Kenyan President William Ruto has urged the Committee of Experts tasked with drawing up the Constitution for the proposed East African Community Political Confederation to fast-track the process, and have its first draft latest by the end of June 2024.
According to a press release by the EAC Secretariat, on May 25, Ruto was speaking at the State House in Nairobi, Kenya, when he received the Committee of Experts tasked with drafting the Constitution for the proposed EAC Political Confederation.
The committee, which is chaired by Uganda's retired Chief Justice, Benjamin Odoki, is currently collecting views from stakeholders and opinion leaders in Kenya through national consultative forums.
Political Federation is the ultimate goal of the EAC integration process, being the fourth step after the Customs Union, Common Market, and Monetary Union. It is founded on three pillars, namely common foreign and security policies, good governance, and effective implementation of the prior stages of regional integration.
The Summit of EAC Heads of State in May 2017 adopted a Political Confederation as the transitional model to the Political Federation.
Ruto said East Africans wanted to live together and do business regardless of national boundaries. HE urged the EAC Partner States to, therefore, endeavour to catch up with them and actualise the Political Confederation as fast as possible.
The Head of State said the idea of a federation was conceived after independence in the early 1960s by the founding fathers of Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, adding that the ongoing expansion of the Community would be an asset for the people of East Africa and Africa as a whole.
He pledged that the government of Kenya would give $1 million to the EAC Secretariat to support national consultations on Political Confederation being conducted by the committee. The President also promised to convince other Partner States to also contribute so that the process of preparing the constitution is finished in time as directed by the EAC Summit.
"The President said that Partner States should not entertain the barriers occasioned by the boundaries created by the former colonial powers for their own imperial interests, instead urging Partner States to work together and collapse all the boundaries for the sake of integration in the region and beyond," the press release reads in part.
Ruto cited prosperity for the region, strategic economy and security, and the fact that East Africans were peoples of the same origins as the major reasons why the region needs to integrate and embrace its unity.
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He added that a borderless Africa would benefit from the prosperity that comes with integration, noting that integration would provide a bigger market for the goods and services produced by the people of the region.
The Chairperson of the Committee, Justice Benjamin Odoki, informed the President that the committee concluded stakeholders' consultations in Burundi and Uganda.
The EAC has seven Partner States - Burundi, DR Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Uganda, and Tanzania.
Odoki informed the President that there had been very good ideas and recommendations that emerged from Kenyans during the consultations.
"I can confidently tell you that, we are trailing behind the citizens' wishes in terms of the need for a political integration Mr. President," he told Ruto.
