Last week, The EastAfrican told us that members had paid only half of the East African Community’s $103 million budget for the 2023/24 financial year, by May 17. The Democratic Republic of Congo is the lead EAC dead beat. Ever since it joined in 2022, it has not contributed even one bob and owes $14.
7 million. Kenya, which pays its dues with one fat cheque at the beginning of the year, is up to date. Tanzania, Uganda, and Rwanda have “relatively small balances”, it said, with information indicating that Uganda’s outstanding $960,774 comprised mostly bank balances.
Tanzania owed $122,694, which might well be delivery fees. Though South Sudan President Salva Kiir is the Chairman of the EAC, his country owed $8.6 million.
Burundi is as bad. New member Somalia is, apparently, still filling out the paperwork. DRC’s default is not just bad manners.
It is very unAfrican, and not how East Africans run their cons. When you join a club, even if you plan to cheat on your payments, at the start you put on your best behaviour. Even shady young men know it.
They wouldn’t go out with a beautiful, young lady, and on the first date they claim they forgot their wallet at home or that their M-Pesa app is malfunctioning. They do that months later, as Burundi and South Sudan did. Crooked house builders know that too.
They will get mabati and cement from a supplier and pay him promptly on the first three occasions. When the supplier gets comfortable, and thinks they are honest, on the .