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.

He said the region lost 20 years of progress as the original three countries went their separate ways in air transport, harbours, railways, lakes, posts and telecommunications, among other defunct regional institutions.

Of the original shared bodies, only three survived the 1977 break up — the East African Development Bank, the Inter University Council of East Africa and the Lake Victoria Basin Commission. 

Nostalgically, he said: “We could have been the most powerful economic bloc in the world considering that we had a union in 1967, well before anyone else.”

In those days, said the secretary general, EAC had centres of excellence, especially in medical research, dealing with tropical diseases that are today a challenge to the Millennium Development Goals.

One such facility, the East African Institute for Medical Research, was based at Usambara in Tanzania.

It brought together a critical mass in research capability, where cutting-edge PhD work in malaria and vector borne diseases research was carried out.

Indeed, according to Mr Mwapachu, the region’s research capacity was second to none and although good work continued nationally (with the facility renamed the National Institute for Medical Research) its status was lost.

Also lost was the hitherto world famous regional Tropical Pesticides Research Institute, based in Tanzania.

Its demise is to blame for today’s up to 50 per cent post-harvest losses, turning the region into a hunger zone. 

“The facility was totally rundown,” said Mr Mwapachu

He also cited the region’s airline industry as a glaring example of lost integration opportunities, saying the bloc should have one airline called the East African Airways.

“Air Tanzania collapsed, Air Uganda is rudimentary, though we have a robust world class Kenya Airways with international networks with KLM.”

Mr Mwapachu said that despite the notable achievements of the past 10 years, the region is yet to achieve a collective grasp of the bigger picture, which remains the real challenge — developing an East African consciousness.

Citing the old University of East Africa, Mr Mwapachu said it was a classic example of regionalisation.

The universities of Makerere, Nairobi and Dar es Salaam were its constituent colleges.

If you wanted to be a lawyer, Dar was the place to go, if you wanted to be a doctor you went to Makerere and if you wished to be an engineer, you joined the University of Nairobi.

There was no student exchange, no different fees, no quotas.

Today, universities have quotas and different fee structures for locals and East African students, and also a student visa.

Mr Mwapachu says as the region seeks to deepen integration, it must harmonise university education so that qualifications can be standardised across the borders.