East African Community - History

History

Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda have had a history of co-operation dating back to the early 20th century. The customs union between Kenya and Uganda in 1917, which the then Tanganyika joined in 1927, was followed by the East African High Commission from 1948 to 1961, the East African Common Services Organization from 1961 to 1967, and then the 1967 to 1977 East African Community. Burundi and Rwanda joined the EAC on 6 July 2009.

Inter-territorial co-operation between the Kenya Colony, the Uganda Protectorate and the Tanganyika Territory was first formalised in 1948 by the East African High Commission. This provided a customs union, a common external tariff, currency and postage; and also dealt with common services in transport and communications, research and education. Following independence, these integrated activities were reconstituted and the High Commission was replaced by the East African Common Services Organisation, which many observers thought would lead to a political federation between the three territories. The new organisation ran into difficulties because of the lack of joint planning and fiscal policy, separate political policies and Kenya's dominant economic position. In 1967 the East African Common Services Organisation was superseded by the East African Community. This body aimed to strengthen the ties between the members through a common market, a common customs tariff and a range of public services so as to achieve balanced economic growth within the region.

In 1977, the East African Community collapsed after ten years. Causes for the collapse included demands by Kenya for more seats than Uganda and Tanzania in decision-making organs, disagreements with Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, and the disparate economic systems of socialism in Tanzania and capitalism in Kenya. The three member states lost over sixty years of co-operation and the benefits of economies of scale, though some Kenyan government officials celebrated the collapse with champagne. Each of the former member states had to embark, at great expense and at lower efficiency, upon the establishment of services and industries that had previously been provided at the Community level.

Later, Presidents Moi of Kenya, Mwinyi of Tanzania, and Museveni of Uganda signed the Treaty for East African Co-operation in Arusha, Tanzania, on 30 November 1993, and established a Tri-partite Commission for Co-operation. A process of re-integration was embarked on involving tripartite programmes of co-operation in political, economic, social and cultural fields, research and technology, defence, security, legal and judicial affairs.

The East African Community was finally revived on November 30, 1999, when the Treaty for its re-establishment was signed. It came into force on July 7, 2000, twenty-three years after the total collapse of the defunct erstwhile Community and its organs. A customs union was signed in March 2004 which commenced on January 1, 2005; Kenya, the region's largest exporter, continued to pay duties on goods entering the other four countries on a declining scale until 2010. A common system of tariffs will apply to goods imported from third-party countries.