An Evaluative Analysis of the Compliance with the EAC-CMP: The Cases of Rwanda and Tanzania

On 7th July 2000, the East African Community Treaty entered into force. Inherent in the Treaty was a call for the contracting member states to establish among themselves certain frameworks that were deemed necessary pre-requisites to boosting the much-desired intra-regional trade. Among these necessary pre-requisites was the Common Market Protocol (CMP), which came into force on 1st July 2010. Almost a decade since its establishment, there is lack of targeted literature comparing the compliance levels of countries of the EAC with the CMP. While annual reports are issued by the EAC Secretariat and the World Bank on compliance, such reports are often overly general to provide a proper picture whether the implementation is happening across the board. As such, it remains unclear whether there is uniformity in compliance levels between bigger economies such as Tanzania with smaller economies such as Rwanda. The purpose of the study was to conduct a comparative analysis of the compliance with the EAC-CMP among partner states with Rwanda and Tanzania being the case studies. Regarding Rwanda’s compliance with the EAC-CMP, the study found that the EAC-CMP was very significant to Rwanda in terms of driving the country’s economic growth. The study concludes by contending that the EAC-CMP has greatly affected Rwanda's economy in several ways. The EAC-CMP has influenced economic and immigration policies in the country and affected the country's trade with the rest of the EAC partner states. It concludes by arguing that Tanzania has received the EAC-CMP with apprehension ion a drive to protect its relatively weak economy from competition from partner states.