Roadblocks keep EA govts rolling and bring their economies to a stop

06/30/08
By CHARLES ONYANGO - OBBO -     

The region’s Big Men, who gathered in Kigali last week for the first East African Investment Conference, said many things about what it will take to make ours one big, happy, rich common market.

To many East Africanistas, the question is: Why has it taken so long? I got an answer of sorts to this question a few weeks ago in Kigali. A senior official lamented that the biggest stumbling blocks to economic prosperity in the East African Community were “what might seem like small things.”

One such “small thing,” he said, was roadblocks. The Rwandans actually counted the number of roadblocks along the highways that Kigali-bound trucks transporting goods from Mombasa port in Kenya use. The total was a staggering 36. None of them in Rwanda. They are all in Uganda and Kenya.

At nearly all these roadblocks, the trucks have to stop for several minutes, and the drivers are shaken down for bribes by policemen and security officers.

Driving through just two of the EAC countries, a trucker makes over 30 more stops than he would driving through 20 EU countries, where he doesn’t have to grease any palms.

BY THE TIME THE TRUCK ARRIVES IN Kigali, the profits on the consignment will have been swallowed in kickbacks and other roadside extortions. To make a profit, the final seller builds the cost of the roadblock bribes into the price.

Therefore, without roadblocks manned by corrupt police, prices in most of the East Africa would be far lower than they are today.

If removing roadblocks can provide a major boost to East African livelihoods, why then don’t governments get rid of them? It’s because of the complexity of the politics of corruption in Africa.

Corruption is an important subsidy and bonus, and while it undermines public administration, it often plays a crucial regime-stabilisation function. That, indeed, is the incentive for governments to tolerate it.

As a subsidy, governments use it to buy and reward support. Thus a businessman with close connections to the ruling party will not have his trucks stopped at a roadblock and the drivers squeezed for money.
In fact, they might even be escorted by the police. An opposition-leaning businessman, meanwhile, will not enjoy such breaks, which is calculated to persuade him to shift loyalties.

As a bonus, or top-up payment, bribes are important in keeping lowly paid workers in government employment. The way the system works is that the senior people pocket a lot of the money allocated to run their ministries and government programmes.

That leaves nothing for the employees further down the food chain. These then get their cut from roadblocks, like the policemen; extorting bribes to grant licences and process documents like passports; for helping a case file “disappear”; and for granting your child a place in a premier government school.

THESE ILLEGAL TOP-UPS AND BONUSes make it worthwhile for people who couldn’t live on their monthly wages to serve the government faithfully until they retire.

These corruption levies make border Customs points an important outlet, even if they get in the way of regional trade. The roadblocks, and therefore the many days and millions of shillings in corruption fees that truckers lose, cannot be got rid of because then you would have to send hundreds of policemen home.

It also happens that in this region, the more corrupt a country is, the more roadblocks and more bureaucratic red tape it tends to have. For this reason, a reduction in corruption in real terms by 50 per cent, could propel East African regional integration forward by 25 years. You won’t ever hear anyone say that at an East African summit.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is Nation Media Group’s managing editor for convergence and new products.