By Charles Onyango-Obbo

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I haven’t yet seen a comprehensive roll call of the African leaders who attended the just-ended third international forum on Chinese President Xi Jinping’s signature policy, the Belt and Road Initiative which, over the past 10 years, has built infrastructure across continents.

From the count we have, it seems attendance from East Africa was not 100 percent as it might have been in the past. Since the start of 2023, there have been signs that some leaders are beginning to shy away from the embarrassing spectacle of lining up sheepishly at the endless “Africa summits” held in the US, Europe and Asia, waiting to hear about what small mercies will be doled out to save “the world’s poorest continent”.

The time is ripe for East Africa’s big men and women to hold a regional summit. However, this should not be like the unremarkable ones they hold as leaders of the East African Community. It should be a people’s summit, a “Jumuiya Kamukunji” or Indaba.

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For starters, the rule will be that it cannot be held in the capital. So, we head to places like Kisumu in Kenya, Musanze in Rwanda, Mwanza in Tanzania, Jinja in Uganda, Bukavu in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and in whatever hidden gems there are in South Sudan and Burundi.

Secondly, the EAC leaders won’t be allowed to lecture. They will have a conversation with East Africans. This means they will sit around in a circle in a conversation moderated by a reliable East African who isn’t afraid of powerful men and women, and the rest of us ask them questions.

That is in the morning sessions.

In the afternoons, the Jumuiya leaders will reverse roles, and either sit in the audience and listen to East Africans debate and whine things that work or don’t work. Or they can be the inquisitioners and ask questions of wiseacre East Africans who think they would fix all our problems if given half a day.

At night, there will be camp fires. Nothing serious, no policy wonking. Someone like Uganda President Yoweri Museveni, will give a traditional recital about cattle or heroism of ancient Africa. He is said to collect “cow music”.

Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu might do a coastal ballad.

Burundi’s Évariste Ndayishimiye is a happy fellow. He is a good dancer, and has even appeared in music videos. He would bring a Burundi troupe and do a jig for East Africa.

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DRC President Felix Tshisekedi looks like a man who can play an instrument — possibly a guitar, or even a saxophone. He will get on a stage and do a classic.

Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame is a man of sports. He is into football, basketball, motorsport, tennis. He plays basketball and tennis. We would get someone like Kenyan tennis star Angella Okutoyi to beat him at a game.

Not sure what South President Salva Kiir’s extracurricular talents are. South Sudan is a land of proverbs and traditional poetry. He could recite poetry.
We can’t have the leaders on the same day, so it will have to be, at a minimum, a two-day event.

Along with all these activities, there will be innovators showing off their creations. Serious ones, like exciting new products out of recycled garbage.

New medicines and medical procedures; start-ups with clever offerings; smart use of drones; conservation successes; promising green technologies; ground-breaking filmmaking and music production techniques; and revealing social and cultural research. Mostly impactful stuff that has potential to play in the global market.

Things like hoodies made of kitenge, woven baskets and mats, shoes made from car tyres, while important, will not be allowed because they aren’t ambitious enough.

Of course, East Africans can’t gather in those numbers then “go home just like that”. There will be a lot of partying, and we will get characters like Tanzanian megastar Diamond Platnumz and Uganda’s Eddy Kenzo to get fellows shaking their legs.

In the mingling, talking and dancing some great ideas could emerge. The East Africa Community market is over 300 million strong. Don’t ask too much of it. Just excite only 25 million East Africans to each put just $20 into a Jumuiya Development Fund or Bond every quarter. In a year, that would be $80 from each one of them. In a year, that is $2 billion in the pot. There are at least a million of them who can afford to invest $1,000 a year, so there are ways in which the total take could be bumped up.

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After just one year, there would be a lot of money for East Africa to pay its way into the 21st century in a serious way, driven by its own money – not Xi Jinping’s, not Joe Biden’s.

Easy-peasy. The elephant-size problem is that East Africans don’t trust most of their governments, their elite, and even their banking institutions not to steal or waste their money. So, they will not give it.

We can’t keep the money out of their reach on the moon, so solutions can be found on earth. There are pan-African money people like the African Development Bank, headquartered in Abidjan, and Afreximbank in Cairo. In the past 15 years, they have become reasonably dependable bookkeepers.

Between them, they can design an instrument to keep the Jumuiya money safe and even multiply it, until East Africa is able to marshal enough angels to oversee it.

But that is a problem for tomorrow. Today, we need to do the first thing: call the kamukunji.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is a journalist, writer, and curator of the “Wall of Great Africans”. X@cobbo3