The Community of East African States (EAC), a regional organization with a single market permitting the unrestricted movement of people and goods, announced Somalia’s official admission on Friday.
Eight nations currently make up the East African Community (EAC), which has its headquarters in Arusha, Tanzania. These nations are Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, South Sudan, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
The DRC was the last member to join the regional organisation, in 2022.
The member countries have “decided to admit the Federal Republic of Somalia under the accession treaty”, declared Burundian Head of State Évariste Ndayishimiye, outgoing President of the EAC.
The announcement was made from Arusha in the presence of Somali President Hassan Cheikh Mohamoud, who expressed his “deep gratitude”.
The EAC, which was founded in 2000, one of its goals is to facilitate cross-border trade by eliminating customs duties between its member countries. In 2010, it established a common market.
The EAC countries, excluding Somalia, cover an area of 4.8 million square kilometers and have a combined GDP of 305 billion dollars, according to the organization’s website.
Somalia has the longest coastline on the African continent (more than 3,000 kilometers), bringing the EAC’s potential market to more than 300 million people.
The Somali government, supported by the international community, has been fighting the insurgency of the radical, a group affiliated with al-Qaeda, for over 16 years.
Kenya and Uganda are sending troops to an African Union force fighting in Somalia.
The EAC’s admission of Somalia is a “decisive step in the bloc’s expansion into East Africa,” according to the Mogadishu-based Heritage Institute for Policy Studies.
