| Letter from the future to Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, with whom it all began |
By EAC SecGen @rsezibera
Shikamoo Mwalimu. Next week, the Summit of Heads of State of the East African Community will take place in Nairobi, Kenya.
The Community is currently chaired by
Uhuru Kenyatta, President of the Republic of Kenya. Yes sir, you may
share this news with Mzee Kenyatta and Mzee Milton Obote when you see
them. The East African Community did not die permanently in 1977; it
has been resurrected and is thriving.
I am writing to seek your wisdom and
blessings. You see, when the Summit meets, they will be deliberating,
among other things, on the best way to start a constitution-making
process for the Federation of East Africa! Yes, the debate is back.
You remember those many years ago, in
1963, when you offered to delay Tanganyika’s Independence to give
chance to East Africa to get its Independence as a federal entity?
You feared that entrenched sovereignty
and the trappings of national authority would blind us to the
strategic imperatives of building a united East Africa capable of
harnessing all its resources for the socio-economic development of its
citizens.
You were worried that narrow parochial
concerns would lead to the marginalisation of our continent. You saw
clearly that Independence within the borders of colonial constructs
would simply reinforce the colonial enterprise, marginally tweaking
the relationship between the former colonies and the metropole, while
leaving the colonial enterprise intact. Well sir, you were right.
Can you imagine that by 2005, the entire
GDP of East Africa was only $40 billion — the wealth of one modern
high net worth individual?
That our fragmented economies remained stuck in the mud for decades, trying to produce more cotton, coffee, and raw minerals for the consumption of the Western world?
The harder we worked, the poorer we
became, until we were told that the only solution was to reduce our
investments in health, education, infrastructure and energy.
We did need macroeconomic discipline,
Mwalimu, but we balanced our books on the backs of the poor. We were
too weak to resist, our valiant struggle against apartheid
notwithstanding. We all agreed to take the medicine.
Our current leaders have decided to
reverse the trend. They have decided to go back to the future. And
they are succeeding. East Africa is now a Customs Union, and we are
slowly turning it into a Single Customs Territory.
Beyond the free movement of goods, the
region is now slowly but surely turning into a Common Market, and
plans are underway to build a Monetary Union. Shared investments in
infrastructure are gaining momentum. Remember when you decided to
invest in the Tazara railway against all opposition?
You may be saddened to hear that line
now carries less than 10 per cent of what it did in its heyday. I am
glad to report however that for the first time in over 100 years,
Kenya and Uganda are beginning to lay a new, modern railway line.
Rwanda and Burundi are determined to follow suit. Investments in energy
generation are on the rise. East Africa is determined not be a dark
region, both figuratively and literally.
Do you know, Mwalimu, that since East
Africa decided to deepen and widen its integration, its GDP is now
over $100 billion and growing? Over 700,000 students are enrolled in
344 institutions of higher education including 161 universities.
This is a sharp rise from the 160,000
enrolled in the 1990s. They pay local fees across the region, and 2015
is the target year for turning East Africa into a Common Higher
Education Area.
There were those who kept telling you
that East African integration would benefit Kenya to the detriment of
Tanzania and Uganda. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose… Yes, we
do speak French and Chinese, in addition to Kiswahili, our lingua
franca.
But my apologies Mwalimu. I forgot to
inform you that Burundi and Rwanda are now members of the Community.
You remember the pan-African discussions you used to have with Prince
Louis Rwagasore of Burundi and Mwami Mutara Rudahigwa of Rwanda? The
pan African seeds they planted have come to fruition.
But I digress. There still are some
people who are fixated on intra-EAC competition rather than
co-operation. They would like to see more barriers to trade.
The naysayers refuse to see, for
example, that Tanzania has recorded the fastest growth in intra-EAC
exports, that Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi have all seen their exports
to Kenya and the rest of East Africa grow.
They fail to appreciate that Kenya is
now a major source of “foreign” direct investment in the EAC,
displacing the Western powers of yesteryear. That intra-EAC trade has
risen to over 26 per cent from less than 10 per cent a decade ago — and
that it is qualitatively better than trade with the rest of the
world, consisting of trade in value added products, and not the raw
materials we export to the West, the East, the North and the South.
When we show them the data, they change
the terms of the debate, raising the bogey of land. Do you know,
Mwalimu, that in recognition of the sensitivity of land ownership, use
and management, the East African Common Market Protocol has made it
very clear that land is a national and not an East African issue?
Yet, merchants of fear whip up the
peoples’ emotions, that other East Africans are only interested in
taking over their land. They refuse to see it as a factor of
production, derailing all attempts at making it produce wealth for
their nations or the region. They get dizzy, trying to walk backwards
on a fast moving economic escalator.
They are so fearful that they want to
hinder the free movement of people. Do you know it still is more
difficult for Africans to move, live and work in Africa than for
non-Africans?
So, this is the context in which the
Heads of State Summit will meet this coming week. They refuse to
simply accept what is, and want to invest in what can be. They want to
turn East Africa into a federal entity, believing that economic
integration is not enough.
They want to follow in your footsteps, Mwalimu.
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