Mwapachu takes over EAC chair at a crucial moment

Apr 26, 2006

AT the Seventh Summit of Heads of State of the East African Community (EAC), Ambassador Juma Volter Mwapachu of Tanzania was appointed the Secretary General of the Community.

By Timothy Makokha

AT the Seventh Summit of Heads of State of the East African Community (EAC), Ambassador Juma Volter Mwapachu of Tanzania was appointed the Secretary General of the Community.

Mwapachu replaces Uganda’s Maj. Nuwe Amanya Mushega, whose five-year term of service with the Community ended on March 24.

Even as Mwapachu takes over the leadership of the community, he will have his job well cut out for him. He takes over the mantle at the community’s most crucial moment.

A political federation, the highest form of cooperation, is only five years away, yet there is still growing tension among the partner states over issues as simple as restrictive labour laws and immigration regulations. Despite all the trade protocols signed, East Africans have to get work permits to work in any of the two countries other than their own. Intervention by a secretariat of Council of Ministers is yet to yield any fruits, especially in the face of opposition from national immigration departments.

Other issues that have remained thorny include the handling of tariffs in a manner that allows equitable accrual of benefits to the member states. One year after the Customs Union, a protocol that provides for a programme of elimination of internal tariffs, the arrangement only seems to have spawned endless disputes between the member states.

Uganda and Tanzania hold it that Kenya’s manufacturing sector is more competitive and likely to hurt local manufacturing industries if not protected. Therefore, concessions must be made to benefit the regional trading bloc without putting Tanzania and Uganda at a disadvantage.

But more importantly, an operational Customs Union is a must if the EAC is to achieve a Common Market by 2008. It is expected that Mwapachu’s vast contacts in the region, his early affair with public-private-sector partnership and his advocacy for a strong civil society for sustained development, will come in handy to resolve the impasse.

He comes with a network of high profile contacts across the region. Notable among them in Uganda include Speaker of Parliament Edward Sekandi, the Chief Justice Benjamin Odoki and Principal Judge James Ogoola.

MP John Baptist Kawanga of Masaka Municipality, who was a year behind Mwapachu in law school, says he was popular with the students as well as the university administration.

“Mwapachu served as the Guild President. He was a luminous student, a keen debater and a gifted leader,” Kawanga says. “Mwapachu is a brilliant lawyer. I have no doubt in his appointment as chief of the Community. With all these contacts, what more does one need to make a difference in society?”

Mwapachu is no stranger to the world of business, having served on several boards of both public and private organisations. He served as a director of the board of directors of over seven companies including East African Breweries Limited, Kenya.

His early interaction with the Community in 1999/2000 as chairperson, East African Business Council (an amalgam of private and public business support and lobby organisations in the region), will necessarily inform his understanding of the challenge that is the East African Community.

Mwapachu is also expected to preside over the final ratification before Rwanda and Burundi join as member states. The two countries have been waiting far too long since their application to join the regional bloc.

If he realises that the admission of the two countries is beneficial to the Community, as the case is, Mwapachu is expected to put to work his negotiation skills in having the Summit of Heads of State endorse recommendations of a council of ministers and grant them membership.

Mwapachu’s life spans a full 63 years of time and space, from a very ordinary birth in Mwanza in Tanzania on September 27, 1942, to a joyous childhood and early school shared between Tanga, Ukerewe and Tukuyu, to an active high school career at St Michael’s and St George’s School.

His later years were to be characterised by a vibrant come-of-age intellectualism briskly intertwined with path-finding critical ideology at University College of Dar es Salaam, where he studied and later served as Convocation President for 15 years.

Mwapachu obtained a Bachelors degree in Law from University of East Africa Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania in 1969. He holds a Post Graduate Diploma in International Law, International Institutions and Diplomacy from the Indian Academy of International Law and Diplomacy, New Delhi.

He is a Fellow of Chartered Management Institute, UK since 1981, a Fellow of Academy of Political Science, USA and a member of Society of International Development.

On his graduation in 1969, Mwapachu demonstrated his nationhood by choosing to begin a civil service career in the less lustrous Police Force. Here, Mwapachu recorded his distinction. He was the first Tanzanian graduate to join the Tanzania Police Force, rising through the ranks to serve as assistant Superintendent of Police. He is a lawyer, an industrialist and a banker. Unto his sleeves, Mwapachu has long standing experience in both private and government sectors. As a civil servant, he held different positions in the Ministry of Local Government and Foreign Affairs.

Mwapachu served as a state attorney (1969), a legal secretary in the National Bank of Commerce (1969-1973), a District Development Director (1973-1976), a principal Foreign Service officer and as minister-counsellor in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

At 26, Mwapachu represented Tanzania at the Bulgarian Dimitrov Youth Communist Assembly in 1968. He also represented Tanzania at the OAU Committee of Experts established to consider the legal status of the then Apartheid South Africa under international law in 1976.

Mwapachu cut his diplomatic teeth in India where he was posted as Minister Counsellor, Deputy Head of Mission and Head of Chancery from 1977 to 1980. He also served in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia in a similar posting.

Mwapachu is the longest-serving Convocation President, from August 1988 to December 2003. It had to be his posting as Ambassador to France, with accreditations to Spain, Portugal, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria that cut short his stay at his Alma Mater.



During his 15-year tenure as Convocation President, he inaugurated the biennial symposia in which debates were ordained at the university. Through the symposia, members of the university debated with freedom – any matter of national importance. In the oratory in which Mwapachu was honoured with a Doctor of Literature Honoris Causa in November last year, Abel Ishumi of Faculty of Education at Dar es salaam University hailed his literary prowess as “simply superlative”.

“Mr. Juma Mwapachu is a prolific reader, critic, debater and writer. He has to his personal credit a total of 130 published works,” Ishumi said describing Mwapachu as an ordinary man with extra-ordinary accomplishments.

“He is an enviable lawyer, administrator, manager, diplomat and scholar. But more importantly, Mwapachu is a happily married husband, with children; he finds time to be with his family, to play games, to socialise with friends and, most of all, to do physical exercise,” Ishumi adds.

With a minefield of experience in diplomacy and foreign affairs, Mwapachu’s choice could never have been better. Welcoming him to the regional fold, Abdulrahman Omar Kinana, Speaker of the East Africa Legislative Assembly, said Mwapachu’s endorsement was “ a deserving choice to the Community.”

Mwapachu’s grasp of global issues from his experience and the innumerable academic papers he has authored will come in handy in forming the direction the Community takes.

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});