The East African Federation experiment | Hacker News Reader

The East African Federation experiment

karlsnotes.com

38 pointstorts34 comments

Citizen of an East African state here. Don't read too much into this experiment. At best it's a limited regional partnership framework (emphasis on limited), at worst it's a private club for a bunch of crooked politicians. Nothing to see here.

I believe a customs union and common market are not nothing. The article is a bit too optimistic in speaking already of a federation. The EU shows that a political union is difficult, but simultaneously shows that a union of currencies, customs, borders, and regulations can be wonderfully effective. In this spirit, the EAC is going in the right direction.

Yes; the EU started out with nothing but a grand vision and a Coal and Steel trade agreement.

Notwithstanding the usual political corruption, it is a step in the right direction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Coal_and_Steel_Commun...

Can you live and work in one of the partner countries without a visa? Can you cross a border without a passport or customs check? Can you ship goods to another country without paying any duties?

I understand there can be a lot of reasons for criticism, but it seems these are real advantages that regular people could take advantage of.

You can cross without a visa and there's an East African passport.The taxes still need to be aligned. If it accomplishes nothing else but a small measure of stability in the Congo then the EAC will be a success in my book.

Travel:

What I read personal travel is still very limited. https://www.eac.int/travelling-within-the-eac

"East Africans can now drive private cars across borders and across the entire EAC region, free of charge, for visits no longer than seven (7) days. ... Anyone using a private car has to fill a form, obtainable at border crossing points or local Revenue Authority office, which grants permission for free access for a week."

And you only have 11 official border entries for cars between all members. At all.

Work:

https://www.eac.int/working-in-east-africa You are free to work unless in the public sector, but you'd still need to pass immigration procedures, and need to get and pay for a work permit within 15 days. Better than the usual wait for 14 days at the border, but then you wait for 3 weeks at the immigration office, and you'd need to pay the work permit fee (unless in Rwanda and Kenya).

This is reminiscent of the Brexiter take on the EU.

Doing stuff that helps big business, good.

Doing stuff that helps people, bad.

(Obviously your rank and file Brexiter believes the exact opposite of this, sort of e.g. we don't want fundamental human rights if it means a famous murderer gets to vote in our not even proportional system, and "it's all useless red tape about how bendy bananas can be" referring to documents written by the banana industry to make their life easier).

Slightly suspicious that the abstract of this link doesn't seem to support the claim:

> and studies suggest that the common external tariff of the EAC has not always been used to improve the economic welfare of citizens.

And it's a weak wishy-washy claim anyway. Sounds like they don't like the tariff but don't have any good reason to support that belief/preference.

I appreciate the enthusiasm, but as the EU shows (and the US in its Confederation incarnation in the 18th century), creating a super-state is not easy.

I wish them luck, we badly need a large and developed country in Africa.

I recently heard a quote: “These countries aren't underdeveloped, they are overexploited.”

EDIT: Found the source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP8CzlFhc14#t=3m

You can only be overexploited if you are underdevelopped and vice versa.

It’s important which word you choose, since both words bring with them its own implied solution to the problem. If we call it “underdeveloped”, the implied solution is to foster development. If, on the other hand, we call it “overexploited”, well…

Then the only solution is for larger more powerful countries to voluntarily give up their way of life. In which case those countries will be in a tough spot for a very long time.

I would disagree because in my opinion it seems that there are some parts of the western developed world where levels of exploitation are increasing.

I fail to see how this argument helps the countries - or rather the people - in question, that is unless you subscribe to the Marxist idea (which probably applies to the lecturer, given he's apparently well-known for his Marxist writings) that the economy essentially is a zero-sum game, in which invariably somebody has to lose for somebody else to win.

In my opinion, that's just a defeatist view because it means poor people in underdeveloped countries will remain poor unless we somehow manage to entirely undo 500 years of colonial history.

Rather than dwell on the past, we should try and find ways to create a better future. Mind you, this doesn't mean forgetting about the past and the atrocities committed under colonialism or revising history accordingly, but rather have that past inform our actions today.

> Rather than dwell on the past, we should try and find ways to create a better future.

A bold prescription! You should be king of Africa.

Overexploitation is a very real dynamic in colonial and post-colonial countries. As shown by the resource curse (aka "Dutch Disease"), countries with the largest, most valuable natural resource endowments tend to be the ones where average folks are worst off.

Dutch disease is only one aspect of the resource curse and classical "Dutch disease" has little has little to do with overexploitation post colonial or otherwise -- I don't think many people were claiming that the Netherlands were being exploited in the 1960's. What it does mean though, is that a resource rich country may find is currency strong and any manufacturing or agriculture less competitive on world markets - again this has little to do with overexploitation.

Other aspects of the resource curse that are relevant to resource rich African nations are economies that fluctuate wildly with world commodity prices which lead to whipsaw effects and difficulties in planning and investment, a lower return to investments in human capital and natural resource development being more amenable to corrruption than other industries.

The resource curse also affects countries that weren't colonized such as Russia.

Norway was worried about this as well so that's why they created their sovereign wealth fund.

> Rather than dwell on the past, we should try and find ways to create a better future.

Of course. But the solution differs depending on whether the problem today is underdevelopment or overexploitation. Most current thinking seems to tend to try to fix the former problem, not the latter. But whatever they are doing, it does not seem to be helping; these countries have been “developing” for 50 years. You’d think if they were simply underdeveloped, they would have developed by now.

Easy trick they could do to develop quicker and lesser the level of curruption: give women more rights and power. Europe is certainly not hindering them

I have heard that Europe (and others) are promoting corruption by unholding regimes which are beneficial to businesses; the old “Banana republic” play. They might not invade to suppress communist revolutions quite as often these days, but it’s perfectly plausible that they undermine such anti-corruption efforts behind the scenes.

You just need 1 or a few to reach "escape velocity", though.

Europe was ok-ish until ~1700, then Britain reached the Industrial Revolution, then everybody in about a 2000km radius suddenly leveled up. Kind of funny how geography and culture work.

Ah, the Anglo-centric (what's centrism taken to its extreme BTW?) view. As always, utterly divorced from actual facts on the ground on the Continent.

I'm not from an English speaking country and I'm actually from the "Continent".

yes, Europe had multiple colonies all over the world to extract raw material. Very easy to do that when you have a strong army. A monopoly on violence lead to that "development".

> Very easy to do that when you have a strong army

If it was so easy everyone would do it. It’s not like India wasn’t ruled by a series of colonizers long before the British.

But how do you get the strong army without being developed first?

(I agree that once you already have a strong army, you can leverage it to get even more advantages.)

Chicken and egg. The "monopoly on violence" requires technological "development".

are they not both?

I feel like it may not be easy but the EU and the US are massive success stories by any measure so it definitely worth the growing pains?

In west africa there are plans for a single currency (beyond the already existing CFA franc) https://www.dw.com/en/ecowas-west-african-bloc-aims-to-launc...

I only know people in Tanzania so I don't know how anyone in the other countries feel but the Tanzanians I know are supportive of the dream but are concerned about getting swamped by newcomers as Tanzania has lots of land and has somewhat low population density. If freedom to settle anywhere happened, they're worried Tanzania would cease to be Tanzania. And for those curious, they got the Tanzania jokes in the Simpsons and found them amusing. Tanzanians are generally optimistic people who want to see the good things in life.

Political union is implausible. Kagame and Museveni can’t even accept domestic term limits. If they won’t hand over power to another one of their countrymen, why would they hand over power to foreigners, especially ones with whom disputes over who gets to steal what from the DRC have emerged?

Not very hopeful on this working out without merging institutions (central banks, etc..) and laws, which, of course, are much harder to get agreement to.

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