The East African Federation: A Flawed Future Superpower

The East African Federation (EAF) has received a modest amount of coverage for how important it could be for the future stability of East Africa. It is a proposed unification of six East African countries: Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Uganda, and Burundi. These nations have already made efforts in the past twenty years to integrate their cultures and economies through a regional organization known as the East African Community (EAC). The presence of a unified African power may change how the U.S. approaches foreign policy in the region, as it has the potential to change the power structure of Africa and create a domino effect of changes. China has already made efforts to garner good relations with the East African Community through foreign investment in African businesses in Kenya and Rwanda, which would only further incentivize the U.S. to increase their interest in the region.

In order to understand what is at stake in this part of the world, it would be prudent to understand the background of the political situation in the region. While Africa has generally seen many decades of instability, East African nations have made numerous attempts to collaborate and unify. The original East African Community was created in 1967 and dissolved in 1977. This dissolution was mainly due to political disputes between member nations regarding legislative seats and lack of will for nations to cooperate. There was also a feeling within member states, particularly Tanzania, that the benefits of integration would benefit Kenya the most, as it is the most well-developed country out of the member states. After six years of negotiation throughout the 1990s, the East African Community was reformed in 1999, and has remained active to the present day. The main purpose of the East African Community, according to their government website, EAC.int, “Is widening and deepening cooperation among the Partner States in various key spheres for their mutual benefit. These spheres include political, economic and social.” What unites the six member nations is mainly a shared cultural history, geography, and a shared interest in bringing their nations out of instability and poverty. South Sudan was added to the five original member states in 2016. The EAC has made various reforms to push integration since 2005. A common market and customs union, similar to the European Union system, was enacted in 2010 that allowed free movement of people and goods throughout the member states, and talks began on writing a new constitution for the proposed nation in 2018.

Despite continued cooperation, the EAC and the proposed EAF still face many current and future problems. These problems can be placed into three broad categories: regional politics, economics, and foreign policy. Politically, it has been difficult for the EAC member states to reconcile their individual political systems and unify into a common system. Tanzania, for example, has had a one-party dominant state since 1992, and made a transition to market capitalism relatively late compared to its neighbors in the EAC. Rwanda’s civil conflict in the 1990s led to the rise of Paul Kagame as the linchpin of the country’s political system, becoming a popular authoritarian leader. He has served as the President of Rwanda since his victory in the civil war, and is the Chairman of the EAC Summit and a key figure in the push for unification.

The game theory of political decisions between multiple authoritarian-leaning governments is important to note here, as this is a key obstacle to the unification process. According to Freedom House’s 2018 report on freedom in the world, four out of the six member states of the EAC are rated an aggregate score or 5.5 out of 7 or higher, with South Sudan being the highest with a 7 out of 7 score. These scores rank most of the EAC nations among the least politically free countries in the world. A 2015 paper by Stephen M. Magu, a political science professor at Hampton University, discusses the troubles that politically limited countries have with influencing their leaders, particularly discussing the EAC member states. Magu believes that the effect that normal citizens, or the “domestic audience” have on their leaders’ decision making is low to non-existent in authoritarian countries, and so it would be very easy for EAC national leaders to pull out of the union if anything was unacceptable to their interests. This could also be an excuse for the larger nations like Tanzania and Kenya to leave smaller nations like Rwanda out of certain negotiations. In a sense, non-cooperative behavior would become the dominant strategy of the unification game, even if cooperation would be more mutually beneficial.

Economically, the proposed EAF has structural issues that need to be overcome if the new nation wishes to become a developed country. A 2016 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) report details the vast differences between the economies of the EAC member states. Kenya is the most developed economy by far, with a 2016 GDP of $70.5 billion and a GDP per capita of $1,455; this is twice the GDP per capita of Tanzania, the second biggest EAC economy. The rest of the EAC states are part of the least-developed countries (LDCs) even though their economic growth rates are higher than the world average. The report also states that most of EAC is not industrialized and the majority of its exports are primary goods, namely tea, coffee, gold, and other unrefined metals. This discrepancy in economic condition creates issues of fairness, namely the idea that the rewards of integration would mainly benefit Kenya, as they have most of the economic advantages compared to the rest of the EAC. A successfully unified EAF would have a combined GDP of $155.4 billion, ranking it among countries like Hungary and Azerbaijan. Compared to those countries, however, the EAC has a vastly larger combined population about 173 million people, creating a lot of potential for further growth if industrialization does occur.

Additionally, the push toward globalizing the region poses problems for local workers. If, for example, immigration increases rapidly to the EAF after unification, there are currently very few worker protections to stop local industries being overtaken by foreign companies and workers. Trade unionization and cooperation between workers’ unions in member states has been posed as a solution to this issue, but current organizations lack the strong leadership needed to unite workers across the region (Gona 327). The paper that poses this as a solution was written prior to the enactment of the customs union and common market in 2010, and the lack of free movement of people was cited in the paper one of the biggest reasons why workers have been unable to form effective trade unions. Now that the EAC has enjoyed a decade of free movement, the chances of effective trade unions forming in the EAC and the proposed EAF are much higher.

EAC states have been receiving increased attention from foreign powers, particularly the United States and China. China’s interaction with EAC nations has been mostly cooperative, as the Chinese government has had a recent interest in developing a political and economic relationship with the region. According to Reuters, trade talks between the EAC and China started in June 2019, with the EAC looking to foster a more balanced trade relationship with China by convincing the government to purchase more primary products like avocados. As the EAC arrives closer to unification, a closer relationship with China could mean an increase in foreign direct investment in the region. U.S. actions in the region have been more adversarial, removing duty-free status from clothing imports from Rwanda after Rwanda increased duties on U.S. clothing exports (Owusu, etc. 9). These actions are indicative of the Trump administration’s tendency to use trade policy as a means to put political pressure on other countries. In the case of the EAC, it will become increasingly difficult for the United States put economic pressure on the region as it develops economically and forms a greater relationship with China and other Asian nations.

The proposed EAF faces many challenges in its goal of creating a politically and economically stable union. It’s advantages in resources, population, having a head start in collaboration, and focus on improving public services like infrastructure give the union a much better chance to survive in a global environment. Much of the important diplomatic work toward unification is taking place during the constitutional negotiations in Arusha, Tanzania. It is only a matter of how much the EAC nations are willing to cooperate that determines their future, and if they can become the superpower that they seem to be on paper.

Sources:

Aydiner-Avsar, Nursei, Omemli, Burak, and Quast, Baastian. 2016. “East African Community Regional Integration: Trade and Gender Implications.”; UNCTAD Publications. https://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/ditc2017d2_en.pdf; retrieved Dec. 2, 2019.

East African Community. 2017. “History of the EAC”. https://www.eac.int/eac-history; retrieved Nov. 30, 2019.

Freedom House. 2019. Freedom in the World Countries. https://freedomhouse.org/report/countries-world-freedom-2019. Retrieved Dec. 2, 2019.

Gona, George M. 2007. “Towards a Concrete East African Trade Union Federation: History, Prospects and Constraints” African Studies 66(2–3): 273–294.

Magu, Stephen M. 2015. “Dilemmas of East African Cooperation: Domestic Audience and Prisoner’s Dilemma Approaches on Regional Integration.” African Studies 74(3):388–403.

Miriri, Duncan. Jun. 10, 2019. “China ready for trade talks with East Africa bloc: ambassador to Kenya” Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kenya-china-trade/china-ready-for-trade-talks-with-east-africa-bloc-ambassador-to-kenya-idUSKCN1TB1EC; Retrieved Dec. 2, 2019.

Owusu, Francis, Reboredo, Ricardo, and Carmody, Pádraig. 2019. “Trumping Development: Selective Delinking and Coercive Governmentality in US–Africa Relations” Africa Today 66(1): 2–26.

Ouma, Duncan, Kimani, Tom, and Manyasa, Emmanuel. 2016 “Agricultural Trade and Economic Growth in East African Community” African Journal of Economic Review 4(2): 203–221.