Happy birthday: EAC marches on under a new flag

A new song and a new flag. This is what awaits East Africans who will dance to the tune of a regional anthem as the new banner is unfurled on Friday to mark the passing of a decade since the rebirth of the East African Community.

In addition to the new song, the bloc will on November 20 usher in a Common Market and a fully-fledged Customs Union.

This will herald what EAC Secretary General Juma Mwapachu says is a return to lost glory for the people of the five states — Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi.

Mr Mwapachu said the community has made rapid strides towards integration, progress that has surprised the world’s biggest regional bloc — the European Union — which took more than 40 years to attain what “we are celebrating in 10 years this week.”

In an interview with The EastAfrican in Arusha, Mr Mwapachu said the heads of EAC partner states had committed themselves to give the region’s residents a Common Market as a 10th anniversary gift.

This Friday, they will sign the Common Market Protocol.

It will open the borders within the five member countries of the Community, allowing free movement of people, goods, services and capital.

On the same day, Presidents Mwai Kibaki, Yoweri Museveni, Jakaya Kikwete, Paul Kagame and Pierre Nkurunziza will lay the groundwork for the EAC headquarters building in Arusha.

The operationalisation of both a fully fledged Customs Union and the Common Market — slated for January 2010 and July 2010, respectively — will take the region closer to a Monetary Union (2012) and a Political Federation (2015).

EAC Deputy Secretary General for Infrastructure and Planning Alloys Mutabingwa said the region had moved with speed unequalled by any other bloc.

He said that in Africa, only the EAC is close to achieving a Monetary Union.

Achieving a Political Federation in 2015, said the Deputy Secretary General for Political Federation, Beatrice Kiraso, will put East Africa in the league of the EU.

Mr Mwapachu said East Africa has the opportunity to regain what it lost when the old community broke up in 1977.

But he was quick to point out that what the region has now is a completely new body.

“While many people say we re-established the EAC, I would rather say we established it from ground zero. With no Common Services and no Customs Union,” he said.