The Minister of foreign affairs Louise Mushikiwabo told MP’s that the ongoing Northern Corridor Project, once completed , will provide Rwandans will more jobs and this will benefit to the rest of state members of the EAC that are part and parcel of the project.
The Northern Corridor project is a transit through which goods will be passing to reach Rwanda, Kenya and Uganda.
The idea of setting up the Northern Corridor Project came as a means to accelerate the economic partnership between the EAC state members.
However, some of the projects are not being implemented as planned before due to the fact that some of the state members are slow to implement it.
This pushed Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya to connect the efforts as to set up the Northern Corridor Project so that the economic policies useful for the integration might be achieved regardless of the slowness of the rest of EAC state members.
The Northern Corridor Project involves the setting up of a canal to supply oil to state members through a pipeline and to construct a railway for an easy and quick transport of goods and people.
The Rwandan Minister of foreign affairs Louise Mushikiwabo said that she is confident that all these above mentioned projects will be set up and be beneficial to all East Africans, especially to Rwandans.
MPs revealed to the Minister Mushikiwabo that since the integration started, many goods that are circulating in Rwandan markets are manufactured in either Kenya or Uganda, a situation that hinders products made from Rwanda being abundant in the market.
To this, the Minister of industry Francois Kanimba explained that the roots of this reality are that the factories that manufacture these projects either in Uganda or in Kenya have been set up longtime ago.
At the other hand, Rwandan factories are developing at a remarkable level, a situation that inspires hope in the future.
Even though the Minister Mushikiwabo affirmed that since Rwanda integrated the EA, more Rwandans acquired jobs, she did not provide MPs with tangible statistics on the issue.
Members of Parliament urged for more actions to help Rwandans living in rural areas benefit from these EAC related projects, especially regarding the decrease of high prices partnering to food and to other first necessities.
Apart from the Northern Corridor, there is another corridor called Central Corridor that goes from Dar-es Salam in Tanzania, passing through Uganda and reaches Kigali, Rwanda.
However, this channel seems to be no longer operational as both Rwanda and Uganda are highly motivated to make the Northern Corridor project successful.
Countries like South Sudan and Ethiopia are willing to integrate the Northern Project but are currently acting as observer countries.
UM– USEKE.RW
