The recent revival and expansion of the East African Community, as a regional trading bloc, from three to five partner members is by any world standards a wise move and a big economical and historical achievement for us, East Africans.
The recent revival and expansion of the East African Community, as a regional trading bloc, from three to five partner members is by any world standards a wise move and a big economical and historical achievement for us, East Africans.
We should take advantage of available opportunities without delay and draw lessons from past performance and experience of similar regional trade and or economic blocs around the world, to help us guard ours against pitfalls and use realised achievements to articulately strategise for the future.
Although economic conditions and times of starting and running such trading blocs in other parts of the world are different, their case studies, management and leadership skills are relevant and worth learning from. They also form a basis for setting our benchmarks according to East African conditions and aspirations.
They will also help to equip us with what to expect from our leaders and officials in the Community and accordingly know what to demand from them in terms of accountability.
We should avoid being mere spectators or mere critics. As long as the Community is for us to benefit, it is fair that we unreservedly be involved in ensuring its success. Every resident of East Africa is relevant. We should consider ourselves similar to passengers in an overloaded bus or boat, who should be concerned and ready to give whatever assistance the driver or captain needs to reduce his/her fatigue, to facilitate him/her to take us safely to our destination.
As he/she needs the passengers’ support throughout the journey, so do our East African Community leaders and officials. We should be with them closely and actively from time to time, updating ourselves with the Community’s developments, translating and implementing its aspirations and objectives in our daily business lives. We should not wait for things to go wrong at the Community, to blame its leaders and officials. We should instead be continually available to contribute useful ideas for preventing wrong things from happening.
Considering that a trading bloc is a group of countries, usually neighbouring each other like the East African Community countries, whose governments enter an agreement to trade with each other more easily, it is a good thing. For it aims at reducing and or limiting or eliminating trade barriers between them, tariff and non tariff ones, including removing quantitative restrictions such as quotas.
By such arrangement, relief and or exemption from tariffs benefits resident businessmen and women in the blocs as they find it easy to export to each other and import from one another freely and or at reduced tariffs. On the contrary, counterparts outside the blocs continue being subjected to tariffs.
Likewise, stringent customs checks are removed thus speeding up movements of vehicles, cargo and people on roads, railways, ports and border points. There is also a relief arrangement for members of counterpart trading blocs to trade with each other at reduced tariffs. Sometimes an arrangement for export quotas between them also exists.
Therefore it is incumbent upon businessmen and women in such countries to know about such protocols and accordingly take advantage of them. For which reason, East Africans, too, should benefit from trading blocs around the world by knowing so and taking advantage.
Similarly, the respective Governments in the region and the countries’ chambers of commerce should tailor their policies, plans and aspirations relevantly. East African Parliaments and the respective local councils in the region also ought to enact relevant laws and by laws capable of providing an enabling environment for regional trade and international trade under the trading blocs’ arrangement to smoothly take place.
They should also enact relevant laws to deter unscrupulous businessmen and women from disturbing, disrupting and or sabotaging the same.
Trading blocs around the world
There is a good number of trading blocs around the world to learn from and take advantage of beginning with ours, the East African Community (EAC). Others include the African Economic Community (AEC), the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Economic Community of Central African States, the Arab Maghreb Union (AMU), the European Union, the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the British Commonwealth, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), the South Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Andean Community of Nations, the proposed Union of South American Nations (USAN), the Carribean Community, the Common Market of South America known as Mercado Comun del Sur (in Spanish)MERCOSUR or Mercado Comun do Sul (in Portuguese) MERCOSUL, the Commonwealth of Independent State (CIS), the Baltic States, the Pacific Community and the Gulf Cooperation Council.
One of the first economic blocs to be established was the German Customs Union (Zollverein) in 1834. It was formed on the basis of the German Confederation which subsequently became the German Empire from 1871.
Thereafter the world saw various other trading blocs springing up in the 1960s, the 1970s and in the 1990s after the collapse of Communism. By 1997, more than 50% of the entire world commerce was conducted under regional trade blocs. The very best to learn from are successful trading blocs in developing countries, jokingly known as the Third World.
As far as East Africans are concerned, we should begin by taking more interest and advantage in the trading opportunities offered by the East African Community. Then try others.