South Sudan will be fully integrated into the East African Community from July after the EAC Council of Ministers agreed last week that Juba should first join the East African Legislative Assembly and the East Africa Court of Justice.

Already, Secretary-General Liberat Mfumukeko has written to Juba for nomination of a judge to the First Instance Division of EACJ. The judge will be sworn in during the Ordinary Heads of State Summit later this month.

South Sudan has also nominated its nine members to EALA, submitted its list to the EAC Secretariat and the members will be sworn in officially when the new term for the EALA members begins in July.

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According to a report by the Council of Ministers in a meeting held in Arusha, Tanzania between March 30 and April 4, South Sudan will need to align its Customs Administration with the EAC Customs Union in accordance with the Roadmap for the Integration of South Sudan into the EAC.

This means that South Sudan has agreed to establish free trade (or zero duty imposed on goods and services to the other partner states) and has agreed to implement the EAC Common External Tariff (CET), where imports from countries outside the region are subjected to the same tariff when sold to any partner state.

Also, goods moving freely within the region must comply with the EAC Rules of Origin and with certain provisions of the Protocol for the establishment of the region’s Customs Union. 

The oil-rich country follows in the footsteps of Rwanda and Burundi by joining the Community through the acquis communautaire (community law) terms.

“South Sudan is accepting and signing all laws, agreements and policies that already exist in the region,” said Masinde Wanyama, an EAC integration expert and director of Africa Capacity in Nairobi.

The inclusion of South Sudan in the next session of EALA has revived the issue of whether Africa’s youngest nation is ready to be part of the regional bloc. This follows delays by its parliament to pass laws to conform with the EAC Treaty, protocols and agreements, which have so far been passed by the other five member states.  

Despite South Sudan — which was admitted to the EAC in March 2016 — having negotiated for a three-year period to conform to the Customs Union and the free movement of labour, there are growing concerns that the ongoing civil war will not allow the country to enact laws within the given time.

The current conflict and political instability in the country have also not made it easy for it to conform to key conditions for membership such as adherence to principles of good governance, democracy, rule of law, observance of human-rights and social justice.

However, South Sudan’s Presidential Adviser on Economic Affairs and envoy to the EAC, Aggrey Tisa Sabuni, told The EastAfrican by telephone from Juba that his country would abide by all the laws, protocols and MoUs, but said the enactment and implementation of different laws takes time.

Mr Sabuni said that the only areas where the government requested a three-year grace period was for the Customs Union and the free movement of labour.
“Some of them require amendments to the legal framework, which may take a lot of time. For instance, laws related to the Customs Union and Common Market Protocol require extensive analysis of the country’s laws,” said Mr Sabuni.

Among the laws whose amendments are still pending are: The Passports and Immigration Act, the Investment Promotion Act and the Companies Act. The country is also required to implement the common rules and standards governing cross-border transactions and free movement of goods, labour and capital.

Key areas
After accession, South Sudan had to work on five key areas for it to become a fully-fledged member of the EAC. They are: Having the National Assembly approve the Treaty; harmonising the country’s laws with those of the EAC; streamlining Customs, immigration and other key agencies to adopt EAC standards; creating new institutions such as the Ministry of EAC Affairs and a Revenue Authority, and implementing EAC programmes and projects.

John Andruga Duku, the director of international organisations at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told The EastAfrican that the exemptions are not peculiar to South Sudan because even Burundi was given a grace period when it became an EAC member in 2007.

South Sudan became an official member when the country deposited the instrument of ratification on the Accession to the Treaty with EAC Secretary-General, Liberat Mfumukeko on September 5, 2016, at the Community’s headquarters in Arusha.

This means that the country got full and equal rights, as well as obligations and privileges after waiting for five years since it made its application in June 2011.
South Sudan’s nine EALA members are expected to join members from Kenya, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania in the fourth Assembly, which will start its sitting in July.

The nine are Gabriel Garang Aher Arol, Gai Deng Nhial, Anne Itto Leonardo, Isac Aziz Justin Bazugba, Gabriel Alaak Garang and Thomes Dut Gatkek from the ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), and Adil Elais Sandrai and Gideon Gatpan Thoar from SPLM-in-Opposition, and Joseph Ukel Ubango from the United Sudan African Party.

Like Burundi, South Sudan has only included two women in the nine EALA MPs, while the general trend is that partner states conform to Article 50 (1) of the Treaty, which provides that those elected shall include: “Shades of opinion, gender and other special interest groups in that Partner State.”

In the current Assembly, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania have four women out of nine members.