The Democratic Republic of Congo is set to become a member of the East African Community, a decision formalised by the bloc’s presidents when they meet on 29 March.
The EAC Council of Ministers last year approved DRC’s application after Kinshasa reportedly ticked all the boxes required to qualify for membership.
The EAC Summit of six presidents chaired by Kenya’s former EAC Affairs and Regional Development Cabinet Secretary Adan Mohamed endorsed DRC during an extraordinary meeting on November 22, 2021, in Arusha, Tanzania.
EAC is one of the most vibrant and best performing in Africa, this is according to the African Regional Integration Index which ranks blocs on five aspects of integration – trade, productivity, macroeconomic, infrastructural, and movement of people.
Currently, it has six members: Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda.
East Africa’s integration is envisioned under four pillars. These are the customs union, the common market, the monetary union, and the political federation.
So far, the bloc has been implementing protocols on a customs union and a common market. These have helped improve trade and investments in the region since 2006 and boosted country relations.
The entry of DRC to the EAC bloc will prompt the common market of the community/customs union to grow dramatically from 180 million to 270 million people.
Secondly, all of Congo’s raw materials, including the most critical for harnessing clean energy in the era of combating global warming, will suddenly become locally available to the East African countries at their different stages of industrial development.
Citizens of space-constrained EAC member states will be able to grow food in the extensive fertile soils of the Congo that are abundantly watered by nature.
Additionally, free movement will enable hundreds of thousands of our young adults fathered by Ugandan soldiers with Congolese women one and a half to two decades ago to choose whether to complete their growth process/education in their fatherland or stay in their motherland.
As the EAC progresses to a federation, the little matter of $20 billion Uganda owes to Congo, which started as $10 billion following some crazy international court order will automatically die off, also the poorest East African peasant/slum dweller will have mahogany and ebony to make furniture and finishing fittings for their homes.
Further, all seven EAC members can just develop one power dam at Inga Falls to produce all the electricity they will need for all their factories, homes railways, and vehicles as the world automakers speed up the outlawing of fuel-burning vehicles.
Today, the world is still horrified at the killing of six million Jews 77 years ago but knows little about the killing of six million Congolese over the past 27 years in proxy resource wars.
The life of our Congolese brothers and sisters would be greatly revalued as the EAC heads to the federation stage. But the reverse could happen if DRC’s joining causes the other East Africans’ lives to be devalued, by the forces that devalued Congolese lives over two centuries.
The expected East African Federation, a state stretching from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean, could easily become the most unstable state as it may not be prepared to take on the far more powerful forces that have been finding it easy harvesting the stupendous resources of DR Congo.
Even without/before the creation of the federation, the EAC having Kinshasa and Juba governments that are unable to govern their states, might expose the community’s limitations in getting its principles and policies recognised across the territory and erode the confidence even the older members have been having in it.