The Evolution of the EAC Economic Institutions

Introduction. The article analyzes the functioning of the main East African Community (EAC) economic institutions – the Customs Union, the Common Market and the Monetary Union. Along with that, the authors scrutinize the EAC economic successes. Taking into account extensive factual material present, the authors conclude that the EAC institutional decisions have a double effect: on the one hand, these tools foster trade and investment interaction within the association, and on the other hand, they deepen the intrinsic asymmetry in the association functioning and encourage multilevel integration.

Materials and methods. The authors used comparative analysis of profile economic data, which allowed to identify the role of individual countries in economic processes within the EAC, as well as the basic methods of scientific knowledge: analysis, synthesis, generalizations and comparative analysis.

Literature on the topic of the study, official documents of the East African Community and statistics published by the EAC bodies and “The Observatory of Economic Complexity” were also used in the study.

Results of the study. The further development of economic integration within the East African Community is accompanied by a steady, though not equally rapid, growth in trade and investment cooperation. To date, the EAC is facing an obvious slowdown in integration processes due to the difficulties on its path to the Monetary Union and scarce opportunities for the new members to actively join the EAC institutional structure. As a result, the EAC is unofficially divided into two groups of countries with different degrees of readiness to deepen integration.

Discussion and Conclusion. The study found that East African integration has shown strong positive results despite the incomplete inclusion of new members, overlapping membership, trade wars and other challenges. As the association evolves, a multispeed and multi-tiered integration scheme becomes increasingly relevant for the EAC it is unlikely that the new members will be able to join the Customs Union anytime soon, let alone the more institutionally complex stages.

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