EAC unity on test as Tanzania faces isolation

President Kenyatta (left) receives Uganda President Yoweri Museveni when the latter arrived at the Kenya Ports Authority, Mombasa for the commissioning of Berth 19 August 28, 2013. PSCU  

By George Omondi

In Summary

• Kenya’s growing coziness with her landlocked neighbours and Tanzania’s continued estrangement and southward drift may shape the future of the bloc.
• Tanzania is Kenya’s second-largest market for goods in Africa, taking up Sh46 billion worth of exports last year compared to the Sh67.5 billion exported to Uganda.

The East African Community (EAC) faces an acid test as heads of State pull in different directions ahead of a crucial November meeting.

Analysts say Kenya’s growing coziness with her landlocked neighbours and Tanzania’s continued estrangement and southward drift may shape the future of the bloc.

Tanzania is Kenya’s second-largest market for goods in Africa, taking up Sh46 billion worth of exports last year compared to the Sh67.5 billion exported to Uganda.

“What we have been seeing in the last six months is a new trajectory, which is far from the path and direction that citizens are accustomed to,” says Gervase Akhaabi, a Nairobi-based lawyer. Mr Akhaabi was an East African Legislative Assembly (Eala) member up to last June.

The presidents are expected to review progress on integration and approve a monetary union protocol when their hold the annual summit in November.

The lawyer sees a larger economic and diplomatic shift behind the differences that have played out openly in recent weeks, with Tanzania’s President Jakaya Kikwete and Rwanda’s Paul Kagame hardly seeing eye to eye.

Experts see the slow pace of reaching consensus and implementing regional agreements as fanning an anti-Tanzania coalition within the bloc — informally referred to as the coalition of the willing.

“Tanzania has been torn between joining southern and eastern African formations at the national level, but other EAC states interpret this cautiousness as a go-it-alone stance,” says Macharia Munene, a professor of History and International Relations at the United States International University - Africa.

The region revived integration in 1999 after a 23-year hiatus aiming to form a Custom union, to be followed by a common market, monetary union and finally a political federation by December 2015.

“The current dynamics have more to do with frustrations of other member states with the slow pace at which Tanzania has been willing to integrate its economy,” said Mr Akhaabi.

In the last 13 years, Tanzania has remained in a Free Trade Area (FTA) arrangement with other southern Africa states under the South African Development Community (SADC).

The rest of EAC states continue to extend their markets northwards under the 19-member Comesa that includes Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt.

“The landlocked nations have also been drifting towards Kenya on realisation that efficient infrastructure such as port is in the best interest of their economies,” prof Munene told the Business Daily on Friday.

Matters came to a head last month when Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda began to implement a trilateral pact that will see the three states operating as a single customs territory without Tanzania.

Last week Mr Kikwete was conspicuously absent as the leaders announced that their border officials would allow use of identity cards as travel documents.