Karibu East Africa Presidential Awards is to examine the seven heads of state of the East African Community member countries on their contributions to the growth and development of regional integration.
Karibu East Africa Presidential Awards (KEAP Awards), is a legally registered organization in Uganda, and was conceived in 2015 by Africa News Group Limited as a platform to recognize the performance of policy makers especially the heads of state, legislators and technocrats in adopting and implementing policies that build the integration of the East African Community.
The heads of state to be assessed are; Yoweri K. Museveni of Uganda; Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya, Samia Suluhu Hassan of Tanzania; Felix Tshisekedi of DRC, Salva Kiir of South Sudan and Evariste Ndayishimiye of Burundi.
These leaders will be examined on how much they have performed in four areas that include; infrastructure, Peace &Security, governance, intra EAC relations and trade from the start of 2021 to the end of 2022.
The voting for the heads of state and the 100 top east Africans can be done on https://www.keap-awards.org.
The results will be announced on November 30, 2022 during the DRC-EAC trade symposium also to be hosted in Kampala, Uganda.
In the past, for the period 2015 to 2020, six heads of state of the EAC member countries that included; Yoweri K. Museveni of Uganda; Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya, the late John Pombe Magufuli of Tanzania; Salva Kiir of South Sudan and the late Pierre Nkurunziza of Burundi.
Of the six, President Kagame emerged as the best with 57.4% and Salva Kiir was the last with 20.6%. However, President Museveni excelled at intra-EAC relations (relating well with his peers in the region) and peace and security. He attained average on infrastructure.
Whereas Magufuli performed better than all his colleagues in trade, peace & security, infrastructure and governance. Kenyatta excelled in trade and governance. And President Kagame only excelled in peace and security and was average in the rest of the areas.
For the EAC heads of State (2015-2020), we did three sets of assessments; opinion polls, media analysis and considered the 2020 Ibrahim Index of African Governance (IIAG), which is a scientific survey by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation.
For opinion polls we conducted an online process from December 2018 to March 2019 that attracted 190 respondents, who chose their favorite leaders that pursued regional integration.
On Media analysis, we looked at what has mostly been published in different media platforms about the EAC leaders and their respective countries. Under media analysis, we considered five areas; trade, governance, infrastructure, peace & security and finally how partner states’ leaders related with other. Each of these five areas was awarded marks.
Mo Ibrahim Foundation assessed governance dimensions, from security to justice, to rights and economic opportunity, to health and environment.
It is from these three layers assessment that we generated the final average marks for each Head of State.
The survey is intended to motivate all stakeholders in the integration process to positively contribute to the growth of EAC and African integration.
