It is safe to say that the hottest story right now in East Africa is not the on-going political games in Tanzania, the death squads assassinating people in Burundi, the new real estate developments in the City of Kigali or the usual political drama in Uganda.
It is safe to say that the hottest story right now in East Africa is not the on-going political games in Tanzania, the death squads assassinating people in Burundi, the new real estate developments in the City of Kigali or the usual political drama in Uganda.
It is not even the suspected case of an Ebola-related death among the Burundian refugees in Tanzania. It is instead, the issue of Kenya having to import sugar from Uganda.
When Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta was hosted by his Ugandan counterpart Yoweri Kaguta Museveni a week ago, it was announced that the two leaders had agreed on a number of bilateral undertakings. They talked of the construction of an oil pipeline to move oil products from Hoima to Mombasa and the link from Juba to Lamu. The Standard Gauge Railway from Mombasa is also planned to extend to Uganda and Juba before a Southern link to Kigali can be worked on.
The two leaders then went on to announce a deal that will see Uganda exporting sugar to Kenya and in return, Kenya will export beef and dairy products to Uganda. All seemed well as the two leaders smiled for the cameras to capture the photos that would grace front page news dailies in Uganda and Kenya. And then hell broke loose.
The opposition leaders, especially those from sugarcane growing areas, took to social media to trash the deal saying it will kill the business of the local millers and that sugar barons will use the deal to smuggle in cheap sugar from Brazil packaged as Ugandan sugar.
Kenyatta shot back and said, "We would rather import sugar from Uganda than Brazil to support our own and promote regional integration.”
Not so long ago, Ugandan traders were having a hard time getting their sugar into Kenya despite the fact that East African Community members signed the Common Market Protocol that allows each member state to export freely within the region.
At the end of the day, these are the challenges the region needs to address if meaningful integration is to ever be realised.
Every time we are marketing the merits of the East African Community, we mention the combined population of the five countries as a potential market that is more attractive than what we have as individual countries. Kenya ought to be the last country to complain about imports since they have exported almost everything to other East African countries.
Don’t we all now shop in Nakumatt after getting our money from an Equity or Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB)? I will not even mention the insurance companies that are Kenyan and are all over EAC. Despite its financial woes, Kenya Airways remains the giant of the regional skies while when it comes to road transport; the death of Akamba buses gave us the birth of Modern Coast and Mash Poa buses.
A lot of the staff you will find on the shelves of Nakumatt come from Kenya and Kenyan heavy trucks can be seen crossing Namanga into Tanzania and Busia or Malaba to take goods as far as Goma, Bukavu, Juba and Bujumbura. Kenyans should therefore probably allow Uganda to import a few bags of sugar without being worried about their economy being affected.
What is interesting though is that as the debate on the importation of Ugandan sugar was going on, the Kenya Music Movement (KMM) was protesting the lack of airplay of local music. The protests pointed to a bias towards South and West African music and KMM was demanding that media houses should dedicate 70 percent of the airplay to Kenyan music. To stretch their complaint, they added Tanzanian and Ugandan music to the same list.
To be fair, media houses have a role to play in promoting local music in any country. However, what many fear to say is that the current technology has made it harder for us to ignore good music from elsewhere. The good news here is that it is now much easier to learn from the best and to also know where you stand compared to others on a continental and global level.
If there is anything I have a problem with right now, it is the South American soaps that dominate television screens in East Africa. Otherwise, I see nothing wrong with East Africans laughing at Anne Kansiime’s antics or dancing to Sauti Sol’s ballads. As a community, I believe we can afford to share the gems we have without bickering.