The Brexit Has Exposed the Deficiencies of Regional Integration And Globalization

The Brexit Has Exposed the Deficiencies of Regional Integration And Globalization

• ·         Uganda Has Not Built Enough Production Capacity To Satisfy The EAC Market

• ·         The EAC May Not Be As Viable As President Museveni Is Making Us To Believe

A lot has already been said and written about last Thursday’s famous referendum that culminated into the exit of United Kingdom from the European Union.

The high and mighty powers in British circles seem NOT to have anticipated that the referendum would result into the exit of the English from the continental body.

But my view is that the outcome of the referendum (LEAVE) was long overdue.

Any country that seeks to integrate with other countries needs to first do three things;

1; To first build enough production capacity to satisfy the local market (36m people) before it embarks on the regional market (170m people)

2; First build concrete internal infrastructure (power , roads and railway transport)

2; To periodically consult its citizens (through referendum) about the viability of  integration with other countries

THE REALITY IN UGANDA

In Uganda our president, Yoweri Museveni has been a lone voice in propagating the voice of the east African integration. His argument is that our market is too small to accommodate our products.

 He therefore argues that we need to integrate our 38 million Ugandans together with the 45 million Kenyans, 50 million Tanzanians, 11 million southern Sudanese, 11 million Burundians, 12 million Rwandese to widen our marker base for our products.

The amazing thing is that no single Ugandan has ever challenged president Museveni on whether we have built enough capacity to produce for the regional market of 145 million people.

THE DEMERITS OF REGIONAL INTEGRATION

For very many years we have not asked ourselves what happened to regional bodies like ECOWAS, SADC, COMESA, PTA, and IGAD etc

Yet the truth is that all these blocs failed to work due to various reasons.

 The Brexit has therefore been an eye opener on the demerits of regional integration in particular and globalization in general.

When you observe critically, you will realize that the two concepts; globalization and regional integration actually mean the same thing.

This is because while regional integration is the harmonization of working relationships between countries with the objective of enabling free movement of goods and services together with the nationals of their nationals.

On the other hand globalization envisages a free movement of capital, ideas and technological innovations between the citizens of the globe.  

The difference between the two is that while integration is institutionalized by promulgating laws, globalization operates spontaneously.  In other words globalization is not regulated by legislation but integration is institutionalized through legislations and memorandum of understanding between countries with an objective of achieving a common good.

Regional integration is almost similar to cooperatives where a group of people who agree to join together as a group with an objective of achieving a common goal.

So while our president has been pushing us to integrate our country with the brothers in the region, I think he needed to first seek the permission of the citizens.

The question we needed to pose to president Museveni and other proponents of the EAC should be as follows;.

WHAT IS UGANDA’S PRODUCTIVITY

While president Museveni makes a very attractive argument about marketing Ugandan products in the region, we need to know whether Uganda has built enough capacity to produce for the east African market as a whole.

For instance can Uganda produce enough milk and meat products for the entire region?

Can we manage to satiate the market demands for agricultural products?

The truth is the Uganda as a country has not built enough capacity to fulfill the market demands of the east African market.

What we have actually been experiencing has been that whenever Ugandans have found market for their products outside Uganda, there has developed an immediate deficit in supply of those particular goods within the country.

For instance when president Museveni got investors in the fishing industry, leading to the emergence of very many fish processing industries, the local citizens have been starved of fish.

During the 2016 state of the nation address, President Museveni himself admitted that most of the fish processing industries had closed because there was not enough fish to meet the market demands of the industries.

He went on to blame the illegal fishermen for depleting all the fish from Lake Victoria by use of wrong fishing methods.

But the reality is that the fish reserves had been overwhelmed by the huge demand.

Now president Museveni has embarked on instituting very tough laws on fishing on al lakes of Uganda.

But he has forgotten the market is too big for the Ugandan fish reserves.

THE SOUTH SUDAN MARKET EXPERIENCE

Another interesting experience has been the perplexing story of southern Sudan.

When southern Sudan got independence and opened its borders for the Ugandan traders, all goods were sold to juba.

And consequence was that Uganda suffered an immediate shortage of foodstuffs like bananas, pineapples, oranges, mangoes and cassava.

In 2011, the Ugandan production potential was stretched to the limit to an extent that the country ran out of sugar leading to intolerable inflation levels.

The Ugandan opposition leader Col Kiiza Besigye exploited that inflation and shortage of sugar and staged walk to work demonstrations that almost brought down the NRM government.

Yet the truth of it all was that our country’s production potential had been stretched beyond its means by the market demands of southern Sudan.  

At that moment the solution was to adopt protectionist policies that restricted the movement of sugar from Uganda with the objective of meeting the demands of the Ugandan market.

Many times traders have bought cassava for the southern Sudan market when it’s still in the gardens!

This is a clear manifestation of our lack of capacity to produce for the regional market.

Therefore as president Museveni crusades for the east African community, we need to task him for the viability of the concept of regional integration.

In fact when war broke out between president salvar kiir and his deputy Dr Riek Machar  in southern Sudan it was a blessing in disguise for the Ugandan economy, as inflation went down because traders were no longer exporting goods to the Sudan market.

Once southern Sudan stabilizes and begins taking our goods we shall suffer from terrible inflation.

 Therefore the Brexit is one good illustration of the demerits of regional integration.

While many of you may appreciate it from the perspective of facilitating free movement of people across national borders , you don’t take time to look at the consequences of the free movement of goods that you don’t produce in enough quantities.

Therefore, I think , when subjected to scrutiny , the east African integration may not be as rosy as president Museveni is making us to believe.

The author Fred Daka Kamwada is a journalist, researcher and blogger

You can reach him on kamwadafred@gmail.com or 0782480121

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