Echoes of SID East African Scenarios

By Aidan Eyakuze

On September 3, the Economist has published an article entitled “Big ambitions, big questions marks” in relation to the East Africa and the on-going integration process. I noticed that it focuses on politics and economic infrastructure, but we the people? Well we sort of disappear into the background as mere population statistics.

It also has some images which are strikingly familiar to the East African Scenarios stories (Picture of Now; I Want to Be a Star; I Want a Visa) developed by SID and published in 2008.

In the Picture of Now, the Scenarios booklet said:
‘This project however found it more useful to expand the definition of the region beyond its political units and to view East Africa as a ‘region of peoples’ bounded loosely within a ‘Swahili line’. The boundaries stretch as far north as southern Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia. To the west, large areas of eastern DRC are included. The boundary stretches as far south as northern Mozambique and the Indian Ocean to the East’.

The Economist writes:
And why should an East African federation stop with the club’s existing member countries? If defined by the area in which the lingua franca of the Swahili language is used, the range of lorries heading out of the Kenyan port of Mombasa, and the magnet of Nairobi as a hub, east Africa spreads into Ethiopia and includes a chunk of Somalia, a swathe of east Congo, a strip of northern Mozambique and all of southern Sudan, which could become an independent country in 2011, if its people vote in a promised referendum to secede.

Look at these echoes of the SID ‘I want to be a Star‘ story (resource extraction):
Paul Kagame, president of tiny, landlocked Rwanda, is also keen to press ahead. His recent rapprochement with Congo, Rwanda’s vast, ramshackle neighbour to the west, was made in the hope of increasing trade via the fledgling EAC’s market. He is now intent on adding value to Congolese raw materials and shipping them to the world market through the EAC, too.

Congo’s government seems willing. China, by some counts the biggest investor in the region, plainly wants Congo’s timber, iron ore and other minerals shipped across the Indian Ocean via the EAC.

For that and other reasons, Kenya, for its part, wants to build a new deep-sea port near the island of Lamu, close to the border with Somalia. Kenyan officials have so far brushed aside concerns for the mangrove swamps and nearby marine sanctuary. They say the port, refinery and new city will be built on the mainland to preserve Lamu’s heritage and tourist industry. The hope is for roads and railways to Mogadishu, Addis Ababa and Kigali and a pipeline bringing in Ugandan and south Sudanese oil. Funds would flow in from Kuwait and other Arab investors. This would link up east Africa as never before, and a single currency and a customs union would then make much more sense.

There are also strong hints of the SID ‘I want a Visa‘ story (consolidation and coordination):
The EAC already has 126m people. If it expands, it could add as many as 120m more to that number, making it more than twice as populous as Africa’s 28 smallest countries combined—enough, its backers argue, to make a bigger EAC very attractive to foreign investors. The EAC says it would negotiate better deals with the rich world than individual African countries can.

And finally, ‘Usiniharakishe‘ (regional commons under pressure)
An early test of the EAC’s earnestness will be to see if it can get its member countries jointly to look after Lake Victoria, a common resource that scientists say has been over fished and poisoned by the sewage running off its overpopulated shores.

Read more on SID East African Scenarios:

East Africa Scenario Project
Scenarios Publications
National scenarios: Kenya at Crossroads;  Tanzania: Imaging our future;  The story of Uganda

Written by: Aidan

Filed Under: Opinions

Tags: East Africa, Scenarios

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About Aidan

Aidan Eyakuze is Programme Director, East Africa Futures Programme for the Society for International Development. He is based in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania.

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