By Charles Onyango-Obbo

I think the beginning of a new year is the only time we can all safely be parochial. I wanted to be an East African Community chauvinist, but thought perhaps I should look at the wider region in theatres where some EAC nations’ armies are active first.

In Somalia, where Uganda, Burundi, and Kenya in the south, have thousands of troops as part of the African Union peacekeeping force Amisom, there was the usual war news: A daring raid on the AU headquarters base in Mogadishu by Al Shabaab, the surrender of the militant’s former intelligence chief, and the death of the group’s intelligence chief in a US air strike.

But the most striking news from Somalia that speaks to how much the Amisom mission there has achieved, came from Mogadishu and didn’t make the front pages.

A wire story said that for the first time in nearly two decades, more people are dying in and being treated for wounds received in road accidents in Somalia’s capital than from gunfire! Rarely has bad news been so good.

The road accidents are happening not just the AU has been able to bring some order and peace, but also because major roads in Mogadishu are being refurbished and streetlights installed.

Somalia’s drivers are even worse than your average bad African driver, but hey, rather them than Al Shabaab or a suicide bomber with explosives strapped under his shirt. That is progress.

Closer home, came news that in the next few days Uganda and Rwanda will have a single border point so that clearing of goods, services and people is done once on each side, which should considerably speed up things. Something along the same lines is happening at the Rwanda-Burundi border.

If these “one stop border posts” conceived by the EAC come to pass, we shall have them at the Taveta-Holili border and the Namanga border (Kenya-Tanzania), Busia and Malaba borders (Kenya-Uganda), the Kanyaru-Akanyaru border (Burundi-Rwanda), the Mutukula border (Tanzania-Uganda), Gasenyi-Nemba border (Burundi, Rwanda) and Lungalunga-Horohoro border (Kenya-Tanzania).

Another big step towards the Brave New East Africa was taken in Kampala in mid-December by the Uganda parliament. It became the first East African legislature to pass a law to establish the East African monetary union, which will see the region adopt a single common currency.

After months in which the EAC seemed to fall into a period of “integration lethargy,” the burst of activity seen in December was welcome.

But two other things were evident. With Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni clinching the nomination as sole candidate for his party and on course to seek a seventh term in the February 2016 elections, integration has become his mega-legacy project — and also his swan song (it’s not certain he will have the legs under him to make the 2021 run).

Second, after the media-labelled “Coalition of the Willing” (CoW) of Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda, who peeled off and fast-tracked a series of regional projects, we are probably seeing the emergence of the “East African hares” — the countries that, alone, or with just one other, undertake big integration moves ahead of the rest.

Hope 2015 will be full of more pleasant surprises.

Source: The East African