The East African Community (EAC) is an intergovernmental organization in East Africa, striving for regional integration and cooperation among its member states. This article delves into the definition, historical context, and ongoing efforts of the EAC, particularly focusing on the harmonization of higher education within the region.
Map of East African Community Member States
EAC: An Overview
The EAC's membership consists of eight states: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Federal Republic of Somalia, the Republics of Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Uganda, and Tanzania. William Ruto, the president of Kenya, is the current EAC chairman.
Historical Context
Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda have cooperated with each other since the early 20th century. The East African Currency Board provided a common currency from 1919 to 1966. The customs union between Kenya and Uganda in 1917, which Tanganyika joined in 1927, was followed by the East African High Commission (EAHC) from 1948 to 1961, the East African Common Services Organization (EACSO) from 1961 to 1967, and the EAC from 1967 to 1977.
Inter-territorial co-operation between the Kenya Colony, the Uganda Protectorate, and the Tanganyika Territory was formalised in 1948 by the EAHC. This provided a customs union, a common external tariff, currency, and postage. It also dealt with common services in transport and communications, research, and education. Following independence, these integrated activities were reconstituted and the EAHC was replaced by the EACSO, which many observers thought would lead to a political federation between the three territories. The new organisation ran into difficulties because of the lack of joint planning and fiscal policy, separate political policies, and Kenya's dominant economic position. In 1967, the EACSO was superseded by the EAC.
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The EAC was revived on 30 November 1999, when the treaty for its re-establishment was signed. It came into force on 7 July 2000, 23 years after the collapse of the previous community and its organs. A customs union was signed in March 2004, which commenced on 1 January 2005. Kenya, the region's largest exporter, continued to pay duties on goods entering the other four countries on a declining scale until 2010.
Expansion and Membership
The presidents of Kenya and Rwanda invited the Autonomous Government of Southern Sudan to apply for membership upon the independence of South Sudan in 2011, and South Sudan was reportedly an applicant country as of mid-July 2011. In December 2012, Tanzania agreed to South Sudan's bid to join the EAC, clearing the way for the world's newest state to become the regional bloc's sixth member. The Democratic Republic of the Congo was admitted as a member of the EAC on 29 March 2022, and officially became a member on 11 July 2022, after depositing the instrument of ratification with the EAC Secretary General.
Organizational Structure
The EAC operates through several key organs and institutions:
- The Summit: Consists of the heads of state of each member country, providing strategic direction and convening annually.
- The Council: Comprises ministers responsible for EAC affairs, implementing decisions made by the Summit and meeting twice a year.
- The Co-ordination Committee: Consists of Permanent Secretaries of EAC affairs, implementing directives from the Council and meeting at least twice a year.
- The East African Court of Justice (EACJ): The judicial arm of the community, with a First Instance Division and an Appellate Division.
- The East African Legislative Assembly (EALA): The legislative arm of the community, with 27 members elected by the National Assemblies or Parliaments of the member states.
- The Secretariat: The executive organ of the EAC, headed by the Secretary General.
Harmonization of Higher Education
The harmonization of education systems is a recurring theme in contemporary history. Another example of these regional integration trends is the attempted harmonization of education systems in the East African Community (EAC). By design at least, the East African harmonization project closely follows the blueprint of the Bologna declaration.
This article describes the harmonization reforms in East Africa and analyzes the genesis, planned structural changes, and future prospects of the EAC’s Common Higher Education Area (CHEA). The EAC is a regional intergovernmental organization and economic community comprising more than 185 million people and over one million tertiary students combined. It consists of Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda.
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The implementation of most of the EAC’s harmonization efforts has been delegated to the Inter-University Council for East Africa (IUCEA), a coordinating and steering body headquartered in Kampala, Uganda’s capital. As of now, council membership is voluntary and by application, although the IUCEA seeks to eventually admit all 300 universities presently operating in the EAC. There is presently only one member university from South Sudan (the Rumbek University of Science and Technology).
Key Initiatives
- Handbook for Quality Assurance in Higher Education: Developed by the IUCEA, it trains senior university administrators in best quality assurance practices.
- East African Quality Assurance Network (EAQAN): Tasked with fostering the establishment of QA units and strengthening QA systems within universities and national QA bodies.
- East African Qualifications Framework for Higher Education (EAQFHE): Codifies the length, structure, and learning outcomes of academic degree programs, establishing a common credit system called EACAT (East African Credit Accumulation and Transfer).
The EAQFHE codifies the length, structure, and learning outcomes of academic degree programs. Beyond that, it establishes a common credit system and specifies minimum credit requirements for established benchmark qualifications, akin to the ECTS (European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System) credit system of the Bologna reforms. Called EACAT (East African Credit Accumulation and Transfer), this new credit system is intended to make academic qualifications more comparable and to facilitate the transfer of credits between programs, as well as ease the recognition of prior learning.
Other notable aspects of the qualifications framework include the definition of set admission requirements, progression pathways, assessment criteria, and specific learning outcomes for each of the eight qualification levels laid down in the EAQFHE. Beyond that, the guidelines call for the standardization of credential names and the creation of an “East African Graduation Statement.” Similar to the European Diploma Supplement, this document would be issued together with degree certificates and provide information on the qualification.
Intra-Regional Mobility
While reliable data are scarce and most mobile students from the region study overseas in destinations like Europe, the United States, or China, Uganda has become an increasingly important international education hub for East African students. This trend is mirrored in Kenya-the economic powerhouse of the EA and a magnet for intra-regional labor migrants. The country presently takes in a reported 4,000 to 5,000 international students annually, mostly from East Africa.
One recent study found that more than 25 percent of foreign students at four sampled Kenyan universities came from East African countries, including sizable numbers of graduate students from Tanzania and Rwanda. One reason for this growing mobility is a significant expansion of intra-regional research cooperation, along with greater availability of scholarships for graduate students in recent years.
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One example is the World Bank-funded ACE II project known as the Eastern and Southern Africa Higher Education Centers of Excellence Project (ACE II), launched in 2016. These centers are designed to function as regional incubators for technical innovation and specialized research on topics relevant to regional development, such as irrigation or electrical micro grids. In total, the ACE II project funds 24 centers where more than 3,500 graduate students conduct research, including at least 700 PhD students.
Challenges and Future Prospects
Despite the EAC’s ambitious objectives and recent increases in intra-regional mobility, the challenges to creating a CHEA in East Africa remain formidable. The EAC is a group of highly heterogeneous and unevenly developed countries inundated by rapid population growth and severe capacity shortages in higher education. Not counting South Sudan, the number of tertiary students in the EAC has almost tripled over the past decade, overburdening education systems and exacerbating chronic funding crises. This scarcity of resources complicates the implementation of large-scale reforms and means that bodies like EQAN have neither adequate staffing nor infrastructure.
There are also substantial structural barriers to overcome between the different countries’ systems. The length, curricula, credit, and assessment systems of academic degree programs vary substantially not only between Anglophone countries and countries with a Francophone legacy, but even between the UK-patterned systems themselves. While Kenya has a 12+4 system with four-year bachelor’s programs, Tanzania and Uganda have three-year bachelor’s programs and require entrants to higher education to complete a two-year advanced-level secondary program after 11 years of school (11+2+3).
As the Bologna reforms have illustrated, the restructuring and alignment of degree programs is far from insurmountable, notwithstanding opposition from universities and other stakeholders to transforming long-standing structures. That said, the implementation of such far-reaching reforms requires political will and a readiness to forgo certain national and institutional prerogatives. This is apparent in the economic sphere, where member countries are still reluctant to fully liberalize their labor markets and continue to impose barriers to protect local jobs from foreign competition despite multilateral agreements to the contrary.
The EAC customs union, which was meant to be in full effect by 2010, was in 2018 postponed indefinitely because countries continue to unilaterally shield specific industries of national importance. Similar setbacks can likely be expected in the education sector, where integration is still embryonic. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, fiscal issues like the agreed-upon equal treatment of students from all member countries in terms of tuition fees face resistance from underfunded universities, more than half of which are not yet full members of the IUCEA.
Some universities also fear that the increased transferability of qualifications will cause them to lose students to institutions in other countries. In light of these realities, the present strategy of the IUECA is to promote awareness of the reforms and their benefits, and to prioritize the harmonization of graduate education, rather than push for the immediate standardization of education systems at all levels of tertiary education.
The reforms are bound to progress in the years ahead, but it’s unrealistic to expect the East African CHEA to emerge swiftly, uniformly, or linearly.
EAC Trade Flows 2018
Funding Challenges
The EAC is critically underfunded due to defaulting member states. Kenya, Tanzania and Somalia are the only member states to not have any standing debt. Uganda has paid 99% of its remittance. The budget deficits have led to a slowdown in community operations.
At the 23rd Ordinary summit in 2023, they agreed on a new financing model in which 65% of the budget is contributed to equally, while the remaining 35% is contributed to on the basis of each member states' respective average nominal GDP in the past five years as assessed by the World Bank.
Kenya will contribute $12.1 million (23.7%), Tanzania $9 million (17.6%), Uganda $8.5 million (16.7%), Rwanda $8.3 million (16.3), South Sudan $6.6 (12.9%) million and Burundi $6.4 million (12.5%).
