If endorsed during the ongoing summit in Uganda’s capital Kampala, the regional economic cooperation will be the largest in Africa.
Inevitably, the summit of member states from the East African Community (EAC), Southern African Development Cooperation (SADC), and Common Markets of East and Southern Africa (Comesa), will tackle the global financial crisis.
Citing strains on resources and manpower due to multiple entries in various trading blocs, the three regional economic co-operations are seeking to dissolve their sub-regional bloc and merge into one.
Under the African Union (AU), there is an ongoing debate on how best to move towards an Economic Community and Union Government for Africa, but many countries choose to go slow, while others, especially the movers like Libya, say hesitation by other countries denies the largely poor continent the desired growth rate. "The best strategy is to consolidate regional integration and use regional economic communities as a building bloc towards an eventual AU government," says Mr Eriya Kategaya, Uganda’s Minister for EAC.
"We are implementing a strategy of moving towards a continental economic cooperation in a systematic manner than we would be in our small and economically weak regional economic cooperations," he said.
"Our first tripartite summit will bring together heads of states from the three trading blocs to share ideas on how best we can merge into one economic cooperation."
He said the summit would focus on cross cutting issue that affect the three blocs: EAC, SADC, and COMESA with the sticking issue being infrastructure development and connectivity, promotion of free movement of persons and integration covering economic and trade liberalisation.
"While EAC heads of states have resolved to commit more resources for development of infrastructure: roads, railways, sea ports and civil aviation, there is need to enhance the inter-connectivity with the other regions to benefit from synergies.
This summit is expected to provide an impetus in this regard," said Kategaya. According to world statistics of 2006, the three blocs have a combined population of 527 million people, representing 57 per cent of Africa’s population.