The Horn Of Africa States: The Region To Replicate The Experiences Of South Asia – Analysis

Any rising regional or even national economy is generally motivated by emulating and/or replicating the strategies followed by another developed or growing economy, which has risen from the doldrums of poverty to high peaks of human performance. A rising region usually emphasises on two major issues, namely education and infrastructure. Of course, they would always need the assistance of others who may be interested in taking advantage of the resources of the region.

Experts on the performance of countries generally look into South Asia, a region, which over the years from 1991 onwards, rose from backward economies and human miseries to vibrant economies with a highly motivated and developed human resource base. They note that these countries replicated the strategies of Japan after the Second World War.

The economy of the country, i.e. Japan, was directed at improving and developing its export business. It already had a tradition of an industrialized infrastructure, which it started in the nineteenth century, when, as a closed society, it found out it could do better than just being closed to the rest of the world. That old Japan itself copied Europe of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The South Asian countries developed export-oriented economies that put them on the map and earned them the title of “Asian Tigers.” Although the title was more specifically on the four countries of Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea,, it also encompassed the other South Asian countries of Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and eventually Vietnam and others.

One would note that the countries of Singapore and the city of Hong Kong, at the time, did not have large internal markets and mostly, therefore, engaged themselves in high-tech activities while the other countries developed a kind of hybrid economies involving not only high-tech but also traditional manufacturing, because of the larger labor forces they own.

The Horn of Africa States region could rise from the current pitiful situation it finds itself in through following and replicating the experiences of those South Asian countries in the past four decades. A prerequisite though, is that they should first settle their individual and regional problems with sincerity, magnanimity and tranquility, and make the region peaceful and stable.

The Current State

The Horn of Africa States is a rich region despite it being marked as poor. The poverty is generally due to the inability of the region to use its inherently brilliant minds to exploit the resources at its disposal and over emphasis and concentration on ethnic politics. This has failed the region both at the national and regional levels. The per capita income of the region is way below normal levels there should be in the region and the gross national product is also extremely low despite owning a population of some 175 million people, including the large Somali population spread across four countries of East and Horn of Africa and across the world.

The region has a beautiful coastal belt of about 4,700 km, which could accommodate many sites and resorts for a highly developed tourist industry, which can attract, at better prices, a significant portion of the over one billion Europeans, who travel to warm waters the year round.

The region owns large arable lands and a major marine space to produce food that can feed the region’s population and many millions more across the globe. It also enjoys sub-soil wealth including oil and gas and other minerals such as uranium, gold, lithium, cobalt, phosphates, copper, iron ore and many others.

It is, indeed, a region endowed with all the resources that can contribute to the creation of a highly advanced society, which can contribute to the betterment of humanity. However, at present, it seems to be at the bottom of the scale in terms of human development, and most of all, in governance where it has failed enormously. The countries of the region do not even notice that the region has all these assets, which attracts many another hostile nation, which does not wish the region well, and which wants to exploit those resources for its own benefit.

These external countries include not only the old colonial countries who know the region, but also others including even rising regional economies such as the mini-Gulf states of West Asia, which have enormous wealth they currently deploy to destroy and uproot the region. What happened to Sudan and Libya and Yemen present a major statement, which the Horn of Africa States countries should read and carefully and take notice.

The Way Forward

The region should first realize its state and potential. It is not only up to the leadership, but it is also up to the general public, the academia, the traditional rulers, the religious leaders, and of course, many of the better politicians of the region. The region could do better!

First, each of the countries of the region should deal with its own opposition within their countries not on the prism of ethnicity, as is the case today, but on the prism of citizenhood and equality under the law. This requires that those who are appointed to positions of power should not based on loyalty and ethnicity, but on qualifications and usefulness to the country thereof. It should not be based on the snobbish attitude of “It is my turn.”

It is best that each country should not deploy the unqualified people who currently man each country’s sensitive departments in finance and economy, security, diplomacy and foreign affairs, internal management apparatus, in terms of police and administration, education and healthcare services.

Second, priorities to education and healthcare services should be put ahead of guns and soldiering as is the case today. It is how peace and stability can be achieved. The Horn African society does extend significant importance to education, the family, and kinship, and can therefore produce an intelligent working class once soldiering as a priority is replaced by education and skill acquisition.

In the future, high tech and its deployment thereof would be important. The region is endowed with a large population, seventy per cent of which is of youthful age of under thirty i.e. they have many years of working life ahead of them. They can easily adapt to being trained into the skills of the future to become a productive factor instead of the destructive factor they are currently trained into as soldiers for the regimes. The countries do not need soldiers and guns but pens and paper, education, and a productive human resource vested in the industries of the future.

The countries of the region should be able to retain, however, the people they train. They should note that they have spent, time, efforts and money on training them and making them ready for productive deployment. They cannot let them just disappear through immigration, both legal and illegal, to other parts of the world. Retention of trained people is usually done through proper compensation to make travelling to outside the region for works and money, a useless venture. People would always travel outside but not permanently settle there. One should find the region more friendly and more accommodating to its own people. It should be attractive both economically and otherwise.

Third, the economies of the region should be moved away from the import business and the tax incomes levied on these imported goods at different levels but on an export economy where the countries earn foreign currency income. There should be no need for financial assistance from other parties as is the case today when hundreds of unnecessary and destructive NGOs from elsewhere seem to be the main source of income and employment for the youth of the region.

The resources of the region can be deployed in this respect in many ways. Perhaps the easiest way is tourism with resorts being built across the total landscape of the region both in the highlands and on the extensive coastal belt of the region. An increasing mobile population of some 10 to 15 million would be good in the beginning, but a developed tourist industry in a peaceful, stable Horn Africa States region can attract over 40-50 million people annually and the region can earn a minimum of US$ 70 - 100 billion from that sector alone.

The resources of the region include sufficiently large arable lands and a substantial marine resource base, which can feed both the people of the region and many millions more outside the region. This requires a concerted, organized and a well executed plan.

Fourth, the financial resources of the region are currently limited due to a limited export business, taxes levied on imported goods and services, and grants and loans from multilateral financial institutions, which are all unfriendly to a country’s development and business. The income of the region is supplemented by remittances from the region’s global diaspora, who keep many millions of families afloat. While this could be ambitious, the region needs to harness the financial resources of the region, wherein the deposit base of the region in the banking systems, is deployed in the countries of the region and not placed with financial institutions outside the region, who use them to deploy them for their own purposes.

A deposit placed with a foreign correspondent bank would only be useful to the country of that correspondent bank and not the original country which collected the deposit. There are large surplus funds in the region which float outside the banking system, even though the collected funds themselves are siphoned off to other countries. But it is still important for the countries of the region to pay attention to the monies in circulation and put them to good use through deposit collections and financing local export-oriented businesses, including farming, fishing and other activities that earn hard currencies and incomes for the region.

Collective Bargaining Platform

The region consists of four countries which need to be working together instead of working against each other as seems to be the case these days. It will need investments in infrastructures, education, healthcare systems and maintaining peace and order in the region in order to make it a viable and worthwhile space for life.

A collective platform is, therefore, important for the region. The collective platform will create an integrated economy, which makes it easy to build ports, roads and rail together, not only to transport goods within the region, but also to transport the goods and people to destinations outside the region.

The World Bank puts it correctly when it says that “Regional integration helps countries overcome divisions that impede the flow of goods, services, capital, people and ideas.” The World Economic Forum, in some of its findings, also notes that “Many countries and regions are pursuing deeper trade relationships with their neighbors to fuel growth.”

Why shouldn’t the Horn of Africa States region, the SEED countries, pursue a similar economic integration to speed growth of the region? They know they can but there are forces standing in the way and these forces, unlike previous interferences from others, is closer to home. They are the Miniscule but economically giant Gulf states of West Asia.

Apparently, they see growth of the region as a loss to themselves, for the ports and long coastal belt of the region can deprive them, they wrongly assume, of the usefulness and benefits of the heavy investments they made in ports and other tourist infrastructures in their tiny countries.

Contrary to their wrong conclusions, they know not that the two regions complement each other but at present, they pose an eminent danger to the Horn of Africa development processes through the wars and conflicts they finance and instigate.

It is time the region reversed themselves from the wrong paths of destruction they seem to have embarked on through the instigation of others and built local themes to make peace and develop the region economically and otherwise through an integrated collective platform. This is still doable!