For telecoms-tycoon-turned-philanthropist Mo Ibrahim, it’s one step forward, two steps back. For Benno Ndullu, governor of the central Bank of Tanzania, the whole thing is bound to stall unless problems are ironed out first.

For many Tanzanians, it’s a threat to their jobs, language and prospects.

But for the leaders of the five-member East African Community (EAC), signing the common market protocol on Friday represents the future fortunes of Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda combined.

Signing the document — the culmination of a relatively speedy 18 months of negotiation — will mean goods, services and the community’s 126 million people can move freely across their borders, in theory at least.

Together, the five countries muster $60 billion in gross domestic product combined, and believe they can prosper better as one unit than apart.

Already they have a customs union, but by 2012 they foresee sharing a single currency and finally political federation.

“If you don’t get the economic integration process going in Africa you’re dead,” Tim Clarke, head of delegation at the European Commission in Tanzania, told the Mo Ibrahim Foundation meeting on good governance last weekend.

There are plenty of creases to be ironed out, however — whether Rwandans should switch the side of the road they drive on to match up with the region or whether home-made goods are prepared to fight it out against cheaper imports unencumbered by import duties.

Sometimes described as a bowl of spaghetti, many countries belong to overlapping regional economic communities, which makes negotiating as a single bloc tricky.

Other contentious issues include land ownership, common external tariffs, travel documents and protection of ill-prepared local manufacturers and workers.

For EAC Secretary General, Ambassador Juma Mwapachu, who is also a Tanzanian citizen, it is important to overcome what he calls “this zero-sum mindset that these people are coming to take our jobs”.

“The common market is going to send another right signal to the region in terms of enticing investors,” he told the Mo Ibrahim Foundation at the weekend.

Some think the countries are nevertheless overambitious in their timescale, while also being slowed down by lengthy protocol: among their planning duties, heads of state mulled “a report on the finalisation of the development of the EAC Anthem”.

But as they promote cultural cohesion with EAC football, a new EAC headquarters and yes, the new anthem, many are hoping to put the previous failure of the EAC — which ran for ten years until it was dissolved amid rancour in 1977 — far behind them.

Will it work this time?

Kenya’s Maasai warriors are known for being fearless lion killers but times have changed and the country’s lion’s population is in danger of being wiped out. Now the Maasai in southern Kenya are taking part in an initiative to preserve the big cats.

For thousands of years the Maasai co-existed with huge herds of wildlife. Their lion-killing rituals kept down the number of lions preying on the game while their fearsome reputation as warriors kept the herds safe from other humans. The result, Kenya’s wildlife heritage is a wonder of the modern world.

But Kenya’s lions, a huge tourist attraction, are being decimated. From tens of thousands, only around 2,000 survive.

Lion researcher Amy Howard told Reuters Africa Journal that Maasai are now being recruited as Lion Guardians: “The problems are that these lions are coming into bomas, they’re attacking livestock, goats and cows and the communities are getting angry about this. In the past they used to go out on hunting parties and try and kill the lions in revenge and also as a rite of passage for the warriors.

“So what we are doing is we are employing warriors here to conserve the lions. They go out and track them and tell their communities where they are so they know not to herd there. So we’re tying to reduce the amount of conflict that we’re getting between the livestock and lions.”

Lion Guardians use an electronic device that will help them track a dozen or so lions that they and the researchers have been able to collar.

The Guardians often walk huge distances to pinpoint the exact location of the collared lions. But while the tracking device helps them locate collared lions, uncollared lions still require traditional tracking skills.

The Lion Guardians work alongside other conservation efforts in the area. The Maasailand Preservation Trust oversees a programme that compensates herders when they lose livestock to lions, hyenas and other predators.

But not everyone is happy, as cattle owner Solomon Lotobulua explains: “We are told to simply watch when lions attack our animals, that we would be compensated. The agreement we reached was that for one cow attacked we would be paid $200. But now we’re only paid $160. So we are saying that unless things change, by the end of the year, we will chase away the lion projects.”

The Maasai are in a difficult position, caught between the need to conserve Kenya’s wildlife and a historical animosity towards anything that might kill their cattle. But as Lion Guardians they are helping their community reclaim a place at the centre of Kenya’s conservation efforts.

Successive failed rain seasons in Kenya have led to a drought that experts say is the worst in the country since 1996.

And it is not just a problem for Kenya. Aid agencies estimate more than 23 million people will need food aid in the Horn of Africa region.

Kenyan Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai says it shows how ill-prepared much of Africa is to deal with the effects of climate change.

Herders who depend on cattle for their food and income are having to drive their livestock hundreds of kilometres to seek pasture and water - but find little relief.

“The grass was green when I got here, but it is finished now and a lot of our animals are dying,” Grewan Lesakut, from the pastoralist Samburu community in the Rift Valley, told Reuters Africa Journal.

“The way I see it, all our cows are going to die,” fellow herder John Lenyarui said. “I know some people who had 50 cows but have nothing now, some with 200 and now have only 40 and myself I had 500 and now I have 100.”

Kenya’s Meat Commission is doing what it can. It has offered to buy thousands of cattle from their owners to be slaughtered for meat. But the government facility has been stretched to the limit and thousands of have died outside the slaughterhouse.

“This is a very ugly scene, a very disturbing scene that the country is facing,” Livestock Minister Mohamed Kuti said.

Most nomadic groups hold on to their animals even in times of severe drought, seeing them as their most valuable investment.  In desperation, Turkana villagers, from northwest Kenya, are selling their goats well below market prices to the European Union’s humanitarian wing which then distributes the meat to the hungry.

Maathai, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004, says the drought is evidence of the long term effect of climate change.

“This is an excellent time for Kenya maybe to realise, and for the rest of Africa to learn, what we are talking about when we say that climate change is going to hit Africa very seriously, and it’s partly because Africa is completely unprepared for what is coming with climate change,” she told Africa Journal.

“For more than three decades we have been saying it is important to protect our forests, to protect our rivers, to protect our lands so that we stop soil erosion and to protect our wetlands.

“Somehow, all of them have come and have converged during this last two, now going to three, years and everybody and everything that is living in this country is feeling it.”

(Pictures: Turkana men slaughter goats at a livestock de-stocking centre in the Loyoro village of Turkana district in northwestern Kenya. Reuters/Thomas Mukoya. Kenya’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate Maathai delivers a speech in Japan. Reuters/Kim Kyung Hoon.)

Sudath Perera has every reason to be content. He started up his textiles factory outside the Kenyan capital Nairobi nine years ago; today, he employs 1500 workers and turns over between 18 and 20 million U.S. dollars a year.

“We are contributing to the local economy by creating employment,” he says. “And indirectly there are a lot of local suppliers also relying on us.”

Perera’s factory is one of thousands of businesses on the continent that are taking advantage of a U.S. trade programme under which certain goods from around 40 sub-Saharan African countries can be imported to the States duty-free.

It’s known as AGOA – the African Growth and Opportunity Act – and was one of the main reasons for U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to the continent.

“The ingredients are all here for an extraordinary explosion of growth, prosperity and progress,” said Clinton at the AGOA forum in Nairobi last week. “I know how important it is to translate legislation like AGOA into daily changes that people can look to.”

Many on the continent say they’re already feeling those changes. Textiles factory worker Christine Mwende didn’t have a job before Perera employed her; and though the 120 dollar-a-month salary she makes is low by Western standards, she says it’s made all the difference.

“This job has really helped me,” she told Reuters Africa Journal correspondent Vivianne Mukakizima. “When I started working here, my child had not started school – but he is now in class 4.”

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A presidential visit followed by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s African tour cannot conceal a stark reality: China has overtaken the United States as Africa’s top trading partner.

That is one of the main problems facing Clinton on a seven-nation jaunt meant variously to spread Washington’s good governance message and shore up relationships with its key oil suppliers on the continent.         

U.S. officials are keen to trumpet a 28 percent jump in 2008 in trade with sub-Saharan Africa to $104 billion, even if the increase is attributable mainly to the high price of oil, which accounts for more than 80 percent of U.S. imports from Africa.

However, there is another statistic that says more about the direction of development on the poorest continent: this decade’s tenfold increase in trade with China to $107 billion last year, narrowly eclipsing the United States.

The financial and then economic crisis that has pushed U.S. and European economies into recession and forced their companies to crimp overseas expansion is only likely to accelerate the trend despite the regional goodwill towards U.S. President Barack Obama, whose father was Kenyan.

Nor is China the only emerging economy seeking a slice of a continent estimated to hold a third of the world’s mineral resources, and nearly a billion people slowly finding they want — and can afford — things like life insurance and iPhones.

The $23 billion bid by mobile phone firm Bharti Airtel to tie up with South Africa’s MTN Group, Africa’s biggest operator by subscribers, is the latest and biggest example of an Indian company on the prowl in the region.

Brazil is also making its presence felt, with offers of technology and know-how to boost food and biofuels production in Africa, where only a fraction of potential arable land is under cultivation.

In June, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev flew in to Egypt, Namibia, Angola and Nigeria — the last two being Africa’s biggest oil producers — to underscore Moscow’s intentions not to be left out in the cold.

For sure, the increased competition does not mean the world’s biggest economy is throwing in the African towel, especially given that Angola, for instance, accounts for 7 percent of its oil imports.

But maybe it might make visiting Washington bigwigs bite their tongues before embarking on yet another morality lecture the moment they set foot on African soil.

Direct and indirect foreign investors fled from Africa as the credit crisis sparked a flight to safety, or at least familiarity, but Ayo Salami, manager of the Duet Victoire Africa Index fund believes domestic demand can step in to underpin growth.

President Barack Obama’s choice of Ghana for his first visit to sub-Saharan Africa since taking office has stirred debate in his father’s homeland Kenya.

Some Kenyans believe Obama ought to have come “home” first. Others, especially among critics of President Mwai Kibaki’s government, say he has deliberately shunned the country to show U.S. disapproval of rampant corruption and nepotism in political circles here.

Prime Minister Raila Odinga, who comes from the Luo ethnic group like Obama’s father, said it was wrong to read too much into Obama’s itinerary, given that neither was he visiting other influential nations in the region like South Africa and Nigeria.

“Ghana is symbolic. It was the first African country to gain independence from Britain in 1957. Ghana is very advanced in its transition to democratic form of governance. So it is perfectly logical,” he told Reuters.

“If Obama were to come to Kenya as the first country in Africa, it would send some very wrong signals that he is coming here merely because of some organic relationship that he has with this country. So in fact it is good.”

Obama has been to Kenya several times, most recently as a senator in mid-2006. In a speech then, he took a strong line against corruption, which has plagued East Africa’s largest economy for decades. “If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists - to protect them and promote their common welfare - then all else is lost. That is why the struggle of corruption is one of the great struggles of our time,” he said.

That speech drew a sharp response from the government. Spokesman Alfred Mutua called Obama a young man who was “very poorly informed” and chided him for “lecturing” Kenyans. When Obama took power, however, the Kibaki government was so happy it announced a national holiday in his honour. The U.S. leader is wildly popular among all sectors of Kenyan society.

So should Obama have included Kenya on his Africa tour? Is he snubbing his ancestral homeland?

“When you see a Sudanese walking on the street there is a story,” child soldier turned hip-hop star Emmanuel Jal says.

That’s certainly true for Jal. He was sent to fight for Sudan People’s Liberation Army when he was just six years old.

The exact dates are sketchy, but in about 1987, his village in southern Sudan was attacked by soldiers loyal to the Khartoum government, during more than two decades of north-south civil war.

His mother was killed and he was taken into the SPLA and taught to fire a rifle he was barely strong enough to hold. With the help of a British aid worker, he managed to escape to neighbouring Kenya and today is known for his music and messages of peace.

More than 20,000 child soldiers have been demobilised since the war that killed 2 million people ended in 2005.

His experience was turned into a documentary, “War Child”, which he went back to Kenya from his base in London to promote.

“Kenya is my home, this is where I became known as a rapper … so I’m bringing the movie home to see what had happened into the neighbouring country, for them to know why we are refugees here,” he told Reuters Africa Journal in Kenya.

His songs draw heavily on his history and that of Africa.

One, he told Africa Journal, is a letter to the oil, diamond and gold miners: “You take the riches and you leave the people poor.”

“I talk about when it comes to Africa the world don’t care,” he said.

Nairobi resident Moses Mbaja said: “Jal gave up his anger, he gave up his hatred and now he is creating peace; he is making peace. We should all embrace it.”

(Reuters Photo: Sudanese child soldiers guard rebel military headquarters in February 2000)

“Would you please pass this bottle of water to Tom?” Lady Delamere asked me while we were waiting in court to hear the sentencing of her son, Tom Cholmondeley, who had been convicted of manslaughter for shooting a black poacher in Kenya.

After three years in prison, one of Kenya’s best-known white aristocrats was told he would have to serve a further eight months in jail in a case that has highlighted land, race, wealth and tribal tensions in the country.

I squeezed through the crowded courtroom to give Cholmondeley the water from his mother and returned to my spot where the Delamere family was awaiting the judge’s decision.
It was the second time I had seen Cholmondeley in person and in court. A very tall man in a pressed suit with always the same impassive expression on his clean-shaven face.

It was an awkward experience for me and probably for most people in the court room where rich and poor, black and white have all, unusually for Kenya, been huddled together in one space.

Looking at Cholmondeley through his mother’s eyes humanised this seemingly unemotional man and made me wonder if he held onto that expression to hide any turmoil he was experiencing. He did after all try and help Robert Njoya, the victim, with first aid and transport to hospital, which suggests a compassionate side to his character.

This was the second such case against Cholmondeley, who was accused of killing a wildlife ranger, Samson Ole Sisina, in 2005. That case was dropped for lack of evidence.

When the judge gave his decision, the courtroom erupted with Masai tribesmen shouting, waving banners and demanding justice for the two victims’ families. Cholmondeley and his family were whisked away for fear they would be in danger if they stayed.

His defence lawyer told me he was happy with the result and thought the judge had made a fair decision but the prosecution said they would appeal the decision.

However, the word on the Nairobi streets is that Cholmondeley may get a pardon on Madaraka day (June 1), commemorating the day Kenya attained internal self-rule in 1963, a time when the president often releases convicts serving sentences of less than one year.

It’s been almost three years since the son of the 5th Lord Delamere, Thomas Cholmondeley, first hopped down from a police  truck and entered into Kenya’s High Court to face murder charges  over the death of a local poacher on his estate.

Cholmondeley sat as impassively this week as he did that  first day in court as the judge convicted him of a lesser charge  of manslaughter.

Although the death  penalty is off the table, he still could face life in prison.

Cholmondeley admitted shooting dogs belonging to five armed poachers whom he confronted on his 55,000 acre ranch but denied killing local stonemason Robert Njoya.

The media frenzy surrounding the case has had as much to do with the gin-soaked antics of his British colonial ancestors as  with simmering resentment against settlers who snatched large  tracts of land during British rule .

The aristocrat’s family is one of Kenya’s largest landowners and is famed for its association with the wealthy white settlers  of colonial east Africa’s “Happy Valley” set whose passions for  big game hunting, adultery and lavish parties inspired the book and film “White Mischief.” Many Kenyans say there are two laws  in the east African nation - one for whites and one for blacks.

Another murder case against Cholmondeley — this one  involving a game warden in 2005 — was dropped for lack of  evidence.

Lawyers will be back in court on Tuesday to begin the  sentencing process. Defence attorneys have already said they  would appeal. Was the verdict fair? What sentence do you think he’ll get?