The EAC dream must be driven by its people

As Alpha, the sole Rwandan contestant in the ongoing Tuskers project fame, sung his own reggae composition on people and regional integration, he got me thinking how important it was for all of us to internalize the lyrics that made up his compilation. His song, seemingly an East African Community anthem, raised profound questions about the very essence of East African Community’s identity. It talked of a new dawn of borderless East Africa. The EAC integration process must be a people-driven one and not one borne out of the needs of the political class. In order to achieve peace and prosperity for the millions living in East Africa, we must now understand that the attainment of the EAC dream lies in securing an identity that will hold us, the peoples, together as one. Because if people don’t own the EAC agenda, if they will not understand how the bloc will improve their lives, then we might not be able to achieve the integration we envision or will be able to reap the fruits of the bloc as promised. We, the people, can’t pretend that the EA monetary and political union do not make us uneasy or the possibilities of a border-less East Africa doesn’t make us think twice. We wonder what will become of our sheltered businesses and our sheltered lives. These fears will be wiped away by guided education and it’s every country’s leadership’s duty to communicate the dream to their population so that, in the end, the fears are replaced with expectation and hope. In the end every East African citizen should be able to participate in the formation and implementation of the policies that will guide integration. We must learn from the mistakes of the old East African Community of yesteryear. The leaders of the day left out their citizens in the entire process, and the result was its dissolution. So, unlike the former, the new model has to be spearheaded by the citizens and not politicians. The recent EAC monetary union consultative meetings are a good start. The meetings, held in all five partner states, aimed at collecting facts with the aim of developing a monetary union that is people driven. The monetary union, perhaps the most feared stage in the integration process, will be driven by its people’s ideas; maybe this will be the key to its success, because in the end people accept what they helped create. The ideal EAC dream is an ambitious one. It’s achievable but it will take more than politicians signatures; it calls for everyone’s determination in owning the EAC dream and realising that for it to succeed there shall be sweat. The EAC we look forward to is one that will embrace regional differences and integrate them seamlessly into the greater whole. pgathoni@gmail.com The author is a journalist with The New Times