The world trade has perceived generous changes over the two past decades, because of not only downturn in transport costs but also the information technology upheaval, further open economic and trade policies. This paper analyses the factors influencing countries to participate in global value chain in EAC member states using gravity model. The paper uses data on the investment, gross domestic product, distance and landlocked in estimation. Due to its desirable properties especially in international trade, the Generalized Linear Model (IRLS - Fisher Scoring) is used to estimate the gravity equation before carrying out several others diagnostic tests to assess the robustness of results. The Empirical results shows that the flow of investment, which are a proxy of all trade policies, has a positive and significant impact on a country’s level of openness. Gross Domestic Products that represent economic mass has no statistically significant impact on total trade flows. Distance and landlocked represent all barriers associated to the trade among countries have a negative and positive significant impact on bilateral trade flows respectively. Indeed, the EAC member should give more attention to create investment and value addition hub to move up the global value chain.
