(borkena) East African Leaders reportedly reached an agreement to work aggressively on Lamu Project, a project New Vision refers to as “an infrastructural venture that aims at facilitating trade, promoting regional economic integration as well as connectivity between African countries.”
Uhuru Kenyatta hosted Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, Salva Kiir of South Sudan and Hailemariam Desalgne to discuss the project in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. The summit lasted for a day. Uhuru Kenyatta is quoted in New Vision report that he described the summit as “the latest chapter in the deepening of integration agenda, pointed out that the focus is on opening up the region’s interconnectivity, trade and investment as well as ensuring that the region’s enterprises are globally competitive.”
With more than three billion dollars in annual aid from the West, Western investment in Energy sectors and growing westernization trend, it seems like Ethiopia is deeply neo-colonized. However, Ethiopia didn’t make significant move before to promote integration with East Africa which does not seem to be the case any longer. The question whether Ethiopia drawn in full force to “East African” Economic integration could become clear in the years to come.
In the tradition of Afro-centric historians, there is a view that in Colonial Africa infrastructure was developed by colonial powers themselves in a way to facilitate resource exploitation from Africa rather than in a way to facilitate inter-African connection.
The Globalization project is seemingly preparing Africa to a new, and probably deepened, stage of exploitation through the use of African leaders themselves. In fact, it is not unambiguously clear if this so called “economic integration” projects is not engineered as part of the globalization project.
Many African leaders are invited to a meeting with Barack Obama in the White House between August 4 and August 7. Eritrean president Isayas Afeworki is not invited, unsurprisingly, to the meeting, apparently.
