I would name it ‘Nguzo’. From a marketing and nationalist perspective, the latest kid on the vehicle block in East Africa, the Mobius, would appeal to us if named ‘Nguzo’. 

‘Nguzo’ is Kiswahili for pillar, allowing other dialects in the region to perceive and nickname it in their own context, such as ‘Enyomyo’, ‘Mpagi’, et al.

Our East African Community (EAC) anthem asserts ‘Umoja wetu ni nguzo yetu’. Simply put, we must conceptualise it as the pillar of the socio-economic transformation of East Africa, the way the Volkswagen resurrected post-war Germany. What led the Germans to reconstruction was the leadership’s drive to produce a vehicle that the every German could afford for their primary needs; family transport.

And this approach to economic development explains the country’s current economic might and technological superiority. Today, Germany is the economic powerhouse of Europe not by accident. The leaders never entrusted their reconstruction to market forces, the very reason they evolved their own unique economic model and ideology, the social market economy.

The lesson for East Africa here is that the current policy of the common external tariff, which is a tool used under liberal free market economics, is one of the many faux pas of our integration process. Integration is not merely for harmonisation of taxes, laws, policies and other issues in the legal and regulatory regime; integration means bringing our strengths together to mitigate our individual weakness and take advantage of the increased opportunity, thus resilience against common threats.

‘Made in East Africa’ for East Africans: harmonised production

The youthful designer of the Mobius, Joel Jackson was driven by the need to provide an affordable, functional vehicle for the rural East African. The onus is now upon us.

EAC governments and planners need to interest Mobius Motors into a public-private partnership that will enable massive production of the vehicle for the EAC market in three major models: a 4-seater, 5-door Sedan (saloon); the current 8-seater transporter; and a 14-seater transporter.

Cargo versions of one tonne and three tonnes would be the next initiative.

Let this be the subject of the EAC summits, conferences, workshops. The key issues to focus on here will include, inter alia; evoking the infant-industry protection clause to minimise the importation of cheap used vehicles that outcompete the Mobius; evoking all our environmental and health regulations to limit the age of used vehicles into the EAC to three years post-first registration and harmonisation of local-content production to give the car an EAC ‘feel’.

Besides imported components, mainly the powerhouse and the transmission, each EAC Member State could be assigned components to manufacture, according to her technological capacity: glasses, suspension, radiator, Made in Kenya; steel-frame bars Made in Uganda; trimmings Made in Burundi; and mild-steel plates Made in Rwanda; paint, tyres, moldings, Made in Tanzania.

There should also be exploration of possibility and feasibility of merging Kenya’s Mobius project with the Kiira EV programme at Makerere University in Uganda.

With sovereign venture capital financing, tariff and non-tariff measures against cheap imports, massive production of the Mobius will enable us afford the vehicle, protect our environment, besides creating jobs, skills and income along the value chain.

The money we spend on used pollutants that we import cheaply can be spent on a home-grown vehicle, with an internal multiplier effect in the EAC economy. This is the only meaningful approach to EAC integration.

We must refocus our thinking and efforts towards harmonised intra-EAC production in the key sectors. Otherwise, we shall stay bickering since each country seeks to increase import tax revenue as evidenced in the current disharmony over the common external tariffs and Kenyan vehicles being denied EAC tax rates. It actually dates back to the Comesa days.

We had a hard time convincing Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) that Kenyan-assembled buses and omnibuses qualified for Comesa import duty rates by virtue of their local content level. URA argued that "it is the engine that makes the vehicle…and it is from Japan, so this is not a Comesa good, according to the Comesa rules of origin”. Protection of turf, revenue, market, jobs, patronage, etc, while preaching EAC integration…

And this will stay unchanged unless we redirect our development and integration path from the liberal, free market school to the planned, social market economy that resurrected Germany from her ashes.

The writer is a Ugandan-based commentator on EAC affairs

Email: amold@uneca.org