Kenya names team to audit views on EAC trading bloc

Kenya has named a three-man team to assess public concerns over regional integration, amid rising fears that differences in cultures, governance and economic wellbeing across the five-member countries would undermine the ideals of the common market protocol that came into force on Thursday.

The appointment of former Trade minister, Mukhisa Kituyi, political scientist, Adams Oloo, and former East African Legislative Assembly member, Rose Waruhiu, is in line with the East African Community (EAC) secretariat’s directive that each of the five countries names a technical team to detail the expectation and reservations of their citizens.

The committee will interact with players in all sectors of the economy and ordinary citizens and has practically less than one month to compile its findings into a report.

“We have up to August 21 to ensure that the protocol is properly domesticated and its provision popularised among citizens,” EAC minister, Amason Kingi said.

The minister is scheduled to receive today the findings of the Legal Reforms task force appointed last year to bring national laws into line with the common market protocol.

That will pave the way for attorney general Amos Wako to draft a miscellaneous Amendments Bill for presentation to Parliament before the August deadline as ordered by President Mwai Kibaki on Wednesday.

The appointment of the team comes at a time that businesses and firms engaged in cross-border trade are increasingly reporting discrimination and other non-tariff barriers in accessing markets in different parts of the region.

“The principles of the protocol which includes non-discrimination, transparency and sharing of information, must be respected in order to navigate through the challenges and
opportunities the integration presents to the business community,” says Strategy Centre Africa official, Joseph Keiya.

Mr Humphrey Mwangi, acting chief underwriting officer at the African Trade Insurance says the long-standing stereotypes that depicts Kenyans as ‘cunning big brothers’ is likely to undermine cross-border movement of factors of production.

Industrialists maintain that the perception that Kenya has a strong economy is working against their business interests in the early stages of regional exchanges.

“When people see you as a big brother, they also expect you to make huge sacrifices in every undertaking that share with them,” Betty Maina, the Kenya Association of Manufacturers (KAM).

In an earlier presentation, the head of political affairs at the EAC Secretariat, Beatrice Kiraso, said the mutual suspicion that is rife in the region originated from the past regional integration project that collapsed in 1977.

Boycotts

“There are some people in Tanzania who believe that Kenyans cheated them out of the first integration process and it will take time to convince them that this is a new era where things are done differently,” she told Kenyatta University lecturers during a sensitisation campaign.

During the negotiations for custom union and common market protocols, these fears played out openly, sometimes leading to walkouts and boycotts of the sessions.

At every stage of the economic integration, Kenya which has been in the forefront for the revival of the project has always been forced to take the back seat for the negotiations to move forward.

For Tanzania and Uganda to sign the custom union protocol in 2005, Kenya was forced to eliminate all tariffs on their products even as they continued to impose tariffs on Kenyan goods over the last five years.

Uganda only accepted to play along when it was allowed to import some 135 industrial inputs and raw materials (popularly known as Uganda list) duty-free.

Five years later, Tanzania strongly resisted the suggestion to open her capital market, labour market and land access to Kenyans forcing the regional negotiators to postpone the signing of common market protocol twice.

To move forward, Tanzania was granted her wish that partner states retain national laws on matters of access to land, jobs, and right of establishment.

“We are trying to integrate the economies of people of diverse backgrounds, but we are doing very little to integrate their cultures to make them accept one another,” argues Dr Opiyo Arudo, a religious lecturer at Kenyatta University.

Mr Kingi, however, believe that some of these stereotypes are based on low levels of awareness of the aims and objectives of the integration process.

He said Kenya has already finished the first phase of sensitisation and is due to start the second phase after Finance minister, Uhuru Kenyatta, increased the publicity drive’s allocation.

When he officially launched the EAC common market on Wednesday, President Kibaki directed elected leaders and civil servants to explain the common market to ordinary citizens.

“I have noted that despite the huge potential benefits that are inherent in the East African Community integration process, Kenyans are not fully aware about what the Community means to them,” President Kibaki said.

The private sector is also set to hold a two-day conference in Nairobi next week to bring its members up to speed with the common market protocol, focusing on the opportunities presented by freedom of movement of goods, services and capital.