The East African Community is facing a test of unity and an identity crisis after regional leaders last week discussed key proposals to deepen integration without the input of Tanzania, a founder and key member state.
The Mombasa meeting of Presidents Uhuru Kenyatta (Kenya), Yoweri Museveni (Uganda) and Paul Kagame (Rwanda) was ostensibly to discuss cross-border infrastructure projects.
However, the decision to fast-track the East African political federation in the absence of Tanzania confirms the view that a “coalition of the willing” is emerging within the EAC to push for faster integration.
Significantly, the presence of ministerial delegations from Burundi and South Sudan, which has applied to join the EAC, leaves Tanzania as the only partner state not aboard the new high-speed train of regional integration.
Tanzania and Burundi were not present at the earlier meeting, in June, of Presidents Museveni, Kenyatta and Kagame in Entebbe, in what is being called the EAC’s first infrastructure summit. Officials said the two countries had not been invited because the projects under discussion — major among them an oil pipeline and a standard gauge railway — involved only the three countries present.
However, The EastAfrican has learnt from impeccable sources that while Tanzania was not invited to that meeting, President Pierre Nkurunziza of Burundi was invited but chose to stay away, citing scheduling difficulties.
Sources say Bujumbura stayed away from the Entebbe summit out of deference to Dar es Salaam but President Nkurunziza’s decision to send Deogratias Rurimunzu, his Minister for Transport, Public Works and Equipment to represent him in Mombasa suggests he does not want to be left out of the new core emerging in the EAC.
At the Entebbe meeting, it is understood each of the three presidents was given cross-border responsibilities: Kenya takes the lead on the pipeline and electricity generation and distribution; Rwanda on the Customs, single visa and EAC e-identity card; and Uganda the railway and political federation.
Analysts say the Mombasa and Entebbe resolutions highlight a clear move to break away from the laborious consensus model of the EAC, to one where there is a “leading tendency” by a willing few.
Tanzanian officials have repeatedly said that they have no objection to other EAC member states holding bilateral discussions as long as they do not take decisions that are binding on the community.
(Read: Trade disputes, barriers slow down EAC integration)
As the three regional leaders met in Mombasa to discuss regional infrastructure projects, business reforms and plans for a political federation, a spokesman for President Jakaya Kikwete told The EastAfrican that Tanzania had not been invited to the meeting.
Reaching out
“You cannot force an invitation,” Salva Rweyemamu said, speaking by telephone from Dar es Salaam, adding sanguinely, “There is no shortage of people to partner with.”
There was no immediate response from Tanzania to the joint communiqué signed by the three leaders after the Mombasa meeting but sources in Dar es Salaam indicated that the country was in the process of reaching out to President Museveni to help mediate in a dispute with Rwanda that has been raging for the past three months, after President Kikwete suggested that Rwanda should consider negotiating with FDLR, a remnant Hutu militia group that is active in eastern DR Congo.source the Eastafrica
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