International Lawyers and Economist Against Poverty (ILEAP)

In the on-going EPAs negotiations, the EAC private Sector has not had the opportunity to come up with a harmonized regional position in relation to Trade in Services. In addition, the private sector practitioners in general have limited information on opportunities and impact that negotiations on services will bring to their businesses.

It is against this background EABC approached the Canadian based International Lawyers and Economists Against Poverty (ILEAP) for resources to enable us to develop private sector position effectively and to also articulate it to the Partner States through the EAC preparatory negotiation process.

During the period of July-December 2008, ILEAP is providing financial support to EABC to enable the private sector to effectively participate in the EAC-EU services negotiating process; coordinate consensus-building interventions through EAC and EABC; and commissioning of required analytical inputs.

Through the support of ILEAP, EABC is currently undertaking studies aimed at identifying offensive interests of the EAC in EPA in the services sector and the study is due to be completed by early December 2008 in order to timely feed into the negotiations. ILEAP will also fund workshops in all of the EAC Partner States to deliberate the results of national reports and come up with an aggregate report.

ILEAP has also indicated potential support to EABC in providing technical advisory services for EPA negotiations in 2009.