Prospects For A Horn Of Africa Conffederation

Situated in lofty and often inaccessible mountains to the north, and extending far into the Gulf of Aden
to the east, and the Indian Ocean to the southeast, Kenya to the south and the Sudan to the west, the countries that make up the Horn of Africa roughly occupy 1.88 million sq. km. Principally four countries, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somalia, make up the Horn of Africa and have a total population of 75 million, which is estimated to reach 144 million in 25 years.

The Horn of Africa is known for its rich history and culture recognized in the Bible, the Quran and ancient writings including those of the Pharonic, and the Greco-Roman empires. This region owed its importance in ancient times to the fact that it was the source of the mighty Nile and lay beside one of the world’s most

important international trade routes which linked through the Red Sea, the Mediterranean, and hence the West  with Arabia, India, China, and the Far East. The ancient Egyptians who provide our first important testimony on the region knew the area on both counts. The Ethiopian highlands they realized were the source of the Nile, to whose water and silt Egypt owed its very existence. At the Same time the low and arid country towards the coast, perhaps stretching from the Red Sea coasts of Eritrea, through the rift valley depressions of Ethiopia, down to the Indian Ocean coasts of Somalia, constituted the core of the land of Punt, a term coined by the ancient Egyptians, whence the Pharaohs obtained articles of immense value for their devotions and life. On this account, they spoke of the region as “God’s land.” Trade between the Horn of Africa region and the countries of Arabia and Asia also flourished in ancient times with such exports as raw materials, ivory, myrrh, incense, and spices and imports of cloth, swords, and cinnamon (Pankhrust). 

The Institute on Black Life, The Center for Africa and the Diaspora, and The Office of International Affairs at The University of South Florida and The U. S. Africa Education Foundation NOVEMBER 14 - 15, 2002

The Horn of Africa is endowed with rich natural resources including agriculture, water, and energy. It is
well known that for example, 85% of the river Nile that sustains Egypt originates from Ethiopia. It is a region
that has ports on the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean. If developed, its substantial agricultural and water resources could make the region a breadbasket for the benefit of its people as well as the international community.

Being adjacent to the Red Sea, the Horn of Africa is located along one of the most crucial sea lanes for
international trade. Its proximity to the oil producing nations of the Arabian peninsula as well as its hosting the headquarters of the African Union, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and several other indigenous and international non governmental organizations renders the Horn of Africa extremely important in terms of geo-political considerations on the international level.

Due to various reasons including devastating conflicts, recurring droughts and a high incidence of HIV
AIDS, the region is currently suffering from serious underdevelopment. High levels of poverty, rampant diseases and frequent bouts of starvation currently characterize the Horn of Africa. Sustained peace and stability accompanied by an accelerated economic development in the Horn of Africa would certainly raise the standard of living of the people in the region as well as benefit the international community in terms of trade and global security.

Conference Objectives

To develop the modalities for sustainable economic development;
To articulate a new vision of alternative modalities of cooperation and collaboration to effect a
Horn of Africa Confederation (Economic, Social, Political);
To identify the advantages of a confederation for the Horn of Africa countries (initially Somalia,
Djibouti, Ethiopia and Eritrea), focusing on the achievement of peace, stability, accelerated
economic development, and democracy; and
To initiate sustainable momentum and to define next steps for the establishment of the
confederation

Political and Social Issues 

Mesfin Araya
York College, City University of New York

Problems and Prospects for a Horn of Africa Confederation

There are indeed strong cultural, economic, and political reasons to treat the Horn of Africa as a single
region; not only does it have intra-regional cultural ties, particularly in the border areas, but also major common problems-ranging from drought, recurrent famine, environmental degradation, poverty, disease to political instability: major problems whose solutions require collective concerted efforts. The need for, and significance of, a confederation, therefore, could not be argued more. The hard question is -when and how?
Focusing on the nature of the state and the role it has assumed in the region, this study tries to highlight
the formidable problem that any attempt at a socially meaningful confederation is bound to confront; it strongly underlines the fundamental need to treat a confederation project as primarily a process that must be cultivated from below rather than as a thing that could easily be manipulated from above; the study concludes by outlining some suggestions that may improve the prospects.

The historical tragedy in the Horn is that there is no social group solidly anchored in the productive
process to entertain- largely driven by class interest- a broader, regional, vision; nor sadly enough is there an
individual political figure that could command moral and intellectual authority. On the contrary, what we have is a social condition where the state has become highly prized, as it is the major instrument of private capital accumulation; politics, in other words, has become, above and beyond everything else, the primary social activity- a condition necessarily generating social tensions, factionalism, authoritarianism, and recurrent violence. It is not a mere accident, or coincidence that the countries in the Horn of Africa are violently torn apart from within and from each other. The notion of statesmanship, visionary leadership, has been reduced to the politics of fiefdom, to the politics of the belly. Apparently, unmanageable crisis of governance has prevailed; this problem of the state and the role it has assumed may be a post-colonial African phenomenon, but it is extremely manifested in the Horn with all its distractive social ramifications. As long as the politics of private fiefdom is widely entertained as the highest political virtue, let alone a confederation even the survival of the countries as nation-states may be doubtful.

For peace, social development, and sustainable confederation to reign, a profound change of the nature
and role of the state in the region is a vital precondition. The study explores three closely-related building- blocks that may improve the prospects : (1) Democratization of the region: Authoritarian political culture could not sustain a confederation , the 1998-2000 Ethio-Eritrean war ought to be instructive; (2) Fostering coordination and institutional linkages of intra-regional civil society activities- the purpose being to cultivate a new regional political culture of diversity and tolerance- a critical missing link in the Horn; (3) Expanding and strengthening intra-regional trade-there is, indeed, a de-facto regional economic community represented by the long-standing “Unofficial”, “illegal”, intra-regional trade that has thrived in peace as well as in war; appropriate mechanisms to strengthen this tradition need to be explored. Expanded resources and market opportunities may, in the long run, help produce more economic and less political animals- a necessary foundation for a sustainable confederation.

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