On Tuesday, after a three-year hiatus, the State of East Africa Report (SoEAR) returned.

While it spoke of the progress the region has made, it is doubtful anyone left the Nairobi launch feeling upbeat.
As is happening in other parts of the world, the region is stuck in “jobless” economic growth.

There is a “1 per cent” – probably smaller – that is pocketing all the wealth that is being created, and everyone else is “grassing,” as the Ugandans would say.

One got the sense that we have reached the limit of tinkering, and because the report didn’t really propose much that hasn’t been suggested before, it would seem we have arrived at a point where all the tools available will not make life easier for East Africa’s growing army of the jobless.

But not all is lost. Consider, for example, that Lake Victoria is Africa’s largest lake; the largest tropical lake in the world, and also the planet’s second largest freshwater lake.

But nothing much happens there. There is no major ship travel between Kenya-Uganda-Tanzania. When we last tried, the ships were capsizing too often and killing hundreds of people.

The worst was in May 1996, when the MV Bukoba sank near Bukoba with 600 passengers on board. Over 400 people drowned.

We gave up after that. It was your typical African disaster. The ship had broken every rule known to seafarers.

Here is a crazy idea. Since we can’t sail, let us build a long bridge over Lake Victoria connecting Kisumu, Mwanza, Luzira, and back to Kisumu.

We should not be stupid. They should stop and rest on islands in Lake Victoria along the way. Any attempt to build straight bridges anchored in the lake would end predictably – with a lot of cement at the bottom of Victoria.

We would thus create a new “Prosperity Triangle” that would in the process finish all the cement in the region.

There would be so much work, even if all the jobless young East Africans came to work on the bridges, between those who would be injured in accidents or get exhausted, there wouldn’t be enough of them to fill job orders.

All those murderous gangs and armies in South Sudan and Burundi would probably disband and come south to look for honest work.

The next thing that would need to be done is anathema, and I may just get excommunicated from East Africa for suggesting it. Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania would each contribute a clutch of islands, and create one of the world’s largest tax free zones.

Tax havens are one of the most hated things in the world today, but with some stringent laws and a time limit for their operations East Africa could attract billions, nay, trillions of dollars of investment that would transform the Lake Victoria economy.

Ideally, this zone should be semi-autonomous, without the grubby hands of bureaucrats and politicians in Kampala, Nairobi and Dar es Salaam meddling. Or the region could sub-contract Rwanda President Paul Kagame to run it with a firm hand for them.

The goal would be that within 10 years, the Lake Victoria Prosperity Triangle would also be the world’s largest tourist paradise.

This idea will likely be rejected as outlandish, but at least some of us threw some mad ideas in the basket.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is the publisher of the website Africapaedia. Twitter@cobbo3