Founders of the original East African Community (EAC): President Milton Obote of Uganda (left), President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania (centre) and President Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya. (File photo).
By Mboneko Munyaga
Time has come for member states to decide whether they need the East African Community (EAC) to continue as a Regional Economic Cooperation (REC) bloc or simply disband it and let each partner go their way.
The views were expressed by a number of respondents who were interviewed by The Arusha News recently concerning EAC’s financial woes that have made members of the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) to go four months without their salaries. Some EAC members of staff have been reportedly evicted by landlords for failure to pay housing rent.
“The problem with the EAC is that it has made the normal to be the abnormal and the abnormal to be the new normal,” said a respondent who did not want his name revealed for privacy reasons.
Asked to clarify further, the respondent said Article 6 of the EAC Treaty was very clear concerning what should be done to members who defaulted on remitting their membership fees.
However, he said, of the current eight partners, only three, the founder states of Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda steadily pay their fees while the other five, with the exception of Rwanda, at least, appeared not to care much about their obligation to EAC membership, but demand rights.
EAC members are hosts Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, DR Congo, Rwanda, Somalia and South Sudan. Each member is supposed to pay dollars 7.1 million annually to support the EAC budget, with development partners also chipping in. However, in fiscal 2025/26, the EAC has received about 40 per cent only as fees, being mainly contributions from Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda and partly from Rwanda.
Apart from financial turbulence, there is little to almost none mutual trust among some of the EAC member states, said the source further. Kigali is believed to back the M23 rebels who have for years, battled government forces in eastern DRC. Since joining the EAC in 2022, Kinshasa has contributed dollars 1.0 million only as fees, amid rumours that the mineral rich country mulls pulling out of the EAC altogether.
Relations are also tense between neighbours Rwanda and Burundi, the two members of the EAC that are culturally more homogeneous but with very acidic relations. Membership to the EAC has apparently not helped to ease matters among the acrimonious partners to enable the bloc move smoothly towards deeper cooperation, including now, a political confederation after the Treaty goal of a federated East Africa appeared rather too ambitious.
The EAC Summit was supposed to convene in February but has now been pushed forwards to April, again with no clear indication that it is going to be held. The Summit was supposed to confirm the appointment of a new Secretary General (SG) to succeed Kenya’s outgoing SG, Ms Veronica Nduva, who was sworn-in on June 7, 2024 and became the first female to hold the position of EAC’s principal executive officer.
According to rotational rules of the EAC, the new SG was supposed to come from South Sudan, which is a chronic membership fee defaulter. There is talk now that the new SG should come from either Tanzania or Uganda, which would again shake the EAC’s fairness rules to the core.
Similarly, President William Ruto of Kenya was supposed to hand over chairmanship of the Summit to Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud. Again, Somalia is a notorious membership fee defaulter. Under the circumstances, how can the EAC helms be entrusted to a member who shows no serious commitment to partnership ideals?
As such, there have been diplomatic undercurrents that the chairmanship should go to Tanzania, again breaking with tradition as the chairmanship usually goes to the country of the Summit’s Rapporteur. Currently, the Summit Rapporteur is from Somalia.
It is not the first time that the EAC has landed into a financial storm but the current crisis appears to stretch endurance to its very limits. To compound matters, a number of EAC members of staff are due for statutory retirement, along with the cost and challenge of hiring new workers.
Some analysts fear that the way matters are, there is a very high risk and probability that development partners too could withhold funding, plunging the community into even deeper financial crisis that shall invariably affect the implementation of regional development projects as well as deeper integration.
Attempts to reach the EAC secretariat for comment proved futile but whatever the case, the EAC this time around, appears to be in serious existential quagmire that will require both high-stakes level political and diplomatic dexterity to get out of.
