It is now old news that the Democratic Republic of Congo will become the seventh member of the East African Community. And following the endorsement by the bloc’s Council of Ministers, the second-highest organ of the EAC, the DRC is now preparing to welcome neighbours with whom it shares a linguistic and geographical connection.
Pending a calamity before the final decision of the Summit, this move could signal President Felix Tshisekedi’s promise when he took over power in January 2019: to “build bridges and not walls” with neighbours.
Between late June and early July, an EAC verification team travelled to the DRC to verify the country's compliance with the EAC Treaty.
The mission noted that Congo-Kinshasa already had “a sense of belonging and attachment to the EAC at the social, economic, historical, cultural and geographical levels”.
The DRC already shares borders with five EAC member countries: Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda and South Sudan.
Several economic actors point out that trade is increasing between some EAC countries and the DRC. Among the countries illustrating this new cooperation are Rwanda, Tanzania, Burundi, Uganda and even Kenya.
A few days after Tshisekedi announced the initiative to strengthen cooperation with EAC countries, the Rwandan national airline RwandAir launched a direct route between Kigali and Kinshasa, with the first flight in April 2020.
The airline also inaugurated a direct route to Lubumbashi, the second-largest city in the DRC, in the south of the country, and another direct route to Goma, in the east.
Goma, in North Kivu, has become a commercial hub and has also attracted another aviation company: Jambojet, the low-cost Kenyan airline. It launched direct Nairobi-Goma flights in September 2021.
Some worry that DRC’s entry will be bumpy, especially on the issue of EAC common market and customs facilitation protocols.
Competition for local industry
Dady Saleh, an economics lecturer in Kinshasa, said: “The Congolese economy is not yet ready, because it is a question of the law of supply and demand.”
He added: “The Congo is a market of more than 80 million consumers, but we are not able to produce for export to other countries.”
The development economist told the Nation.Africa that given the extroverted nature of the Congolese economy, where almost everything is imported, “local industry is bound to face a lot of competition that will undermine local production”.
The sad bit of local industries being outcompeted is, however, recompensed by the long-term benefits.
For example, investors may seek to enter DRC based on the expected weaker red tape if DRC implements all EAC protocols.
The DRC also expected to finally erect the complete phases of the Inga Dam, which could be Africa’s biggest hydropower producer when completed.
The Congolese president, though, has been hunting for investors to pump money into the project.
Raymond Mabangi, another Congolese economist, told Nation.Africa that the DRC’s market may be attractive to the region, but the region will have to also help the country deal with its uncertain political situation and insecurity, as well as cooperate on infrastructure.
Without that, the DRC could suffer economically and in all other sectors, because it lacks the capacity to deal with the expected free movement of people and goods, he argued.
“Our borders are still fragile and porous. This is a bad idea from Félix Tshisekedi,” he said, referring to the expected influx of people and goods from the region.
On the official side, Bestine Kazadi, President Tshisekedi's adviser on regional integration, has expressed "satisfaction" that the DRC belongs to the EAC.
“There is a need to make the DRC's membership of regional integration organisations profitable; to be a mobile bridge for exchanges and services between the EAC, SADC, ECCAS and Comesa," she wrote last week, referring to the other blocs for southern, eastern and central Africa, as well as the Great Lakes Region, ICGLR, to which the DRC already belongs.
At the time of writing, the Congolese government had not made its views known, beyond what the adviser wrote on her social media pages.
