The new Chairman of the East African Community (EAC), the President of Burundi, Évariste Ndayishimiye. He was elected at the 22nd Meeting of the Heads of State of the East African Community in Arusha. PHOTO | STATE HOUSE
Arusha. He appeared composed and confident but the Burundi leader President Evariste Ndayishimiye has a huge task ahead of him.
That was when he took over as the new chairperson of East African Community (EAC) yesterday from President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya.
The soft-spoken chair knew too well not only of his major responsibilities, but the challenges facing the seven nation bloc.
He would not pretend ignorance of the insecurity that had continued to reign in the Great Lakes region where his country is.
Although he could not expound on this, President Ndayishimiye appeared to have played his cards well before assuming the Chair.
He has normalised relations with next door neighbour Rwanda and this means earning trust of all the seven member states.
In recent months, emissaries from both countries have been visiting the capitals of each state with messages of goodwill to the heads of state.
Improved relations with Rwanda is pertinent in that the hostilities that persisted impacted on the key EAC programmes and activities.
The other security-related challenge is on the eastern rim of EAC’s new member the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
If there is any hope for everlasting peace initiated from the region is through the Nairobi Conclave which has been under President Kenyatta.
With the Kenya leader stepping down, it is yet to be seen if the new EAC chairman will ever step in the crisis for which his country also has a stake.
This will be the first time for a Burundi leader to be entrusted to chair the supreme organ of the Community in 13 years.
The chairman of the EAC Summit is tasked to convene meetings on the regional leaders and maintain constant communication with them.
The tenure of the Chairperson of the Summit is one year and is held in rotation among the partner states.
Mr Ndayishimiye’s predecessor the late Pierre Nkurunziza headed the organ for a mandatory one year tenure sometime during 2010-2011.
In years that followed, the EAC not only saw irregular postponement of the summits, but Burundi apparently took an isolationist stance.
This followed the political crisis that rocked the country from 2015 after the hotly disputed Nkuruzinza’s extension of tenure.
Analysts say Mr Ndayishimiye looks more flexible unlike his hardline predecessor (Nkurunziza) who at one time snubbed foreign travels.
His soft stance may enable him not only to lead the expanding bloc smoothly but reconcile with Rwanda strong man Paul Kagame.
The Burundian leader has made state visits to Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya and DRC in recent months, creating an image of an active regional player.
He also has to see the integration of DR Congo in the EAC fast-tracked, learning from the mistakes made in the South Sudan case.
President Ndayishimiye will obviously inherit the traditional challenges facing the EAC such as the cash crisis due to declining resource injection.
He promised to work out on the alternative funding mechanism which has been on the tables of the EAC technocrats for over 10 years now.
The Burundi president is taking over as the EAC Chair as the expanding bloc is becoming increasingly diverse though united.
The entry of DR Congo and pressure from Tanzania have seen French and Kiswahili adopted as the official languages of the union.
The presence of Somalia President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud as a special guest means the Horn of Africa country is only counting months before joining the bloc.
EAC secretary general Peter Mathuki said recently that a delegation would soon be dispatched to Mogadishu to see the country’s readiness to join the Community.
Speaking as the summit ended yesterday, President Samia Suluhu Hassan reiterated her call to remove the hurdles impacting on cross border trade.
Somalia entry
As the Chair of the EAC, the Burundi leader will have to strike a balance on the pros and cons of admitting Somalia into the bloc.
Burundi is one of the four African countries which have deployed forces to fight the Al Shabaab militants in the Horn of Africa state.
Somalia officially applied to join the EAC wayback in 2013 but no verification mission has been dispatched there to assess the country’s readiness.
Now the EAC Heads of State agreed in their Friday’s Summit that the exercise should be fast-tracked in anticipation of formal admission.
Although the EAC secretariat has not said as to why the process had been delayed, the obvious fact is hesistance by some states due to insecurity there.
Diri Sola Kidawa, a resident of Arusha is emphatic that Somalia’s admission into the bloc should be put on a hold once again.
“Somalia’s entry is not healthy for now. The country has not stabilized because of the Al Shabaab,” he told The Citizen.
“It is too early. Give them another time until the security has improved”, he said, noting that Kenya has borne the brunt of some of the worst attacks by the radical group.
However, Walter Maeda, a member of the Arusha business chamber, said he does not see any problem with Somalia joining the bloc.
“Somalis by nature are shrewd business people and are everywhere in the world,” he said on phone when reached on the prospects of admitting the country into the EAC.
He said although Somalia is prone to waves of droughts and militia attacks, it can provide a market for food stuffs and merchandise produced in the EAC.
However, like other observers in Arusha, Mr Maeda requested that before formal admission, ways should be found to contain the Al Shabaab militants.
Somalia President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, who attended the EAC Summit as ‘a special guest’ acknowledged that his country’s application could have been put on hold.
“We sought to join the bloc for more than 10 years but circumstances did not permit. Now, however,there are signs of optimism”, he told the Summit.
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