East African Community had a strong 2014, what next?

OWN VIEW



Yes, there was a discouraging wrangle in the East African Legislative Assembly (Assembly) and yes, al-Shabaab attacks again raised concerns over Kenya's as well as the wider East African Community's security.

But the Community's overall 2014 performance had some positives whose end product impacts on the future of the five-member regional bloc.

The past 12 months saw no violent inter-state conflict and, in a way, the EAC is open for business in 2015. Minus al-Shabaab's terror in Kenya, the relative peace and stability remains critical in attracting investments to the region.

What's more, the recent respite in the Legislative arm of the Community also puts east Africans' minds at ease as EALA is now expected to concentrate and deliver on its legislative responsibilities.
So important was the call by new Speaker, Daniel Kidega, when, after taking charge, vowed to bring unity in a house previously dented by members' disapproval of his predecessor.

The extended wrangle over Margaret Zziwa's alleged abuse of office had threatened to erode east Africans' trust in the House. With new trusted and trusting EALA leadership, hopefully, 2015 will bode well for the region.

The positive and constant hustle and a bustle by the pace setters of the Northern Corridor - Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda - continued to accelerate integration, boost trade, and enhance security.

The trio's initiatives were a beacon of hope, and a sign of what the future probably holds. Among others, looking to cap off 2014 with an 'unforgettable flash,' the leaders of Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and South Sudan, during December's 8th northern corridor integration projects summit, signed an MOU on management of northern corridor air space, among others.

The deal will deliver in the development of the infrastructure for transmission, power trade, and significantly reduce the region's cost of air travel by 40 percent.

The leaders also directed their ministers to expedite ratification of the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) protocol.

The SGR, despite small start-up hitches here and there, as common with nearly all gigantic projects, will in future supplement the bloc's road transport and increase efficiency especially by providing landlocked economies (Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi) a better and faster access to Kenya's maritime port of Mombasa.

With an envisaged high design standard, the $3.6 billion double-track SGR (1,435mm), 1,890 km from Mombasa to Kigali line is expected to transform transport logistics in the region, stimulate economic development and benefit all east Africans.

In February, the EAC issued regulations to enhance the operationalization of the EAC standardization, quality assurance, metrology and testing Act (SQMT), to facilitate regional trade. The regulations, among others, will provide consumer confidence of products traded in the region.

That same month, a new tool, a Scorecard, to assess progress toward developing the EAC Common Market was launched. It measures Partner States' compliance to the free movement of capital, services and goods.

At its launch in Arusha, EAC Secretary General, Amb. Sezibera said: "The scorecard is not about pointing fingers, or apportioning blame. It is about identifying areas where we are doing well and strengthening them".

In 2015 and beyond, the Scorecard will help identify areas where reforms are required to meet expectations in the bloc's integration agenda.

It is expected to also foster peer learning and facilitate the adoption of best practice in the region, thus helping fortify the regional market, grow the private sector and deliver benefits to consumers.

Also, tourism officials from Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, met to mull over thorny issues that afflicted the sector since 2010. That the meeting happened was in itself an achievement.

Outstanding among the issues that the ministers haggled over was that countries were denying entry of tourist vehicles registered in others'; cross border cooperation in wildlife law enforcement; and harassment of driver guides at border crossings; as well as disparities in fees charged. Ironing out these issues will impact on the bloc's tourism sector in 2015 and further.

The urgency and importance of cutting donor dependence was reiterated in 2014. Of the $117.5 million 2013/2014 budget, EAC countries contributed $37.2 million and donors, $79.8 million.

In March, Sezibera urged the Summit to adopt the alternative financing mechanism of 1% of customs revenue as earlier proposed so as to provide for financial solidarity and equity, key tenets of the integration process.

Some countries are now mobilizing domestic resources, either through infrastructure levies, or through setting aside monies from their own budgets," said Sezibera.
"Secondly, because of good macro-economic management, our countries are able to borrow from capital markets. Rwanda has issued bonds. Kenya did the same and Tanzania will do the same".

Furthermore, the March launching of the EAC Payment and Settlement Systems Integration Project (EAC-PSSIP), an important project in light of the proposed East African Monetary Union (EAMU), the third stage of EAC integration, was important.

The US$23 million EAC-PSSIP project aims to enhance convergence and regional integration of payment and settlement systems; strengthen a harmonized legislative and regulatory financial sector; and build capacities in EAC countries.

The project, said Dr. Enos Bukuku, EAC's Deputy Secretary General (Planning and Infrastructure), is a requirement for the development and implementation of secure, efficient, reliable and integrated payment and settlement system to ensure efficient flow of financial transactions within the Monetary Union.

Collaborating on security

When Kenya, a gateway to most landlocked EAC partner states, hurts there is no doubt that others too feel the pain. The pain inflicted by Al-Shabaab militants on Kenya is a threat to Uganda and Rwanda. It was critical, when in October, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda - and Ethiopia - contributed the bulk of a now ready-to-deploy military fighting force of 5,000 troops under the Eastern Africa Standby Force (EASF).

EPAs

The negotiations on Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with the EU that started in 2007 were completed.

It is the first time that the Community negotiated terms of trade with Europe and the deal is better than nothing.

Even though the real benefits to EAC will have to be seen rather than expected, concluding the deal was significant as it ended the long-drawn-out and wearisome process of negotiations.

The deal, it is hoped, will eventually provide legal certainty for businesses and open a long-term perspective for free and unlimited access to the EU market for products from the EAC.

In November, the East African Trade and Investment Hub, a regional programme intended to increase food security and ramp up trade and investment between the US and east Africa was launched.

The Hub, it is hoped, will assist EAC's private sector to engage with government in finding practical solutions to constraints to trade and investment, as well as build awareness around opportunities for African and U.S. firms to increase trade, expand business partnerships, and invest in east Africa.

On December 5, the International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor withdrew the case against Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta. Despite a lurking chance the prosecutors may bring back charges, the collapse of the case was a welcome moment for EAC leaders, and citizens, who all the time disagreed with the trial.

Bad news

Yes, the bloc largely stood on the weak side during 2014 and, arguably, apart from the Northern Corridor initiatives whose achievements will ultimately benefit the whole region, little else was really exciting.

For once, the ill of corruption remained a nagging burden. EAC countries generally continued to perform poorly in the fight against corruption with none surpassing the 50 per cent threshold in the latest global corruption perception index by Transparency International (TI). The World Bank's Doing Business 2014 report also paints a damning picture of the regional business climate, with the exception of Rwanda.

A key obstruction in the regional fight against graft is that regional anti-corruption agencies held opposing views on whether to give prosecutorial powers to their respective anti-corruption agencies. The signing of the EAC Protocol on Preventing and Combating Corruption was hampered by such differences.

Beyond 2014, to create jobs, the partner states will need to jointly take further steps to tackle corruption, simplify business regulation and create a vibrant regional common market, among others.

Frosty relations

It remains unclear how the heart of inter-EAC relations will beat after Tanzania and Burundi hold their respective presidential elections, in 2015. But it is clear that regional leaders' relations and camaraderie matter for the integration agenda to thrive.

Without the leaders' amity, a scenario akin to that which led to the EAC's 1977 collapse would, regrettably, be inevitable.

External shocks

Besides other unpredictable socio-economic external or global shocks, the wave of violence and instability in the bloc's shaky neighbors, especially the DR Congo, South Sudan and Somalia, is another cause for concern in 2015 and afar.

Peace and stability in these neighbors would by the same token imply socio-economic gains for the EAC, and vice-versa.

The two-year old tit-for-tat violence in the world's youngest state which seceded from Sudan in 2011, for example, did not only claim thousands of lives, displace thousands others and wreck the nascent oil economy but also directly hit the economies of Uganda and Kenya, some of South Sudan's biggest trading partners.

Apart from the effect on cross-border trade, Uganda sent troops to assist President Salva Kiir against rebels led by his sacked vice-president, Riek Machar, forcing the country into war spending which definitely eats into its development budget.

On the other side, since the Operation Linda Nchi began in 2011, Al-Shabaab vowed retaliation against Kenya. Burundi, which has provided the second largest contingent to the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), has also received threats from the militants.

Somalia's insecurity has not only affected its hope of joining the EAC. It hampers EAC's economic progress when the bloc is forced to reinforce security at the expense of entirely focusing and pursuing much needed economic development.

Analysts say that only deepening security cooperation in eliminating al-Shabaab and other security threats can deliver an enormous peace dividend benefiting not only Kenya and Somalia, but also the entire EAC in 2015 and beyond.

The Challenged Life of the Challenger

 ANALYSIS

Uganda's NRM keeps a firm grip on power while opposition parties implode.

In the early years of African independence, military regimes and single-party dictatorships ruled most of the continent's countries. Competitive elections were rare.

From the early 1960s to the end of the 70s, only about 55 elections were held in Africa, averaging three per year, wrote American political scientists Daniel Posner and Daniel Young in 2007 in the Journal of Democracy. Most of these were not competitive, multi-party polls; they were merely referenda that served to endorse autocratic rule.

Incumbent parties and their leaders won all these elections with the exception of Somalia's first president, Aden Abdullah Osman, who lost to Abdirashid Ali Shermarke in 1967. (Mr Osman set the record as the first African president to step down peacefully after serving two terms.)

A slight improvement took place in the 1980s, with about 36 African elections, or 3.6 per year. Only one incumbent party lost, in Mauritius, in 1982.

In the next decade, a wave of democratisation in Eastern Europe set in motion a renewed push for competitive party politics in Africa. From 1990 through to 2005, Africa held more than 100 elections, averaging nearly seven elections each year.

Currently, at least ten elections are held in Africa every year. Yet one constant remains: a weak opposition and dominant ruling parties. The latter still win 80% of all elections held.

Opposition parties' victories in national elections have been few and scattered--in Benin and Zambia in 1991, Ghana in 2000 and 2008, Kenya in 2002, Côte d'Ivoire in 2010, Senegal in 2012, Zambia again in 2012, and Malawi in May 2014.

Uganda is an unambiguous example of a single-party system and a weak and fragmented opposition. The country's experience with multi-party politics is tenuous.

From independence in 1962 to the capture of power by Yoweri Museveni's guerrilla rebels in 1986, only one multi-party election was held: in 1980, when Milton Obote's Uganda People's Congress (UPC) defeated the Democratic Party (DP) and the Uganda Patriotic Movement (UPM) in a highly disputed election.

Since 1986, the National Resistance Movement (NRM) has maintained a firm grip on power. Its chairman, Mr Museveni, now 70, will be running for a record fifth five-year term in 2016. Having ruled unelected up to 1996, Mr Museveni's combined stay in power by 2016 will total 30 years, making him one of Africa's longest-ruling authoritarian leaders.

In a rather bloated national legislature of 385 seats, including unelected members of cabinet, the ruling party holds an absolute majority of 295 backed by a few dozen independents. The combined opposition has only 60 members of Parliament (MPs). This dominance is duplicated at the local, district and sub-county levels.

Mr Museveni has exploited legal and extra-legal manoeuvres to cripple opposition to his increasingly authoritarian rule. Shortly after assuming the presidency, he banned political parties for 19 years until a 2005 referendum restored multi-party politics.

Mr Museveni is quick to chide his opponents: "There is no genuine opposition in Uganda," but rather "political careerists and purveyors of falsehoods", he told a victory party in the capital Kampala after the March 2011 elections.

The structure of Uganda's national politics, the historical interplay between society and state and the internal weakness in political parties have crippled the country's opposition. Three factors explain why.

First, much like other African countries with little experience in liberal principles, the ruling NRM continues to promulgate an environment that is hostile to multi-party politics. From Mr Obote's single-party system of the 1960s and Idi Amin's dictatorship in the 70s to Mr Museveni's no-party politics in the 80s and 90s, the military has played a preponderant role and displaced competitive elections.

"In those countries where the military has been a key political player--in Angola, Egypt, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Sudan, Uganda, etc--state resources are deployed to ensure retention of power by the ruling party," said Augustine Ruzindana, deputy secretary-general of the main opposition party, the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC). Thus, "mobilisation, membership recruitment, and fundraising are made impossible or difficult for opposition parties," Mr Ruzindana added.

In Uganda, the state is synonymous with the ruling NRM. The state's coercive machinery is directed at defeating the opposition as witnessed during the 2011 walk-to-work protests against high food and fuel prices.

The NRM and Mr Museveni equate opposition with subversion of the state, making Uganda's political structure fundamentally unprogressive. While in developed democracies official opposition is a government-in-waiting, "in Africa, opposition parties are seen as detractors and enemies of the ruling parties or even the nation," noted Asnake Kefale, a politics professor at Addis Ababa University.
Second, Africa's limited experience with open and competitive politics means long-standing political constituencies are not aligned to clear ideological persuasions, according to Richard Joseph, a political science professor at Northwestern University in the US.
Instead, parties are founded on religious affiliations, regional and ethnic blocs, as was the case with two
 Ugandan parties: the UPC, which is mainly Anglican and based in the east and north; and the DP, largely Catholic and rooted in central Uganda.

Today religion and ethnicity play a less prominent role. But the main opposition party, the FDC, nevertheless lacks a clear-cut political constituency. It is not a party for workers (a very small fraction of the population), the middle class (equally very small), or the peasant masses (who are the majority).

Without a political base, the FDC cannot raise funding from party members. "Most people will find it easier to contribute [to] weddings and burials the year round than contribute on a sustained basis to political party activities," said Mugisha Muntu, a retired army general and now FDC president.

Third, and arguably most important: the state controls material resources in a country where the ruling party is firmly entrenched. Uganda is one of Africa's most privatised and liberalised economies. But the state remains a big business player and indirectly wields a financial whip.

"There is a desk in the Internal Security Organisation that monitors all business activities remotely associated with the opposition," three-time losing presidential candidate, Kizza Besigye, said over lunch in Kampala in July. Such businesses are denied government tenders, targeted by the tax agency and subjected to other crippling government constraints, he said.

For Frederick Golooba-Mutebi, columnist for The East African newspaper, a vital problem for opposition parties is that "they have no money". Unable to raise funds, Uganda's opposition parties cannot recruit and retain quality leadership and a credible following. "They have limited reach: no party structures, hardly any regular contact with their supposed supporters and members, and total absence of activities geared at recruiting new members," Mr Golooba-Mutebi added.

Critics and opposition leaders accuse the NRM of gross incumbency abuse. Incumbency, however, can backfire when the party in power is confronted with a well-organised opposition, for at least two reasons.

First, precisely because of perceived and actual incumbency advantages, ruling parties suffer succession struggles as members jostle for positions when a long-reigning ruler finally bows out. This happened in Ghana in 2000 (with Jerry Rawlings) and Kenya in 2002 (with Daniel arap Moi). It could have transpired in Uganda in 2006 had Mr Museveni not bribed MPs to remove term limits, as reported in local and international media and alleged by some MPs.

Second, the electorate can be rallied to vote out the incumbent party for its poor performance. Organisational failures within the FDC and other opposition parties, however, have prevented holding the NRM to account in Uganda.

To have a fighting chance, Uganda's opposition parties need to organise and mobilise robustly to overcome constraining political and economic obstacles. They need to broaden their base by leaving their headquarters in Kampala and campaigning in the countryside. Instead of relying on external donors, the opposition needs to tap into local funding sources such as the small middle-class and business community. To beat the state's coercive machinery, the opposition should craft an appealing message and an alternative national vision.

Witness: Her Grandson Executed by Congo Police in operation Lik ofi (iron fist) – Jeanne’s Story

 

 Gen. Célestin Kanyama

One night in 2013, Jeanne was awakened by pounding on the door of her home in Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, she told Legal Link International and Human Rights Watch in a soft, sad voice. When she asked who was there, the men outside yelled “Police!” They broke down her door and rounded up all the men in the house and beat them, but let them go once they found Jeanne’s 19-year-old grandson, Joseph, whom Jeanne had helped raise. They dragged her grandson outside the house, shot him three times in the chest, and left him dead in the avenue, covered in blood.

Last November, Congo’s government began “Operation Likofi” – “iron fist” or “punch” in Lingala, one of Congo’s languages. The police operation was aimed at ending a surge of armed robberies and other crimes in Kinshasa by members of organized gangs known as “kuluna.” The kuluna carry machetes, broken bottles, and knives, and threaten or use violence to extort money, jewelry, mobile phones, and other valuables. Political leaders have also used the kuluna for protection or to intimidate opponents during elections.

Kuluna who commit crimes should be arrested and brought to justice. But Operation Likofi did not enforce the law in Kinshasa but instead reinforced a climate of fear. In raids across the city, uniformed police wearing black masks dragged suspected kuluna out of their homes at night at gunpoint with no arrest warrants. The police frequently shot and killed the unarmed youth outside their homes, often while family members and neighbors helplessly watched. Some victims were apprehended and executed in the open markets where they slept or in nearby fields or empty lots. Many others were taken to unknown locations and were not seen again. At least 51 young men and boys were killed and another 33 were forcibly disappeared during the operation.

The nightmare for victims’ families lasted well beyond the shootings.

Jeanne’s family took Joseph’s body to the morgue, but when they came to collect it for burial, morgue employees told Jeanne that the authorities had ordered them not to release the bodies of anyone killed during Operation Likofi. Jeanne yelled at the morgue employees until the police detained her. She was released later that day, but without Joseph’s body. She felt empty, she said, but she organized a traditional mourning period regardless. Yet each time the family and neighbors gathered, the police came to their home and threatened to arrest them for mourning Joseph. (Their names were changed to protect the family.)

In interviewing the families of the dead or “disappeared” teenagers and young men, the Human Rights Watch senior researcher on Congo, Ida Sawyer, heard the same pleas over and over. Those whose children were disappeared want to know what happened to them and where they are. Those whose relatives were killed want to bury them with dignity. If their children did something wrong, the families said, they should be arrested and brought to trial. You can’t just kill and kidnap people.

Police officers, intelligence agents and other officials have threatened and warned victims’ relatives, journalists, magistrates, and doctors, suggesting that senior officials knew about the killings. But rather than act to stop the police and bring those responsible to justice, authorities became more secretive and attempted to cover up the abuses. When a military magistrate wanted to investigate a police colonel who allegedly shot and killed a suspected kuluna, a government official told him to “close [his] eyes” and drop the case.

The primary commander of Operation Likofi was Gen. Célestin Kanyama, currently the Kinshasa police commissioner. Police officers who participated in the operation described a well-organized campaign during which Kanyama’s orders led to killings. One officer said he was told to call Kanyama whenever they arrested a suspect, as Kanyama would give instructions on whether to kill the youth or jail him. Kanyama himself was sometimes present during the operations. Police officers also said that many young men who weren’t immediately killed were taken to Camp Lufungula, a police camp where Kanyama was based. They said that some of those detained were taken out of the camp at night and executed.

When Sawyer met with Kanyama in August to present the Human Rights Watch research findings, he rejected all allegations of extrajudicial executions and enforced disappearances. “Operation Likofi did not have the mission to kill or to execute people,” he said. “Everything that people tell you doesn’t come from the Bible. There are rumors.”

What is urgently needed is an independent and impartial investigation into Kanyama’s role in the deaths and disappearances during the police operation he commanded.  In the meantime he should be suspended as Kinshasa’s police commissioner. The family members of the dead and missing young men and teenagers – people like Jeanne – deserve justice.

Kenya to tackle child traficking with the new Law

Legal Link International, Nairobi beaural — Kenya has passed a law that will make it easier to secure convictions for human trafficking by providing greater support to victims, encouraging them to give evidence, campaigners said.

Kenya has been on the U.S. Department of State's Tier 2 Watch List for trafficking for the past three years for failing to make serious efforts to tackle the problem. The east African nation is a source, transit and destination country for men, women and children subjected to forced labour and sex trafficking.

The country's last effort to fight trafficking, the Counter Trafficking in Persons Act, became law in 2012, but there have been very few successful prosecutions because of the high threshold of evidence required to obtain a conviction.

Last week, parliament passed the Victim Protection Bill to improve support to victims of crime, including providing a place of safety, food, medical treatment, psychosocial care and police protection where necessary. It also establishes a fund to assist victims.

"The most successful way of countering trafficking in persons, especially for children, is through securing conviction against the traffickers," said Prudence Mutiso, a lawyer with child rights charity The Cradle, which provides legal aid to children in Kenyan courts.

"With the Victim Protection Act, we will be able to have a stronger prosecution case."

MANY VICTIMS TRAUMATISED

Children in Kenya are trafficked to work as domestic labourers and in farming, fisheries and begging. They are also trafficked for sex work, particularly for tourists on the coast.
Many trafficking victims are so traumatised that they are unwilling to give evidence, Mutiso said.

"The process of interviewing the victim, collecting and corroborating evidence and investigating perpetrators is more effective when the victim is accessing care and protection from a service provider as early in the process as possible," she said.

"If the victim is traumatised and they undergo counselling with help from the funds that the government has set aside, they will be in a position to address the court more confidently."

Of more than 200 child trafficking cases brought to The Cradle since 2009, only 43 have gone to court, and there have been few convictions.

"I think it's really going to help secure some convictions; it definitely will," said Ruth Juliet Gachanja, another lawyer with The Cradle.

Campaigners believe the fact that the new law gives victims' lawyers the right to address the court will also strengthen the prosecution's case.

"... when you are a victim of crime, you can (now) have your lawyer and your lawyer can cross-examine the other party [the accused]," said Millie Mabona, a lawyer and a member of parliament who sponsored the bill.

"Your lawyer can also introduce new evidence if the prosecutor does not. This is very significant, especially for cases of trafficking, cases of sexual offences, cases of domestic violence."

Until now, lawyers representing victims had only a watching brief, which meant they sat in court as silent observers.

Prosecutions were led by police officers, often with less legal expertise than the victims' lawyers.