The Nation (Nairobi)
OPINION
January 27, 2007
Posted to the web January 26, 2007
Peter Kimani
Nairobi
The ambition to form the East African political federation has been alive for the past few years. It is expected to climax in 2013 - if the people of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania endorse the plan through referenda.
For generations, border communities in the three countries have embraced the idea of oneness by way of trade, marriage or simply migrating across the border to start a new life.
On a trip across the region in 2004, a Nation team assessed the people's attitude towards this political vision, and their own understanding of its meaning and future implications. However, not many understood what the bureaucrats in Arusha, the seat of the East African Community, were doing, or even how a federation would benefit them.
Immigration
It did not help much either that the bureaucracy at the immigration offices in the three countries had made the movement of goods and people excruciatingly slow.
Besides the duplication of paperwork, where one is required to fill out forms repeating what had been revealed only a few metres away, there are the fees to be paid for business visas. It costs a lot more to transit goods from one country to another, as the fees are charged per axle and distance from the point of origin. This may have been sorted with the introduction of the Customs Union on January 1, 2005, when the protocols to harmonise tariffs on goods imported into the region were ratified.
However, there are still other teething problems.
Doing business
The cost of doing business in the region remains high, at times, ridiculously so. In 2004, for instance, it cost twice as much to transport goods from Mombasa to Nairobi than it would have cost to ferry the same from Durban to Mombasa, 4,000 kilometres away.
And due to the high taxation, some petty traders opt to use panya (illegal) routes to smuggle goods, thereby denying the three countries millions of shillings in revenue.
Skills transfer has also been stunted as the three nations attempt to insulate their limited job markets from skilled foreign workers. The deportation of Nation journalists from Dar es Salaam, over a year ago, for instance, exposed this rivalry.
But traders, whether small or medium scale, are not always in need of a job; in fact, they help create jobs and other opportunities by opening up businesses.
Reluctance to allow fellow East Africans to move freely within the region has benefited Europe and North America, where immigrants are encouraged to travel through established channels.
Political analysts, however, are not very convinced that East Africa is ready to federate.
Develop currency
Prof Ali Mazrui, who is the also the Chancellor of the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, says the region will take up to 40 years before this project can be feasible.
For that to happen, the region would first have to develop its own currency and establish joint policies on transport and communication among others.
Such structures existed in the colonial times. The three countries inherited and operated them successfully until 1977 when things fell apart. For instance, the Customs Union between Kenya and Uganda was first established in 1917 and Tanganyika later joined in 1927.
Then there was the East African High Commission (1948-1961); the East African Common Services Organisation (1961-1967) and the East African Community that lasted from 1967 to 1977.
Differences
The collapse of the community was precipitated by ideological differences among the region's leaders: Uganda's Idi Amin who became a dictator; Tanzania's Julius Nyerere who adopted socialism; and Kenya's Jomo Kenyatta who embraced capitalism.
Full East African cooperation operations started on March 14, 1996, when the secretariat of the Permanent Tripartite Commission was launched at the headquarters of the EAC in Arusha, Tanzania. While the three countries are likely to remain autonomous, there will be a new flag and anthem for the region, with a rotational, largely ceremonial presidency, only six years away - if voters from the three countries give their green light.