UK Out, South Sudan In: The Paradox of Regional Integration Projects
By David Mayen Ayarbior, Juba, South Sudan
June 26, 2016 (SSB) — Last week the United Kingdom of Britain voted in a referendum to exit from the European Union. Having been an integral part of the “European project” for much too long, the decision to exit the union has created an economic shock that is still spreading beyond the EU’s epicenter into the rest of the world. Within the Kingdom itself, the demographic chart of the vote has shown how divided the voters were: the youth voted to stay, Scotland voted to stay, Londoners voted to stay, yet almost every “rural” community voted to exit and they won the day by just over a million vote.
Thousands of miles away from Britain, the “youngest” nation in the world has recently been accepted into an economic community which has benchmarked the EU for its growth projectiles. South Sudan has been accepted into the East African Community, an economic community with its own skeptics who are comparable to those in the EU. Like it is in Britain, the skeptics (naysayers) of South Sudan about joining EAC are also overwhelmingly rural folks who do not have requisite capacity to correctly perceive the socioeconomic intricacies of economic communities.
Unlike our own experience, those rural folks in Britain are able to exercise their long held ‘democratic’ right to have a strong say about staying in the EU. Albeit the British rural population have mostly decided on a purely emotional premise, the elites in London have no option but to implement what has been decided by ‘the people’. For us, the people have handed their fate into the hands of the literate and semi-literate who are now self-designated ‘economic shepherds’ of EAC whose decisions are quasi-biblical; though not for the wrong reasons cynics would want to agitate. For a country of over 70% illiteracy rate, no rational thinker would want the rural folks to analyze the pros and cons of jumping onto the East African fast moving economic wagon, with all its possible defects and numerous opportunities.
EAC had once disintegrated when Uganda and Tanzania detested Kenya’s economic hegemony. Just a few weeks ago, cynics argued that the same old conspiracy of the EAC’s underdeveloped seemed to be submerging when Uganda decided to extend pipelines through Tanzania instead of Lamu Port in Kenya. Kenya responded by penning a contract with Ethiopia for the latter to extend a pipeline to Mombasa. Again, while they (the cynics) would shoehorn their sinister motives in-between the EAC founders on these projects, they (projects) essentially remain positive economic developments nonetheless. With these project, the rising tides of economic growth shall, hopefully, soon lift all EAC boats, including the new ‘kid’ on the block.
The issues that led to Britain’s exit (Brexit) from the EU may be trivial according to the young and the elite Londoners who overwhelmingly voted to stay, but democracy has spoken. But who would dare say that issues of sovereignty can ever be trivial as they are perceived by the unsophisticated. After all, irrespective of sophistication, salient features of parliamentary sovereignty, independence of the judiciary, citizenship rights, economic independence, etc. have always defined the meaning of sacrosanctity underlying the term “nation-state.” By most lenses, there is no sovereignty in (more than half) foreign parliamentarians legislating on my behalf; in another court to rule over my affairs, and in foreign farmers to have a right of ownership over my ancestral land. On the outset, it simply looks and smells like “loss of sovereignty.” But to all intents and purposes, in actual fact, it practically is handing over sovereignty to a “supra-state,” a new species of our evolving human pursuit of peaceful coexistence through economic satisfaction and interdependence.
All in all, the EU is a benchmark for EAC’s economic development targets. In spite of assurances from founding members that the project may be even stronger without London, it might have started a downward trajectory towards disintegration. In contrast, EAC has just boosted its regional integration project with numerous grand multibillion schemes that are making it, by all accounts, a hopeful prospect.
The issues of sovereignty (democratic deficit) that have pushed Britain away from EU may not apply to EAC member states, if only for the short and medium terms. For EAC, all eyes are on freeing the regions populations from the shackles of degrading poverty. And considering the gradual nature of EAC regional integration project, it will take it not less than a couple of decades of economic integration before it starts grappling with serious issues of political sovereignty underlying all such endeavors. Hopefully, by then, the ground work for social integration will have been firmly set.
For South Sudan, current macro-economic entanglements are risking its fast-tracking (3 years) scenarios (requirements) for joining EAC. If nothing changes in the country’s macroeconomic management shortcomings, it is more than likely that EAC countries will vote for South Sudan’s process of full integration to be suspended until it sets its house in order. Political stability and economic predictability are always prerequisites for a country to prove itself worthy of joining any economic community. That was the case with Eastern European countries before they were admitted to EU.
Thus, we must honesty ask ourselves: why would Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Rwanda (who are currently among the fastest growing economies in the world) just embrace South Sudan? What incentive could they have from a country that is falling apart and refusing to be rescued, even by genuine “sibling” neighbors and distant friends and well-wishers? I am more than sure that EAC states will soon say: Let them seek the political kingdom first and all other things shall be added unto them. It will just be fair to say so when they say so and we will, then, have to accept our multiplying shortfalls.
Mayen Ayarbior has a Bachelor Degree in Economics and Political Science from Kampala International University (Uganda), Masters in International Security from JKSIS-University of Denver (USA), and Bachelor of Laws (LLB) from the University of London. He is the author of “House of War (Civil War and State Failure in Africa) 2013” and currently the Press Secretary/ Spokesperson in the Office of South Sudan’s Vice President, H.E. James Wani Igga. You can reach him via his email address: mayen.ayarbior@gmail.com.
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