Making sense of EAC's Vision 2050

The 17th Ordinary East African Community (EAC) Heads of State Summit, early this month, endorsed and launched the EAC Vision 2050, a blueprint articulating the bloc’s desired future of a prosperous, competitive, secure, stable and politically-united Community. According to a communiqué, the EAC leaders committed to implementing the vision and ensure that by 2050, the bloc will have transformed into an upper-middle income region within a secure and politically united east Africa based on the principles of inclusiveness and accountability. The Vision was initially approved during a Council of Ministers’ meeting in Arusha, in 2014, after which a steering committee was established, to provide quality assurance of the process. Consultations were reportedly undertaken among a multidisciplinary team of experts from the Partner States and the EAC Secretariat with technical inputs from the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA).Consultations focused on identifying priority areas that would underpin the Vision for the next 34 years. Rwanda’s EALA member Dr Odette Nyiramilimo is one of the people who participated in the process. Though she had not yet had a chance to read the final document, Dr Nyiramilimo told The New Times, last week, that the most important aspect that was included, “is that EAC will be developed, at least to the level of middle income countries.” “For that to happen, the political federation would have been achieved,” she said. Dr Nyiramilimo noted that she is optimistic that the process of implementation will go forward, “because we have visionary leaders,” and it is a question of survival. She added, “If we don’t progress quickly in this integration process, our economies would become weaker and weaker over the years... and no leader wants that.” The bloc’s vision is partly informed by the African Union Agenda 2063, which articulates the aspiration of all the people of the continent. As EAC leaders commit to work together on all fronts to achieve shared development goals for the benefit of the region, it is understood that the people of the Community need a long-term vision to achieve full development potential for the region. According to a pre-Summit final draft, the long term perspective enables the region to merge the tactical regional and individual state initiatives into a larger framework for transformation and development and to help in monitoring the progress of the various sectoral initiatives in a quantifiable manner. “The articulation of long term prospect has focused on identifying policy measures and instruments required to facilitate the formulation of plausible vision for the Eastern Africa region,” reads part of the executive summary. Consultations with stakeholders led to the drafting of a comprehensive set of country cases and national workshop reports that captured key issues perceived by the citizens and Partner States. Each of the country cases highlighted practices and key areas for possible regional cooperation, within the overall construct of the EAC long term agenda and within the framework of AU Agenda 2063. EALA MP Peter Mathuki (Kenya), said: “A community without a vision is unrealistic and unpromising. A vision will help those leaders of tomorrow to understand what the leaders of today envisaged about the Community.” Vision 2050 primarily focuses on initiatives that will create gainful employment. Its authors note that it must, therefore, aim to accommodate the development pillars and enablers that would create jobs to absorb the expected expansion of workforce in the next decades. The identified pillars and enablers include: infrastructure and transport network that is easy; fast and cheap means both for people and goods for regional competitiveness; and energy and information technology that are accessible to citizens. Industrialisation, that is built on structural transformation of the industrial and manufacturing, is another key pillar. These pillars and enablers, it was observed, are integral to the very idea of long-term transformation, value addition and growth needed for accelerating momentum for sustained growth over the long term. According to the final document, there will be emphasis on agriculture and rural development that is based on improved agricultural practices, including mechanisation, irrigation, improved seeds and use of fertilisers, among others, in order to ensure increased productivity for food security as well as economic prosperity for the citizenry.In addition, effective natural resource management with enhanced value addition will be given high priority, coupled with human capital development aimed at creating well-educated and healthy people in the region. For the vision to be realised, Mathuki told The New Times, “there must be political will and commitment to achieve it, which I think is there.” The Kenyan politician observed that, cooperation among partner states is key. The implementation of Vision 2050 will be based on periodic concentration with marked segments consisting of phases of five years and addressing specific aspects of the Vision. Regular reviews will be conducted during the implementation process to identify changes that may be necessary in order to increase its implementation effectiveness. “This will be buttressed with systematic monitoring and evaluation frameworks which will continuously generate feedback and remedial actions to make sure implementation is consistently on track,” reads the document. editorial@newtimes.co.rw

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Making sense of EAC's Vision 2050