The breakaway state is finalising a huge port investment, boosting
its efforts to serve as a trade hub between the African and Arab
worlds
Somaliland is finalising a multi-million dollar deal with a leading
international operator to devel op a port at Berbera, on the Gulf of
Aden, bolstering the breakaway nation’s bid to position itself as a
export gateway for landlocked Ethiopia, according to an envoy
working on the deal.
“After six months of negotiations, an agreement has been put on the
table, which is highly ex citing, from one of the world’s best port
operators,” says Jason McCue, a human rights lawyer who serves as an
envoy for the state’s bid for independence, and who is assembling
investors to grow the coastal town of Berbera into a
$2.5bn
logistics hub. “The moment is there for Som aliland.”
Mr McCue declined to comment on the size of the port investment, but
says it would constitute the single biggest inflow of foreign direct
investment in Somaliland’s 22 year history of de fact o autonomy. “We
are talking hundreds of millions,” he tells This is Africa. “That
port will become a major international port.”
Authorities in the desert state are trying to overhaul crumbling
infrastructure as they seek to capitalise on their position as a
bridge between Africa and the Middle East. Kuwait recently sp ent
$10m reinvigorating the nation’s two airports, and the government in Hargeisa has plans to develop road networks and an oil pipeline to
service the export needs of neighbouring Eth iopia. It hopes that the
port at Berbera can compete with Djibouti, Mombasa and Dar es
Salaa m, where ships can wait weeks to unload their cargo due to
bottlenecks
Ethiopia is Africa’s second most populous nation, with 91 million
inhabitants, and has annual exports worth almost $1bn, led by coffee
and gold.
“We are trying to see how we could get international partners to
help us with infrastructure. We want to develop the corridor between
Berbera and Ethiopia because that is really the lif eline,” says
Somaliland’s foreign minister Mohamed Bihi Yonis. “We are all aiming
at Ethiopia and we believe that we could provide support to a third
of the population of Ethiopia.”
This kind of large-scale investment may bolster Somaliland’s
attempts to gain international re cognition. The state unilaterally
declared independence when civil war erupted in Somalia in 1991 and
is officially seen as an autonomous region rather than a country.
But it has held a series of democratic elections, has its own
currency, and is a haven of relative refuge from the terrorism and
piracy that afflict Mogadishu's government. As well as targeting
infrastructure investors, the government has ushered in frontier oil
companies like Genel Energy, which are exploring Somaliland’s
potentially huge reserves. But like Somalia, the nation is hampered
by the fact that it has no access to international financial
services.
“There is almost an inevitability occurring [around the independence
bid], as Somaliland creat es this financial self-sufficiency,” Mr
McCue argues. “When big international companies come in, who have
immense power in the states where they are from, they are going to
demand that their home state pushes for [Somaliland’s] independence,
because they are going to want to operate in a normal financial
services market.”
Hargeisa’s foreign minister says that “dealing with the rest of the
world in terms of investmen ts and development and security” is proof
that the region is fulfilling the criteria required of a country.
“We believe that we will get recognition soon, because we have done
well,” he claims.
But sources close to talks between Somalia and Somaliland tell This
is Africa that a new govern ment in Mogadishu shows little indication
of changing its stance by recognising the breakaway region’s right
to independence.
Somalia has contested oil licenses awarded by Somaliland’s Hargeisa-based
government, sayin g they infringe on old concessions awarded by the
federal government before 1991. A draft petroleum bill says the
central government alone has the “privilege to distribute natural
reso urces”.
Somaliland could wait a while longer before it gets the recognition
it has been hankering after for two decades.
By Eleanor Whitehead
Source: This is Africa
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