Political wrangling may hamper EAC-EU deal over trade talks
Political wrangling may wreck the prospects of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to realise its political and economic ambition to forge a common front in crucial international trade talks since some of SADC’s active members prefer other existing regional blocs to customs unions.
In fact, dual membership has been a concern among the southern, eastern and central African member states where most of the countries belong to more than one economic bloc.
Tanzania, an active member of the 14-member states of SADC, is also a key member of the five-member states of East African Development Community (EAC) and hosts its secretariat.
The rest of EAC member countries also retain the membership in the Lusaka, Zambia-based Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA).
All these blocs aspire to have their own Customs Unions at different stages.
But since international rules restrict a country to belong to a single customs union, member states would have to choose which customs union to belong to.
And, there, lies the problem.
This quandary was noted at the just ended SADC summit in Lusaka, where the debate of dual membership was spared, at least for a while, until when the customs unions come into effect.
The challenges of overlapping memberships of regional groupings are coming to the fore as African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries seek a new Economic Partnership Agreements (EPA) with the European Union.
SADC finds itself having to go into the negotiations as a depleted grouping due to the current problem of dual memberships.
In the talks with the EU, some countries have broken ranks with SADC and are discussing with the Europeans under the Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA) banner.
Only Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland and the United Republic of Tanzania are negotiating as SADC.
An EAC source says there is a broad consensus that EAC, being a customs union, should negotiate as one Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with EU, rather than having EAC member states negotiating under different regional organisations.
According to the sources, Tanzania, Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda are ready for the EAC-EPA negotiations.
But not EAC member Kenya, which is the current chair of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern African (COMESA).
Nairobi says it is reconsidering its stand in being part of the EAC-EPA talks.
Tanzania, however, says it has no such problem – it will go ahead to secure a deal with the Europeans under the EAC-EPA talks.