Fifteen years after the East African Community’s free movement protocol came into force, Kenya has reaped the least tourism benefits from the policy, despite leading the bloc in implementation and regional integration.

Yet Kenya is -- and has always been -- the leader in regional integration, according to an index produced by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, the African Union, and the African Development Bank.

These findings are contained in a new study by Kenyan and Hungarian scholars, published in December in an academic journal of Slovakia’s Presov University, examining how the free movement protocol reshaped tourism flows across the region.

Uganda saw one of the biggest jumps in visitor arrivals after implementation of the free movement of people, with average arrivals nearly tripling to 1.2 million post-2010, compared to just 476,900 before.

Tanzania’s numbers rose by 89 percent to 1.2 million after the protocol’s implementation, compared to an average of 622,000 yearly arrivals before.

A similar jump was recorded in Rwanda, where annual visitor arrivals in the decade after 2010 rose to 1.3 million from 618,500 in the 10 years before the protocol’s entry, most of which Kigali had itself not yet joined the bloc.

Even Burundi, albeit with the fewest visitors in the bloc, recorded a more significant improvement in visitor arrivals than Kenya. Average annual visitors to the country rose by 44 percent to 189,875 from 131,400 before. Kenya’s average visitor arrivals in the 10 years after 2010 rose only marginally to 1.6 million a year from 1.3 million annually in the decade before—a 22 percent jump that was insignificant compared to the improvement seen in the other four partner states.

Interviews with policy experts, government officials, and tourists revealed that despite implementation of the EAC Common Market Protocol, which was supposed to come with free movement of goods and people, freedom of movement within the bloc remains largely on paper.

One expert said although the protocol requires complete freedom of movement from one country to another within the region, this is still not happening because of “security reasons”.“I doubt whether this is the best we can have. For migration purposes, when crossing, you have to show your papers for security reasons,” said the expert.“When I enquired why we still have to check in with the immigration desk, they said they have to know who is entering and leaving the country.”Tourists polled said the entry barriers at border posts make little sense because land borders are generally porous and ill-meaning travellers would still cross unabated, a viewpoint that was explored and confirmed by the researchers.“I think that this is just political because our borders are very porous. You can cross anywhere from Kenya to Uganda,” one tourist told the scholars.“I feel like it is there just because we are chest-thumping that this is my country and you cannot come in without me knowing, and for competition, because some countries fear that, for example, Tanzanians fear Kenyans for being aggressive and would be competition for business.”In addition to the persistence of entry barriers in the region, the study finds that complete free movement of people within the bloc is further hampered by some partner states’, notably Tanzania’s, objection to the region’s single tourist visa.

It points to the provable benefits of free movement and a single-entry visa for a region, as demonstrated by the European Union, which has recorded remarkable gains in tourist arrivals since the introduction of the Schengen Area in 1985.“Other regions across the world have demonstrated that there are efficient alternative visa policies that would facilitate travel without attenuating the primary objectives of visas in the EAC,” the scholars argue.“In order to increase tourism arrivals in the East African Community, countries should review not only their visa policies, but also current border procedures among their citizens from time to time.”

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