ARE WE WITNESSING THE RESPLITTING OF EAC

Last week the Presidents of the Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda and South Sudan met in Kigali for the third Infrastructure Projects Summit, Tanzania was noticeably absent – a now expected occurrence and one that raises questions about the future integration of the East African Community.

The three countries – Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda, seem to have decided to push on with much needed projects, the suggestion being that Tanzania is proving to be an impediment to their speedy execution. 

The leaders met previously in Kampala and Mombasa with South Sudan joining in this latest round as a potential future member.

The Tanzanians argue that they should not be seen as slowing down the process but rather as the voice of caution especially against the fast tracking of the Monetary Union and the political federation of the region.

"Admittedly Dar es Salaam’s slowness of foot is looking very dated, viewed against the action men of Kampala and Kigali and the shot of youthful energy from Nairobi....

Observers say that the marital spurt is deeper than a resentment of Tanzania’s lack of a sense of urgency and include economic rivalry and differences in opinion on how the conflict in eastern Congo can be resolved.

The view among the Tanzanian elite is that with groundbreaking on a mammoth port in Bagamoyo, which dwarf the combined capacity of Mombasa and Dar es Salaam, will shift the trade patterns away from the northern corridor south to Tanzania. 

This development will disenfranchise a lot of Kenyan businessmen and long standing coalitions that have benefitted from the massive traffic flowing from Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda. 

In addition potentially huge finds of natural gas, whose current established reserves are estimated at $430b. The cheaper power if this find is fully exploited could end up shifting the region’s economic center of gravity southwards, a situation that may not amuse entrenched commercial interests in Nairobi.

If there was any doubt about Tanzania’s unease about being isolated it came out last week, with the issuing of statement by Tanzania’s East African Community ministry denouncing the goings on between its partners as illegal and contrary to the spirit of community.

Kenya’s more established commercial sector has not been averse to batting for their own interests, sometimes with blatant disregard for others,  all through negotiations for the reestablishement of the community and suspicions that they are trying to push their own agenda in the region, would not be an unfamiliar one.

Adding fuel to the flames is the recent call by Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete to Rwanda and Uganda to negotiate with rebels groups opposed to their respective governments that are holed up in the DRC and reportedly strain at the bit to attack.

Uganda’s reponse to Dar es Salaam while dismissive was not as vehement as that from Rwanda, which argues that the forces arrayed against them in the jungles of eastern Congo are the remnants of the forces that perpetuated the genocide where about a million people died in 1994. Kigali argues they are criminals and not political opponents whose only fate should be before a criminal court.

People familiar with the spurt suggest that Tanzania’s seemingly out-of-the-blue counsel is driven partly by their new role at the center of a peace keeping force in eastern Congo, but also the suggestion that a decision may have been made to push for a secession of eastern Congo, to which thinking Dar was not made privy until it was a fait accompli.

Whatever the reasons at the top, the people of east Africa would hate to see the community break up again because of a clash of egos between their leaders. 

"In fact our political leaders are behind the curve on the population’s desire for integration, with the region’s citizens voting with their wallets and their feet and leaving the photo opportunities to their leaders...

It is unlikely that Tanzania would be isolated for long – its rich natural bounty and access to the sea are a useful bargaining chip against the domineering interests in Kenya, but a solution needs to be found sooner than later, or we could have a case of the EAC cutting off its nose to spite its face.

AID IS AT THE HEART OF CORRUPTION

Last week rights advocacy group Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued a report which was the usual – that government doesn’t seem to have the will to stamp out corruption, and some unusual things that Uganda has been positioned as a key ally in the region and donors are hesitant to clamp down on the government on its luckluster stand on graft for fear of antagonising Kampala.

"Government protested of course, spread out its array of anti-corruption agencies, enumerated the corrupt officials standing trial and even urged the witnesses to sacrifice their lives in the fight against the scourge...

But what was a departure from other publicised pronouncements on corruption in this country, was the criticism of the donor community, who are caught up in a dilemma not of their making, they can’t really throw the sink at the government for fear of losing favour with a strategic partner.

You almost felt sorry for them.

HRW had it right that the donor community are part of the problem and not the solution to corruption, HRW however skirted the truth that Uganda’s “new” positioning is causing them to bite their nails in agitation.

Evidence abounds that aid industry is not all it seems to be or wants us to believe it is.

On a global level the aid industry is not motivated by alleviating the suffering of poor, helpless Africans but rather it is wielded as an instrument of influence, domestically in the donor countries and abroad among the recipient nations.

If this were not so, many more countries, even the whole African continent through which billions of dollars have been pumped in the last half century, would have had their economies transformed. In fact in the history of world economics no country has been transformed by the kind of aid Africa has been force fed.

The Marshall plan, which was used to lift Europe out of the ruins of the Second World War, lasted four years and about $15b – about $150b today, was disbursed. In contrast Africa has received about $500b since 1960 and in further contrast to Europe aid has only served to make us more dependent on aid, lowered living standards on the continent generally and enriched a local elite while impoverishing the majority...

The difference between the Marshall plan and the aid that has been funneled to Africa is that the Marshall plan largely consisted of loans to businessmen who then repaid them to their local governments which used this to finance the infrastructure to improve the business environment a virtuous cycle. 

Aid to Africa on the other hand has flown to governments and NGOs with next to no involvement of the local business community. By ignoring the business community they ensured that the creators of sustainable wealth – the private sector, were hobbled, guaranteeing a perpetual dependence of their respective governments.

This thesis is neither original nor a recent revelation.

In fact studies have shown that for every $10 dollars of aid as little $4 or even less reaches the recipient nation. And even this pittance is mostly consumed by local elites with their never ending workshops, fuel guzzling four wheel drive vehicles and upscale lifestyles, what little reaches the intended beneficiaries is denominated in pit latrines, boreholes and pigs...

To what lengths would the “real” beneficiaries of this cozy living go to protect the status quo? Hence the slaps on our governments wrists when several billions go missing, maybe a few months of suspension before the aid roars back more determined than ever – to make up for lost time?

The point is that it is not entirely down to President Yoweri Museveni’s political adroitness, that donors are finding themselves in this “uncomfortable” position, this scam was already running at full steam even before Museveni was in  high school.

But just as an example of how dependant we remain on donor aid, never mind that we are now financing a larger proportion of our budget, is the notion held not only by us but by sections of the donor community – read HRW, that the donors are the ones who can help solve this problem.

"Corruption will stop when our governments find it in their self-interest to stop it – or at least give it an acceptable face like they do in more developed economies. And the only way that is going to happen is when the population makes the link between poor service delivery and graft and hold the governments to account. This and not bleeding hearts who parachute into the country to read us the riot act, is where our salvation lies...

This is not an indictment on the do-gooders who work for the aid agencies, who have a genuine desire to help, it’s just that they are enrolled in a system that is at odds with their altruism.

The aid industry is inherently corrupt – if you define corruption as using public resources for personal gain, and lends itself to such moral quandaries as HRW describes. Otherwise it will be business as usual on the continent as we continue to pointedly avoid the truth and assign blame to red herrings that take us nowhere.

OUR POOR HEALTH SERVICES WILL RETURN TO BITE US

“First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.”

-          Martin Niemöller

The poem above was written as a criticism of the elite during the rise of Nazism in Germany.

Looking at Uganda you can substitute this same sloth to any number of issues that our elite are ignoring, seemingly oblivious of the possibility that the ills studiously ignore will come back to bite them one day.

Last week a pregnant mother and her unborn child died in Mukono from unforgivable negligence. She is not alone just that her story caught the eye of the press.

According to the latest World Bank numbers 310 in every 100,000 mothers die during child birth or about 4300 annually. While we seem to be ahead of the region in this statistic – Kenya 488 and Rwanda 340.

The problem with statistics is that it reduces invaluable human lives to relatively meaningless number. The truth is regardless of the gains we have made in our health sector, this is still about 300 taxi-loads of women too many. It’s actually worse than other incidents we refer to as massacres.

Like the president likes to say, let us stop comparing ourselves with midgets, the equivalent number for Mauritius is 60 deaths for every 100,000 deliveries or Egypt whose number is 66 or Tunisia’s 56.
And that is only a tip of the ice berg. Our health statistics are not anything to write home by whatever parameter you look at.

The news really is that the health sector which has been the biggest budget allocation since independence is so run down and incapable of rising to its obligations. But what is even more scandalous is that this sector is administered by the country’s brightest minds.

They will tell you that budgets are not adequate. That even the billions that the ministry receives are a drop in the ocean in respect of the health needs of the country. That there are shortages in infrastructure, man power and any other resources that would require to make the sector live up to expectations.

This is all true but these are just symptoms of a wider problem.

At the heart of these inadequacies is a strange sense of invulnerability, even immortality among our planners and executors of our policies. They seem to believe that they and their loved ones can circumvent the public health system and get private health care here or abroad and so they turn a blind eye to the collapse of our health system or even worse work actively to undermine it.

They forget that the private health care providers, being  businesses, will only do a little above the public health care system, just enough to show a profit. This means they are not very much better than what the downtrodden of our land are suffering in our public health centers and referral hospitals.

Attempts at fixing the sector have been piecemeal at best and haphazard at worst, and it is not for lack of knowing what to do.  

Let us be serious and fix this health system once and for all – we will not be inventing the wheel it has been done elsewhere, if only because we do not know when we will need to patronise our village health center with a life threatening, but very treatable condition.