The world is coming to East Africa, and they want your hearts and minds
East Africa has become the go-to place on the continent, to which the whole world is paying attention.
Any forward-looking strategist will have come across the African Development Bank’s “Africa in 50 Years’ Time” report published in late 2011.
Its analysis and projections on the future of the five East African Community countries and their eight neighbours (Comoros, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Seychelles, Somalia, Sudan and South Sudan) are striking.
The Bank shows that these 13 economies have grown faster than the African average since 2000.
That growth was outpaced by West Africa in 2010 (6.7 per cent against 6.2 per cent) and it will be again in 2020 (8.8 per cent against 7.9 per cent).
However, in all other future years and scenarios, the pace of East Africa’s economic growth will be faster than every other region in the continent.
As a result, its share of Africa’s total GDP is projected to expand from 11 per cent (of $1.71 trillion) in 2010 to a very large 39 per cent (of between $12 and $16 trillion) in 2060.
East Africa’s share of the continent’s population will have expanded from 27 per cent in 2010 to 32 per cent in 2060.
Per capita GDP is also anticipated to increase from the current $657 to between $6,000 and $7,000 in the next 50 years.
No surprise then that almost out of the blue, East Africa has become the go-to place on the continent, to which the whole world is paying attention.
In late February 2012, the EAC Secretary General Richard Sezibera made a statement that was both hopeful and profoundly challenging, “This is Africa’s century, whether Africans own it or not.” Nowhere else is this statement more applicable than in East Africa.
Foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows to the region have more than doubled in the past ten years.
Total FDI inflows increased from $688 million in 2000 to $1.7 billion in 2010 with the highest recipients of these inflows being Tanzania and Uganda.
On a regional level, the $500 million injection that the EAC received from China in the last quarter of 2011, earmarked for infrastructure investment, is a major boost for the region.
Global powers are paying attention and the fact that China is striking regional investment deals in addition to the already substantial bilateral ties it has with member states goes to show they view the EAC as an important partner in future.
China’s trade and investment in Africa in general grew by 1,000 per cent between 2000 and 2010. It overtook the United States as Africa’s main trading partner in 2009.
Between 2005 and 2010, intra-EAC trade expanded from $2.2 billion to $4.1 billion and in a sign of a rapidly globalising region, total trade with the world doubled from $17.5 billion in 2005 to $37 billion in 2010.
Multilateral actors such as the African Development Bank Group have expanded funding to the region from $267 million in 2005 to $863 million in 2010, with over 80 per cent of these funds earmarked for infrastructure.
However, the sense of a region that is becoming increasingly militarised is hard to shake off following Kenya’s incursion into Somalia, President Barack Obama’s dispatch of 100 military advisers to Uganda, unmanned drones flying throughout the region, and the subtle but growing role of the United States Africa Command (Africom).
Africom had 13 joint major exercises planned for 2011, with three of these exercises performed in Uganda, Tanzania and on the Indian Ocean. In October 2009, an operation in Uganda involved all five members of the EAC totalling 650 soldiers.
Furthermore, the US expanded its drone operations in the region by establishing a base in Seychelles in 2011.
The approximate range of these drones, according to the Washington Post, is over 1,800 kilometres, enough to cover Tanzania, Kenya, Somalia and southern Ethiopia.
Drones are reportedly also launched from Ethiopia. In its 2012 posture statement, Africom clearly states, “Our highest priority is the East Africa region which is the nexus for transnational threats to our nation’s national security.”
The media surge
Al-Jazeera, the media network based in Qatar, will soon launch Al-Jazeera Kiswahili, serving as a “new regional news and current affairs media network in East Africa.”
The network will be headquartered in Nairobi and has already begun a vigorous process of recruiting journalists and reporters from across the region.
If the programme Africa Investigates is any indication of the type of coverage Al-Jazeera Kiswahili will provide, the region’s establishment can expect to be rocked.
Al Jazeera is not alone in committing to the media surge; China’s CCTV also launched its Africa head office in Nairobi in November 2010.
With economic ties between Africa and China continuing to deepen, will military ties follow suit?
In a sign of a growing rivalry between India and China for maritime eminence, a senior Chinese navy officer has been quoted as suggesting that China will not allow the Indian Ocean to be India’s ocean.
A peoples’ choice
It seems that the leadership and people of East Africa have two distinct options of how they respond to the intensifying glare of the global financial, military and media establishment and the ensuing battle for their hearts and minds.
Doing nothing is one option. This could result in the different powers pulling the countries apart in conflicting directions, weakening and de-legitimising regional integration.
The second option is to collectively respond to the intensifying interest in East Africa. Regional integration is not easy; in fact it will be painful at times.
However, a strong, integrated East African Community will be better able to manage the intense interest in the region to its own advantage.
Ahmed Salim is a programme officer with the Society for International Development and a principal author of the forthcoming “State of East Africa Report 2012: Deepening Integration, Intensifying Challenges.”
