East African trade zone off to creaky start

The train, with its 21 box cars full of maize bound for hungry folks in Tanzania, was supposed to leave at 8 a.m.

It's now 2:30 p.m., and train driver Moses Mukungu promises departure is imminent. "Soon," he says, "soon."

This freight train's troubled journey is a metaphor for regional integration. To get its cargo from Uganda's capital, it only has to travel 6.8 miles down the track, to a local port - from which it'll go by ferry across giant Lake Victoria to Tanzania.

Such a journey used to be routine as part of a once-vibrant rail and ferry network, constructed in the late 1800s, that linked Britain's east African colonies. But in recent decades, the railway has all but deteriorated.

Now efforts to sustain and rebuild the transit system are moving in parallel with fresh moves to expand trade within groups of African nations - and fuse those groups into regional blocs, a là NAFTA and the European Union, all with the goal of bringing globalization-style prosperity to the poorest continent.

Three East African countries have, arguably, the most-robust integration effort in Africa: There are plans to unite the 82 million people of Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania into a unified market, with a single currency, by 2009 - and elect a common president by 2010. But many hurdles remain.

Meanwhile, as the train's workers scramble to get their cargo moving, bureaucrats, merchants, and politicians hustle toward regional unity and trade.

"If we had an efficient system," says train operations manager Johnson Okelo, trade between the three countries "would be so big."

It's 2:59, and the train suddenly lurches forward, shudders backward, and then slowly starts rolling ahead. Mr. Mukungu, the driver, flashes a smile and holds the horn for a long blast. People seem surprised to see the train moving. What used to be four scheduled trips a day on this route has fallen to a scattershot schedule of maybe four per week.

Likewise, many were surprised last year when the three East African Community countries fast-tracked their economic and political integration - aiming for the 2009 and 2010 targets. Many are skeptical. A recent report by the Chr. Michelsen Institute, a development think tank in Norway, found that "hardly anybody" involved in the process sees the 2010 date as realistic - and many suspect political integration could take until 2015, 2020, or even 2050.

Nor is success guaranteed: A previous effort at unity collapsed in 1977 amid dictatorship under Idi Amin in Uganda, socialism in Tanzania, and capitalism in Kenya.

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