by admin
Welcome to EAC Blogs
7:48 am in EAC Updates by admin
The East African Community (EAC) is the regional intergovernmental organisation of the Republics of Kenya, Uganda, the United Republic of Tanzania, Republic of Burundi and Republic of Rwanda with its headquarters in Arusha, Tanzania.
The Treaty for Establishment of the East African Community was signed on 30th November 1999 and entered into force on 7th July 2000 following its ratification by the Original 3 Partner States Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. The Republic of Rwanda and the Republic of Burundi acceded to the EAC Treaty on 18th June 2007 and became full Members of the Community with effect from 1st July 2007.
Aims and Objectives
The EAC aims at widening and deepening co-operation among the Partner States in, among others, political, economic and social fields for their mutual benefit. To this extent the EAC countries established a Customs Union in 2005 and are working towards the establishment of a Common Market by 2010, subsequently a Monetary Union by 2012 and ultimately a Political Federation of the East African States.
Enlargement of the Community
The realization of a large regional economic bloc encompassing Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda with a combined population of 120 million people, land area of 1.85 million sq kilometres and a combined gross domestic product of $ 41 billion, bears great strategic and geopolitical significance and prospects of a renewed and reinvigorated East African Community.
Current status
The regional integration process is at a high pitch at the moment. The encouraging progress of the East African Customs Union, the enlargement of the Community with admission of Rwanda and Burundi, the ongoing negotiations of the East African Common Market as well as the consultations on fast tracking the process towards East African Federation all underscore the serious determination of the East African leadership and citizens to construct a powerful and sustainable East African economic and political bloc.
EAC is celebrating almost 10 yrs and this is a great news for every eastarian ( eastafrican) however we should ask ourself what is the tradeoff between our marginal social benefit vs our marginal social cost.
How significant can this EAC to member states citizen, rather than mobility and commonness, what is our position inline with international stage.
Or are`we just here to be seen and not to be heard? is EAC a social club? a plan B compesation plan? or a regional bloc ready to deliver EAC countries and usher a new era of accountability, governance, democracy and foster development.
EAC need to do more on trade and social development ie movements, remove all the restrictions, on the residents of the states,outside trasde to be done as a bloc, that way we the eac have greater leverage on trade talks and investments in the region.
its a good organization,
that will eveolve for better economic goods, all member states to disregard Nile treaty with unity, let egypt and sudan iniciate the talk, they have to share the conservations costs forests and ecosystem around the Lake.
Bziegnew Mugogo
Alask – USA
Hello Blogmaster and Webmaster!
Hongera to you and the entire EAC web team. The new website is just fantastic! Its layout and content are brilliant and very, very useful indeed. one challenge: when will the Kiswahili version of the website be ready?
I am a very committed East African and I follow the development around regional integration with a huge amount of interest. Thanks to your website, I was able to download and browse the Common Market protocol and its various annexes. I have aquestions (which is probably not for the blog, but maybe you can help either forward it to the right place/person, or better yet, provide an answer which is of general interest:
1. Annex III (Right of Establishment), regulation 9, paragraph 3, page 6 seems to have an incomplete sentence.
2. Annex III (Right of Establishment), regulation 10, paragraph 2 requires the removal of ‘administrative’ restrictions, BUT paragraph 3 talks about ‘restrictions’ needing to be listed and submitted to the Council. Are these other ‘restrictions’ of a ‘legal’ nature? Administrative? Its not clear in the Annex, which opens up room for discretionary interpretation by obstructionists to make life difficult.
I’d appreciate any guidance you may be able to procure for us.
Asante sana!
Dear Manirakiza. Most of the EAC documents at the moment are in English, because that is recognised as the official language of the Community by the EAC Treaty. However there have been proposals to have the Treaty amended to include French as the other official language. There is an ongoing project to create a Kiswahili-version of the Treaty. At the moment however most translations of EAC publications into any other language are done at Partner State level, by ministries responsible for EAC affairs. Please get in touch with your Ministry of EAC in Bujumbura.