The Horn Of Africa States: The Horn Needs More Corridors, Not More Rivalries – OpEd

Key Takeaways:

• Djibouti should not fear emerging alternative transport corridors (such as those via Berbera or Zeila-Harrar) because expanded regional infrastructure increases overall trade capacity, reduces costs, and grows the economic pie rather than redistributing a fixed volume of cargo.
• The four Horn countries—Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Djibouti—should establish practical cooperative institutions, including a Regional Banking Syndication Framework to pool capital for large infrastructure projects and a Horn of Africa States (HAS) organisation focused initially on trade facilitation, infrastructure planning, energy, and related areas of shared interest.
• Economic interdependence and multiple complementary corridors would create stronger incentives for cooperation, generate jobs for the region’s large youth population, and build lasting stability more effectively than competition over existing routes.

For decades, Djibouti has occupied a position most countries would envy. As Ethiopia’s principal maritime gateway, it has transformed a favourable geography into world-class ports, free zones and a thriving logistics sector. Yet as alternative transport corridors emerge across the region, a familiar question is being asked: should Djibouti be worried?

The answer is no. In fact, it should welcome them.

There is an African proverb that says, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” That wisdom is especially relevant today. Too much of the debate over ports and transport corridors assumes that trade is a fixed pie, that one country’s gain must inevitably come at another’s expense. Economics suggests precisely the opposite.

Markets expand. New infrastructure creates new opportunities. Every additional railway, highway or port increases capacity, reduces transport costs, improves resilience and encourages investment. The real choice facing the Horn is not between Djibouti, Berbera or Zeila-Harrar corridors. It is between remaining a collection of competing national markets or becoming an integrated regional economy.

Much of the discussion resembles a family quarrelling over who should drive the only car. A prosperous family buys a second, and eventually a third. The objective is not to win the argument over one vehicle but to expand the fleet.

That logic is difficult to ignore. Ethiopia, one of Africa’s largest and fastest-growing economies, will require multiple reliable gateways to international markets over the coming decades. Add the economic potential of Somalia, Eritrea and Djibouti, and it becomes increasingly unrealistic to believe that a single corridor can efficiently serve the region’s future trade.

Rather than viewing new transport routes as threats, the four countries should see them as complementary arteries feeding one economic heart. More corridors mean more commerce. More commerce attracts manufacturing, logistics, finance, insurance, telecommunications and professional services. The objective is not merely to move containers more efficiently. It is to create a larger regional economy.

That is why the time has come for Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti to convene a regional conference aimed at establishing two practical institutions: a Regional Banking Syndication Framework and a Horn of Africa States (HAS) organisation, certainly more suited for the region than IGAD which includes non-regional parties.

The banking proposal addresses one of the region’s greatest constraints. Every country faces enormous infrastructure needs, railways, highways, renewable energy, ports, industrial parks, digital networks and water systems. But many of these projects exceed the lending capacity of individual domestic banks.

Instead of depending almost exclusively on external financiers, banks from the four countries could pool capital through syndicated lending arrangements, share risks, harmonise lending standards and attract international investors with greater confidence. Pension funds, development finance institutions and private investors could participate in financing projects whose benefits extend across national borders.

Regional integration often begins not with treaties but with financial cooperation. Capital usually crosses borders before politics does.

The second proposal is more ambitious but follows the same principle. The gradual establishment of a Horn of Africa States (HAS) organisation comprising Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti. The name may sound ambitious, but history offers useful lessons. Europe’s integration did not begin with a grand political union. It began with practical cooperation in coal and steel, sectors that had once fuelled conflict but gradually became instruments of peace and shared prosperity. Trust was built through commerce before it was institutionalised through politics.

The Horn need not copy Europe. Every region has its own history. But one lesson is universal. Durable integration is built through practical cooperation rather than political declarations. A Horn of Africa States (HAS) organisation should initially concentrate on areas where interests clearly converge, trade facilitation, customs modernisation, infrastructure planning, energy interconnection, digital payments, regional banking, food security, investment promotion and transport regulation. None of these initiatives requires countries to surrender sovereignty. All of them strengthen it by expanding economic opportunity.

Critics will argue that the political histories of Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea and Djibouti make such cooperation unrealistic. They will point to historical rivalries, unresolved disputes and differing political systems.

Those concerns deserve respect but not surrender.

Successful regional organisations rarely emerge because governments agree on everything. They emerge because governments recognise that continued rivalry carries greater economic costs than cooperation. Political disagreements may persist for decades, but that need not prevent countries from building roads together, financing infrastructure together or expanding trade together.

Indeed, the Horn’s greatest strategic asset is neither its ports nor its geography. It is its people.

Across the region, millions of young people enter the labour market every year. Their priorities are remarkably similar regardless of nationality: decent jobs, reliable electricity, functioning transport networks, affordable finance and opportunities to build businesses and raise families. Few wake each morning thinking about geopolitical competition. They think about opportunity.

This is where economics becomes more powerful than politics.

Political leaders understandably focus on sovereignty and security. Those responsibilities are unavoidable. Yet lasting stability depends equally on employment, enterprise and rising living standards. History repeatedly demonstrates that countries trading together develop stronger incentives to cooperate than to confront one another. Prosperity creates stakeholders in peace.

If manufacturers in Ethiopia depend on ports in Djibouti, if Somali fisheries export efficiently through regional transport networks, if Eritrean industries attract investment because infrastructure is financed collectively, and if banks throughout the region participate in shared lending platforms, every country acquires something valuable that conflict would jeopardise, and if… and if…

Economic interdependence does not eliminate political differences. It changes the incentives for managing them.

This is why the debate over transport corridors has been framed too narrowly. The question should not be, “How do we protect our own corridor?” It should be, “How do we build every corridor that makes the region more competitive?”

One practical example is the Zeila-Harrar corridor. Developing this route need not diminish Djibouti’s importance,  or for that matter Berbera-Wajaale corridor, any more than additional European ports diminished Rotterdam or Antwerp. Expanding regional transport capacity increases total trade rather than simply redistributing existing cargo. As economic activity grows, every efficient corridor finds its market.

Leadership, therefore, should not be measured by which country attracts the largest share of today’s trade but by which country has the vision to create tomorrow’s economy.

Djibouti possesses considerable advantages, experience, credibility, financial connectivity and modern logistics infrastructure. It could convene such a regional initiative. Equally, Ethiopia, Somalia or Eritrea could choose to do so. What matters is not which country receives the credit, but whether one is prepared to begin the conversation.

The Horn stands at an important crossroads. It can continue debating which port should dominate regional trade, or it can build an economic community large enough for every efficient port and corridor to prosper. One path encourages competition over existing commerce. The other creates new commerce altogether.

History tends to reward countries that expand opportunities rather than defend monopolies. If Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti can embrace that principle, they will not merely strengthen their own economies. They will demonstrate that regional integration is not an abstract political aspiration but a practical strategy for creating jobs, mobilising investment and offering millions of young people a more prosperous future.

That would be a legacy no transport corridor could ever diminish.