The East African Community formalized this Tuesday, March 29 the entry of a new member, and size. The Democratic Republic of Congo joins Burundi, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, South Sudan and Tanzania in the sub-regional organization. The DRC represents a sizeable market for all these countries, but its entry into the East African Community could also reveal the Congolese giant’s economic weaknesses.
With the entry of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the East African Community now extends from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean “, welcomed the secretary general of the sub-regional organization. The Kenyan Peter Mathuki even describes the event as historic.
By welcoming the 90 million Congolese in the single East African market, Kenyans, Ugandans and Tanzanians, who already export a lot to their big neighbor, see a huge market opening up to them without as many customs duties.
If the Congolese population can expect to benefit from a drop in the cost of communications and imported products, not to mention the facilities for traveling in the region, the shock could be severe for the Congolese economy. Little industrialized, little banked, the DRC risks becoming a real funnel for the products of its English-speaking neighbors, underlines an expert of the Great Lakes.
But President Tshisekedi, in asking for his country’s entry into the East African organization a little less than two years ago, favored the end of the diplomatic isolation of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Diplomatic relations still very tense in the region, since the very day of its entry into the East African Community, the DRC accused Rwandaa member of the organization, to encourage a rebellion in eastern Congo.