The member states of the East African Community (EAC) are called upon to accelerate political confederation because the people of the region had always lived together.
Uganda’s Acting Chief Justice Richard Butera said on 3 May 2021 that East Africans had always lived together. Therefore, they could not wait for the partner states to create the confederation to continue their interactions. According to him, the citizens are way ahead of their national governments in the integration process.
“East Africans want to live together regardless of national borders,” said Butera. “Governments should therefore strive to catch up and actualize the political confederation as soon as possible,” he said at the Ugandan High Court in Kampala. He had just received the committee of experts tasked with drafting the constitution of the EAC political confederation.
Justice Benjamin Odoki, chairman of the committee of experts tasked with drafting a constitution, had said that a confederation is a model for transition to the political federation of the community.
In the confederal system, some sort of central authority would be put in place to guide policies and activities in the partner states.
The expert team was appointed by the EAC Heads of State Summit in 2018. Its mission is to consult and propose a model constitution for the confederation.
It has just met with civil society, local leaders, opinion leaders and the business community.
The idea of a federation was conceived shortly after independence in the early 1960s. The original East African community of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania collapsed in 1977.
Gerard Rugambwa
