In the Horn of Africa States region, conflicts and economic challenges still continue, The region remains poor, and its population keeps growing at a faster rate than many other regions of the world. It is home to some 160 million people at present, and over two thirds are of youthful and employable age, with many years of working life ahead of them. 

The region is marked by the inability of its governance to find solutions to this bulging population, and the only possible way to vent the frustration of this large youthful population is to revert, for the social and security purposes, to the animalistic instinct of the tribe/clan. It is the source of the conflicts for which the region is famous, and which allows unworthy foreigners to exploit the resources of the region, including its geostrategic location.

The economic pie remains small and governments of the region, therefore, find themselves, unable to raise enough revenues to meet the services that the population of the region need in terms of employment, education and health, roads and other infrastructures that are essential for this twenty-first century, of which they are fully aware through Sheikh Google. There is no proper tax collections, and the financial sector of the region still remains outside the orbit of contributing to the economy of the region. They are either in government or private hands and both appear not to have learned much from their counterparts in other parts of the world.

Corruption, nepotism, and weaknesses of the legal systems contribute to the inability of the region to attract foreign investors in addition to its unending ethnic-based conflicts. How could the region attract foreign investments when each country is at the other’s throat  and its regional diplomacy is barely able to function, although the governance of each country paints itself as successful despite a backdrop of difficult, conflicted and unstable environments?

The region’s economy is mostly informal, which makes the current available statistics on the region’s economy fake and unrepresentative of the true size of the economy of the region. It is where  the governments of the region need to change track to move away from dependence on others to feed their populations or to contribute to the growth of the economy of the region. This will not happen. Countries only reap  the fruits of the sweat of their people and not through the........

© Eurasia Review