Two decades after Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania launched the East African Community Customs Union, conversations about the state of regional integration inevitably always return to the same stubborn problem: Non-tariff barriers.
The Customs Union, which came into force on January 1, 2005, was meant to establish the first foundational pillar of a progressively deeper integration project. The EAC has since grown from three founding partner states to eight. Yet, for all that expansion, the promise of a genuinely common market remains frustratingly incomplete.
