{UAH} Can the East African Community breathe without Tanzania, its lungs?
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10:13 AM |
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As the Presidents of Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda were proudly opening a new berth at the port of Mombasa on Wednesday, one man was conspicuously missing — President Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania.
After the ribbon-cutting was done, the presidents along with ministers from Burundi and South Sudan retreated to a closed-door meeting to discuss the completion of a number of multibillion-dollar infrastructure projects across the region, as well as, interestingly, fast-tracking the EAC political federation.
It is a broad set of initiatives from which Tanzania was noticeably absent — for the second time in such a meeting — that is being seen as a realignment of the EAC in which Tanzania's role and future in the bloc is being questioned.
But can the EAC afford to do without Tanzania?
"I don't read much into Tanzania's absence at the talks," said Peter Mathuki, a Member of the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA).
"The [EAC] Treaty allows a section of countries to come together and discuss specific issues that affect them. Tanzania is a key architect of the EAC right from its founding, and I don't see why it wouldn't be committed to the EAC."
Covering nearly a million square kilometres, Tanzania accounts for 51 per cent of the total land area in the EAC. However, the country only accounts for 38 per cent of land under agriculture in the region, holding the greatest fraction of arable but unused land in the EAC — an estimated 380,000 square kilometres.
By comparison, Kenya accounts for 32 per cent of the total land area in the EAC, but 45 per cent of land under agriculture.
The UN Population Division projects that the EAC's population will balloon from the current 150 million to 270 million by 2030. The region is therefore likely to turn to Tanzania as it looks to feed its growing population. Also, at 49 million strong, Tanzania accounts for a third of the region's population, representing a huge consumer market that businesses are keen to tap into.
Today, the EAC is Tanzania's second biggest trading partner in Africa after South Africa. The country exported goods worth $318 million to the region in 2012, with Kenya accounting for two-thirds of those exports. Tanzania imports goods worth $362 million from the EAC, with Kenya accounting for nearly 90 per cent of these imports.
"South Africa is definitely making inroads in Tanzania. But because of its proximity, Kenya will continue playing a major role in Tanzania's economy, as a source of processed goods and as an export market," said Felix Okatch, a multilateral trade expert and council member with the Association of Professional Societies in East Africa.
In addition, virtually all the countries in the region except Tanzania face serious water stress in the next few years. Kenya is the most stressed: Each Kenyan only has 792 cubic metres of water a year, compared with 2,085 cubic metres in Uganda and 2,266 in Tanzania.
Hydrologists consider 2,000 cubic metres per person per year as the point when a country is considered "water-stressed", and under 1,000 cubic metres as when the situation is critical, and a country is "water-scarce."
Tanzania is better insulated than the rest of East Africa from the pressures of water scarcity, partly because it has the greatest land area under natural forest and woodland, with about 352,000 square kilometres of natural forest, compared with just 16,000 square kilometres in Kenya and a mere 6,000 square kilometres in Uganda.
Rwanda and Burundi have a combined forest cover of only 1,600 square kilometres, according to data from the EAC Secretariat.
Effectively, Tanzania is the EAC's lungs.
Peter Kagwanja, chief executive of the Africa Policy Institute, argues that although the EAC "could survive" without Tanzania as a four-member bloc that is poised to include South Sudan and possibly Somalia and Ethiopia in the long run, Tanzania would find it "extremely hard" to extricate itself from the EAC.
"Tanzania's emergent economic and power elite is taking its children to schools in the region, particularly Kenya. Arusha is the EAC capital, a factor that has hastened the integration of Tanzania into Kenya and Uganda through new highways and tourist circuits and private investments. The EAC region is the world's newest frontier of discoveries of oil and gas and rare metals, and is likely to benefit more as a bloc than disparate states," he said.
"Tanzania has been a major frontier for South African investors, particularly in mining, hospitality, retail, banking and foods industries, partly reinforcing its elite's political leaning to the Southern African Development Community.
But Tanzanians are more economically and culturally integrated with the region than with the south. Ultimately, the big question is whether Tanzania's political class will follow their ideological affinity with the south or the economic imperatives of a people-driven regional integration," said Prof Kagwanja.
Although South Sudan also has vast areas of arable land, forests and water resources from the River Nile, it scores very poorly in human development indicators, the legacy of decades of civil war — for example, only 27 per cent of its citizens aged 15 and above are literate, and just 46 per cent of school-age children are enrolled in primary school, according to the African Economic Outlook.
"I don't think South Sudan could replace Tanzania in the EAC, that's not even worth talking about," said Mr Okatch. "That argument is based on hype, not reality. South Sudan needs to stabilise and develop."
Along with a fairly well educated population and rich deposits of gold, diamond, nickel and natural gas, Tanzania, then, could have its position in the EAC secured for the foreseeable future. But the countries meeting in Mombasa are looking to improve regional infrastructure so that they too, can leverage their competitive advantage.
The new berth at Mombasa is expected to raise the port's capacity by 33 per cent and boost Kenya's standing as the regional logistics hub, in the face of growing competition from Tanzania. Mombasa currently handles 800,000 teu, compared with Dar es Salaam's 550,000, and Tanzania plans to build a bigger port at Bagamoyo.
But Kenya, unlike Tanzania, is at a disadvantage in not having its industries based in Mombasa; most of Kenya's manufacturing is located in Nairobi, 500 kilometres from the port, which means that to access global export markets, Kenyan manufacturers have to incur the cost of transporting goods to Mombasa.
Although Dar es Salaam is better positioned than Nairobi for accessing global markets, a May 2013 report by the World Bank indicates the port of Dar es Salaam is considerably less efficient than the Mombasa port.
In 2012, if the Dar port had been as efficient as Mombasa's, the analysts say, Tanzania and its landlocked neighbours could have gained over $2.6 billion.
"Kenya appears to be the spider in the centre of the regional infrastructure web, and its port of Mombasa is the gateway to East Africa, and not Dar es Salaam," said Prof Kagwanja.
But Tanzania is still crucial to Burundi and Rwanda — 94 per cent of cargo to Burundi and 57 per cent of cargo to Rwanda passes through Dar, according to Tanzanian government data.
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