Challenges Facing Regional Integration: a Case Study of East Africa Community

Abstract

East African integration intends to build a regional bloc, starting with a Customs Union (CU) as the entry point and eventually developing into a Political Federation. The Common Market (CM) negotiations were launched in January 2008. The mission and vision of this second generation EAC are specified as a prosperous, competitive, stable and politically united East Africa. It aims at widening and deepening economic, social, and cultural integration in order to improve the quality of life of the people of East Africa through increased competitiveness, value added production, trade and investments. Therefore, the current study aims at addressing the challenges in the face of East African integration and to explain how each of them interacts with the others to form social political and economic barriers to integration. The study was guided by four objectives which were; to find out the role of language on regional integration in the East African Community, to assess the effects of currency on regional integration, to determine the effects of restrictions on movement of people and goods on regional integration and to assess the effects of political systems to regional integration in the East African Community.