mizan254
Member
- May 15, 2017
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The strains on EAC integration suggest growing political pushback by member states.
In the web of sometimes over-lapping and conflicting interests, common ground is hard to find.
The strains on EAC integration suggest growing political pushback by member states.
There is no happy ending to this story. However you look at it, a political federation presents insuperable obstacles.
The 18th East African Community Heads of State Summit finally took place in Dar es Salaam last week, after being put off three times.
At one point, Burundi requested postponement to remember the assassination of president Cyprien Ntaryamira, when the plane of Rwanda’s Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down near Kigali in 1994. Another was put off to allow Kenya to complete its party primaries ahead of the General Election in August.
The reasons sound plausible, but Burundi’s “Assassination Day” and the dates for party primaries in Kenya were known well before the Summit dates were set. So, were these the real reasons for rescheduling? Sceptics suspect deeper problems. Interpersonal relations between the EAC heads of state seem uneasy, if not sour.
Rwanda feels that Burundi’s Pierre Nkurunziza is stoking a regional crisis. A majority of the nearly 400,000 people said to have fled Burundi are Tutsis, and many have gone to Rwanda. President Nkurunziza’s practices echo — rather uncomfortably and personally for President Paul Kagame — the Hutu-led anti-Tutsi pogroms in the late 1950s and early 1960s in Rwanda that forced him and his family into exile.
President Uhuru Kenyatta was miffed that the EAC was lukewarm— even hostile — to Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohamed’s candidacy for the chair of the African Union Commission. Kenya suspects that Burundi and Tanzania abandoned Amina while Uganda says it stuck with her. Nairobi is sceptical.
Blowing hot and cold
Tanzania and Kenya have been in a zero-sum race for the infrastructure corridor of the EAC. But Nairobi recently lost that race , when Kigali and Kampala abandoned the previously agreed rail and pipeline routing through Kenya for the Tanzanian alternative.
In foreign policy, the Community is sharply divided : Rwanda and Kenya have signed the Economic Partnership Agreement with the European Union while Tanzania and Uganda are holding out, citing national interest. Burundi is under EU sanctions, and is presumably EPA-ineligible as a result. When the talks with the EU began, South Sudan was not a member of the bloc.
For reasons personal to Presidents Kenyatta and Nkurunziza, Kenya and Burundi do not like the International Criminal Court (ICC): Burundi has pulled out; Kenya threatens to pull out; Tanzania says it won’t pull out; Uganda attacks the Court but President Museveni has referred Joseph Kony and the high command of the Lord’s Resistance Army to the court — suggesting he is hot for one purpose and cold for another, as it suits him. Rwanda is not a member.
continued.... Time for EAC to lower its sights; throw out federation dream
In the web of sometimes over-lapping and conflicting interests, common ground is hard to find.
The strains on EAC integration suggest growing political pushback by member states.
There is no happy ending to this story. However you look at it, a political federation presents insuperable obstacles.
The 18th East African Community Heads of State Summit finally took place in Dar es Salaam last week, after being put off three times.
At one point, Burundi requested postponement to remember the assassination of president Cyprien Ntaryamira, when the plane of Rwanda’s Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down near Kigali in 1994. Another was put off to allow Kenya to complete its party primaries ahead of the General Election in August.
The reasons sound plausible, but Burundi’s “Assassination Day” and the dates for party primaries in Kenya were known well before the Summit dates were set. So, were these the real reasons for rescheduling? Sceptics suspect deeper problems. Interpersonal relations between the EAC heads of state seem uneasy, if not sour.
Rwanda feels that Burundi’s Pierre Nkurunziza is stoking a regional crisis. A majority of the nearly 400,000 people said to have fled Burundi are Tutsis, and many have gone to Rwanda. President Nkurunziza’s practices echo — rather uncomfortably and personally for President Paul Kagame — the Hutu-led anti-Tutsi pogroms in the late 1950s and early 1960s in Rwanda that forced him and his family into exile.
President Uhuru Kenyatta was miffed that the EAC was lukewarm— even hostile — to Cabinet Secretary Amina Mohamed’s candidacy for the chair of the African Union Commission. Kenya suspects that Burundi and Tanzania abandoned Amina while Uganda says it stuck with her. Nairobi is sceptical.
Blowing hot and cold
Tanzania and Kenya have been in a zero-sum race for the infrastructure corridor of the EAC. But Nairobi recently lost that race , when Kigali and Kampala abandoned the previously agreed rail and pipeline routing through Kenya for the Tanzanian alternative.
In foreign policy, the Community is sharply divided : Rwanda and Kenya have signed the Economic Partnership Agreement with the European Union while Tanzania and Uganda are holding out, citing national interest. Burundi is under EU sanctions, and is presumably EPA-ineligible as a result. When the talks with the EU began, South Sudan was not a member of the bloc.
For reasons personal to Presidents Kenyatta and Nkurunziza, Kenya and Burundi do not like the International Criminal Court (ICC): Burundi has pulled out; Kenya threatens to pull out; Tanzania says it won’t pull out; Uganda attacks the Court but President Museveni has referred Joseph Kony and the high command of the Lord’s Resistance Army to the court — suggesting he is hot for one purpose and cold for another, as it suits him. Rwanda is not a member.
continued.... Time for EAC to lower its sights; throw out federation dream
