It’s a new year. Although I carry no soothsayer’s blood, it’s time for me, an ordinary observer, to share with you what I expect to make headlines in 2014 in the East African sub-region.

At home, while we would have expected this to be the year of big changes and reshuffles at the middle towards higher rungs of power—in preparation for the eagerly awaited 2017 president elections—when President Paul Kagame might retire as promised, the re-election of the Rwandan Patriotic Front’s (ruling party) president, vice-president and secretary-general to a new four-year mandate as 2013 came to a close point to the fact that 2014 is more likely to be a year of continuity and minimal change.

As such, in terms of locally generated news, we will continue to be fed on stories picked up at workshops and conferences revolving around such empowering terms as Agaciro (human dignity), Kwigira (self-reliance), Ndi Umunyarwanda (I’m Rwandan) and, of course, since this is the year the genocide will be commemorated for the 20th time and the country’s liberation celebrated for the same length, these will form the centrepiece of headline news stories locally generated in the half of the year.

The biggest stories, however (in the negative reading), are more likely to be foreign generated—largely relating to our relations with the world.

As has often been the case since the end of the Rwandan genocide in 1994, the Democratic Republic of Congo, notwithstanding the defeat of M23 rebels, will continue to be a source of depressing headlines for Rwanda as the Tanzanian-led Force Intervention Brigade continues to try to help that long-bleeding country get rid of the numerous armed groups — including FDLR — as human-rights groups issue report after report implicating Kigali in this or that misdeed.

This also means that Rwanda’s relations with donors may well continue to make news — as long as Congo’s woes continue to be blamed on it.

Talking of Tanzania, unless something drastic happens, its frosty relations with Rwanda will continue to grace the headlines as the “coalition of the willing” try, albeit with difficulty, to walk the talk.

In Kenya, we expect the trial of President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto and its opposition from African heads of state to continue making headlines as expectations from that country’s citizens over what the youthful president can do to improve their wellbeing go south.

The big news from the other three EAC states — Tanzania, Burundi and Uganda — will revolve around preparations for presidential elections while South Sudan will continue to appear on our television screens as a good example of what poor leadership can do to a nation divided along ethnic lines.

In October 2015 Tanzania will hold its seventh presidential elections since the voluntary retirement of founding president Mwalimu Julius Nyerere.

That will see President Jakaya Kikwete exit the juicy seat; so this event will, for most of 2014, constitute the biggest source of news from there. The constitution review, expected to usher in elections, is contested and the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi has resorted to the old tricks political parties in many African countries use on the opposition — probably due to the shifting ground on which its dominance is based.

Crackdown on media

From Uganda we expect the big news to revolve around presidential elections anticipated in February 2016. In this sense, as has often been the case for most of last year, police brutality on opposition politicians and political activists is likely to dominate the news, just as the crackdown on media outlets that present the ruling party or President Yoweri Museveni in “bad” light might continue to be in the news as they face it rough.

Burundi President Pierre Nkurunziza’s second and last constitutional term is expected to end and elections held in July 2015 and the biggest news filed from there will rotate around schemes to amend the constitution to allow East Africa’s first self-proclaimed born-again president vie for a third term. Since we believers trust that leadership comes from God, I can bet my small inheritance that he will do his utmost to try to retain his seat.

Prophesied thus, Happy New Year — however belated.

Dr Christopher Kayumba, PhD, is a senior lecturer at the National University of Rwanda and Managing Consultant at MGC Consult Ltd. E-mail: [email protected]; Twitter: @ckayumba