ABSTRACT
Arguably, the African Renaissance has commenced. This is evident in East Africa, where constitutional reforms in a number of nations, together with accelerated democratization processes, have ushered in an era of renewed hope for real and meaningful change in the circumstances of the region’s almost quarter-billion population. Recent finds in oil and gas and discoveries of significant deposits of high-value minerals have added to this new wave of optimism. Regional economies, long-battered by decades of bad governance and unaccustomed austerity programmes, have recorded impressive growth rates in the last decade. Many credit such growth to a targeted refocusing and aggressive pursuit of the geopolitical interests of individual countries and the region as a collective. This awakening has led to restructuring of key growth sectors, assisted by heavy governmental investment in requisite infrastructures (EAC Secretariat, 2012).
