East Africa Macro Economies 101: As Gabriel Negatu, regional director of the African Development Bank, points out: East Africa is the most promising regional bloc. [It] has registered between 5 and 6% growth annually for the past decade. We estimate that regional gross domestic product will expand 18-fold by the middle of the century, from $185bn in 2010 to $3.5trn by 2050. This era is comparable to the period immediately after independence. This economic promise is based on the depth and scale of integration, says Negatu. If Ethiopia is drawn into the East African Community (EAC), there could be a single market of more than 200 million people. Regional competition and transport links are incentives. Although Uganda discovered oil in Bunyoro in 2006, production was delayed by disputes with oil companies over the size of a planned local refinery and pipeline routes. Following Kenyas discovery of oil in Turkana in 2010, Kampala has speeded up its plans and signed a pipeline deal with Nairobi. By 2020, two mammoth railway projects are due for completion: firstly the Dar es Salaam-Isaka-Kigali route; and secondly the Mombasa-Nairobi-Kigali route. The railways are two of the largest attempts at regional transformation for a century.
Posted on: Mon, 31 Mar 2014 15:43:45 +0000
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