Author: News Editor

The East African Community (EAC) has maintained silence on a recent trade deal by Kenya and the European Union.

Officials of the Secretariat could not comment on the agreement inked this week in Nairobi and witnessed by President William Ruto.

The deal means Kenya has bypassed the fellow EAC member states in implementing the stalled Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between the two sides.

An agreement on the same reached by the EAC and the EU in 2014 after years of negotiations was subject to approval by all countries.

It later stalled as other EAC member states declined to endorse it even as Kenya – then the only middle income country – signed and ratified it.

While Tanzania and Uganda declined to approve the agreement for various reasons, Rwanda signed it but did not ratify the EPA.

In the past all the EAC member states were required to sign and ratify the EPA with the EU for it to come into force.

During the inking of the agreement on Monday, Kenya said that it was not bypassing its fellow member states in the bloc this time around.

Kenya was only using a window opened up by the EAC Heads of State during their summit in February 2021.

The summit, held virtually, allowed the partner states to deal bilaterally with the EU and leave room for others to join in future.

Officials of the EAC reached out on Wednesday declined to comment on the matter on grounds that it was a policy needing the attention of the executives.

“We are aware of the deal, but this is a policy issue,” one senior official told The Citizen, referring its journalist to senior executives who, however, could not be reached.

One of them said it has been a while since the EAC-EU-EPA has come up for discussions at the organisation’s high-level meetings.

The issue could not feature in the recently concluded ministerial session of the sectoral council on trade, industry, finance and investments.

By signing the trade deal, Kenya unlocked immediate duty-free, quota-free access for all its exports to the 27 member EU bloc.

At the same time, the East African nation would be compelled to gradually lower import duty for goods from Europe.

A Tanzanian scholar based in the US, Prof Richard Mshomba, said the “go-it-alone” measure taken by Kenya was enough sign of the existing cracks in the EAC.

“It has revealed, very clearly, that the EAC is not a genuine customs union,” he said, noting that Kenya has also reached a bilateral EPA agreement with the UK.

“These bilateral arrangements would not be possible in a real customs union,” said the economics don teaching at La Salle University in the US.

In a customs union, member countries remove trade barriers among themselves and maintain common external tariffs.

Members of a customs union usually first negotiate among themselves to establish a common position before they negotiate with non-members.

On his part, a Tanzanian business consultant based in Germany, Dr Harrison Mwilima, said a move taken by Kenya was not surprising.

“It is not a coincidence that Kenya decided to go it alone. Countries such as Tanzania, Uganda and Burundi did not want to sign due to, among other things, fear that the free trade proposed through EPA would lead to the killing of their local industries.”

For Kenya, being the only country in the region with a middle-income status, not signing EPA meant that its exports to the EU, including mainly tea, coffee and cut flowers, would face tariffs.

However, he was quick to warn that if other EAC member states will not sign regional EPA, Kenyan future trade engagement with the EU will complicate the EAC economic integration.

He cited cases where and when Kenya starts to allow EU products to enter its market with reduced tariffs.

That would mean that European goods have entered an EAC single market and could potentially be exported to other countries.

Speaking during his visit to Brussels, the EU seat last year, EAC secretary-general Peter Mathuki said the bloc was keen to finalize the EPA agreement.

He said since not all the partner states were in a position to sign, ratify and implement the agreement, there would be some flexibility.

“The Partner States who wish to do so should be able to commence engagements with the EU with a view to starting the EU-EAC-EPA implementation under the principle of variable geometry,” he said.

The AU and the EAC signed a grant agreement of $2 million in facilitating the operation of the EAC-RF at the inaugural Quadripartite Summit held in Luanda, Angola, Tuesday, June 27, 2023.

The first Quadripartite Summit organised over the security crisis in eastern DR Congo took note “with concern the lack of predictable, adequate and sustainable funding” for regional efforts aimed at resolving the crisis.

In this regard, a communique released at the end notes, the Summit directed the AU Commission in coordination with members of the Quadripartite to undertake resource mobilization for the efficient and effective implementation of the Comprehensive Joint Master Plan involving the Luanda roadmap and Nairobi peace process.

The leaders from four regional blocs of the African continent: the EAC, ECCAS, ICGLR and SADC, expressed appreciation to the government Angola for hosting the inaugural Quadripartite Summit.

The agreement was signed on the sidelines of the Quadripartite Summit by EAC Secretary General Peter Mathuki and the AU Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace and Security, Bankole Adeoye.

The leaders also welcomed the announcement by the government of Gabon of $500,000 as part of contributions towards peace efforts in eastern DR Congo; and appealed “to AU Member States to voluntarily contribute financially to peace processes in Africa.”

The leaders applauded Angola and Senegal for their financial support of Euros 1 million, each, to the EAC-led Nairobi Process.

The leaders decided to institutionalize the Quadripartite Summit, as a platform for harmonization and consultations and welcomed the offer by the government of Burundi to host the second Quadripartite Summit in Bujumbura, Burundi. No date was immediately given.

The EAC regional force, or EAC-RF, comprising troops from Kenya, Burundi, Uganda and South Sudan, was deployed to eastern DR Congo in November 2022, with a mandate of supporting peace efforts, especially securing withdrawal of the M23 rebel group.

It occupied various positions vacated by the M23 rebels in North Kivu province. Eastern DR Congo has remained volatile for nearly three decades.

The vast region is home to more than 130 local and foreign armed groups accused of various atrocities and human rights violations.

In the past, multiple interventions especially by the UN’s largest peacekeeping missions failed to end the decades of violence.

In April 2022, Congolese armed groups that participated in the first phase of dialogues in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, noted that the presence and operations of foreign militia forces was a threat to peace in the region. They were referring to, among others, the FDLR-FOCA, an UN-sanctioned genocidal group based in eastern DR Congo for close to three decades.

The FDLR was formed by the masterminds of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. It is, together with its splinter groups, at the heart of the insecurity affecting eastern DR Congo and the region. The Rwandan genocidal militia, is now reportedly openly incorporated into the Congolese national army, and has bases in North Kivu and South Kivu provinces.