Foreign Trade of EAC Partner States: Integration Effects and Trade Trends with Russia

Abstract

The East African Community (EAC) is one of the oldest and most developed regional trade agreements (RTA) in both the Global South and Africa. It has consistently gone through several stages of integration from the customs union to a common market with the prospect of deepening integration to a monetary union and a political union in 2031. The trade liberalization propelled mutual trade and strengthened integration interdependence, and with the industrialization policy it has had a positive impact on changing the commodity structure of exports. The EAC countries and Russia are not major trading partners for each other; however, trade has been growing in recent years. Despite the ongoing problems, there are good prospects for further growth of mutual trade, considering the trade complementarity.