Understanding the EAC Common Market - Part I

I was involved in two major meetings about the EAC within 14 days, one in Kampala (Uganda) and one in Dar es Salaam (Tanzania). The Kampala one seemed straight forward as it was a meeting for reviewing a draft livestock policy for the region. The second one was a little more 'interesting' and expectedly so because it brought together (rightfully) a wide cross section of business people, professionals and agencies that support the integration process. The subject of discussion was 'free movement of services' and inevitably the movement of persons (service providers and workers) across borders of partner states.

The private sector players shared lots of bad experiences they have so far gone through with reference to movement of service providers and workers across borders of partner states. Some of the issues the private sector players lamented about are: the difficulty of obtaining work permits timely; disparities in work permit fees; getting the right people for the right jobs on time (obtaining from across borders of the partner states); discriminatory tax treatment; etc. The more dicey one, to me, is the need to recognize the contribution of non-certified, non-accredited skilled persons and to allow them move freely across the borders of EAC partner states. I will dwell on this particular issue in one of the subsequent posts.

More later. Watch this space.

Ethics

Quite a common word it is on lips of many but the practice of it is very rare. As if to put emphasis to this statement, a prominent businessman in Uganda, Dr. William Kalema, while presenting a paper in honor of Dr. Martin Okech Aliker, lamented the lack of ethics in today's Ugandan graduates especially of a university I wouldn't name here. He challenged the trainers to do something to improve this bad name.

While I agree with him that university teachers probably have something to do with it, I do not take it wholesome. There is lots that shapes somebody's morality that may also have some impact on their ethical conduct. This post lists some examples of possibilities:

• Peer influence.
• Family upbringing.
• Influence from the media.
• Idiosyncratic tendencies unique to some individuals.
• Primary and secondary school discipline and practices.
• Community influence - perceived role models in the community.

If the above be some possible contributing factors to the development of habits that are characterised as unethical conduct, then I pity the university teacher who will be expected to, besides guiding the 'raw' young person to acquire specialised knowledge and skills and critical thinking (primary role of the teacher at that level), fully transform their students' ethical behaviour. Never mind that the behaviour was 'formed' over a period of time (outside/before the university) and that factors that contributed to the young person developing unethical behaviour could still exist and are possibly unknown to the teacher (leave alone being able to change them)! May God help us.