When Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, Mwalimu Julius Kambarage Nyerere and Apollo Milton Obote the presidents of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda signed the treaty establishing the East African Community (EAC) with fanfare in June 1967, little did they know that the EAC would have a relatively short duration. Within a decade of the establishment of the EAC, the organisation collapsed in 1977.
Unlike the old EAC, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), has been in existence for three decades. As the current Tanzanian High Commissioner to Nigeria, the author, Dr Mangachi is in vantage position to observe and compare the workings of ECOWAS with those of the EAC.
Dr Mangachi has presented a well-written, comprehensive account of the pre-colonial and colonial antecedents and the post independent efforts by the leaders of the member states in capitalising on earlier forms of cooperation among them to the form the EAC. It also chronicles the workings of the organisation and the reasons for its break up; sharing of its assets and liabilities, the events leading up to the revival of the EAC in the year 2000 and its enlargement to include Rwanda and Burundi.
The book is situated within the wider context of regional integration in Africa, including a section on ECOWAS. In the case of East Africa as Dr Mangachi has pointed out, the precursor to the establishment of the EAC were the East African High Commission established by the colonial authorities in 1948 and charged with the responsibility of overseeing and promoting cooperation among the countries concerned. It was replaced in 1961 by the East African Common Services Organisation. Of the three territories, Tanzania was originally a German colony called Tanganyika; following the defeat of Germany in the First World War it came under the League of Nations’ mandate with Britain as the Administering Authority. It was later brought under UN trusteeship under British rule and gained independence in 1961 followed by Uganda in 1962 and Kenya in 1963.
The EAC got off to a good start. During its formative years it recorded some achievements. A number of community institutions were established and dispersed among the three member states. East African Airways and East African Railways corporations were based in Nairobi; Uganda hosted the East African Development Bank and the East African Posts and Telecommunications Corporation headquarters. The headquarters of the EAC itself was located in Arusha, Tanzania as well as the headquarters of the East African Harbours Corporation. All these corporations performed reasonably well in the formative years.
A big spanner was however thrown into the EAC works in January 1971, in the bulky frame of Idi Amin Dada who seized power in a military coup in Uganda while president Obote was away attending the Commonwealth summit in Singapore. This singular incident changed the dynamics within the organisation with Tanzania initially refusing to recongnise the new regime in Kampala. Following Amin’s coup the heads of state of the EAC never met again until the organisation folded up. The feud between Uganda and Tanzania escalated beyond the war of words into a real war in which Tanzanian soldiers were involved in deposing Amin, to the relief of the world.
Although the community institutions carried on as best as they could, it was impossible to initiate new programmes of integration without the approval of the highest organ of the EAC, the Authority of Heads of State. Inspite of the establishment of a Treaty Review Commission to revamp the EAC, it did not save the organisation from collapse. Views differ with regard to the factors that led to the collapse of the EAC and how important those factors were. The author refers to a number of factors ranging from lack of funds and the unequal benefits from cooperation to the ideological differences between the member states.
With regard to ideology, Tanzania under Nyerere pursued an avowedly socialist path to development based on the principles of Ujamaa, while Kenya was unashamedly capitalist in orientation. There was perhaps no better illustration of the ideological differences between Tanzania and kenya than the proclamation of the Arusha Declaration in which Nyerere set out his socialist blue print for development in the city which was the headquarters of the EAC. Kenya played a pivotal role in the EAC. As its economic hub, it had most of its industry and attracted most of the foreign investments. It was perhaps no surprise that it benefited more from the economies of scale provided by a common market, while Tanzania and Uganda were at a disadvantage.
Luckily the three members of the defunct EAC saw the wisdom and the need to revive the community by establishing or rather re-establishing the EAC in the year 2000 and enlarging it to include Rwanda and Burundi in 2007. As a new and improved version of the old one, the new EAC treaty is more comprehensive, encompassing good governance, democracy, human rights and a role for civil society. Hopefully its authors have learnt from the mistakes that led to the collapse of the old EAC.
Global political and economic conditions would appear to be more conducive for regional cooperation than ever before. Following the end of the cold war globalisation has intensified while Washington’s unipolar moment appears to have run its course.
As the world moves increasingly inexorably into multipolar mode, with the increasing importance of emerging economies particularly China, India and Brazil, developing countries have more room for manoeuvre in promoting regional cooperation to meet the challenges of globalisation. The case for regional integration among African states, the most developmentally-challenged of the international community has never been stronger given the imperatives of globalisation. This partly explains why the EAC was revived.
Above all, if regional integration in Africa is to be meaningful, its objectives have to be self reliant and self –sustaining development as set out in the Lagos Plan of Action of 1980; a document which, arguably, remains unsurpassed in its diagnosis and solutions to Africa’s underdevelopment.
This book is due for launch on July 26, 2011 in Abuja.
