Hiiraan Online

NAIROBI (HOL) —The horn of Africa na­tion is re­cov­er­ing from decades of war, a de­vel­op­ment that paves the way for key busi­ness am­bi­tions, en­cour­ag­ing neigh­bor­ing coun­tries to change their long neg­a­tive ap­proach to­wards it.

Tak­ing ad­van­tage of the progress, So­ma­lia moves fur­ther be­yond the long neg­a­tive tag of be­ing the most dan­ger­ous na­tion, by ap­ply­ing to re­con­nect with key in­ter­na­tional bod­ies.

The lat­est at­tempt is more buoy­ant for it as it ap­plies a per­ma­nent mem­ber­ship at the East African Com­mu­nity (EAC), a com­mon Mar­ket that en­tered into force on 1 July 2010, fol­low­ing rat­i­fi­ca­tion by all the five Part­ner States:

Bu­rundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tan­za­nia and Uganda are the mem­bers of the or­ga­ni­za­tion. The or­ga­ni­za­tion which is an in­te­gral part of the African Eco­nomic Com­mu­nity was orig­i­nally founded in 1967, and col­lapsed in 1977 be­fore it was of­fi­cially re­vived on 7 July 2000.

Con­sid­er­ing So­ma­li­a’s ap­pli­ca­tion, the or­ga­ni­za­tion’s mem­bers have called for a broader sup­port for So­ma­lia to join EAC with the Tan­zan­ian pres­i­dent Jakaya Mr­isho Kik­wete who de­liv­ered a speech at the as­sem­bly on Fri­day al­luded con­sid­er­a­tion for its mem­ber­ship ap­pli­ca­tion.

“Go­ing through our his­tor­i­cal files, we found a 1974 ap­pli­ca­tion from So­ma­lia, re­quest­ing to join the EAC,” said Mr. Kik­wete who drew an ap­plause from the body’s mem­bers at the meet­ing.
In ad­di­tion, So­ma­li­a’s am­bas­sador to Bu­rundi Ab­shir Has­san Ab­shir who at­tended the as­sem­bly told HOL that EAC’s mem­bers have agreed to send a del­e­ga­tion to So­ma­lia to ex­plore whether So­ma­lia qual­i­fies join­ing the or­ga­ni­za­tion or not.

“We have the sup­port of the most of the or­ga­ni­za­tion’s mem­bers to join EAC. We are con­fi­dent that So­ma­lia will win even if a ref­er­en­dum is con­ducted.” He said.

So­ma­lia which has been with­out func­tion­ing gov­ern­ment since 1991­fi­nally formed a cen­tral gov­ern­ment three years ago as the horn of Africa na­tion tries to re­claim its pres­tige across the globe.
The world at­ten­tion turned to So­ma­lia af­ter the ouster of the Is­lamist in­sur­gents from the cap­i­tal and key strong­holds, bring­ing hope of build­ing a new So­ma­lia.

Why in­vest in East Africa

• Mar­ket ac­cess to more than 130 mil­lion peo­ple • Com­bined GDP size of about US$ 75 bil­lion
• The world’s fastest re­form­ing re­gion in terms of busi­ness reg­u­la­tion
• Sim­pli­fied in­vest­ment pro­ce­dures and one stop cen­tre fa­cil­ity pro­vided by na­tional in­vest­ment pro­mo­tion agen­cies
• Gen­er­ous in­cen­tives of­fered • Vi­brant and up­com­ing cap­i­tal and se­cu­ri­ties mar­ket
• High level of in­tra-re­gional trade and cross-bor­der in­vest­ments
• Nu­mer­ous in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties tra­vers­ing all sec­tors
• Abun­dant labour force – ed­u­cated, trained, mo­bile, skilled and en­ter­pris­ing
• Eng­lish is widely spo­ken; it is one of or the only of­fi­cial lan­guage in at least four of the five Part­ner States
• In­sur­ance against non-com­mer­cial risk by Mul­ti­lat­eral In­vest­ment Guar­an­tee Agency (MIGA) and Africa Trade In­sur­ance Agency (ATIA)
• Sanc­tity of pri­vate prop­erty guar­an­teed by na­tional con­sti­tu­tions
• Sta­ble po­lit­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment and high level of gov­er­nance and democ­racy
• Con­sumer loy­alty • A warm and hos­pitable peo­ple