East Africa’s Integration Paradox: The EAC, IGAD, and Why Africa’s Most Ambitious Regional Bloc Cannot Agree on Its Own Borders
E ast Africa is the most integrated region on the African continent — and simultaneously one of its most conflict-ridden. The East African Community’s nine-member bloc spans from the Indian Ocean coast to the Great Lakes, encompasses over 300 million people and a combined GDP of more than $320 billion, and operates the most advanced customs union, common market, and monetary union framework of any African Regional Economic Community.[1] It is also a bloc whose two most powerful members — Kenya and Tanzania — have spent years in low-grade economic rivalry. Whose newest members — the Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia, admitted in 2022 and 2023 respectively — are both fragile states whose integration into any functional common market remains largely theoretical. And whose geographic neighbourhood is managed by a second, overlapping body — the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) — whose own membership, mandate, and institutional relationship with the EAC have never b...