When DR Congo was welcomed into the East African Community fold earlier this year it sparked a great deal of optimism not only among governments across the bloc but also EAC businesses and citizens.
It marked a momentous milestone in the region’s integration effort.
Home to nearly 90 million people, DR Congo is Africa’s second largest- country by area and shares a border with all but one EAC partner state, and, therefore, its admission into the bloc was always going to inject new momentum into the integration agenda.
Having signed the Treaty of the Accession into the EAC on April 8, 2022, DR Congo now has until September 29, 2022 to undertake internal and constitutional processes to ratify the Treaty and deposit the instruments of ratification.
As the case of South Sudan has shown, it sometimes takes a bit of time to align domestic legal instruments with the EAC legal regime.
But DR Congo is no stranger to integration matters as it is already a member of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), and the Economic Community of the Great Lakes Countries (CEPGL) – regional blocs which count some other EAC partner states as members too.
Most importantly, the people of DR Congo, especially in the east, were always integrated geographically, culturally and socially, and even economically, to some extent, with parts of the EAC.
As such, it should not be difficult for DR Congo to adapt its domestic legislation to EAC standards.
However, the optimism that greeted DR Congo’s accession to the EAC Treaty was soon dampened by political and security crises that have recently heightened, particularly in the country’s east, following the resurgence in fighting between government forces and the M23 rebels.
With the Congo now a member of the EAC, the bloc has since moved to help calm the situation by calling for peace talks between the warring parties as well as resolving to deploy an East African force there.
As reiterated by President Paul Kagame earlier this week, while the military track is critical to normalising the situation, the ultimate objective should be to promote dialogue, with a view to finding a lasting solution through a political settlement.
That should be the primary focus of the EAC and other stakeholders trying to help find a way out of the crisis.
Ultimately, this should allow for the Congolese and other EAC citizens and the wider region to concentrate on the most important thing, which is to connect and do business with each other and, to strengthen ties and prosper together.