Discussions on Somalia’s application to join the East African Community (EAC) are scheduled to start tomorrow.
High-level officials from the Horn of Africa country are expected meet senior officials of the EAC in Arusha to fine-tune critical issues on the process.
A statement issued by the EAC secretariat yesterday said the talks will be held at the Kenya School of Government on the outskirts of Nairobi.
The Federal Republic of Somalia, which has been plagued by security challenges, has been yearning to join the seven nation bloc since 2013.
Its application has, however, seen a long wait attributed by regional analysts to the security challenges the Horn of Africa state continues to face.
But EAC secretary-general Peter Mathuki said last week that Somalia has made a critical step towards becoming the eighth member of the bloc.
“Negotiations between the EAC and Somalia on the admission of Somalia into the EAC will commence on Tuesday, August 22,” he told the media in Arusha.
Currently the EAC has seven member countries being Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Burundi, Rwanda, South Sudan and the DR Congo (DRC).
South Sudan and the DRC are the latest entrants into the bloc. They joined in 2016 and 2022 respectively ahead of Somalia which applied in 2012.
Dr Mathuki has often expressed his confidence that the negotiations will pave the way to Somalia becoming the eight member of the expanding bloc.
“The negotiations stage has been set,” he said in his address on the ‘State of the EAC’, an update of the ongoing activities of the Arusha-based regional body.
He said there are already positive signs of sucking in the Horn of Africa state into the EAC after the verification mission on the country’s readiness in early 2023.
The report on the mission was deliberated on and shared with all partner states whose officials were also in the EAC team to Mogadishu.
Somalia applied to join the Community back in 2012 and a verification mission was launched by EAC on January 25, 2023 to assess its readiness.
The verification team’s report was adopted by the EAC Heads of State in June this year. The regional leaders, thereafter, tasked the Council of Ministers to commence the negotiations with Mogadishu.
Dr Abdusalam Omer, Somalia’s former Foreign Affairs minister and currently Presidential Special Envoy to East African Community, has expressed optimism on the coming talks.
He was quoted by the media in the region saying the negotiations will address all the EAC pillars of integration, comparing and contrasting with the Somalia rules and laws.
“This will also include setting the time frame for Somalia to implement and harmonise the laws with that of the region,” Mr Omer said.
“The way forward for Africa and East Africa is regional integration and opening up markets, as this will help lower the cost of products.
“Integration is the nemesis of the new type of terrorism, and, with regional integration and cooperation, terrorism will be defeated.”
The four pillars of the EAC integration are the Customs Union, the Common Market Protocol, the Monetary Union and the Political Federation.
Only the Customs Union and Common Market protocols have been fully operationalised from 2005 and 2010 respectively.
Somalia shares a border with Kenya, having the longest national coastline in Africa of over 3,000km, linking Africa to the Arabian Peninsula.
Dr Omer added, “There are a lot of Somalia hopes to gain but also the region has a lot to gain from Somalia because of its connectivity to the Middle East.”
Mr Abdullah Ibrahim, a Somali government consultant based in Nairobi, was part of the delegation that supported the EAC verification team in Somalia early this year.
The negotiation report from the EAC Secretariat will be submitted to the Council of Ministers for consideration.
The Council of Ministers, which is an authoritative organ of the EAC, will submit the report to the Heads of State Summit later this year.
The Summit is expected to adopt the report and make a political declaration which is to admit Somalia as the eighth member state of the East African Community.
The admission will precede with the signing of the treaty of the accession by Somalia, Mogadishu will then need to deposit the instruments of the ratification to the EAC secretariat.
