Tanzania’s self-interest must not derail integration

IT IS A GOOD THING THAT in Zanzibar last week, Tanzania finally came clean on its opposition to the desire to fast-track East Africa’s regional integration.

Its position liberates the other four states from the burden of collegiality and allows them to pursue faster integration without the distraction of a partner that is clearly unwilling to commit to either a plan of action or key principles.

It is disappointing though that the southern neighbour cannot be trusted to act on decisions that have already been agreed on.

A frustrated Kenya’s minister for East African Community, Amason Jeffah Kingi, disclosed this week that Tanzania has decided to backtrack on decisions agreed by the Council of Ministers and now wants to renegotiate them.

Apparently, the Council of Ministers, a core committee that is the final forum for thrashing out issues before they are presented to the Summit (the committee of Presidents) for ratification, had met and agreed that identity cards can be used as travel documents within the region, that citizens of member states would be allowed to acquire land anywhere within the trading bloc, and that citizens of member countries be allowed to gain permanent residence in any country within the EAC.

ONCE THE COUNCIL OF MINISTERS and the Summit have agreed on issues, technical committees are supposed to carry the process forward by getting into the details of implementation.

This is what the Zanzibar meeting was intended to do, only for the Tanzania delegation to demur and submit instead that the pace should be slower.

Remarkably, in the same week in Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni was calling for the application of a uniform fee charged on all East African students studying at Makerere University. This was after Kenyan students (who number close to 20,000) in Makerere, demonstrated against what they considered discriminatory fees charged on them.

President Museveni is ready to lose some revenue in the short term to ensure that East Africans have access to the educational facilities in Uganda as its contribution to the integration process.

Of course the money will be recovered through increased admissions. The longer-term gain of inter-cultural bonding and knowledge-sharing across the borders is priceless.

In July, Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame announced in Kampala that professionals from Eastern African countries would not require work permits to take jobs in that country. It was a remarkable concession by a country that was yet to be officially inducted into the EAC.

Again, shorter term gains like work permit fees and protection of jobs for local professionals were being forsaken for longer term, high value gains — access to a wider variety of professionals, building regional work ethic and expertise, promoting inter-cultural interaction, and shattering the regressive pride of national exclusivity.

Kenya did weigh in with its own concession — to introduce a 24-hour working schedule at the critically important Mombasa port, and to reduce the number of roadblocks that held up trucks for days on end.

These relatively small gestures, when put together, underscore a commitment to the cause of integration that regrettably is not being manifested by Tanzania.

On the contrary, there are numerous tales of frustration and distress that Kenyan companies in particular have to put up with when seeking work permits for staff who work in Tanzania.

At the core of the integration process, whose institutional expression will be the common market and eventually the East African federation, must be the principle of free movement of labour, goods and capital.

Clever sounding protocols and complex tax regimes may keep the bureaucrats in Arusha and the respective capitals busy, but the heart and pulse of integration is allowing people to move freely, trade freely, work and pay taxes freely, and live and invest anywhere freely in the knowledge that these are rights and privileges they enjoy and the responsibilities they bear by being East Africans.

AS I HAVE ARGUED BEFORE IN THIS forum, Tanzania — and indeed every other country — has a right to pursue what is in the best interests of its people. Clearly, the leadership in Dar es Salaam does not consider regional integration a priority issue and they cannot be forced to push it higher up its national agenda.

But it must not hold back the other countries. The treaty that binds all the member states to proceed only if there is consensus must be amended to allow a majority vote secure an agreement for action. It should allow states ready to proceed on agreed actions to do so.

The agenda for integration is intimidating enough without the added aggravation of a partner that clearly has made up its mind to walk backwards.