Regional integration and development in East Africa have been portrayed as
inextricably linked. Integration involving investment in trade and transport
corridors to move goods, services and people between coast and resource-rich
hinterlands is seen as part of development and economic growth, even
peace-building. However, top-down implementation and assumptions about
development ‘trickle-down’ pose questions, including how growth ‘corridors’
might exacerbate violence. Equitable, sustainable and conflict-sensitive processes
must start with a better understanding of socio-political context; focus more on
local integration; and establish ways of tracking and monitoring development
impacts over time.UK Department for International Developmen

Nicol, A

English

IDS OpenDocs

www.ids.ac.uk
Po
lic
y B
R
IE
FI
N
G
 
ISSUE 100 • SEPTEMBER 2015
“Global trends 
and regional 
politics are 
driving East 
Africa’s rapid 
integration. 
A ‘coalition of 
willing states’ 
is pressing on 
with political 
and economic 
integration, a 
process rich 
in political 
symbolism.”
Towards Conflict-sensitive 
 Regional Integration in 
 East Africa
Violence in the East and Horn of Africa 
is never far from global news. Brutal 
political conflict in Kenya during early 
2015 damaged the country’s image 
and undermined its crucial tourism 
sector. In neighbouring South Sudan, 
chronic violence now characterises 
the post-independence situation with 
access to oil revenues a root cause. In 
the Somali borderlands with north-east 
Kenya, regional military intervention and 
state failure combine to reprise historical 
cross-border tensions.
Given East Africa’s complexity, and 
current rapid economic development 
and population growth, sufficient 
understanding of the interrelationships 
between integration and political, social 
and economic violence is key to making 
informed judgements about future 
large-scale investments.
Integration trends
Global trends and regional politics are 
driving East Africa’s rapid integration. A 
‘coalition of willing states’ is pressing on 
with political and economic integration, 
a process rich in political symbolism. It is 
also a process pushed by global financing 
institutions and development banks, not 
least the World Bank which envisages 
triple wins of economic growth, 
infrastructure development and trade. 
The wider set of global economic actors, 
meanwhile, are also using this more 
conducive investment environment to 
access natural resources across East and 
Central Africa. Three key processes can be 
identified as characterising the situation, 
and a fourth, more informal, process 
supports better understanding of future 
relationships and violence potential. 
1. The emergence of a regional 
economic community. The East 
African Community is founded on 
legal, institutional and economic 
principles that emerged in the 1970s 
before dissolving again in 1977. Having 
remerged under a more supportive 
global political economy in the 2000s, 
regional integration is now seen by 
the current aid community as central 
to expanding trade, stimulating 
investment and building infrastructure 
– three core developmental imperatives. 
2. ‘Penetration capitalism’. Companies 
and governments in resource-
consuming regions are identifying and 
investing in East African development 
corridors to reach resources and 
markets. These mega projects have 
high ambition and bring together 
states and government actors, foreign 
investors and global political-economic 
Regional integration and development in East Africa have been portrayed as 
inextricably linked. Integration involving investment in trade and transport 
corridors to move goods, services and people between coast and resource-
rich hinterlands is seen as part of development and economic growth, even 
peace-building. However, top-down implementation and assumptions about 
development ‘trickle-down’ pose questions, including how growth ‘corridors’ 
might exacerbate violence. Equitable, sustainable and conflict-sensitive processes 
must start with a better understanding of socio-political context; focus more on 
local integration; and establish ways of tracking and monitoring development 
impacts over time.
demands for food, energy and other 
commodities (including water). Corridors 
reduce transaction costs in accessing 
Africa’s minerals, forest products, and 
hydrocarbons, and open up markets for 
manufactures and services. Foremost 
amongst these rapidly-emerging corridors 
are the Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia 
Corridor (LAPSSET), the Juba-Addis 
Ababa-Djibouti Corridor, and Tanzania’s 
Mwam-bani Economic Corridor (MEC), 
which has ambition to connect up Africa’s 
east and west coasts.
3. Resource-specific cooperation. This is best 
exemplified by the Nile Basin Initiative (NBI), 
the Lake Victoria Basin Commission and 
other resource-oriented institutions and 
networks. The 15-year-old NBI has forged 
some cooperation and trust between 
countries sharing the river Nile, but in 
only a few instances does this translate 
into development projects – the Rusumo 
Falls Hydroelectric project is one of few 
examples. Otherwise, the NBI has failed 
to make headway on joint river basin 
development, and, for some, has simply 
provided political cover for states wishing 
to continue business as usual in the form of 
unilateral and uncoordinated investments. 
4. Informal integration. Both economic 
and social (and in some senses political) 
integration extends at an informal level 
beyond the state, particularly as a result of 
voluntary and involuntary movement and 
settlement. Though data about this process 
are hard to acquire, this is an important factor 
for integration because of its association 
with wider challenges of state-society (and 
even intra-societal) integration. Highlighting 
this is the recent violence in Kenya during 
elections in 2007 which targeted foreigners 
living and working in the country. 
Violence and integration
The World Bank World Development Report 
(WDR) in 2011 puts forward a model of 
conflict and violence that highlights internal 
and external stresses and suggests that tackling 
violence requires multi-level action. Whilst this 
is hard to contest – violence is multifaceted in 
cause (and impact) – it is also quite simplistic, 
presenting a binary view of states and non-
state actors involved in tackling violence. It 
also inadequately reflects how integration 
processes can blur state and non-state lines, 
complicate understandings of ‘internal and 
external stressors’ and even change what is 
‘external’, from beyond states to beyond the 
regions in which states are located. 
The message the Bank delivers is that 
‘strengthening legitimate institutions and 
governance to provide citizen security, justice 
and jobs is crucial to break cycles of violence’. 
This view of institutional development 
and the processes and outcomes that can 
trigger shifts towards violence suggests a 
basic division between states and non-state 
entities, whereas under conditions of regional 
integration this relationship is perhaps more 
complex and less binary with the boundaries 
of state action becoming distinctly ‘fuzzy’. 
Some of the identifiable challenges of 
regional integration include: 
1. Entrenching elites. Linkages between 
regional integration and political conditions 
for violence can include the ‘cementing in’ 
of elites at a national level. This is through 
giving developmental legitimacy to them 
as part of regional integration, including 
through the ‘wins’ of attracting global 
aid and international financial investment. 
Mechanisms of integration may also 
establish new ‘supranational’ elites 
that can be disembodied from national 
political economies, establishing further 
regional levels of patrimonialism and 
patronage. The WDR described ‘formal 
joint arrangements to design and monitor 
development programs in insecure border 
areas and move toward specific provisions 
to help insecure land-locked areas gain 
access to markets’. This depicts typical 
corridor-type developments, but also 
makes broad assumptions about the nature 
of winners and losers in these ‘insecure 
land-locked areas’ which may prove to be 
overly optimistic. 
2. Resource grabs. Entrenched elites, 
regional integration and market expansion 
may create opportunities for trade and 
investment (for example, the LAPSSET 
Corridor project is opening a gateway 
to resources in South Sudan). However, 
this may derive benefits – and new 
revenue streams – for only a select few 
institutions and groups. It may also incur 
costs to economic development in the 
longer term, including market saturation 
of cheap imports and crowding out of 
local producers; and more substantially 
and structurally, in conflict terms, this may 
also hasten the process of land and other 
resource grabbing through reducing costs 
TOWARDS CONFLICT-SENSITIVE REGIONAL INTEGRATION IN EAST AFRICA ISSUE 100 • SEPTEMBER 2015 www.ids.ac.uk
“Regional 
integration is 
now seen by 
the current 
aid community 
as central to 
expanding 
trade, 
stimulating 
investment 
and building 
infrastructure 
– three core 
developmental 
imperatives.”
TOWARDS CONFLICT-SENSITIVE REGIONAL INTEGRATION IN EAST AFRICA ISSUE 100 • SEPTEMBER 2015 www.ids.ac.uk
“Linkages 
between regional 
integration 
and political 
conditions for 
violence can 
include the 
‘cementing in’ 
of elites at a 
national level.”
associated with the extraction and delivery 
of natural resources to global markets. This 
is a substantial challenge, and one that 
is emerging within both the Juba-Addis 
Ababa-Djibouti and LAPSSET Corridors, 
where land title is being provided to 
investors. 
3. Privileging physical infrastructure. 
Integration – particularly under corridor 
development, but increasingly too under 
river basin development – largely involves 
investment in physical infrastructure. 
The lack of accompanying social investments 
in, for example, local community 
development and welfare rarely achieves 
equivalence. There are inherent dangers in 
such an approach, particularly if this directly 
contributes to state coffers at the expense 
of local economic growth. The logic that 
such processes boost overall national 
development is rooted in concepts of 
trickle-down and distribution, the ambition 
and feasibility of which may be overstated 
and unrealistic.
New Corridors of power
‘Juba-Addis Ababa-Djibouti’ Corridor: The concept of a road and rail corridor from Juba (South Sudan) to 
Djibouti via Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) is supported by the African Development Bank. Landlocked South Sudan 
seeks outlets to and inlets from the global economy. This also provides an alternative to the LAPSSET Corridor 
(see below) which suggests a complex geopolitical calculation in developing alternative inland trade routes. The 
Addis Ababa leg has historically been a defining feature of Ethiopia’s highland (ruling) relationship over (largely 
pastoral) lowland groups, including in the Afar region, through which the only navigable route has previously 
existed via Djibouti to the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. Complex power relations between Afars and Issas 
straddling this route (Djibouti was formerly the ‘French Territory of the Afars and Issas’) provide early evidence of 
difficult local conflicts that can arise in such ‘corridors’, whereby groups vie for extraction of rent including the 
use of violence (or threats of violence) as political levers. 
This corridor has been further bolstered by upcoming plans to construct an Addis Ababa-Juba leg for transport 
and trade under the auspices of Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD). The project aims to open 
up a ‘new route’ to the Red Sea and Indian Ocean from Uganda and South Sudan, with the expressed aim of 
enhancing regional integration, cross-border and international trade and tourism, lowering transport costs and 
improving services. According to the African Development Bank (2014), the principle beneficiaries are to be 
cross-border trade and communities of the four countries of influence, the region at large, and [the corridor] 
is envisaged to ‘provide better socioeconomic opportunities and thus contribute to reduction of poverty and 
promote good governance, peace and security’.
The Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia Transport (LAPSSET) Corridor: LAPSSET – estimated to cost US$20bn 
– combines a railway, road and pipeline inland from a redeveloped Lamu Port with a junction at Isiolo leading to 
Ethiopia (right branch) and South Sudan (left branch). The economic logic of LAPSSET is that it provides routes 
between development hubs, creating new economic opportunities and ‘more effective land use’. This mega 
project, amongst others, is intended to open through infrastructure investments pastoral regions, particularly 
in the north of Kenya, thereby enabling a new growth frontier for the entire Kenyan economy. Embedded in 
this is a heavy emphasis on the notion of ‘unlocking potential’ in particular areas, including pastoral regions. 
However, the recent rise in violence associated with Al-Shabaab and the geo-strategic implications of rerouting 
crude oil flows via a pipeline to Lamu Port will be significant in determining final implementation of these plans.
The Mwam-bani Economic Corridor (MEC): MEC further exemplifies the crossover between establishment 
of a common economic area – the EAC customs union – and corridor development. This is a port and railway 
corridor that will combine deep port development at Kigombe, an airport, and a transcontinental railway 
across Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo to the Atlantic, also linking up with Uganda and South 
Sudan. So-called ‘railway towns’ along the corridor will be constructed across all countries and serve as special 
economic zones. Currently under study, project completion is envisaged by 2021, and would establish Tanzania’s 
‘own’ corridor into the interior and the most southerly of the three envisaged ‘mega corridors’ along the Indian 
Ocean coastline, with clear links to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and other key areas 
of regional integration.
Policy recommendations
To promote more equitable, sustainable and conflict-sensitive integration processes, 
state and donor efforts should: 
• Start with a deeper understanding of socio-political contexts, histories and 
pathways. With this understanding, integration processes can be developed to 
build in explicit conflict avoidance and mitigation measures from the outset. 
Part of this will involve focusing on existing informal integration of societies and 
economies across corridor geographies avoiding disruption to these systems 
where they are important for local livelihoods and employment. Where feasible, 
there needs to be support for their further development through improving 
market access (reducing barriers to entry) and improving the development of skills 
and capacities amongst populations in order to enable engagement in growing 
market activities.
• Link the drive for infrastructure with poverty reduction strategies, and wider 
efforts at reducing inequalities – in order to integrate the potential for social and 
economic benefits into new large-scale infrastructure developments. And as part 
of this make explicit a focus on local integration and wider regional processes. 
This ‘localisation’ of regional integration can provide greater legitimacy for 
development processes but also establish clearer pathways for impact, including 
between infrastructure investment and other policies of more inclusive and 
gender-equitable growth.
• Go beyond offering compensation for losses incurred (including land) and seek 
more explicit inclusivity and social infrastructure development, particularly in 
pastoral areas where approaches should include policies and practices that 
provide opportunities for pastoral economies and production systems to benefit 
from access to new markets under corridor developments.
• Establish ways of tracking and monitoring development impacts over time so that 
progress can be made more tangible, challenges can be overcome and the whole 
process can be more public, transparent and accountable. This would potentially 
include indicators on development of economic growth poles and markets, 
impacts on livelihoods, changes in wage labour occupations and labour markets, 
and specific indicators on changes to other land and resource tenure relations at 
a local level.
IDS POLICY BRIEFING ISSUE 100 • SEPTEMBER 2015 www.ids.ac.uk
IDS_Master Logo
IDS Policy Briefings are published by the Institute of Development Studies and aim to provide high quality 
analysis and practical recommendations for policymakers on important development issues. 
To subscribe: www.ids.ac.uk/idspolicybriefings
Institute of Development Studies, Brighton BN1 9RE UK
T +44 (0) 1273 606261  F + 44 (0) 1273 621202  E ids@ids.ac.uk  W www.ids.ac.uk
     twitter.com/IDS_UK #idspolicy       facebook.com/idsuk
Further reading
African Development Bank 
(2011) Eastern Africa: Regional 
Integration Strategy Paper 
2011–2015, ADB
East African Community, Office 
of the Secretary General (2011) 
The Future of East African 
Integration, blog 
Nicol, A. and Otulana, M. (2014) 
Contested Margins, Complex 
Pathways: The Afar Triangle 
in the Horn of Africa, Future 
Agricultures Working Paper 94, 
Brighton: Future Agricultures 
Consortium
World Bank (2011) World 
Development Report 2011: 
Conflict, Security, and Development, 
Washington DC: World Bank
Credits
This IDS Policy Briefing was 
written by Alan Nicol and 
edited by Carol Smithyes. It 
was produced as part of the 
IDS Addressing and Mitigating 
Violence programme, supported 
with UK Aid from the UK 
Department for International 
Development. 
The opinions expressed are 
those of the authors and do not 
necessarily reflect the views of 
IDS or the UK government’s 
official policies. 
Readers are encouraged to 
quote and reproduce material 
from the IDS Policy Briefing 
series. In return, IDS requests 
due acknowledgement and 
quotes referenced as above. 
AG Level 2 Output ID: 64
© Institute of Development Studies, 2015 
ISSN 1479-974X


Towards Conflict-sensitive Regional Integration in East Africa

https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/20.500.12413/6931/1/PB100_AG64_EastAfrica_Online.pdf

Towards Conflict-sensitive Regional Integration in East Africa

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

IDS OpenDocs