Optimism about a bold new East Africa has been growing apace. This month, the Common Market protocol, signed last November by the heads of state of Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda transcends into a treaty. This comes close on the heels of the January 2010 promulgation of the Customs Union.

Next in the gathering moment on the path to the proposed 2015 East Africa political federation is a single currency anticipated by 2013. All these accolades are quite in order, but should East Africans pop the champagne bottles just yet?

Questions abound about the viability and feasibility of a political federation by 2015 – only five years away! One can be excused for opining that the fast pace of integration is more a matter for EAC bureaucrats and technocrats than that of the 120 million-plus region’s populace.

Take the business community for instance. Ululating and celebrating in Arusha last November after it was announced the region would be a Customs Union, many a captain of industry has since revised this enthusiasm downwards. So have many traders. The roll out of the Customs Union has not facilitated the movement of goods across borders in the way the business community had envisaged. The challenge, nay, roadblock to the smooth flow of goods across borders has been simply intransigence on the part of member countries, and accusations have been flowing back and forth. Skeptics, particularly those that had whetted appetites about super profits from wider markets, are now putting a damper on the even more intricate Common Market as it comes into force. If in doubt, just ask members of the East African Business Council.

On this score, it is critical that the frustrations of businesses, such as immigration officers at border points who won’t acquiesce to the new customs regime, be addressed once and for all before delving

into the more ambitious Common Market. If impediments to the movement of goods still exist months after the region became a fully fledged Customs Union, how much more difficult will it be for capital, labour and services to flow across borders as the Common Market treaty proposes? And how about negotiations for a single currency in a short three years!

It must be appreciated that engendering a truly regional entity is an intensely political process fraught with the fragility of the attendant socio-cultural and historical milieu and antecedents. The whispered word is that decisions were rammed down the throats of unwilling partners who then appended their signatures to documents but secure in the knowledge that they had no intentions of implementing them.

The socio-economic benefits of a unified East African Community are manifold and need not detain us here, but this does not mean that East Africans should plunge headlong into it without thinking through the potential challenges. It is the hallmark of a strategist to cast his or her gaze ahead and plan ways and means of overcoming or avoiding hurdles.

While it is quite in order for the negotiating teams to hammer out deals rapidly and urgently, it would be important for deliberate ownership and involvement of the general populace to be factored in. This far, the opinion of East African peoples has not been sought vigorously enough on the twin issues of a Customs Union and a Common Market, which are seen as the foundation blocks to an East African nation. It could be argued that when the Presidents appended their signatures to protocols and treaties, they had, by extension decided for and on behalf of the citizens they represent. But as the European Union case has shown, committing citizens to intenational decisions of necessity requires their say so. To this end, Ambassador Juma Mwapachu’s secretariat would be well advised to propose and pursue no less than a referendum or at least voting on these issues by national parliaments. This would be a particularly crucial ingredient en-route to negotiations on the monetary union