two years, most EAC countries will have removed work permit requirements because it is a competitive penalty they cannot live with for long.

You can argue that the ability by Rwanda and Kenya to go where the collective EAC wasn’t ready to go yet is what made it possible for the EAC leaders to adopt the principle of “variable geometry”, that allows members to move at different speeds on the road to regional integration. Again, here we see national action, dramatically impacting regional dynamics.

The vexing issue of sovereignty itself is being shaped by individual state actions. Rwanda has had dual citizenship for nearly 10 years now. Uganda has adopted it. Kenya seems to be on the road to doing so in about a year. When we reach the point where a majority of East Africa countries individually allow dual citizenship, I think the debate about sovereignty within the EAC will end.

Sin

If there is another sin that the media commits, it is in not adequately paying attention to how other developments in Africa are fashioning the EAC, a reason why we at Nation Media Group are investing to develop our Media for Africa initiative aggressively.

All the EAC members, except Tanzania, are members of COMESA. COMESA, with 19 member states, is anything between three to five times more culturally diverse than the EAC. The irony, however, is that COMESA seems to be able to reach its decisions much more quickly than the much smaller and near-homogenous EAC. No one seems to ask why.

However, we have seen recent decisions on the common market arrived much earlier than in the EAC. In fact, if Tanzania was not a non-COMESA, we might probably not even need to wrestle with the issues of the common market within the EAC. However, SADC – to which Tanzania belongs and Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda don’t – and COMESA agreed at a meeting in Kampala to sign an agreement forming a Free Trade Area (FTA) encompassing both blocs.

That didn’t happen. But it was radical enough that such an ambitious project was discussed, and there was a meeting of minds on it. Developments in COMESA, SADC and the FTA will alter the EAC in significant ways.

Merger

First, EAC will have two major functions, that is monetary issues (a common currency and an EAC Central Bank), and movement of labour. This will ease its burden of administration. If this happens, then it would make sense for the EAC to expand into working on cultural, environmental, and shared resources issues that are not at the top of its agenda right now.

I think if COMESA and SADC get to impact the EAC, it will give the Cooperation a better prospect of survival than its forerunner EA Community had because it will lower the usual bitter quarrels that often crop up among neighbours, and the contempt that comes with familiarity. I would urge EAC to move the bar higher and be a catalyst for the integration of COMESA and SADC. Even when we do that, we shall still be a small proportion of the common market that is India or China. These two countries are fast emerging as the source of future competition.

One easy starting point of this merger is to lobby for the East African passport, which has been very successful in EA, to be acceptable within COMESA and SADC. I do not see why those countries cannot accept it as a valid travelling document overnight. It will be a key way of uniting the East Africans themselves when those external to us start referring to us that way. I can see a queue set up in Zambia or South Africa immigration for “East Africans”.

As I conclude, I must ask what is the price of failing to integrate? We got a shocking answer to this question a few years ago when a team of journalists travelled by road from Kenya, on to Tanzania through Mutukula border point, and back to Kenya via Namanga. They had US$1,000 which they kept changing into the local currency as they crossed, and when they got back to Nairobi they bought back dollars. This was a strictly monitored process. The shock was that they could buy back only about US$600. In other words, exchange rate differentials and commissions on forex transactions would cost a businessman who works through just three of our markets 40 per cent of his dollar holdings. You can say that is the penalty for not having a common currency.

Digital currency

I would like us to look to some of the dramatic changes caused by technology. For example, after Celtel - now renamed Zain - introduced its One Network, within a year the number of telephone calls between Kenya and Tanzania through their network grew by nearly 100 per cent a year to six million.

In Kenya, Safaricom became the first company in the world to introduce the digital money transfer and banking service M-Pesa. Zain followed suit, and now in Uganda we have nearly all the cellphone companies offering an “M-Pesa-type” service. This service is transforming mobile companies not just into the region’s biggest technology firms, but promise to turn them into our biggest banks too. With cross network money transfers now possible, two significant things have happened. First, the cellphone companies are, indeed, becoming East Africa’s Central Bank. And, secondly, we basically already have a regional currency – a digital one.

Technology, you can argue, is running many years ahead of our governments in creating a common market and currency. And in the process, creating an economy that is more integrated in the global one, than the ones East African ministers of Finance talk about every year during the June budgets. There is a possibility that these technological and globalising forces could render the EAC as it was envisioned initially irrelevant. The lesson for us all here is to urge quick action on formal integration issues, if we are to have an EAC that works for everyone, including the small people.

Finally, we must be alive to the fact that multinationals today are talking about what share of East Africa, or Africa, or indeed the world they have for their products and services. Expanding the market gives the potential for East African multinationals to start having this conversation in their board rooms. At the moment every one led by the politicians are talking about what share if any, we have of Migingo Island... How far removed from the challenges can we be?

If there is one thing I agree with President Museveni, its that we must stop comparing who amongst the East African countries is doing better than the other and realize that we are only talking about which pygmy is taller.

Our combined efforts is what will conquer the world.