A lot of mystery, fallacy, myth and a
certain indefinable fear surrounds the EAC
political federation debate. This fear is warranted, from the state centric
realist approach, one can openly be skeptic on how states can ever give up
their sovereignty to form a bigger and a more powerful state. It seems quite an
impossible undertaking given that there is yet a union to gain political
federation, the European Union which has managed to develop some highly
advanced level of deeper integration is yet to achieve political federation
status, so how can a couple of sub-Saharan countries struggling to make a mark
on the international political economy be as ambitious as to hope for a
superior political federation less
than two decades after its revival? One might be forced to ask!
A simple Google search on East Africa federation will give you
very diverse opinions: from ill shaped to very plausible arguments on how the
federation will turn out to be, from western skeptics portending doom for the
East African Community to very optimistic and ambitious debates by East
Africans. Despite the varied debates and arguments one thing that cuts across
and is agreed upon by many is the enormity of this task, all articles ever
written on the EAC does not fail to
mention the enormous changes and challenges that face the individual members of
EAC in establishing this EA federation.
How the political federation in East Africa be like?
Scholars such as Peterson(2005) and
kasasira(2007) believed that by 2013, the EAC plans to have facilitated the
creation of the East African Federation which will be a federal super state where all member countries will keep their own identities with
national parliaments, presidents, and flags, but share a
1. Federal
parliament & cabinet,
2. A
chief justice,
3. A
supreme court, and
4. A
super state president appointed by rotation from the member states.
Are the people of East Africa fully engaged in the integration process?
This people-centered political
federation can only be achieved by heightened levels of engaging the people;
the youth, men, women, children and every individual in the social strata of
the region; this in turn will mean a more informed populace that will speed up
the people owned and people driven EAC integration process. Currently the
avenues through which the EAC policy formulation, orientation and its
subsequent implementation is limited only to a few media houses and the EAC
owned monthly Jumuiya news. A more robust and one on one engagement with the
people involves having open public forums that will adequately engage everyone
in having a say in what decisions and policies reached and pursued by East Africa
as a community. This forum should be running in all the EAST AFRICAN
UNIVERSITIES, the current university and college students will be running the
EAC integration process in a few years and without their full engagement, full
progress and people centered integration will be hard to come by.
Once as a first year student, the
Kenyan ministry of East Africa Community under the leadership of hon. Jeferson
Kingi, and the late MEAC Permanent Secretary Mr. David Nalo held the first ever
EAC integration sensitization forum in Maseno University. As a very naïve and
idealistic first year I wished such forums would be an annual event. I greatly
benefited from the, debate, the EAC Development Strategy (2008-2012), Jumuiya
news and a few other documents that the ministry gave for free. A few weeks later having read the entire MEAC
development strategy I wrote an email to the permanent secretary’s office
expressing my fears and concerns, asking for explanations on certain aspects of
the EAC integration process (read the questions and feedback received from my
email to the permanent secretary here.) It’s
been a whole four years since and there is not a sign of any such forum on EAC
in our campus and it’s a shame that those of us at the university are being cut
out of the EAC integration process.
It’s about time the university
students demanded to be listened to, to be involved, to be consulted and it is
about that time we took an active role in the EAC integration process. Connect,Vuka Border is one initiative that needs to be replicated everywhere and at
every level for our universities to include the EAC week in its academic
calendar and in the process fostering a more robust relationship between the
students body and those in the frontline in running the EAC integration
process.
Sign this petition to
have EAC week included in the varsity calendar.
SIGN PETITION
The EAC integration should not an
elite talk or a purely government officials and ambassadors run process. The mama
mboga talks in roadside stalls should be listened to and acted with the same
vigor that our campus room debates need to be listened to and used as a guide in
shaping the direction of the EAC integration process.
Tweet about this and let all in your network know of the urgency of this matter!
@cvukaborder
#connectVukaBorder
#TeamMasenoUniversity
The writer is a fourth year student International Relation student at
Maseno university.
Twitter handle @Dalle22
Twitter handle @Dalle22
