Kenyan President William Ruto is openly promoting the creation of the East African Federation, endorsing a lead to achieving formation that his predecessors had avoided or only rarely attempted but which aims to ensure a sizable market for regional goods and services as well as strategic security.
With infrastructural systems crisscrossing the member nations, the community is becoming ever more integrated. An East African Federation is no longer just a pipe dream or a wild speculation. In his Mashujaa Day speech on October 20 in Nairobi, Ruto stated that the question of when had replaced the earlier one of if.
“As we work towards complete integration, the East African Community’s hard geographical frontiers are definitely on their way out. Trade volumes have increased and non-tariff barriers have been reduced, he continued.
The final tenet of the East African Community (EAC) integration process is a political federation, which is followed in that order by a customs union, a common market, and a monetary union.
However, each of the pillars has been difficult to put into practice, which has led skeptics to assert that the federation may continue to be a mirage as it also struggles with conflicting political systems.
President Yoweri Museveni is the main supporter of the federation, despite the fact that Uganda, unlike Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, does not have a limit on the number of presidential terms.
Political integration could unify the seven EAC members under a single political authority, or, as President Museveni suggested on October 9, the area could resemble the US by being divided into various zones with various political authorities and a top-level regional government with specific responsibilities.
The Ugandan president claimed that such a deal may spare the area from ongoing political disputes.