An agreement to establish a common market with the East African Community (EAC) has recently been signed to promote trade among East Africa’s economies: Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.  While this new deal contains some of the pitfalls that have plagued other attempts to stimulate the currently pathetically low levels of intra-African trade, there is room for hope that this time it will be different.

So far Africa’s obsession with regional trading blocs has proven more of a hindrance than a help. Of the 53 countries, all belong to at least one regional grouping, 27 are members of two, 18 belong to three, and one country is even a member of four.  Despite this plethora of groups, acronyms, and big budget summits, trade is blighted by internal barriers- just nine per cent of African trading takes place between other Africans- the lowest levels of inter-regional trading in the world.

The EAC common market will be different. Its objective is not to simply aggregate trading partners into vague geographical groupings, with no regard to trade facilitation or existing trading patterns, such as the Economic and Monetary Community of Central African States (CEMAC).  The EAC will, we are lead to believe, actively promote inter-regional trading by removing many of the tedious and arbitrary procedures that currently obstruct trade across African states.  Furthermore, once the initial reforms to harmonise customs procedures and remove unnecessary and harmful ones, local industry leaders will begin to press EAC governments to drop many other trade barriers, boosting the prospect that African producers will finally be able to gain access to cheaper suppliers and better growth opportunities around the world.

This is all good news, but some of the usual caveats to “free trade” agreements apply: critics of the treaty are already pointing to a number of exceptions requested my member states, looking to “protect” their domestic industries.  On balance, however, a positive step for East Africa.