Tanzania and the East African Federation Agenda: a Committed or Reluctant Party to Full Integration?

Abstract

This article takes as its point of departure the directive of the Heads of State of the three founding EAC (East African Community) members - Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda - to set up National Consultative Committees to collect peoples’ views on whether to fast-track the creation of a political union. The outcome of the national consultations was that while Kenyans and Ugandans were eager to embrace an immediate federation, Tanzanians felt that the 120 million-plus bloc should instead create an economic union before evolving into a political union. The article notes ironically, nearly fifty years after Julius Nyerere, Tanzania’s first President, challenged the “let’s put our house in order first” argument, East Africans are still enmeshed in a similar debate, but this time around the voices of “let’s put our house in order first” have largely come from Tanzania, especially the Isles. In this article it is argued that the current EAC is no longer insulated from domestic politics. Therefore, policy makers in Tanzania will not cut deals with their counterparts at the regional level for the sake of the regional organization at the expense of their domestic support. It is further argued that the Dar Government’s push to collect people’s views on the agenda was a tactical move to suppress the subject. Statements expressing top policy makers’ commitment to strengthening the EAC have not silenced claims that the country is dragging its feet to reach the goal of a political federation by 2013.  Prospects of a political federation by 2013 are also dim because the block still lacks the ‘institutional prerequisites’ of federalism.