That's very true, jamaa wanabana kila mahali, American themselves have tried to enter Ethiopian marketing and failed. Chinese have barely enter by using their "Communist card" because Ethiopia has been Communist country for a long time and China was backing them with military assistant. But truth to be told those guys (Ethiopia) have massive potential market.
The Ethiopian government heavily protects it's economy under the guise of protecting infant industries. Yet in reality they're only protecting govt control and creating a huge bottleneck to economic advancement. Their 2016 industrial output is smaller than Uganda's, let Tanzania's and Kenya's just because there isn't exports and imports to and from Neighboring countries.
Their economy will increase with them joining EAC, lakini is it in their best interest?. Until they build there own capacity e.g education, laws, or producing something for EAC. They will continue to be protective, they are accessing more world markets without any EAC bureaucracy They've run and clinch Djibouti route just to give themselves leverage of not to depend too much on EAC.
The Ethiopians have since time immemorial used only Djibouti for imports and exports. Their trade with Djibouti is so pitiable, it's mostly shipping their goods through, nothing more. Djibouti even complained last year about Ethiopia blocking their companies. S.Sudan is far more underdeveloped than Ethiopia but it's joined the EAC and benefited alot.
This is why I said to you before, they will only join EAC if is in their best interest. Djibouti is their trading partner only in logistics at the moment, na Djibouti is junior partner because they want Ethiopian logistics money (they can't complain much). I'm not denying that Ethiopia joining EAC would be a huge plus to EAC as whole because will be a very sizeable market of 200+ million people. Lakini, with all this trade war going on within EAC and outside will that serve their interest? South Sudan needs EAC, they've no food, no strong government, no infrastructure, no even institution. They need EAC to access investments and and also to guarantee their security. As you said it, Ethiopia is granting EU, China slice of their market but look who is making most of the profits, Ethiopia of course, there is not difficult country shift fands abroad like Ethiopia. At the same time EU can't sale much to Ethiopia because the market is not ripe for consumption for European goods. But on the other hand, Ethiopia can sale even their teeth to EU and others because they have the advantage low production cost.
Well, I did noticed that people from the horn of Africa hold a lot of reservations regarding interactions with neighbors, more so ukilinganisha na the great Lakes region. But for me, hata kama ni Northern Sudan yataka kujoin, for as long as they table something relevant I've got no qualms with them brother
The EAC is an economic bloc, countries are joining the EAC because there's more to gain economically, not because we would like cross border marriages or something like that.
I do understand what your saying, but i think your looking at this in short term rather than long term. I think you should look at this in 50 years from now, 100 years from now. The people of then will be more closer than us, they will be connected with common language of "Internet". We have 54 counties in AU, and apart from smaller problems we are all getting along very well. All I know about economical block, is not about what you get out, it is what you put in. A country which produces more will sale more and benefited more than the others in the community. Congo has so much to offer, so as Ethiopia so as Somalia, is it up to them to feel like they need EAC rather than EAC need them. Remember EAC is like one big market place, the farmer will pick the most profitable market to sale his/her produce.
