The Brits are headed for the exit, is anyone in the EAC paying attention?

By Daniel K. Kalinaki
Posted 


Thursday, June 30  

2016 at 

01:00

A very good friend, who is both fiercely intelligent and usually restrained in her views, surprised me a week ago by declaring, over drinks in Nairobi, that she was hoping Britain votes to leave the European Union.
Before I could overcome my surprise, she added that she also hopes Donald Trump wins the US presidential election in November. She was dead serious, and sober to boot.

Her argument, to hack it savagely and try to fit it in a paragraph, is that we have a varnished view of many Western societies and that the extremist and insular views espoused by people like Trump, Nigel Farage and other right-wingers are more mainstream than we are willing to accept.

Britain’s vote to leave the EU, which I learnt with shock the next morning, has of course validated some of my friend’s arguments, regardless of the outcome of the US election (where I still think the clever money is on Hillary Clinton being the least-worst option). The full extent of the fallout will take many months, probably years to become fully evident, but the vote itself offers some lessons for those involved in similar transnational projects, including the East African Community.

For far too many people, regional integration, and the basis of free markets on which it is built, has come to sound like hollow sloganeering of predatory global capitalism. Behind the angry rhetoric of xenophobia, racism, anti-migration and renewed calls for protectionism lie genuine fears about jobs, social safety nets and the widening gulf between the very rich and the very poor.

We should, of course, condemn these backward and short-sighted responses, but we must analyse and understand the underlying sentiment. Free markets, we are told, lift all boats, but when the canoes of the poor and vulnerable spring leaks and no one seems to care, it can be tempting to throw the migrants and foreigners overboard, as some in the Leave campaign would have it.

What makes Brexit particularly remarkable is that the EU has brought many tangible benefits to ordinary people, from visa-free travel to free labour movement, to lower roaming charges.

The EAC project has similarly brought gains, particularly in the free movement of capital and a reduction in some of the non-tariff barriers, but look beyond the surface and the disuniting factors stick out prominently. For all the talk of free movement of labour, one still requires a work permit, obtained with varying degrees of difficulty, even where it is free, theoretically. One can’t buy land across the border except through legal manoeuvres; roaming charges are falling but still expensive; travel across borders is inefficient and bureaucratic and air travel in East Africa remains extortionist (yes, Kenya Airways, we are talking about you!).

Insularity doesn’t bring prosperity, but neither does all-out integration in which regional and global capital is seen to benefit at the expense of poor natives. President Museveni, a strong proponent of regional integration, has recently expressed concern about Uganda being a supermarket for foreign-made wares. He forgot to mention that most of the supermarkets themselves are foreign.

The EU expansion that brought in the poorer cousins from the east was always going to test the unity of the trading bloc – unequal partners rarely make great partnerships – and Brexit is a shocking example of a richer member trying to kick away the ladder to keep out the village cousins.

East Africa has been there, seen that. If we need reminding, Brexit offers at least two lessons: one, that abstract notions of political federation are risky, vulnerable to domestic political realities, and perhaps best left out of the conversation for now.

Two, that unity works where there are tangible benefits to ordinary people, where the richer states subsidise the poorer ones without feeling short-changed, and where the bureaucracy does not interfere too much in domestic political and economic affairs.

Europe’s history is one of trying to unite the continent either through violence or through consensus. The EU was evidence of violence not being the answer. Brexit might be evidence of consensus not being the answer, either. The EAC should watch and learn, seeing that we do not seem to have learnt much from our first attempt at regional integration.

Mr Kalinaki is a Ugandan journalist based in Nairobi. dkalinaki@ke.nationmedia.com Twitter: @Kalinaki