The East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) will meet here in Kigali next week, for its plenary session. There is something more interesting than these proceedings. Was it not rather weird to read that Sudan (Khartoum) has applied to join the East African Community (EAC) even before South Sudan?

Apparently in June, Pres. Omar Al Bashir of Sudan wrote to the current chairperson of the EAC Summit, Pres. Pierre Nkurunziza on this matter. One newspaper reported that the folks at Arusha (secretariat) are now scratching their heads over this issue. They don’t want to appear Islamophobic by refusing and yet others feel Southern Sudan should be the one to join first.  Other challenges include the fact that Sudan is predominantly a Muslim country and has Arabic as its official language. The community already has enough language troubles with Burundi lobbying for the inclusion of French among the recognised official languages.

Before this can go away, the guys at the secretariat should not be shocked to receive more applications from places like Kinshasa and Addis Ababa or even Mogadishu. Before we got here we had a community of three countries. It later expanded to include Rwanda and Burundi in 2007.

What therefore is the way forward for the community? The brainstorming, ought to be about whether to go for expansion or consolidation of the present through further integration. Do the people at the EAC secretariat have a clue as to where our ship is headed? More members or more brotherliness!

If you were to ask me what my stand (not that it matters) on all this is, I would say I go for further integration and a freeze on the expansion. My choice is remised on the preference for quality instead of quantity. I would rather continue improving my Swahili so that I can speak with my brothers in Mombasa or Moshi than figuring out where to take Arabic lessons so as to communicate with someone from Sudan.

I am not entirely opposed to the expansion of the community. The business would crucify me for exactly that. I just believe the community is better off nurturing its identity, its soul before growing any bigger. We are already fairing poorly as far as integration is concerned. Even Swahili the language that is supposed to unite us is hardly spoken in Uganda one of the original members of the bloc. Southern Sudan is not part of the EAC yet already gets more press coverage in the regional media than Burundi which joined at the same time with Rwanda.

On Thursday an Akamba bus from Kampala to Kigali was involved in an accident in Kabale, Uganda claiming ten lives. However in the press reports I read from a Ugandan paper, mention was only made of a British couple that was on the bus. I have used such buses several times and it is a pity that a journalist sees no point in confirming whether the different Kenyans, Rwandans, Burundians and Ugandans on the bus were alright.

If the different East Africans on a bus involved in a terrible accident are inconsequential then what business do we have expanding? Why should a father continue to sire children when he cannot remember the names of those alive?

How do you explain the fact that Kenya’s Equity Bank now has four branches in South Sudan and none in Rwanda yet? A lot of focus is placed on making life easy for the business community to spread out and make more profits than for the ordinary wananchi to integrate.

Many like to project the EAC along the lines of the European Union. The EU has got more members than the EAC but more importantly, it has crucial lessons for us as well. The EU is dealing with serious financial problems that seem to have pitted the richer members against the poorer ones.

The debt crisis effects on what is often referred to as the ‘PIGS’ (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain) is bringing the community on its knees. The expansion of the EU has created the problem of multiculturalism; an obsession for the right wing politicians.

In brief, we are better off working on our relationships and growing the EAC brand. I think we can find ways of trading with Sudan, Ethiopia or DRC without necessarily admitting them into the community. Yes you can have a nice relationship with your neighbour without them sleeping in your bed and asking you for a toothbrush in the morning!

Email: ssenyonga@gmail.com
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