East African integration more crucial than Migingo
Aug 05, 2009
THE Migingo Island dispute recently raised the prospects of war between Kenya and Uganda. Uganda deployed military police, hoisted its flag on the island, prompting the Kenyan parliament to pass a bill authorising President Kibaki to use every resource at
By Dick Kamuganga
THE Migingo Island dispute recently raised the prospects of war between Kenya and Uganda. Uganda deployed military police, hoisted its flag on the island, prompting the Kenyan parliament to pass a bill authorising President Kibaki to use every resource at his disposal to defend Kenya’s territorial integrity.
In addition, ethnically charged rhetoric capable of triggering a wave of ethnic violence ensued disturbingly at high political levels. The Migingo dispute, like all conflicts that have plagued Africa, centres on resource control and exploitation. Uganda said it will not permit Luo Kenyans to fish in Ugandan waters surrounding Migingo after the joint survey results establishing the boundaries are published.
My opinion is, there should not be any form of dispute in the East African Community (EAC) to undermine the vision of the common people and modernisation of the region.
First, because we are entering a new era of world history, where interdependence and interconnectedness defines the modern world in which tensions, conflict and war between neighbouring states should be unacceptable.
Rapidly modernising east Asia has learned the ills of interstate war. The region has the fastest rates of interconnectedness, via free trade and economic integration.
EAC’s unique regional integration model is an opportunity. Therefore, EAC cannot afford to lose the chance to lead the rest of Africa into regional economic blocks as centres of modernisation and prosperity.
In his book The New Asian Hemisphere, Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East, a leading Asian thinker, Kishore Mahbubani, asserts that East Asian powers are on the march to modernity because of learning the pillars of modernisation from the West.
One key pillar is the culture of peace, east Asia’s new world is a world close to zero prospects of interstate war. Guns are silent and factory engines are buzzing. Goods and services, investments, labour are making inroads in the region with China, Japan, India and Korea leading in extending the frontiers of the region’s modernisation.
Africa has been independent for half a century, but has failed to learn the pillars of modernisation. They have failed to learn the culture of peace within its nations and their neighbours. Does Africa’s future have to remain the past of other regions — characterised by interstate tensions, and civil conflicts, low volumes of intra-regional trade and limited economic integration that no longer exists in modern Europe, North America and East Asia? Can African leaders learn from the rest?
Second, conflicts and interstate tensions suffocate the emergence of the middle class. This is society’s agent of modernisation and the smaller the numbers of the middle class, the slower the pace of modernisation. Africa remains the region with the lowest numbers of the middle class explaining its limited pace of modernisation. East Asia’s mammoth middle class (approx. 650 million in China and India) are driving the region’s rapid growth. East Africa with a population of 130 million can borrow a leaf from east Asia and make itself an economic power in Africa.
Tensions within the region can only serve to delay modernity. Third, market size, business environment, quality of infrastructure (human and physical), determine the flow of sustainable foreign investment in the region.
Even in the absence of actual war, tensions, uprooting railway lines in Kenya over Migingo are bad for the region’s reputation. As a potential destination of large industrial market, seeking foreign direct investment (FDI), tension must be diffused.
Africa’s reputation as a high risk for business is often cited as a reason for receiving only a portion of global FDI flows. Fourth, the recent boom in trade between Uganda and Southern Sudan, making Sudan one of Uganda’s leading export destinations in the COMESA region demonstrates how intra-regional disputes can limit the potential volume of intra-regional trade.
Therefore, President Museveni’s speech in Lusaka laying down his vision of an African single market and infrastructure to connect it was timely and is a noble vision. However, the vision should not be overshadowed by short-term national pride at the expense of regional, political and economic competitiveness.
Fifth, the EAC federation provides a strategic platform to create robust regional institutions. These institutions could mitigate the effects of recurring destructive ethnic group competition in the region that has deterred it from extending its frontiers of modernisation.
Sixth, the EAC federation provides a vantage regional configuration for a strategic security sphere of influence in the 21st Century Africa. With a shift in the balance of power, new patterns of international security cooperation emerging and the West no longer capable of protecting its allies, the politics of influence is important.
The penetration of Africa by Arab states through their massive acquisition of land, the Darfur crisis and possible conflicts over the River Nile pose a security threat. A strategic joint regional security is in the interest of the EAC people and their leaders.
The writer is a teaching fellow at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland.
THE Migingo Island dispute recently raised the prospects of war between Kenya and Uganda. Uganda deployed military police, hoisted its flag on the island, prompting the Kenyan parliament to pass a bill authorising President Kibaki to use every resource at his disposal to defend Kenya’s territorial integrity.
In addition, ethnically charged rhetoric capable of triggering a wave of ethnic violence ensued disturbingly at high political levels. The Migingo dispute, like all conflicts that have plagued Africa, centres on resource control and exploitation. Uganda said it will not permit Luo Kenyans to fish in Ugandan waters surrounding Migingo after the joint survey results establishing the boundaries are published.
My opinion is, there should not be any form of dispute in the East African Community (EAC) to undermine the vision of the common people and modernisation of the region.
First, because we are entering a new era of world history, where interdependence and interconnectedness defines the modern world in which tensions, conflict and war between neighbouring states should be unacceptable.
Rapidly modernising east Asia has learned the ills of interstate war. The region has the fastest rates of interconnectedness, via free trade and economic integration.
EAC’s unique regional integration model is an opportunity. Therefore, EAC cannot afford to lose the chance to lead the rest of Africa into regional economic blocks as centres of modernisation and prosperity.
In his book The New Asian Hemisphere, Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East, a leading Asian thinker, Kishore Mahbubani, asserts that East Asian powers are on the march to modernity because of learning the pillars of modernisation from the West.
One key pillar is the culture of peace, east Asia’s new world is a world close to zero prospects of interstate war. Guns are silent and factory engines are buzzing. Goods and services, investments, labour are making inroads in the region with China, Japan, India and Korea leading in extending the frontiers of the region’s modernisation.
Africa has been independent for half a century, but has failed to learn the pillars of modernisation. They have failed to learn the culture of peace within its nations and their neighbours. Does Africa’s future have to remain the past of other regions — characterised by interstate tensions, and civil conflicts, low volumes of intra-regional trade and limited economic integration that no longer exists in modern Europe, North America and East Asia? Can African leaders learn from the rest?
Second, conflicts and interstate tensions suffocate the emergence of the middle class. This is society’s agent of modernisation and the smaller the numbers of the middle class, the slower the pace of modernisation. Africa remains the region with the lowest numbers of the middle class explaining its limited pace of modernisation. East Asia’s mammoth middle class (approx. 650 million in China and India) are driving the region’s rapid growth. East Africa with a population of 130 million can borrow a leaf from east Asia and make itself an economic power in Africa.
Tensions within the region can only serve to delay modernity. Third, market size, business environment, quality of infrastructure (human and physical), determine the flow of sustainable foreign investment in the region.
Even in the absence of actual war, tensions, uprooting railway lines in Kenya over Migingo are bad for the region’s reputation. As a potential destination of large industrial market, seeking foreign direct investment (FDI), tension must be diffused.
Africa’s reputation as a high risk for business is often cited as a reason for receiving only a portion of global FDI flows. Fourth, the recent boom in trade between Uganda and Southern Sudan, making Sudan one of Uganda’s leading export destinations in the COMESA region demonstrates how intra-regional disputes can limit the potential volume of intra-regional trade.
Therefore, President Museveni’s speech in Lusaka laying down his vision of an African single market and infrastructure to connect it was timely and is a noble vision. However, the vision should not be overshadowed by short-term national pride at the expense of regional, political and economic competitiveness.
Fifth, the EAC federation provides a strategic platform to create robust regional institutions. These institutions could mitigate the effects of recurring destructive ethnic group competition in the region that has deterred it from extending its frontiers of modernisation.
Sixth, the EAC federation provides a vantage regional configuration for a strategic security sphere of influence in the 21st Century Africa. With a shift in the balance of power, new patterns of international security cooperation emerging and the West no longer capable of protecting its allies, the politics of influence is important.
The penetration of Africa by Arab states through their massive acquisition of land, the Darfur crisis and possible conflicts over the River Nile pose a security threat. A strategic joint regional security is in the interest of the EAC people and their leaders.
The writer is a teaching fellow at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland.