By Mkumbwa Ally
I’ve been harbouring a fear that the East African Community (EAC), which was given a second lease of life in 1999, is not on the right footing.
The finances of the economic bloc—whose membership has expanded from the original three to eight—may not have fully recovered from the shocks of the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change.
As a result, the EAC secretariat, which is working towards the lofty goals of creating a regional economic, monetary and ultimately political union, has faced budgetary constraints over the past five years.
The East African Legislative Assembly (EALA), which approves the budget, has been forced to skip sittings due to the financial crunch, while the East African Court of Justice (EACJ)—tasked with upholding the rule of law—has only two judges on its permanent and half-dozen part-time system. EAC staff have not had their May salaries in June, 2024 and there is a staffing gap of 150 employees, according to EAC officials.
It has emerged that half of the eight member states—delayed withholding 61 percent of the US$112 million due for 2024/2025—have fallen into arrears to the tune of US$70 million or more. One member state owed US$27 million, equivalent to more than one-quarter of the US$112 million annual budget; another owed US$13 million, while another trailed with arrears of US$3 million. This is clearly a serious state of affairs.
It is reported that the Council of Ministers, which oversees EAC operations, is seized with the dire financial crisis, but it is clear that the Summit still will need to intervene before a lasting solution is found.
First things first: The EAC Treaty is too lenient on member states that default on their annual financial contributions to the bloc. While EAC has mechanisms that may be applied, they’re not speedy enough nor do they bite. It must be recommended that the rules be reviewed.
However, when defaults were widespread during the 2020/2021 fiscal year, EAC members were asked to submit their own views on what could be done to address the issue. The entry of the bloc’s newest comer—South Sudan—then in arrears of US$12.4 million, partly informed the decision to establish a new roadmap by the Southern African Development Community (SADC), whose Treaty prescribes suspension for non-paying members. Unfortunately, that recommendation was not adopted in the final Council of Ministers meeting due to the African Union (AU)—whose practices depend on the same lenient basis as those of EAC—where defaulters face no punishments and while the AU and SADC are assessed on financial needs among members, EAC members are rated at a flat rate.
This could partly explain why some members are frequently in arrears, while others are routinely up to date.
All things considered, all is not well at the EAC. Apart from undermining the functions of EALA and the court, the financial crunch has starved EAC of funds such as for institutions like Lake Victoria Basin Commission, the Science and Technology Commission, the Kiswahili Commission, the Health Research Commission and the EAC Statistics Authority.
It is now commendable that member states should move to embrace the idea of extending the principle of equal national representation to the operations of regional institutions and not just elect another troika of the organs of the EAC bloc.
Unless national governments address the underlying causes of this god forbid—the EAC is headed for rough seas. And as someone once observed in the early years of EAC 1.0, the bloc can be casually reigned into slumber and eventually be forgotten, just as the earlier version of itself.
