Southern Africa: Tanzania Defiant On SADC Withdrawal

Tanzania will not withdraw from the Southern African Development Community (SADC), an organisation that aims to promote Southern African regional cooperation in economic development, the country's minister of Foreign Affairs has said.

"Tanzania does not find anything wrong with belonging to various regional groupings and maintaining, of course, the cardinal original grouping of the pentagon, that is, the East African Community (EAC).

"SADC remains part and parcel of the life of Tanzania, and for the time being we do not see the reason why we should pull out just because we have the East African Community," the country's Foreign Affairs Minister, Bernard Kamillius Membe, told a news conference in Kampala, Uganda, on Tuesday.

"But not to say that we are dividing 50-50 (equally). We attach strong attention to the really fraternal relationship that exists in the East African region," Membe added.

The position is contrary to the World Trade Organisation's regulation barring states from belonging to two Customs Unions.

The rest EAC member countries - Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda and Kenya - also belong to the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa), a regional community from which Tanzania pulled out in 2000.

This means that at a certain time when all these communities introduce common markets, EAC membership would be affected.

Comesa is the largest bloc bringing together a population of 400 million, followed by SADC with 230 million, while EAC has about 120 million.

According to Lydia Wanyoto, a member of the East African Legislative Assembly, EAC partner states can maintain their strong relationship with other trading blocs only if they jointly sought membership to groupings with those other states, than each going it individually.

Source : Charles Kazooba [The New Times - Kigali], March 17, 2007