EAC to fast-track federation undertaking

Arusha. The East African Community (EAC) has announced that it will fast-track the political confederation process.

Public consultations will be held across all the seven partner states in the next two years, according to EAC secretary-general Peter Mathuki.

Drafting of the EAC Political Federation Constitution will involve various stakeholders amongst them the civil society, local and opinion leaders and the business community.

“They will seek their views on what kind of Political Confederation they would desire for the EAC,” Dr Mathuki said.

He added, as per a dispatch from the EAC secretariat, that the views will later be submitted to the partner states for planning purposes.

The EAC boss revealed this during a meeting with the chairperson of the Constitutional Experts, Justice Benjamin Joses Odoki, at the EAC seat here.

Justice Odoki was accompanied by the deputy chairperson of the Constitutional Experts, Mr Amos Wako, and Prof Idd Ramadhani, who serves as the rapporteur.

The public consultations were held in Burundi in January 2020 and in Uganda in April-May 2021.

However, they were postponed due to the containment measures imposed across the region to mitigate the spread of Covid-19.

Dr Mathuki briefed the experts on the status of integration, noting that the Political Federation was the ultimate goal of the EAC regional integration agenda.

“We are making significant strides in the Common Market, Customs Union and Monetary Union and thus accelerating the process to a political federation is critical,” he said.

The constitutional experts are ultimately expected to deliver a report on the proposed model for EAC Political Confederation and draft the EAC Political Confederation Constitution as a transitional model.

The Political Confederation is a transitional model of the East African Political Federation which was adopted by the EAC Summit of Heads of State in 2017.

Thereafter, the Council of Ministers was directed by the Council to Constitute a Team of Constitutional Experts to Draft the Constitution for the Political Confederation.

The constitutional experts were appointed in January 2019 and comprised two Constitutional Experts and one Constitution Drafting Expert from each partner state.

With the addition of the DR Congo into the bloc last year, the Council of EAC Ministers directed the new member country to submit the names of the Constitutional Experts by March 30th this year.

Ugandan President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni was selected by the Summit to provide “political guidance” to the Constitutional Experts.