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The road map to a successful East African Monetary Union
East African Heads of State sign the protocol on the establishment of the EAC Common Market at Arusha International Conference centre, Tanzania during a past function. Photo/FILE
Posted Monday, March 22 2010 at 00:00
Parliament never got to vote on the EAC Treaty nor on any of the protocols that followed.
Since EAC legislation takes precedence over national laws, it in effect means that Kenyans now find themselves subject to regulations and authorities that are not accountable to either them or their representatives.
This may not yet be considered controversial (national consultations in 2007 and 2008 found that despite low levels of awareness, large majorities in all partner states, including Kenya approved of political federation), but it does little to foster a feeling of ownership of the Community and the processes that generate it.
This is not a uniquely Kenyan problem.
In fact, a study last year found that one-third of East Africans had only a weak or no sense at all of being “East African.”
In 2004, when the Summit instituted the Wako committee on Fasttracking Political Integration, it was the “slow pace of integration” that caused the leadership to remember the people — a tacit admission that popular participation was lacking.
Attitudes, though, are slowly changing.
Last year, The EastAfrican reported that the partner states are to establish integration centres at border points to sensitise the citizenry on the benefits of regional assimilation and that Kenya’s EAC Ministry will use mobile phones to educate up to 17 million people on the Common Market Protocol.
It is also planning to hire a public relations firm as part of what Naim Bilal, deputy director of Public Communications, calls a “broad-based and comprehensive strategy” to communicate the benefits of integration to the people.
Welcome as they are, such measures are only of limited benefit.
To be sustainable in the long term, the EAC must become a true and powerful union of peoples — a United States of East Africa, rather than a loose association of governments.
Till that happens, the Monetary Union and the Community it is meant to serve will remain as fragile as the political will that created them.
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