Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta has reiterated the importance of infrastructure accelerating regional integration within the East Africa Community (EAC). President Kenyatta indicated that EAC can only achieve its targets if its people are able to move from one region to another and goods are easily ferried from one part of the region to the other.
He pointed out that as long as the East African countries are not interlinked, they will remain to be markets for other regions and not producers.
“That is why infrastructure is critical in achieving our common objective of being a common market. That is [also] why my administration in Kenya has been very keen to see the growth of infrastructure across the board,” President Kenyatta said.
He spoke on Thursday evening during a high-level retreat on the EAC Common Market held at the EAC headquarters in Arusha where the East African Heads of State outlined what needs to be done to expedite the implementation of the EAC Common Market Protocol as part of the efforts of entrenching integration.
Earlier, EAC Secretary General Dr. Peter Mathuki indicated that the President, together with his counterparts from the region, will on Friday morning officially open the 42.4 km Arusha Bypass road before chairing the EAC summit.
The EAC bypass road is one of the roads sponsored by the EAC and connects Arusha to the Namanga road, all the way into Kenya. This road is going to reduce the number of days people take transporting goods into Kenya and into Tanzania.
“For business, the time taken on the road is very critical and that is why they will be opening that road, whose design and even securing of the funds for the construction were done during the tenure of President Kenyatta as the chair of EAC,” Dr. Mathuki said.
The EAC bypass road is one of the roads sponsored by the EAC and connects Arusha to the Namanga road, all the way into Kenya.
The EAC Secretary General pointed out that other key achievements of President Kenyatta as the EAC chair include the admission of DR Congo into the community.
“DRC is a full member and the seventh partner state of the EAC. That was achieved during the tenure of President Kenyatta as the chair of EAC. It is through his guidance, through his support and through his vision that we were able to bring DRC into EAC,” Dr. Mathuki said.
Dr. Mathuki noted that the coming onboard of DRC with a population of 100 million has expanded the regional economic bloc’s market by raising its population to over 300 million people.
“This is also a huge milestone achieved under the guidance of President Kenyatta as the chair of the summit. And that is one of the things that we will sit, as a community, and say President Kenyatta has been able to do for the community,” the EAC Secretary General said.
Dr. Mathuki said President Kenyatta’s tenure as the EAC chair also saw the implementation of the common external tariff that discouraged the importation of goods that could be produced locally.
He added that it was also during President Kenyatta’s first and second tenure that the EAC was able to resolve 245 non-tariff barriers that allowed the movement of goods with ease from one partner state to another.
“That is now contributing to the growth of the intra-EAC trade. Looking at the intra-EAC trade at the time he came, it was about 13 percent. It has increased to 15 percent during President Kenyatta’s tenure.
“We have removed some internal tariffs on locally produced goods within the region. That has now moved the growth of trade to US$ 6 billion from US$ 4 billion,” he said.
Other achievements during President Kenyatta’s tenure at the helm of the EAC include the implementation of the single customs territory with 13 one-stop border posts within East Africa and the conclusion of the Mutual Recognition Agreement for a number of professions including accountants, engineers, architects and veterinary officers.
According to the EAC Secretary General, President Kenyatta has raised the bar such that whoever will take over from him as the chair of the regional economic bloc will have to do a lot to match his standards