East Africa Community to be Boosted by Business

By Eddyson Lugangwa Posted 17 October 2006 @ 04:06 pm EET     Print     Reprint     E-Mail     Comments

Nairobi (IBTimes.com) - A talk about East African community is starting to feel like a foul taste in the mouth since many people cannot put a finger on anything that is really East African yet.

Apart from the many musicians who are claiming to be East African simply because they can sing a few lines in Swahili, the rest of the people are still Rwandans, Ugandans, Kenyans, Burundians and Tanzanians.

In other words for now, the much hyped East African Community is still more of a paper model. People always hear of meetings and proposals but hardly any implantations of some of the things discussed in Arusha, the seat of the EAC.

While the bureaucrats seem to be dragging their feet, the business community cannot wait for Arusha to make up their minds. About three weeks ago, something great happened in the yet to be East African federation. Celtel International, the leading pan-African mobile telecommunications group, pulled off first when it successfully launched a borderless mobile phone network covering the East African region.

The company launched a common network for Celtel customers in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, effectively phasing out the regional roaming service. Now any Celtel subscriber in the region will be treated as a local customer no matter which country they are in.

Under the new service, touted by its architects as a major technological breakthrough in the history of mobile telecommunications in the world, Celtel subscribers can use any Celtel sim card across all the three East African countries. Known as "One Network", the new service, which takes effect immediately, will also allow Celtel subscribers to top up anywhere in the region with local scratch cards using a new common reload code for East Africa.

Incoming calls from a Celtel line from anywhere in the region will also be free. Unlike the traditional roaming facilities, Celtel subscribers within East Africa will not be required to pay roaming or international access deposits, sign-up fee or pre-registration charges under the new service.

The new product gives Celtel an edge over its competitors such as Safaricom, Vodacom, MTN and UTL. The three companies provide roaming services only to prepaid customers and charge for all incoming calls and require a special subscription and tariff plan.

According to Celtel's Chief Executive Officer, Gerhard May, the new product is aimed at making cross-border communication easier for those who depend on cross-border contacts. The new product is timely, since East Africa is currently experiencing high cross-border traffic. Now this is really the way forward for East Africa.

Countries should also support this process by making legislation that removes all possible bottlenecks. The delay in putting the customs union into operation should be one of the things to deal with. This can actually help large scale businessmen like Mukwano, or Madhivani to operate throughout the whole region.

As for the transport industry, we can agree that we have enough bus companies that are operating at an East African scale. Companies like, ONATRACOM, Akamba, Scandinavia, Gaso, Regional and Jaguar bus companies have for long been offering quality services to travellers throughout East Africa.

These companies also do accept any of the different currencies used in East Africa at their offices. Such business procedures will go a long way in preparing East Africans for a common currency which is one of the objectives espoused in the East African treaty.

It is a pity that the famous East African passport never got deserved attention. Governments need to simply work out ways to ease movement of their citizens across borders. And since we are talking about East Africanizing businesses, then the question of free movement of labour needs to be addressed as well. Tanzania is on a wrong footing so far for its record of chasing Rwandan farmers from its soil. For the East African federation to come into effect, the business community needs to lead the pace.