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- Feb 20, 2014
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East Africa Legislative Assembly Speaker Margaret Zziwa
A new movement which emerged recently within the East African Community (EAC), popularly known as Coalition of the Willing (COW) had no intention to weaken the regional integration process, top EAC leaders believe.
East Africa Legislative Assembly Speaker Margaret Zziwa told The Guardian recently in Dar es Salaam that most media reports on the three country movement were misleading and perhaps contrary to core objectives of the coalition.
Speaker Zziwa said COW was not another challenging move set against the stability and core achievements of the five member regional block, grouping Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Burundi and Rwanda.
The EALA Speaker insisted that the matter was treated with misconception by media and other information outlets. The three countries - Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya - were meeting to resolve on how to fast track construction of the northern transport corridor that starts at Mombasa port via Malaba border through central Uganda to Kigali in Rwanda
At face value, one could not have been surprised by the meeting. The three countries are linked by what is called the northern transport corridor from the port of Mombasa through to Nairobi and Kampala all the way to Kigali and beyond, and this would not shake the community, she emphasized.
In some way, the new partnership would have also been caused by new developments such as the dredging of the port of Lamu and its proposed road and railway links with the hinterland, the coming onto the scene of oil-rich South Sudan and the new oil fields in Uganda, she elaborated.
The Speakers stand comes a year after the media caught wind of the COW alliance, described as representing the will and speed of implementing key aspects of integration.
Media outlets in the East African region repeatedly affirmed that what has set the COW apart from the traditional EAC and constantly fell short of our expectations is implementation of key integration protocols within the allotted time.
The facts are that COW had taken a stand that their meetings should not only translate into reports, but into implementable action plans, action plans that seem more than committed to implement.
The COW unlike the conservative EAC has adopted a walk the talk approach in workings and dealings vis-à-vis a middle-of-the-road approach.
The reports say that with CoW, work has already begun on the standard gauge railway that is expected to run through the three northern corridor East African countries, and perhaps have a diversion link to South Sudan.
The coalition leaders maintained that implications of the commissioning of this railway on the three implementing countries has vast economic significance as it is bound to lower the cost of transporting cargo imported through the Mombasa port by a substantial margin.
Furthermore, the fast tracking of an integrated immigration system has lowered the cost of non-East African citizens travelling through the East African countries through a single entry Visa system that requires a single one time Visa payment valid for 90 days.
Others factors include lowering the cost of touring the region, encouraging more tourist traffic, not only for one country, but for the three countries as a sort of sub-regional bloc. This is bound to translate into increased earnings from the tourism sector.
Earlier reports also noted that the most significant COW achievement is free labour movement through the scrapping of work permit fees for Kenyans, Ugandans and Rwandese within the three collaborating member states.
According to COW the movement would enable the three countries to complement each other in terms of the supply-demand imbalance for skilled human capital within the region.
In the past, the nagging problems had been the slow speed with which the member countries jointly or individually took in the implementation of what had been agreed upon and signed by all parties.
This was not the case for 2013. It is the year that for the first time saw the bloc, which was revived in the 1990s after the first one collapsed in 1977, starting to develop cracks which, in essence, threatened its survival.
The trouble, if some analysts would call it that, started in the middle of the year with the coming onto the scene by the Coalition of the Willing (CoW), an alliance of three member countries; Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya.
The trio came together ostensibly to fast-track regional projects which they thought were delayed by the heavy bureaucracy within the EAC and some member countries they accused of being not serious with regional integration issues.
The new developments took the Arusha-based EAC by surprise. It was immediately after the first summit of Uganda, Rwanda and Kenya hosted by President Yoweri Museveni in Entebbe, that left the Arusha bureaucrats guessing.
Neither the secretary general nor the directorate of information, known for a chain of well-crafted press releases, could say anything on an event the Community should have played a role.
During their Entebbe summit at the end of June last year, Presidents Museveni, Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya, pledged their commitment to regional integration, particularly in the development of infrastructure.
Conspicuous absentees to the summit were Tanzania and Burundi. Then came another summit of the triumvirate in Mombasa two months later (end of August).
With the latter, it was as if the EAC or rather the harmony that had existed among the five countries, was coming to an end.
Two members of the bloc, Tanzania and Rwanda were already at loggerheads on a number of issues, one among them the expulsion of Rwandese (and other people from other countries) who had no proper documents while living in Tanzania.
Authorities in Kigali took the issue seriously, although their government did not retaliate. It was a kind of war of words between the media of the two neighbouring countries which had everybody worried about the strained relations.
The Mombasa summit agreed on the construction of a standard gauge railway line from Mombasa that would link the three countries, and possibly South Sudan as well as pipelines from Uganda and South Sudan oil fields to the markets; be they within eastern Africa or elsewhere.
SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN
