EAST African Community leaders yesterday pondered various angles on which the quest for federation can be furthered, at the Silver Jubilee of the EAC Treaty, signed mid-1999 in the travel capital of Arusha.

The discussion came at an open forum prior to the summit to be held today, where Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said that despite its weaknesses, the EAC was the most institutionalized regional bloc, with a working customs union, a common market protocol, and even a court for citizens’ grievances, along with various agencies facilitating integration.

Kenyan President Dr William Ruto pointed at the complex issue of sequencing the East African federation, noting that the three main country unions were supposed to unite by 1963 when Kenya obtained its independence, ‘but early in 1964 the union between Tanganyika and Zanzibar came about.’ Intimating that its circumstances cast a shadow on the feasibility of the wider plan.

The Kenyan leader also remarked on suggestions by the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on the need to unify the two parallel processes on African initiatives for peace in DRC, one proceeding from the Angolan capital of Luanda and another anchored in the Nairobi process.

The latter significantly involves EAC member states while the Luanda process chiefly elicits support from the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) where DRC and Tanzania are members.

He pleaded that DRC wishes that the Nairobi process be amplified and provide the guarantee for positive movement of the situation in the EAC partner state.

The leaders similarly discussed how the countries are working to solve current challenges of socioeconomic development in the region and Africa generally, with host President Samia Suluhu Hassan stating that Tanzania needs at least $19bn to address issues related to climate in the next five years.

The country is struggling to raise funds to that effect, he said, underlining that Africa requires $ 1.3trn for the purpose but so far the continent has been able to raise $300bn to pursue those efforts.

“Energy transition is an important issue for our countries and we have started to implement the programmes," she said, pointing at local efforts for cleaner sources of energy such as solar and wind. “We have already started a solar project in Singida,” she said, sidestepping the more prevalent gas transition theme.

She said that to reduce deforestation there is need to supply clean energy through rural electrification and natural gas or even coal-based treated briquettes.

Tanzania will early next year host a global energy meeting, to be attended by multilateral agencies like the World Bank, the African Development Bank and development partner agencies.

In other remarks, President Museveni suggested that while the colonialists drew the borders of the respective countries, “East Africans have been a single society for thousands of years.

“The Berlin Conference which partitioned the African continent took place in 1884, just 140 years ago and before that our forefathers and grandfathers were one for thousands of years,” he declared.