[h=1]Who owns East Africa?[/h] Printable View
- 13th September 2011, 16:32
Mwaisumbe
Who owns East Africa?
It is good to be part and parcel for this forum, though I have been one of the effective participator by reading of ll what other stake holder has been contributing, I think its time also to share and burst of what I have, I hope most of you your saying karibu Asante.
Well I dont want to shift you from whatever its going on! But I want you to share my concern, through this question who wants to own East Africa?!
What is behind the East African Cooperation? As the days lapse, the much unclear information we receive from our leaders of the East African region. Actually, we find ourselves shocked from time to time whenever they come up with different regulations, policies, agreements and so forth. I used to ask myself, who gave them the mandate to undertake what they are currently busy with? Making policies and starting implementing them without the citizens permission or concerns? Which constitution provides those powers they use to apply and decide electing leaders to fill the positions of East African vacancies?
Another surprise is the tendency of the media in Tanzania to take news related to East African issues as a priority while it is rare to experience such approach in other East African countries! Now we have reached a stage of having a common market; and my presumption is that we would be moving ahead other steps without doing a thorough evaluation on how we as Tanzanians have so far benefited from this early stage. I also think we were supposed to measure the progress and decide whether it is worth to continue with this union or not, or even if we may change the way we cooperate with other countries. My understanding is that, a country may cooperate advantageously with other countries even without having a union.
The critical issue to note here is that the citizens have the right to know every aspect of the cooperation ranging from benefits, problems and how snags have been addressed and the way forward. My concern is that what are our priorities as Tanzanians? And to what category do we regard East Africa as a niche to Tanzania economy? Are we real aware of what is going on in other countries? Are they genuinely serious about East Africa as we do? How much energy, time and resource do we spend for East Africa? The main question here is that have we forgotten our priority and turn to think that East Africa is the answer for our economic woes?
Every economic development initiatives should have a contribution from the natives who are the key stakeholders. People of the country are the ones with a mandate to shape the way they need the union to be, and in fact need to know exactly how the union is going to work, as we have seen in previous years for the European Union; they underwent all necessary steps to involve the citizens and later on vote to agree to have union, and the shape of the union they should have. Economy is neither a method nor a kind of a formula that you have to follow as you did in previous years. And the role should not be played by only certain people but involve participation of everyone.
I think it is myopic to think that in order to benefit more from these kinds of cooperation; you should always strive to be a key leader of the union. Here I mean you ought to be the headquarters of the union. This could be just to blind your mind so that psychologically you might think that you lead the crew, but it the fact is the otherwise. Is someone in mission to own East Africa? I think we have to slow down and if possible let us go back to our people and shape the union we want from the fact that the key players of the East African Cooperation are the citizens of Tanzania. Let us decide structure of the union we dream to have. "That's my concern"
Frank Mwaisumbe
