Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni assumed the chairmanship of the East African Community on March 7, taking over from Kenya’s William Ruto at the 25th Ordinary Summit in Arusha and warning that the region risks global marginalisation unless it completes the unfinished business of economic union. The handover came as the bloc adopted emergency reforms to address an $89 million arrears crisis that has been undermining core operations.
- Museveni takes the rotational chair for a one-year term running March 2026 to March 2027. He succeeds Ruto, whose 15-month tenure saw intra-EAC trade rise from $33 billion in 2024 to $40.3 billion in 2025, a 22% increase, with exports up 32% to $19.6 billion.
- In his address, Museveni warned against what he called “Okukonesa” — a Ugandan term for undercooking — arguing that Africa has repeatedly begun its economic transformation without applying sufficient heat long enough to complete it. He cited disunity, weak leadership, and the failure to adopt science and technology as the continent’s core self-inflicted wounds since independence.
- Africa’s combined GDP stands at roughly $3.6 trillion, far below the United States or China. Museveni argued that the EAC’s 350 million-person market must deepen integration to give African businesses the scale needed to industrialise and create jobs, pointing to youth migration and Mediterranean deaths as the direct cost of market fragmentation.
- The summit adopted a new contribution formula effective July 1, 2026: member states will fund the EAC budget in a ratio of 50% based on GDP size and 50% based on shared quotas, replacing a system that left four members — DRC, Burundi, South Sudan, and Somalia — chronically in arrears. Defaulters will have arrears waived by 50% but must clear the remainder within two years.
- The summit also launched the 7th EAC Development Strategy (2026/27 to 2030/31) and the EAC Customs Bond, which replaces multiple national transit guarantees with a single regional instrument. EALA members of parliament will now be paid salaries by their home country parliaments rather than by the bloc centrally. Tanzania’s Ambassador Stephen Patrick Mbundi was appointed the new EAC Secretary-General for 2026 to 2031, replacing Kenya’s Veronica Nduva.
- Quorum rules were also amended. With eight member states, the original three-country quorum created dysfunction; the new rules allow summits to proceed and reach binding decisions with fewer than full attendance, directly addressing the pattern of absent heads of state that has delayed key decisions.
The Arusha summit was as much a structural rescue operation as a leadership transition. The $89.3 million arrears crisis heading into the summit had reached the point where salaries and core operations were at risk, and several of the bloc’s newest members had never been current on contributions. The funding model overhaul, Customs Bond, and quorum reform collectively represent the most significant institutional reset since the EAC expanded from three to eight members. Museveni’s chairmanship will also directly advance a bilateral milestone: he confirmed he will co-host the Kenya-Uganda SGR groundbreaking in Kisumu on March 20, a project that will cut the Nairobi to Kampala journey from 14 hours to 4 hours.
The Bigger Picture: Museveni has been the EAC’s most persistent federationist since the 1980s, but he assumes the chair at a moment when the bloc’s internal tensions are more structural than rhetorical. The expansion from 3 to 8 members brought scale but also four states with weak state capacity, unpaid dues, and ongoing conflicts. The DRC alone accounts for the largest share of outstanding arrears and is simultaneously the theatre for the region’s most active security crisis. The GDP-weighted funding model is a sensible reform, but it concentrates financial burden on Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, the same three countries that built the original bloc. If Museveni’s year produces a functional Customs Bond, a credible debt resolution for the defaulting members, and a completed SGR groundbreaking, it will represent more tangible progress than the last three chairmanships combined. The integration sermon is familiar; the institutional repair is what matters.
Source: The East African / Daily Nation / The Citizen
