In June 2019, Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi expressed his country’s desire to join the East African Community (EAC) and made a formal request through President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, then chairman of the EAC.

In March 2022, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) was formally admitted into the regional bloc, becoming the seventh member after Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda Burundi and South Sudan.

Each member state is expected to make a financial contribution for the bloc's annual budget. The money forms the budget to run the activities of the EAC.  

Since joining the bloc, DRC has never contributed a single coin and by the time of writing this article, DRC is the most highly indebted country with arrears amounting to $14.7million, followed by Burundi at $11.2million.  Somalia, the newest EAC baby, has cleared and owes nothing to the bloc.

With a current budget of $112, 984,442, in the 2024/2025 financial year, the EAC relies more on contributions from partner states which comprises 61 per cent of the total budget while 39 per cent is sourced from development partners.

The failure by member states to make their contributions cripples EAC activities. This puts DRC authorities on the spot light for hampering the smooth functioning of the EAC.

Reliable sources close to decision makers within the EAC secretariat, confided to the Great Lakes Eye, that there have been closed door consultations regarding DRC's intentions to join the bloc yet fail to abide by membership rules and ideals.

Some suggested that instead of causing disharmony, the country should be expelled from the bloc.

Since its admission into the EAC, there has been no ministerial representative of DRC within the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) for the last two years.

It is only in June that DRC authorities sent Francophone and Regional Integration Minister Didier Mazenga to the Assembly. He was sworn as an ex-officiao member on June 28, at the EAC headquarters, in Arusha, Tanzania.

Political analysts believe that Kinshasa acted hurriedly to send its envoy after getting wind of possible expulsion for non-compliance with the operating procedures of EAC.

Hours before Mazenga was sworn in, he paid a courtesy call to EALA Speaker Joseph Ntakirutimana and assured him that his country was planning to make good the arreas it owed EAC. On the same day, EALA members had a heated debate over the non-remittance of contributions by member states, chief among them being the DRC. EALA MPs propose to impose a penalty of suspension of their counterparts from countries that had failed to send their remittances to the EAC.

The DRC rarely takes part in EAC meetings. Notable among such absenteeism is during the EAC 23rd Extraordinary Summit of Heads of State held on June 7 to appoint new EAC Secretary General Veronica Mueni Nduva.

Tshisekedi did not attend the virtual meeting and nor did he send a representative. The fact that Tshisekedi did not even bother to offer an apology was interpreted as lack of interest in EAC affairs and probably even undermining the bloc’s desired objectives.

After DRC joined the EAC, a summit of Heads of State held in Nairobi Kenya in June 2022, agreed to send a regional force (EACRF) to help quell the war between the DRC government and M23 rebels in eastern DRC.  Although the force was credited for bringing relative calm in eastern DRC, Tshisekedi sent the force packing in December 2023, claiming that the force had failed its mission.

However, the point of departure was that Tshisekedi had anticipated that EACRF would help his weak army to fight the M23 rebels who had captured the strategic border town of Bunagana and were advancing. The spirit of EAC leaders when agreeing to deploy EACRF was to stop the fighting to enable   political dialogue between the two sides. 

As Tshisekedi sent EACRF out of eastern DRC, he called in SADC countries to send troops to help him fight M23 rebels. SADC forces came in, led by South African Defence Forces (SANDF). Not so surprisingly, the SADC mission was quickly joined by the Burundian army - Burundi is not a member of the southern African regional bloc but it has a suspect bilateral pact with Kinshasa - European mercenaries, a Rwandan genocidal militia known as FDLR, a government supported local militia called Wazalendo, and others, in fighting M23. Unfortunately, the DRC army and its collation continue to suffer defeat and are losing more territory to the M23 rebels. 

Tshisekedi refused to listen to his peers who advised and warned that the solution to the eastern DRC crisis cannot be through military means but a political process because the root causes of the crisis are political in nature.

By running to SADC, after his defiance to EAC leaders’ advice, Tshisekedi showed less trust in EAC. His actions somehow caused an uncomfortable relationship between the two blocs.

Tshisekedi’s joining EAC must have been genuine hoping to contribute to the growth of EAC. But along the way, he developed cold feet, which is likely to lead to expulsion of his country being a reluctant member. There is also an option of voluntary withdraw to save the embarrassment of expulsion.