The checkered East African Community (EAC) integration process recently 'gate-crashed' an otherwise hilarious Saturday late breakfast as my brother woke up swearing he had ‘10 men’ inside  him.

‘Ten men’s hunger’ is our family jargon which we inherited from our grandfather, whenever he wanted to communicate how hungry he was, especially coming in from the pastures.

The latest occasion when my brother played this tune was on the weekend Rwanda hosted Ntare Old Boys (Rwanda and Uganda Chapters) and EAC Heads of State under the Northern Corridor Initiative Projects (NCIP).

The genesis of my brother’s hunger was that he had only been served a quarter slice of a potato and a strip of meat for dinner during their NSOBA Reunion in Kigali. ‘But you are Lions, how can you feed on slices of potatoes and strips of meat?...ku otsiga emiriire yaawe, oraarakwo…’.

This barb came from our host, a relative who works in Kigali, as she served us huge chunks of a ‘concoction’ she calls strammer maxi!

The message in the above barb literally says that if you deviate from your eating habits, you sleep hungry. And this is what happened to the Lions, who instead of a bull-roasting picnic in the wild, say, atop Juru hill, opted for a seated corporate glitterati dinner.

Literal and figurative, it aptly applies to the second category of dignitaries that Rwanda was hosting the first weekend of last month. This is the delegation of EAC leaders, planners and technocrats. Milestones and achievements notwithstanding, the EAC has deviated from its eating habits and, soon will have ‘10 men’s hunger’.

The same week the NCIP Summit was in Kigali, the media ran the ‘stranger-than-fiction’ story that Kenya had banned sugar imports from her neigbouring countries. All her neighbouring countries are either EAC partner states, or Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) partner states, whose central tenet of integration is free trade. Yet this same economic power house of the EAC imports sugar from as far as Brazil. 

As we debated this, someone drew our attention to some pundits argument that EAC needs strong partners to exploit her natural resources such as oil. This argument holds true in the context, where the EAC has deviated from her eating habits. And it is not only on this NCIP or investment alone, but toute la chose integration.

Time to look to herself, learn from partner states

In a commentary a few weeks back, Charles Onyango-Obbo sounded the alarm of the butcher sharpening his knife as the CoW (Coalition of the Willing) slept.

This was at a time when the then Coalition of the Willing (now rebranded Northern Corridor Integration Projects) seemed to have no ‘newsworthy’ activity running. And his parting shot was simple: the EAC needs an East African Institute. Yes. This is what we need.

The secretariat, with its 800 donor-funded meetings in a single year across the region, seems to be a deviation from our eating habits, and soon we shall famish. Manned by the class of East Africans whom in another piece Onyango-Obbo calls ‘the cross-word puzzle’ type, the East African Institute will do the thinking and bleeding for this region. Simple organisational development theory holds that for every organisation to succeed there must be a core leadership ready and committed to bleeding for the cause.

Obbo reveals the secret behind a small island called Britain dominating the world: research and documentation of virtually every nook and corner of the world, in all fields and dimensions.

And the EAC need not look overseas for inspiration. One of her partner states, Rwanda is a living benchmark in ‘risking’ the unbeaten path, venturing into the unknown, defying convention and cutting across the grain.

From her political system to communal work, Rwanda has adopted and contextualised universal principles and values to the age-old cultural milieu of her people.

The much riled Gacaca courts achieved what conventional ‘international judicial organs’ would only manage in 300 years and trillion-dollar budgets. 

These home-grown initiatives as they are called, is what the EAC needs. And the starting point is the East African Institute. Located in the legendary Gitega town of Burundi, it should become the centre of our renaissance, with Summits and ‘high-level’ meetings taking the form of Rwanda’s Umushyikirano, the citizens’ forum where they interact with leaders and hold them accountable. And building on the theory of The Power of Numbers, the institute will be fully financed by EAC mobilised resources. It is possible.

All we need is an EAC Integration Fund, into which the roadside maize-roaster drops a coin the same way a telecom multinational drops 2 per cent of every tax levied on its business. And how about our social security funds financing such infrastructure programmes as the standard gauge railway?  Watch this space.

The author is a partner at Peers Consult Kampala and CET Consulting, Kigali.