The East African Community Participating as a Bloc in World Trade Organization Negotiations: Prospects and Challenges

Abstract

The East African legislative Assembly passed the East African Trade negotiations Act in the year 2008. The Act has its major objective as ensuring that the East African Partner states carry out their trade negotiations at a regional and multilateral level jointly. Moreover, all the East African Partner States are members of the World Trade Organisation. However, in spite of the objectives of the Act, the partner states of the East African Community still carry out their trade negotiations individually. This study is therefore an in depth analysis of the process of ensuring that the EAC partner states carry out trade negotiations at the WTO jointly as a regional bloc and the extent to which the East African Community through its customs union, can review its legal regime and reform its institutions to facilitate the same. The methodology adopted into researching into this topic is based on analysis of the Act, rules, reports, books, articles, journals and online resources.