By Charles Onyango-Obbo
In Summary
It has been a trying year for East Africa.
Drought hammered parts of Uganda and Kenya; the bloodletting
continued in Burundi and South Sudan, with warnings of a “genocide” in
both countries; and there were savage clashes in the far western
Rwenzururu kingdom between Uganda government troops and its royal
guards.
Uganda also had, well, a Ugandan election (i.e. with hammers, tongs and fiddling) in February.
It remained a hard time for the media in the region, probably the worst period in recent times.
Yet the year was not lost. To begin with, though Tanzania
President John Magufuli’s needs to outgrow his thin-skinned approach to
media and social media critics, his anti-corruption handiwork has done
something important for the region.
With Rwanda still holding up as the most honest country in
Africa, despite small reversals, with Magufuli’s Tanzania there are now
two nations back to back, anchoring the bottom of the EAC like some kind
of chastity mat.
It might not be a world of difference, but where once there was one, and now there is two, you have to recognise progress.
After six years, the African Union meeting returned to East
Africa, with a summit in Kigali. A lot of things have been happening in
Rwanda, with the biggest climate change meeting in the region also
taking place in Kigali in October.
The meeting was significant because nearly 170 countries agreed
to get rid of 90 per cent of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) beginning from
2019 for some of the leading industrialised economies, and between 2024
and 2028 for many of the less developed ones.
But perhaps more significant from an Africa point of view, and
as a pointer to possibilities, Rwanda’s Green Fund (FONERWA), which
finances climate resilience initiatives in the country, took root. More
than $100 million has been mobilised, and the fund says it has already
created 60,000 green jobs.
Rwanda President Paul Kagame’s top UN environmental prize, the Champions of the Earth award, was well deserved.
As the year closed, Uganda — which has been obsessed with oil
and dams in recent years — threw in a pleasant green surprise, with the
launch of a $19 million solar power plant in the eastern district of
Soroti.
The project is the largest announced in East Africa so far.
On the back of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) 10th
Ministerial Conference in Nairobi in December 2015, residents endured
many painful traffic days again in July with the United Nations
Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) meeting.
Good things don’t come cheap. Depending, these are either small
twitches or significant steps in globalisation, even though it has
become a dirty word to some these days
Therefore it has to worry the region that nothing
forward-looking, except massacres, rape and repression, is happening in
Burundi and South Sudan.
Indeed parts of South Sudan are all sliding back into the Medieval Age.
An EAC with part of it in the 21st century, and the other in
early 20th at best, can only fail. Fixing Burundi and South Sudan should
probably be the EAC’s only priority for 2017. If they can’t do it on
their own, presidents Pierre Nkurunziza and Salva Kiir must forcefully
be fed sanity pills.
Charles Onyango-Obbo is publisher of data visualiser Africapaedia and Rogue Chiefs. Twitter@cobbo3
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