The South Wing

In 2000, the heads of the formerly united Ugandan, Kenyan, and Tanzanian states met to form the East African Community, an organization which Rwanda and Burundi later joined in order to establish a common market and political union for the region. In November of this year, the heads of the East African states will meet to decide whether to fast track the formation of the East African Federation. Last month, a public opinion poll measuring the favorability of Ugandans, Kenyans, Tanzanians, Rwandans, and Burundians towards fast-tracking the process was completed. All are largely favorable, with the exception of Tanzania.

Once formed, the East African Federation will join the Southern African Development Community (SADC), and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), as regional cooperatives within the African Union. While the East African Federation is likely to initially have parallel functions to other African regional multi-laterals, its stated objectives are more ambitious and seek a greater level of integration than any other on the continent. However, such an ambitious integration agenda comes with numerous challenges of state-capacity, differing stages of development and political will.

Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya, previous British colonial neighbors and closely aligned during the independence movement, established the East African Community (EAC) to pursue a re-unification process. The goal of the EAC is to facilitate the ultimate (and potentially very soon) East African Federation with its own president, parliament, and a fully integrated economy. Rwanda and Burundi, francophone rather than Anglophone, joined in 2007 and are amongst the most enthusiastic to fast-tracking the formation of the Federation.

The goals of the Federation would be economic, political and cultural. Removing trade barriers between African regional neighbors is one of the most common agreements in African multi-laterals and East Africa will be no exception. However, what it is unique is the proposed East African Shilling, a single regional currency for the whole Federation, to replace national currencies. Kenya is the most industrialized of the five, while Tanzania has the largest share of the region’s GDP, and Uganda has the fastest growing market. Tanzania also enjoys the greatest political and economic stability in the region. While Rwanda and Burundi would stand to benefit from a unified currency, Tanzanians appear to be less comfortable to release fiscal autonomy so quickly. The East African Federation may need to follow in the E.U.’s footsteps, of allowing certain members to keep their own currency until the regional one proves its viability.

If the economic integration is approached with an entrepreneurial spirit, there may be substantial gains for all member nations as they gain access to a greater market and increase their local economic activity. But there are also legitimate concerns about job crowding and what will happen as the less educated work-force of some regions move into more developed areas looking for work. Again, Tanzania seems to be most concerned with this issue.

Politically, it is hoped that an East African Federation would have more clout in the international realm – at the United Nations, within the African Union, and in foreign relations with global mega power states, like the U.S., the E.U, and China. This may or may not come into fruition (the already-established African multilaterals do not give reason to expect that the EAF will centralize most diplomatic efforts, but it is still possible). However, pooled governing-resources have another potential – greater capacity to respond to, and mitigate, crisis. And for this, there is notable precedent. The African Union, the continent-wide multilateral body, is currently shouldering the lion’s share of the Darfur peacekeeping process, which however flawed, is a huge responsibility that no single African country would be able to shoulder alone. Perhaps the more notable success would come from the March 2008 SADC’s collective decision to not allow a Chinese shipment of arms headed for Zimbabwe after the election crisis to unload anywhere in the region. Political force successfully impeded an economic transaction and saved unaccountable lives during a time of major governing crisis within Southern Africa without external intervention. While this decision was not an everyday type of action for the SADC, the pooled political will of the multilateral was able to avoid a potentially devastating trade.

If the East African Federation successfully creates a collaborative forum for pooled governing resources, it may find that the next east African crisis may be addressed with limited, or no, external dictation.

Culturally, the unification is part of a larger trend within pan-African artistic cultural expressions to focus on macro identities and common needs, rather than competing based on more micro identities. While conceptually, this is an easy thing to cheer on, in practice, it is complicated by meaningful differences that go beyond language and cultural ceremonies. Some ethnic groups have for generations lagged in educational and economic development compared to others. Even on the country-level, there are notably different literacy levels. When all barriers to migration and labor are removed, East Africa will likely face the same questions other destination-countries throughout the world are struggling to address regarding immigration, the “race-to-the-bottom” amongst the less-educated workforce, and urban crowding. If these development discrepancies are not meaningfully addressed at the onset of the Federation, new resentments between groups could arise that do not currently exist, and thus threaten the cultural component of the Federation’s East African unity.

This November 2009, the EAC Heads of State will meet to decide whether to fast-track the unification process, establishing the East African Federation as a politically united entity in 2010. Currently, Tanzanians seem to be the only ones opposed; they seem to have the most to lose if the unification process is a bumpy road. 4 versus 1 may sound like dim odds for the Tanzanians but as the most populous and geographically largest member of the union, they may get to call many of the shots – an East African Federation without Tanzania would seriously be lacking in perceived legitimacy. Tanzania’s post-independence history is the most peaceful and its economic stability is an essential feature of the proposed federation. Yet, Tanzania’s unique qualifications may be the exact qualities that make its neighbors want to hasten the unification and Tanzania’s exact reason for wanting a slower, incremental process.

Tanzanians’ reluctance to rush into a full-blown integration comes from legitimate concerns and when (or if, for the skeptics) Kenya re-establishes its economic and political leadership in the region, it may share in its neighbor’s concerns. While there may be a shared vision amongst East African leaders for the type of unity to be shared in the far future, the immediate implementation may need to proceed cautiously. If Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and Kenya press Tanzania too hard for rapid federalization, they risk losing a vital member, as Tanzania can abstain from participating in talks (as it did in early 2008), essentially halting meaningful progress towards the Federation’s formation.