Abstract:
Regional integration has long been recognized and practised in East Africa. The main aim of this study is to analyze the effects of the various prospects and challenges in the East African Community Regional Integration Process (2001-2009). This study also seeks to discuss the various measures adopted by members of the East African Community have adopted during the four-step regional integration process to address the hereinabove subject, recommend policy alternatives for effective regional integration in East Africa, and examining the processes of the development of regional integration in East Africa.
Before its fall in 1977, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda were included in the Eastern Africa Community (EAC). In 1999, the EAC Treaty re-signed efforts of integration in the East African region and, as a Member State, it eventually opened Rwanda and Burundi up to join the EAC and further Southern Sudan. The incorporation of the EAC is composed of four pillars: The Customs Union, Political Federation, Common Market and Monetary Union. This study aims at examining the impact on East Africa's integration of Member States ' regimes because of the revived EAC. The results show that the kinds of government in the Eastern African countries have a significant negative and positive impact on regional integration. On the other side, it is evident that ethnicity has an adverse effect on the inclusion of East Africa, although the political class has not yet utilized racial jingoism to overcome assimilation.
This study concludes by recommending that maximum support by all the EAC stakeholders is essential in ensuring the regional integration process will be fully realized. As the member states stride towards regional integration, they ought to assume common regional approaches, develop common regional public goods, adopt common investment, foreign and infrastructural, and take cognizant of essential roles of the other member states
