With Dr. Congo gearing up to join the community, it is a plus to Uganda tourism. Democratic republic of Congo is one of the largest biodiversity in Africa. This is a natural rich gem with tremendous and endless tourist attractions. With this large country joining the east African community, there will be easy border crossing tourism. For many years tourists who come to Uganda always wish to crossover to encounter some of the touristic jewels of Congo but due to complicated border crossing process that avails, their wishes and desires are halted.
At the east of Congo where Uganda borders, there are numerous and popular tourist places for instance the Virunga national park where the mountain gorillas are found in Congo, Kahuzi Biega national park a home to eastern lowland gorilla and Nyiragongo one of the few active volcanoes in the world. So the local tour operators will be adding the aforementioned attractions to their tour packages and hence attracting more tourists who wish to visit both countries of Uganda and Dr. Congo and the government will also collect more revenue through taxes.
Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi this week wrote to his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame, who is the current chairman of the EAC, seeking to join the Community whose member countries are Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and South Sudan.
“This request follows the ever-increasing trade between the economic players of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and those of the states of the Community,” he wrote on June 8.
The Secretary-General of the EAC Liberat Mfumukeko has disclosed that the Democratic Republic of Congo’s application to join the regional block has been put on the agenda of the next summit
The East African community is an umbrella that brings all east African countries to cooperate on economic, social and political issues. So far countries under the east African community are Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and South Sudan and now Democratic Republic of Congo is in contention to join the organization.
This organization has brought more benefits within the east African region where we have seen free movement of goods, services, labor and business people from one country to another with no restrictions and less taxes involved. The east African community has also brought peace and stability in the member countries since countries have joined forces to combat instabilities within the region.
There has also been development of an integral transport system whereby people and goods move from one country to another easily through the east African railway transport system and air transport system where all the freedom of air certificates are granted to the member countries. The nationals have less restrictions to enter member countries and also there has been an establishment of an east African visa whereby a tourist acquires a visa from one border point and permits him/her to freely move around member countries.
