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Mining and free trade in Eritrea
Eritrea’s President Isaias Afwerki has guarded his country jealousy since independence, pushing a self-reliant attitude that encourages Eritreans to rebuild Eritrea for themselves.
But in order to develop the potentially lucrative mining and trade sectors, he will have to open up the country more to foreign money and therefore possible foreign influence.
The government intends to launch free trade zones at its main ports in Massawa and Assab on its Red Sea coast, and dozens of firms, including from China, India and Dubai, have already registered to operate there to take advantage of the bustling cargo shipping lanes.
Reserves of gold, zinc and copper have been found in Eritrea and analysts are predicting a mining boom. Fourteen foreign firms are exploring in the country and the first project is expected to start producing gold by late 2010.
“We believe mining will play an important role in boosting the economy and the government is committed to develop it,” Alem Kibreab, director-general of mines, told Reuters Africa Journal.
The authorities want the sector to be developed slowly and carefully to prevent the so-called “resources curse”, where oil and minerals have spawned and corruption violence in Africa.
After the long struggle for independence from Ethiopia and subsequent border dispute, expectations for the development of the economy to support the population of 4 million are high – although Afwerki says the mining sector is no magic solution.
Eritrean passions
I hesitate to blog again on Eritrea, given some of the vitriol that greeted a post last year. For some, Reuters was an apologist and mouthpiece for Eritrea’s President Isaias Afwerki, simply for interviewing him in May 2008. For others, we were doing the CIA’s work by taking some awkward lines of questioning to Asmara.
The passion on both sides reminded me of the torrent of deeply felt responses I used to receive when reporting on Fidel Castro from Cuba between 1998 and 2002.
Yet here I am again in Asmara, in May 2009, fresh from another lengthy interview with Eritrea’s ever-controversial leader. Whereas last year, he was quite formal with me, this time he was much more relaxed as we sat down for several hours in the colonial-era presidential palace, even poking fun before the interview at my old-fashioned tape-recorder.
We politely discussed hiking before getting down to business.
I questioned the president closely on plenty of issues, including Eritrea’s economic prospects and his views on various hot issues around the region. I was also able to discuss some of President Isaias’ life philosophy and thoughts on the past and future. Before I mentioned them, he anticipated inevitable questions on human rights and his own political longevity, saying he was used to visiting journalists raising such questions due to ‘misinformation’ from outside.
The interview was one of two dozen or so Eritrea’s leader has given in recent days in the run-up to Independence Day, mainly to African and Arab media. Eritrea feels it gets a raw deal in the international arena, and especially from the Western media. The marathon of interviews was an attempt to redress that.
I must have asked 20 or so questions over a 2 ½-hour period. Soon they’ll be playing the interview on state media here.
Mr CawthorneThank you at least for trying to be impartial, those who try to be impartial reporters are like a flower that sprouted in the middle of a sewage system, it gets overwhelmed by the surrounding.Journalism has become an incestuous state of affairs that gets dictated by interested parties to create initial momentum, there after they cross feed from each other .The best example of this is Dick Cheney’s saga of the Niger Yellow cake saga. Officials leak information to newspapers, and they quote newspapers as a source. Things propel themselves from there.As we know, truth in the end comes out,but by then it is history and there are new lies to be made.When Eritreans say it is conspiracy it is not a figment of their imagination but based on facts that can be substantiated by anyone, but people rarely do.Even the people that were part of the conspiracy write about it on their books and memoirs.Two such examples are the booksSurrender Is Not an Option: Defending America at the United Nations by John BoltonWhere he clearly implicates the Bush Admin represented by Jendayi Frazer and Blair Admin represented by Lord Malloc-Brown as the culprits for the impasse between Eritrea and Ethiopian.“Unvanquished: U.S.– U.N. Saga” by Boutros Boutros?Ghali Secretary general for UN (92-97)In the book he accuses the current puppet master in Somalia Ould Abdallah (UN Official) the same man that is accusing Eritrea of gun running, and was instrumental for falsifying of the UN monitoring report that stated 2000 Eritrean troops in Somalia in 2007, as sleepery eel that was bought by the Americans.Here is an excerpt from(Page279):After a late Saturday night arrival in early July in Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon and the h ost city for the OAU summit, I be gan to seek support among the delegates early Sunday morning. Although warned that the Americans were on the scene in force, I was shocked to find s uch a high powered U.S. team of officials work ing so intensely to discredit me. There, in the hotel lobby, I reali zed for the first time the full m eaning of the American term “lobb ying.” Countless young American di plomats seemed to be constantly rus hing from one part of the hotel t o another. Every time I stepped in to the elevator, I would encounter a sweating American Foreign Service officer on his or her way to me etings with African leaders. “Assi stant Secretary of State for African Affairs George Moose wa s there. With him was the man who had held that same job during the Bush Administration, Herman “Hank” Cohen, now director of a foundation dealing with Africa. I knew both men, because we had o ften worked together on African iss ues. Strangest of all to me was the presence of Ahmedou Ould Abdall ah, a Mauritanian I had appointed as my special representative for Bu rundi. Ould Abdallah had slipped in to the American camp like an eel, perhaps because he had suddenly le ft the United Nations to become th e new head of Cohen’s foundation. My aide Fayza Abulnaga cornered O uld Abdallah with feline fury in a hotel corridor and denounced him as a despicable turncoat.”
Where is Eritrea headed?
Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki is probably one of Africa’s least-known yet controversial leaders. After a successful 30-year independence war against neighbouring Ethiopia, he won praise from the West in the 1990s for being part of a “new generation” of progressive African leaders. In recent years, however, the Eritrean president has been increasingly criticised from abroad as running his small Horn of African nation along authoritarian lines.
Not usually keen on giving interviews to Western media, President Isaias Afwerki sat down this week for a nearly two-hour chat with Reuters’ Asmara correspondent Jack Kimball and East Africa bureau chief Andrew Cawthorne. In it, he criticised the United Nations, denied an incursion into Djibouti, outlined Eritrea’s economic policies and accused the United States of trying to destabilise his country.
Has Isaias Afwerki been good or bad for Eritrea and Africa. What do you think?
Thomas !
You put a ward on the confusing Western mass madia propaganda. I hope that time will tell soon. Now a days mass madia has changed it role, not in constractive and comprehencive way but miss informing and aggitating people and political ledears in animosity, distractive
political agenda. It has caused mass distraction, migration , hunger and terror among nations and etnich gruppes in the same teritory.I think it is madness to let such things happen in a modern and globalized world that we are living today.
Acoording to the 2009 report by Funds for Peace of the Failed Index states, most African states, despite the huge foreign aid they receive from the so called “western donors” performed very poor. Why? because they are infested with corruption. Eritrea, despite all the obstacles and with minimal to none foreign assitance, performed better than the others. Why? because it adheres to the principle of self reliance and does not tolerate corruption. Do you get it you bone headed so called “opposition” who can’t see things beyond your blind and obsessive hate towards the leadership. Speaking of constitution, the subject you adore most, the fact is that if it was to be painted as a human figure by the best artist like, let’s say Michael Agelo, and presented to you, you wouldn’t be able to differentiate its head from its feet. So, stop whining and let the people of Eritrea participate in the nation building.