Foreign Policy Blogs

Tech Savvy and the East African Community Common Market

Taking a lesson from Barack Obama’s tech-savvy presidential campaign last year Kenya plans to use text messaging to promote the East African Community Common Market. The goal of the campaign is twofold. Its advocates want to sell the idea, but they also want to educate people about it, as they fear that not enopugh Kenyans are even aware of the Common Market, which hopes to make it easier for people, goods, and services to move between the member states.

 

Author

Derek Catsam

Derek Catsam is a Professor of history and Kathlyn Cosper Dunagan Professor in the Humanities at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin. He is also Senior Research Associate at Rhodes University. Derek writes about race and politics in the United States and Africa, sports, and terrorism. He is currently working on books on bus boycotts in the United States and South Africa in the 1940s and 1950s and on the 1981 South African Springbok rugby team's tour to the US. He is the author of three books, dozens of scholarly articles and reviews, and has published widely on current affairs in African, American, and European publications. He has lived, worked, and travelled extensively throughout southern Africa. He writes about politics, sports, travel, pop culture, and just about anything else that comes to mind.

Areas of Focus:
Africa; Zimbabwe; South Africa; Apartheid

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