Media houses should take eac as special project

The concern raised recently by media bosses in East African Community (EAC) about the low levels of awareness on the region’s integration points to a faux pas and a hitch in the process. The old EAC is often said to have collapsed because of the regional leaders’ disagreements. The new EAC may fail to take off because of citizen exclusion, the same thing said differently. To appreciate the ordinary people’s understanding of the integration process, let’s look at two incidents: During one of the meetings of the National Implementation Committee for the Common Market Protocol in Kampala, a participant narrated his experience of encountering two joyous traders that had been evicted from Kampala’s Park Yard Market. The traders were jubilating, praising the government for allocating them space on Jinja Road in Kampala to put up a ‘new market’. The source of their joy? A huge billboard announcing the birth of the East African common market. The keyword here was ‘common’ (as in common man). This ‘market’ (the physical place where the billboard was) would serve all the common people in East Africa, so they thought. Another interesting case we encountered while conducting a baseline survey on the free movement of goods within the EAC came from a second-hand shoe trader. The trader was complaining of harassment at the Kenyan border as he tried to cross with his merchandise into Uganda. He could not understand why he was subjected to inspection and taxes, yet radio adverts were talking of trade with no taxes. Now that the media house bosses have realised this lacuna, the buck stops with them. Besides The East African which runs snippets in its ‘Integration Tracker’, the rest of the regional newspapers only give us occasional story-type news about the process. Yet there is a lot that these media houses can and should do. The questions and comments raised by public relations officers from various ministries, departments and agencies during one EAC media meeting betrayed this lacuna even further. For starters, the media houses owe it to East Africans to take EAC as a special project in their editorial plans. A periodic pull-out, the way we have the various products for each reader category, would do the process a great of good. This would highlight such issues as simplified and dissected protocols and their implications, fast tracking the implementation process et al. Even simplified translations into key vernaculars, for print and electronic media. The only translation initiative I have seen was by a women’s organisation, seeking to translate the simplified Common Market Protocol into Kiswahili for the cross-border women traders.Media bosses, over to you. You owe it to us and you have the means to deliver it.The writer is a Uganda-based economic consultant