Somalia Joins East Africa Trade Bloc as It Eyes New Opportunities

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The East African Com­mu­ni­ty trade bloc admit­ted Soma­lia as its eighth mem­ber on Fri­day, a move Soma­li author­i­ties and busi­ness­es hope will boost the coun­try’s war-rav­aged economy.

The EAC com­mon mar­ket — which con­sists of Burun­di, Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic of Con­go, Kenya, Rwan­da, South Sudan, Tan­za­nia and Ugan­da — was set up in 2010 and cur­rent­ly com­pris­es almost 300 mil­lion people.

“Soma­lia offi­cial­ly joins the East African Com­mu­ni­ty, rein­forc­ing ties and open­ing new doors for progress and part­ner­ship,” Daud Aweis, Soma­li­a’s min­is­ter for infor­ma­tion, cul­ture and tourism, said in a post on X, for­mer­ly Twitter.

With the new mem­ber the bloc has expand­ed its mar­ket and also gained an addi­tion­al new coast­line stretch­ing over more than 3,000 kilo­me­ters (1,800 miles) that holds poten­tial for off­shore resources like oil and gas.

In turn the bloc’s large pop­u­la­tion and exist­ing cus­toms union and com­mon mar­ket are a draw for investors that Soma­lia can now tap into.

Although the EAC has over the decades made progress in eco­nom­ic inte­gra­tion, like many oth­er trade blocs it has strug­gled to over­come bar­ri­ers to com­merce such as red tape, polit­i­cal insta­bil­i­ty, poor infra­struc­ture and trade disputes.

Soma­lia, which has a pop­u­la­tion of about 17 mil­lion, had sought to join the EAC for years, but its chron­ic insta­bil­i­ty made some East African coun­tries reluc­tant to grant it mem­ber­ship, ana­lysts say.

Al Qai­da-linked al-Shabab has waged a bru­tal insur­gency against the Mogadishu gov­ern­ment since 2006. Some offi­cials have voiced con­cerns that EAC inte­gra­tion could ease the move­ment of mil­i­tants and con­tra­band across the region.

Kenya post­poned plans ear­li­er this year to reopen its bor­der with Soma­lia after more than a decade of clo­sure due to a surge in attacks in north­ern Kenya by sus­pect­ed al- Shabab fighters.

Soma­li busi­ness­es said the coun­try’s vibrant pri­vate sec­tor, which has over­come long odds to stay afloat, will bring a fresh injec­tion of risk-tol­er­ant entre­pre­neurs into the trade bloc and boost exchanges across the large Soma­li diaspora.

“It will be sim­pler for the large Soma­li dias­po­ra liv­ing across East Africa to access finan­cial ser­vices and prod­ucts,” said Shuayb Haji Nur Mohamed, man­ag­ing direc­tor of Salaam Soma­li Bank, one of Soma­li­a’s major banks.