Somaliland is a remarkable – albeit lonely – success in a notoriously troubled region. International recognition of it as a sovereign country in the world community would be an investment in Africa’s stability.
. Durban is at 364 and Cape Town at 365 – below the likes of even Lagos and Dar es Salaam, and above only Luanda. Yet South Africa’s GDP is, at $5,000 per capita, nearly 10 times that of the average Somalilander.
The absence of recognition and Somaliland’s relative progress – compared with Somalia, certainly, but to many in Africa – raises a question about the role and value of outsiders. That Somaliland’s progress is now being assisted by a monarchy in the Emirates, should wake the West from its slumber. Somaliland’s success has, in the circumstances, been founded on a healthy combination of principle and pragmatism, unlike the process in neighbouring Somalia, one driven organically from the bottom-up rather than by international sponsors.
“To fully grasp the horrors visited upon the cities of Somaliland, all you need to do is to look today at Mariupol and other major cities of Ukraine,” reflects President Muse Bihi Abdi, who earlier served as an officer in the Somali National Movement . The steps towards recognition are not binary, however. There are steps along the way for Somaliland – a transit and trade agreement with Ethiopia, observer status in the African Union, a deal to be part of the US African Growth and Opportunity Act, for instance, even a compact with Israel – short of international recognition.
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