EAC INTEGRATION AND SKILLED LABOUR MOBILITY

Abstract

The East African Community Common Market Protocol of 2010, is an integral part of the Treaty for Establishment of the East African Community that all partner states have committed themselves to implement. The protocol clearly provides labour mobility as one of its fundamental principles. Regional integration can be best achieved when grounded on social interactions (mobility) which deepens integration process. Restricted cross border mobility, is among other things that have been holding back the integration process in Africa. Rwanda is one of the EAC Partner States that have opened its borders as well as its labour market to East African citizens, after having under gone a skills shortage of about 60% in all sectors. The purpose of this research is to establish whether skilled labour mobility from the EAC partner states has facilitated in bridging the skills gap in Rwandan education sector. It also aims at identifying the measures and policies that Rwanda has put in place, making it a destination country for skilled labour mobility from EAC Partner States and an opportunity for bridging its skills gap. The research adopted a descriptive research design, which was chosen because the study was confined to the collection and description of the data. The researcher used both primary and secondary data and a Purposive sampling has been done whereby 181 respondents were selected to answer the questionnaires. The coefficient model on how EAC integration explains skilled labour mobility for the case of Rwanda. The profitability has an overall correlation with EAC integration of 0.724 which is strong and positive. This means that approximately 72.4% variations from skilled labour mobility are explained by the EAC integration at 5% level of significance. These indicate good fit of the regression equation used. Therefore, this is a good indication of the true position of EAC integration explained by free movement of skilled labour, as a response to bridging the skills gap in Rwanda. The conclusion from the findings of the study is that all EAC citizens move freely to Rwanda and this has contributed a lot to the Rwandan education sector.