In the year 2000, Ugandan exports to Rwanda were worth $9 million. By the 2017/2018 financial year, this figure had shot up to $197 million, against imports of $20 million, giving it a surplus of $177 million, despite the icy relations currently prevailing.

In the same period, in a reversal of fortune, Uganda for the first time registered a $122 million trade surplus with Kenya, with exports worth $628 million and imports worth $505 million.Though Uganda hardly invests any serious money in agriculture, the country is now the EAC’s bread basket.

Kenyan business people travel as far as the remote parts of western Uganda to villages whose names they can’t pronounce, and put a deposit on food crops before they are harvested. None of this happens as a result of state policy, but rather the invisible hand of integration. The magic happens in that “invisible” East Africa.

Despite the circular firing squad that is the relationship between East Africa’s heads of state, the economic incentives for ever greater integration in the EAC remain strong.

Next in line to join might be the DRC. Then perhaps Somalia. Ethiopia might be interested, too.