By Samuel Kamndaya
The Ministry of East African Community (EAC) Cooperation is undertaking a countrywide campaign to educate Tanzanians on the benefits and challenges of the region’s integration.

The move is meant to equip Tanzanians with knowledge of what the EAC integration process entail, its challenges and how the country may benefit from opportunities brought by the integration, according to the ministry’s permanent secretary, Dr Stergomena Tax.

“Many Tanzanians are still ignorant of what the EAC integration process entails…it is in this view that we are aggressively undertaking a countrywide campaign to educate them,” Dr Tax said in Dar es Salaam on Saturday at a seminar for senior journalists.

The one-day seminar was meant to acquaint them with the status of the region’s integration.
With gross ignorance, a majority of Tanzanians tend to view the EAC integration process from the negative side of it, ignoring the benefits.

Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda established the EAC Customs Union (EAC-CU) in 2005 as the first step to the countries’ integration process. The EAC-CU allowed for a free trade in goods within partner states. Rwanda and Burundi joined the region later and, together with the three founding nations, the five countries embarked on the second integration stage – the Common Market – in July 2010.

The EAC-CM creates for free movement of goods, services, labour and capital.
With gross ignorance, some Tanzanians perceive the EAC-CM to mean that their jobs will be taken up by Kenyans and Uganda. They tend to ignore the benefits of an expanded market of 126 million people and the fact that it also gives Tanzanians a chance to go and look for jobs in other EAC partner states and receive all the benefits that locals do.
Available data indicate that during the past five years of operationalisation of the EAC-CU, intra-trade among partner has gone up from $2.218billion in 2005 to $3.477 in 2009.

According to Dr Tax, apart from journalists, the ministry will also train government officials, policymakers, academicians, civil society organizations and businesspeople as well as their associations among others.
“We hope reaching out to the people will help to wipe out unnecessary fears that the EAC-CM is a bad thing for Tanzanians as some quarters in the society would like people to believe,” she said.

Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites