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A Bleak Outlook for the Horn
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11636 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1986 |
3,117 Words |
| Author
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Ali Khalif Galaydh
Ali Khalif Galaydh, a Somali national, is an associate of the
Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University,
Cambridge, Massachusetts. |
The countries of the Horn of Africa, Somalia, Sudan, and Ethiopia, are not members of the mythical cornucopia club. They are very poor by all the conventional socio-economic measures. Their economic status is unenviable even by African standards.
According to the most recent World Bank ranking of international economies, Ethiopia is number one from the bottom, Somalia number 13, and Sudan number 28.
If the past has been bleak and the present patently problematic, neither does the future of these economies look very promising.
The recurring droughts and general environmental degeneration pose daunting long-term problems. Bankrupt developmental policies have mortgaged the future. The symptoms of a blighted future include the inability to generate significant domestic resources for investment, to feed - as a minimum - their increasing populations, and to service their external debts.
The fluctuating international market will continue to have a negative impact on these fragile economies, but more alarming are the increasingly restrictive trading policies of the industrialized countries and the marked fall in the levels of economic aid.
The authoritarian regimes that have ruled these countries for the last decade and a half have proved to be brutal in their denial of basic human rights, incompetent in the forgoing and implementation of developmental strategies, and unimaginative in the resolution of domestic and regional
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