Senior officials and experts from member countries of the East African Community (EAC) yesterday started a two-day session in Kigali ahead of the Northern Corridor Integration Projects (NCIP) Summit.

The summit, which is expected to be attended by at least four Heads of State on Saturday, is aimed at assessing the implementation status of 14 projects launched under the NCIP framework.

It is expected to draw the Presidents of Kenya, Uganda, South Sudan and the host Rwanda.

The NCIP meeting has three sessions including the Senior Officials session (ongoing in Kigali from 4th - 5th March), the Ministerial Session (to be held in Kigali on March 6), and the Heads of State Summit on March 7, 2015.

Rwanda’s national coordinator for the NCIP, Monique Mukaruliza, said in an interview with The New Times yesterday that the experts will assess and report about 14 projects which the Ministerial Session will also deliberate on and report to the Heads of State.

The projects include several infrastructural facilities in key sectors. They include building an oil refinery in Uganda as well as oil and gas pipelines to enabling customs integration and single visas for tourists in the EAC and putting in place electricity grids to enable power sharing, among others.

Others are policy frameworks on key areas.

"A lot has been achieved; we are working together on military operations to ensure security in the region, we have agreements on one network area which has made it cheaper to call South Sudan, Uganda, and Kenya, it’s much cheaper, it’s almost the same like calling someone in Rwanda,” Mukaruliza said.

The Northern Corridor brings together countries that are mainly served by the Mombasa Port in Kenya.

At the NCIP summit, country members of the corridor which are Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya and South Sudan are represented while delegates from Tanzania, Burundi, and Ethiopia are attending the meetings as observers.

According to Joseph Nyagah, Kenya’s national coordinator for the NCIP, Heads of State are "well informed” about the projects and they put pressure on the senior officials and experts to ensure implementation given the importance of the projects for the people.

"The Northern Corridor (NCIP) is a very exciting project. We have achieved a lot during the past one-and-ahalf years because the Presidents are totally in charge. They are the ones supervising it and every two months they chair a meeting where we go through item by item,” he said.

Both Nyagah and Mukaruliza said that officials will use the ongoing NCIP summit to urge members of the private sector in the EAC to be more involved with integration projects as the phase of their implementation approaches.

"We want members of the private sector to be involved. We want them to buy shares in the projects so they can benefit from them,” Mukaruliza said.

editorial@newtimes.co.rw