The last two decades marked a significant number of interstate conflicts in the great lakes region including complex liberation wars of Rwanda, DRC, and crush of allied forces (Uganda & Rwandan troops) on a foreign territory in Eastern Congo in 1999 & the current stalemate over Migingo Island between Kenya-Uganda.
The Migingo Island dispute recently raised the prospects of war between Kenya & Uganda to significant levels. Apparently Uganda deployed military police, hoisted its flag on the island, prompting Kenyan Parliament to pass a bill authorizing President Kibaki to use every resource at his disposal to defend its territorial integrity & ethnically charged rhetoric capable of triggering a wave of ethnic & tribal violence ensued disturbingly at high political levels.
Migingo dispute like all conflicts that have plagued Africa is characteristically centered on resource control & exploitation, precisely, the fishing industry on Lake Victoria (Apparently, Uganda indicated that it will not permit Luo Kenyans to fish in Ugandan waters surrounding Migingo after the joint survey results establishing the boundaries are published).
My opinion is, there shouldn’t be any form of dispute in the EAC to fundamentally undermine the strategic vision of the common people & modernization of the region.
First, because we are entering a new era of world history, where interdependence & interconnectedness defines the modern world therefore tensions, conflict & war between neighboring states should be deligitimized.
Rapidly modernizing regions of East Asia have learned the ills of interstate war & conflict on their quest for modernization & the region has the fastest rates of interconnectedness, via free trade & economic integration. EAC with its unique regional integration model is at an opportune moment for leading the rest of Africa & cannot once again afford to squander this opportunity to lead Africa into new era of increasing importance of regional economic blocks as centers of modernization & power.
In his book “The New Asian Hemisphere, Irresistible Shift of Global Power to the East” a leading Asian thinker Kishore Mahbubani has asserted that the East Asian powers are on the match to modernity because they have learned the pillars of modernization from the West.
Key of these pillars is the culture of peace in which East Asia’s new world is a world close to zero prospects of interstate war. Guns are silent & its factory engines that are buzzing & movement of goods & services, investments and labor are making inroads in the region with China, Japan, India, and Korea leading the rest in extending the frontiers of economic integration.
Largely Africa has been independent for more than half a century now, why do other states & regions modernize faster than itself? Why does Africa future remain the past of other regions characterized by shallow in-depth of trade & economic integration, regional & interstate tensions, and civil conflicts that no longer existed in modern Europe, North America & recently East Asia? Can African leaders learn from the rest?
Second, any form of conflict or interstate tensions suffocates the emergence of the middle class, the society’s agents of modernization. Africa remains the region with the lowest numbers of the middle class in the world explaining its limited pace of modernization (the higher the numbers of the middle class the faster the pace of modernization in any country or region).
The mammoth of middle class in China & India (close to 650 million people) are behind the rapid rise of these powers and the region as a centre of gravity of the global economy & future political power. The region provides great lessons for EAC people & their leaders that size matters along with numbers of middle class created & neighboring state tensions only serve to delay the matching forward of close to 130 million in the region to modernity
Third, middle class numbers, size of market, & absence of regional tensions (business environment ratings) determine the quality of region’s foreign investment. Even in absence of actual war, tensions, uprooting of regional infrastructure (railway lines in Kenya) over Migingo Island are bad for the region’s reputation in attracting sustainable large scale market seeking foreign industrial investments & bad for native investments too. Africa’s reputation as high risk for business is often cited as the reason why it receives only a portion of Global FDI flows ($ 61 billion (4.2%) of $ 1.5 trillion of FDI flows in 2008)
Fourth, the recent boom in trade between Uganda & Southern Sudan demonstrates how intra-regional disputes can limit a trade potential of the region. After stabilization of Southern Sudan, trade between the two neighbors grew by 80 percent in favor of Uganda suddenly Sudan is one of the important trading partners of Uganda in COMESA region. Intra-regional wars, conflicts & tensions do hurt intra-regional trade volume.
President Museveni, in his timely speech recently in Lusaka Zambia laid down his African single market vision & infrastructure that connects it, a noble vision but only if not overshadowed by short term national pride at the expense of regional, political and economic competitiveness.
Fifth, because the region has the highest propensity for destructive ethnic group competition in the world, the vision of EAC federation provides a farsighted platform through taking advantage to create regional robust institutions that could mitigate the adverse effects of destructive ethnic group competition & lock in ethnic fractionalization that has deterred the region from extending it frontiers of modernization.
Sixth, EAC is at vantage point in a strategic security sphere of influence for the next 21st century world. The balance of power is shifting in the world, the West is no longer capable of protecting its allies, visa vie the emerging new centers of power & patterns of international security. The increasing penetration of the Arab World in Sub Saharan Africa (through state enterprises massively acquiring land resources), the Darfur Crisis, possible conflicts over water, River Nile, Arms Race in the Middle East (a possible Nuclear Armed Iran), a strategic joint regional security agenda will guarantee EAC`s influence on the continent & must be of interest to its leaders to pursue jointly & strategically.
Mahmood Mamdani, in his book “Good Muslim Bad Muslim-An African Perspective” has asserted that “civilization & therefore modernization is a constant creation whereby we gradually expand the boundaries of community, the boundaries of those with whom we share the world” hence the charges over Migingo is not helpful for the process of integrating & modernizing the EAC, no matter the reasons the people of two countries have in mind.
