Nicknamed the North Korea of Africa, Eritrea is considered one of the continent’s most opaque countries. National elections have not been held since it gained independence in 1993. The country is governed by the one-party authoritarian rule of President Isaias Afewerki , who has been in power for 20 years.

Torture, arbitrary detention and severe restrictions on freedom of expression are routine. Mandatory military service imposed on all men and women between 18 and 55 is one of the main causes of flight from the country. It has been calculated that 4,000 Eritreans leave the country every month and, according to a 2008 estimate, 40,000 Eritreans live in Britain.

Since 2004, over 200,000 Eritreans out of the 5.6 million-strong population have fled repression to border camps in eastern Sudan and Ethiopia.

In recent years, tens of thousands of Eritreans have been kidnapped by the country’s senior military officers and taken to the Sinai desert in Egypt where they suffer torture and ransom demands, according to a report by human rights activists.

Between 2007 and 2012, some 25,000 to 30,000 migrants were trafficked by Eritrean and Sudanese security officers, who collude with Bedouin gangs.

Torture methods include burning, beating, and electrocution. Some hostages are slashed with knives, or have bottles melted on their skin. Some are repeatedly raped; some have been hanged.

Reporters without Borders has ranked Eritrea bottom of a list of 179 countries for freedom of expression. Access for international humanitarian and human rights organisations is almost impossible and the country has no independent media.

With the resolution 2023 (2011), the UN Security Council condemned the Eritrean government’s policy to destabilise the Horn of Africa region by supporting Somalia’s Islamist militant group al-Shabaab.

The 2013 annual report by the UN Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea to the Security Council’s Somalia/Eritrea sanctions committee revealed that the Eritrean government was still undermining stability in Somalia by paying political agents and a warlord linked to Islamist militants to influence the Mogadishu government.

Asmara has always denied any involvement with al-Shabaab militants fighting to overthrow the Somali government. It said that UN sanctions imposed in 2009 for supporting the Islamist militant group were based on lies.

The UN Security Council decided to extend for 16 months the sanctions against Somalia and Eritrea.

“The council asked Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to re-establish the eight-member Monitoring Group on Eritrea and Somalia until 25 November, 2014,” read a UN statement.

By Gianluca Mezzofiore | IB Times 

(Reuters) – A picture of African migrants standing on the shore of Djibouti City at night, their glimmering phones held aloft to catch a weak signal, won the World Press Photo prize on Friday for American photographer John Stanmeyer of the VII Photo Agency.

The silhouetted figures facing seawards are straining to pick up a cheaper mobile signal from neighboring Somalia, hoping to establish a tenuous link with relatives abroad.

“So many pictures of migrants show them as bedraggled and pathetic … but this photo is not so much romantic, as dignified,” said jury member Susan Linfield.

Djibouti is a common stop-off point for migrants heading from nearby countries like Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea in search of a better life in Europe and the Middle East.

“It opens up discussions about technology, globalization, migration, poverty, desperation, alienation, humanity,” said jury member Jillian Edelstein of the photo, which was commissioned by National Geographic magazine.

Reuters photographer Goran Tomasevic, from Serbia, won first prize in the spot news stories category for a dramatic narrative series from Syria depicting a rebel attack on a government checkpoint.

France’s Phillipe Lopez of Agence France-Presse won the spot news singles category with a photograph of typhoon survivors in Tolosa, the Philippines, carrying religious iconography in front of a field of rubble.

Getty’s Brent Stirton, a South African, topped the category for single staged portraits with a picture of five blind albino boys from West Bengal, India. Dressed in matching pink shirts and blue trousers, they appear to gaze stiffly at the camera.

(Reuters: Reporting By Thomas Escritt Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)

Hundreds of Eritrean refugees have been enslaved in torture camps in Sudan and Egypt in the past 10 years, enduring weeks or months of violence and rape and extorted by traffickers often in collusion with state security forces.

Some of the refugees have died, and many have been scarred for life – both physically and psychologically – as a result of mutilation, burning, beatings and sexual assault, according to dozens of testimonies collected by Human Rights Watch in a report published on Tuesday.

The report, I Wanted to Lie Down and Die: Trafficking and Torture of Eritreans in Sudan and Egypt, says state authorities have failed to identify and prosecute perpetrators, and have often colluded with them in the kidnap and abuse of refugees.

Traffickers demand ransom money to halt the torture, either from the refugees or from their relatives, who are forced to listen to their loved ones screaming down telephone lines. Even after money has changed hands, traffickers sometimes sell refugees on to another group rather than release them.

The 79-page report quotes a 23-year-old Eritrean man who was kidnapped by traffickers in Sudan in 2012 and handed over to Egyptian traffickers in the Sinai desert. “They beat me with a metal rod. They dripped molten plastic on my back. They beat the soles of my feet and then they forced me to stand for long periods of time, sometimes for days. Sometimes they threatened to kill me and put a gun to my head,” he told HRW.

“They hung me from the ceiling so my legs couldn’t reach the floor and they gave me electric shocks. One person died after they hung him from the ceiling for 24 hours. We watched him die.

“Whenever I called my relatives to ask them to pay, they burnt me with a hot iron rod so I would scream on the phone. We could not protect the women in our room: they just took them out, raped them, and brought them back.”

HRW also spoke to two traffickers, one of whom said he had made $200,000 (£120,000) profit in less than a year. “I know this money isharam [shameful], but I do it anyway.”

His most recent group was four Eritreans, whose relatives were told to pay $33,000 each for their release.

“Sometimes I tortured them while they were on the phone so the relatives could hear them scream. I did to them what I do to everyone, I beat their legs and feet, and sometimes their stomachs and chest, with a wooden stick. I hang them upside down, sometimes for an hour. Three of them died because I beat them too hard. I released the one that paid.”

According to HRW, more than 200,000 Eritreans – most of them Christians – have fled repression and destitution since 2004. Some of those quoted in the report said they paid people smugglers, but were sold on four or five times to different traffickers.

Until recently, many were heading to Israel until a new 240km (150 mile) steel border fence blocked access from the Sinai desert.

“Over the past three years, Sinai has increasingly represented a dead-end comprised of captivity, cruelty, torture and death,” the report says.

Some refugees have been forced to work for traffickers, as builders or domestic servants. One Bedouin leader in the Sinai, Sheikh Mohamed, told HRW: “I know of hundreds [of Eritreans] at this very moment who are forced to work on construction sites. They are building houses for the kidnappers, who pay for the construction materials with the ransom money.”

In June last year, the US state department reported that “human trafficking, smuggling, abduction, torture and extortion of migrants” in the Sinai was increasing. Victims were “brutalised, including by being whipped, beaten, deprived of food, raped, chained together and forced to do domestics or manual labour at smugglers’ homes”.

Collusion between traffickers and Sudanese and Egyptian police and military is widespread, according to HRW, which says both countries are breaching their obligations under national and international anti-trafficking laws, international human rights law and national criminal law.

Gerry Simpson, the report’s author, said: “So far, police and soldiers in Sudan and Egypt helping traffickers kidnap and torture refugees have nothing to fear. Some police in eastern Sudan are so emboldened by their impunity, they hand refugees over to traffickers in police stations.”

Some security officials in Egypt “even return escaped trafficking victims to their captors in Sinai”, he added.

“The time has long passed for authorities in both countries to arrest and prosecute traffickers for these terrible crimes, and to have zero tolerance for security officials colluding with them.”

Egypt had prosecuted one trafficker and no security officials up to December 2013; Sudan had launched 14 prosecutions of traffickers and four of police officers in connection with trafficking and torture.

Source : The Guardian – world news- More details of this report is  also available on Human Rights Watch website. 

زادت واشنطن من وتيرة عملياتها العسكرية في القرن الإفريقي، في محاولة منها لمواجهة عنف المتشددين الإسلاميين في المنطقة، وذلك في أعقاب الهجوم على مركز تسوق ويست غيت في نيروبي العام الماضي.

وتقول حكومة جيبوتي إن الغارات التي تشنها طائرات دون طيار الأمريكية على المناطق التي تسيطر عليها حركة

الشباب وتنظيم القاعدة “ضرورية للغاية” ولن تتوقف.

وتنشئ الولايات المتحدة قاعدة عسكرية كبيرة في جيبوتي، التي تنطلق منها الطائرات الأمريكية بدون طيار المثيرة

للجدل، كما تقوم على تدريب جيوش الدول الإقليمية لمحاربة حركة الشباب في الصومال.

ويتمركز عدد من الطائرات المروحية وغيرها من الطائرات الأمريكية في هذه القاعدة، وهي على أتم الاستعداد لشن عمليات بعيدة المدى، بعضها سريٌ وأخرى تقليدية.

وشكّلت وزارة الدفاع الأمريكية مؤخرًا قوة خاصة للرد في شرق إفريقيا بجيبوتي، وهي القوة التي هرعت في ديسمبر/كانون الأول إلى جنوب السودان لإجلاء موظفي السفارة الأمريكية وحمايتهم، وهو الدرس الذي تعلمته واشنطن من الهجمات التي استهدفت سفارتها في ليبيا.

وبالإضافة إلى قوة الرد تلك، تأسست “قوة المهام المشتركة في القرن الإفريقي” منذ نحو 12 عاما، وهي القوة التي تقودها الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية.

وكانت واشنطن تهدف من تشكيل تلك القوة في ذلك الوقت إلى إيقاف هجمات تنظيم القاعدة من الاتجاه غربًا من باكستان نحو الشرق الإفريقي، وذلك عبر اعتراض تلك العمليات وتدريب القوات العسكرية بالمنطقة لتحسين أوضاعها الأمنية.

“مشكلة معقدة”

وقال العميد الأمريكي وين غريغسبي، وهو قائد قوة المهام المشتركة في القرن الإفريقي، إن عناصر حركة الشباب الصومالية أصبحوا ماهرين في زرع القنابل على الطرقات، وشنوا هجمات خارج حدودهم في كينيا وأوغندا، في الوقت التي نجحت فيه القاعدة ثلاث مرات في وضع متفجرات على متن رحلات دولية، كل ذلك وقوات المهام المشتركة في القرن الإفريقي يتضاعف حجمها.

ويعترف غريغسبي، الذي تولى مهام منصبه هذا العام، بأن الوضع في المنطقة يمثل “مشكلة معقدة”، لكنه أضاف قائلا إن البنتاغون يهدف إلى “إشراك الأطراف الأخرى بالمنطقة وتمكينها من تحمل أعبائها في دحر حركة الشباب.”

وتابع قائلا “تتمثل مهمة القوات أيضًا في توفير المنافذ الاستراتيجية وحرية الحركة لحماية الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية ومصالحها في المنطقة”.

وتتمتع دولة جيبوتي الفقيرة والمستعمرة السابقة لفرنسا بصلات وثيقة مع أكثر دولتين في المنطقة اضطرابًا، وهما اليمن والصومال، حيث التواجد الميداني للقوات الأمريكية غير مقبول فيهما.

لكن جيبوتي قررت الانضمام إلى معسكر واشنطن والغرب، وأصبحت بالفعل محورا لتمركزهما العسكري الدائم في المنطقة.

ولا تزال لدى القوات الفرنسية في جيبوتي قاعدة عسكرية كبيرة مكونة مما يربو على ألفي جندي، وتتشارك طائرات ميراج المقاتلة التابعة لها مع الطائرات التجارية في مدرج مطار جيبوتي الدولي، بالإضافة إلى قوات ألمانية وإيطالية ويابانية تتمركز في خليج عدن لمكافحة أعمال القرصنة.

لكن التواجد الأكبر هو للقوات الأمريكية، وتتشكل من أربعة آلاف جندي متمركزين في معسكر ليمونير.

وتنتشر المئات من قوات وحدة العمليات الخاصة المشتركة السرية التابعة للجيش الأمريكي في مجمعات داخل مجمعات، تأخذ أوامرها المباشرة من قيادتها فلوريدا، وهدفها الرئيسي هو استهداف قيادات حركة الشباب العسكرية داخل الأراضي الصومالية.

ومنذ أن تسبب أربعة مسلحين من هذه الحركة في مقتل ما يزيد على 60 شخصًا من المتسوقين في مركز وسيت غيت للتسوق بالعاصمة الكينية نيروبي، وضعت واشنطن لقواتها هدفا ملحا بتعقب قيادات تلك الحركة قبل أن يتمكنوا من التخطيط لهجمات أخرى.

هجمات الطائرات بدون طيا

ويعتبر استخدام طائرات دون طيار واحدا من وسائل وحدة القوات الخاصة المثيرة للجدل في المنطقة. فحتى سبتمبر/أيلول الماضي، كانت الطائرات تنطلق من تلك القاعدة، لكن وبعد حوادث متكررة طلبت حكومة جيبوتي من الولايات المتحدة نقلها إلى مدرج في الصحراء.

ولاتزال المنطقة تشهد غارات تشنها هذه الطائرات بدون طيار، متسببة أحيانا في مقتل مدنيين، وهو ما يثير انتقادات المنظمات الحقوقية التي تصفها بـ “عمليات للقتل خارج إطار القانون”.

لذلك، سألت وزير خارجية جيبوتي محمود علي يوسف بشأن تلك الغارات إذا ما كانت تزعجه، ليرد قائلا “ندرك أن جيبوتي هدف رئيسي لحركة الشباب في المنطقة”.

وأضاف “إن عناصر تنظيم القاعدة وحركة الشباب خطرون للغاية، لذلك سنحاربهم مهما كلف الأمر”، مضيفا أنه إذا لم يجر احتواء نشاطهم، فإن الخيار الأفضل سيكون في التخلص منهم.

وقال “لكن، ينبغي ألا نضيع الوقت في أن نسأل أنفسنا كل مرة إذا ما كان ينبغي لنا استخدام الطائرات بدون طيار أم لا”.

لذا فإنه وطالما أن تلك المنطقة تشهد اضطرابات بينما تبدي جيبوتي استعدادا للعب دور الدولة المضيفة، ستتمتع الولايات المتحدة بموطئ قدم ثابت في المنطقة، ما من شأنه أن يحافظ على استمرار استهداف قادة الميليشيات العسكرية بالغارات التي تشنها تلك الطائرات.

فرانك جاردنر

مراسل بي بي سي للشؤون الأمنية – جيبوت

Source: BBC Arabic‬.

Eritrea’s Economic Freedom

Eritrea’s economic freedom score is 38.5, making its economy one of the least free in the 2014 Index. Its overall score is 2.2 points better than last year due to improvements in the control of government spending, labor freedom, and monetary freedom that offset a decline in freedom from corruption. Eritrea is ranked 45th out of the 46 countries in the Sub-Saharan Africa region.

Eritrea’s economic freedom was first assessed in the 2009 Index and has remained stagnant near the bottom of the Index rankings. Score improvements in government spending and business have been completely offset by deteriorations in six of the 10 economic freedoms including investment freedom, labor freedom, and fiscal freedom. Scores for financial freedom and property rights have not changed. The country continues to be stuck in the “repressed” category, but its 2014 score tied its highest level ever over the six-year period.

GDP

Strong GDP growth has been led by increased foreign investment in the mining industry, but substantial mineral revenues benefit only a narrow segment of the population. The public sector remains the largest source of employment. Chronic deficits due to large military spending plague public finance, worsening already fragile monetary stability. A repressive central government continues to marginalize the domestic private sector, perpetuating an uncertain investment climate.

RULE OF LAW

Corruption is a major problem. The president and his small circle of senior advisers and military commanders exercise almost complete political control. The politicized judiciary, understaffed and unprofessional, has never ruled against the government. Protection of property rights is poor. The government has a history of expropriating houses, businesses, and other private property without notice, explanation, or compensation.

LIMITED GOVERNMENT

The top individual income and corporate tax rates are 30 percent. Other taxes include a 2 percent tax on dual citizens, targeted at Eritrea’s large diaspora. The overall tax burden is 50 percent of GDP. Government spending has moderated to 34 percent of GDP. Public debt is large relative to the size of the economy, at over 125 percent of gross domestic output, but has fallen slightly.

REGULATORY EFFICIENCY

Inconsistent enforcement of regulations and other institutional shortcomings often impede business activity and undermine economic development. Launching a business takes more than 80 days and is costly. The labor market remains underdeveloped, and much of the labor force is employed in the informal sector. Monetary stability has been weak. Subsidies and price controls are core features of the country’s command economy.

OPEN MARKETS

Eritrea’s average tariff rate was 5.4 percent as of 2006. It can take several weeks to import goods. State domination of the economy acts as a deterrent to foreign investment. The financial system, consisting mainly of a small banking sector, remains severely underdeveloped and subject to heavy state control. Private-sector participation in the system remains constrained.

(Reuters) – The Italian navy has rescued more than 1,100 migrants from nine large rafts in the waters south of Sicily, the latest arrivals from North Africa.

• Europe tut-tuts while Africans die on its doorstep

Patrol helicopters identified the overcrowded rafts on Wednesday and four navy vessels participated in the rescue which ended early on Thursday, a statement said. The navy gave no details about the nationalities of the migrants.

Italy is a major gateway into Europe for migrants, and sea arrivals more than tripled in 2013 from the previous year, fuelled by Syria’s civil war and strife in the Horn of Africa.

In October, 366 Eritreans drowned in a shipwreck near the shore of the Italian island of Lampedusa, which is located about halfway between Sicily and Tunisia. More than 200, mostly Syrians, died in another shipwreck a week later.

Over the past two decades, Italy, Greece and the Mediterranean island of Malta have borne the brunt of migrant flows and have urged the EU to make a more robust and coordinated response.

(Reporting by Steve Scherer, editing by Elizabeth Piper)

GENEVA: Enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention and torture were just a few of the violations Eritrea was accused of during a UN review of its human rights record Monday.

Diplomats gathered at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva condemned the isolated and autocratic country’s brutal repression of basic rights, charging the lack of freedom was prompting a mass exodus.
The government of Eritrea’s “widespread violation of human rights and the lack of prospects for participatory democracy contribute to large numbers of Eritreans fleeing the country,” US representative Peter Mulrean told the assembly. He was echoing the concerns of many of the 70 state representatives who spoke at Eritrea’s so-called Universal Periodic Review, which all 193 UN countries must undergo every four years.
Chile and others urged the country to probe all reports of enforced disappearances, Denmark said it had done far too little to eliminate torture, while Estonia lamented the “disregard of freedom of expression.”
Tesfamichael Gerahtu, Eritrea’s ambassador to Britain, batted away the slew of charges, insisting that if anything was limiting human rights in Eritrea, it was the “unjustified sanctions” imposed on the country by the international community.

I am sitting in a classroom in a remote part of northern Ethiopia. On the chalkboard in front of me is an equation: specific heat = (m) x (c) x (change in t). There are thirty or so Eritrean 13- to 15-year-olds sitting around me. The teacher at the front is wearing a white coat. I remember that I scraped a B in Chemistry (but felt I deserved a D). The students say they want to become doctors. In another class the majority, when asked if they want to go to university, put up their hands. I am asking myself if this scene is the new face of humanitarian action.

Or is the reality more troubling? 1,000 unaccompanied children in the International Rescue Committee’s care (out of the 60,000 Eritrean refugees); 70 percent of the refugees male; human trafficking that led Eritreans from these camps to the deadly boat trip that ended in Lampedusa; very tough local terrain and increasing regularity of drought; a dream of resettlement but (fueled with rumors that self-harm can help you to the U.S. or Europe) little chance of it.

This is the sharp end of humanitarian relief. IRC is one of the longest standing agencies active in Ethiopia. We work closely with the Ethiopian government and the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR. We are funded — mainly by USAID, OFDA, PRM, ECHO, DFID and UNHCR — for a comprehensive range of services from advanced water delivery and geological mapping to reproductive health and help for women suffering violence. The mapping work is state of the art, tracking everything from people movements to water holes. The water service goes from digging boreholes, building pipelines, pumping water into reservoirs for cleaning, and then delivering down into camps. The determination to get to the places that others cannot reach is really inspiring.

We have some 900 staff on salary, and over 1,400 refugees on stipend, helping deliver services. And we deliver for the emergencies that Ethiopia suffers as well as for the refugees. I am told that the average drought used to be every ten years; now it is every two or three. El Niño in the Pacific puts IRC on the alert for flooding six months later in Ethiopia. La Niña by contrast gets us preparing for droughts. The preparation is “disaster risk reduction” in action.

This country is growing economically. On the plane over a man in the construction business told me the economy had never been better. But the neighbours are unstable: Eritrea, with refugees spilling into the north; Somalia to the east, South Sudan and Sudan to the west. Only yesterday we got the call to help 2,000 people who came across the border from Sudan.

I am here to get a ground-level view of what the policy papers and the headlines can only hint at: the human reality of conflict, demographic change, religious fear and climate change. I will try and chart the contrasts and the lessons in three or four blogs.

By David Miliband, president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee, International Rescue Committee

Eritrean authorities are still holding close to 300 Yemeni fishermen, who have been in custody for over a year, according to Yemen’s Fishermen’s Union. On Thursday, Eritrea released 135 men who were in custody for allegedly fishing in Eritrean waters. According to those released, Eritrean authorities have said they will not release the remaining 285 prisoners until Yemen returns three Eritrean fishermen they say are being held.

However, Yemeni authorities are denying that there are Eritrean fishermen in custody. In a phone interview with the Yemen Times, Abdulla Basunbl, the deputy minister at the Fisheries Ministry, said Eritrean authorities have never officially contacted the ministry regarding the issue.

The operations manager for the Yemeni Coast Guard, Shuja Mahdi, also denied Yemen’s detention of Eritrean fishermen.

The Yemen Times contacted the Eritrean Embassy in Sana’a, but the embassy declined to comment on the story.

According to Salem Alyan, a member of the Fishermen’s Union, the men were not released as a result of diplomatic negotiations, but were told by Eritrean authorities that they were returned as a gesture of goodwill in line with the new year.

Eritrea has long been upset at Yemeni fishermen who are accused of straying into their waters and negatively affecting their fishing economy.

Arif Omar, who was picked up by Eritrean authorities in September 2012, is one of the men recently released.

He says he wasn’t aware he was in Eritrean waters and blames both the Yemeni and Eritrean governments for not creating transparent fishing agreements.

“The Yemeni and Eritrean governments should make clear border restrictions,” Omar said.

However, Mahdi said the fishermen are making excuses.

“These justifications are feeble. All fishermen know where Yemen’s regional waters are,” he said.

Omar’s year and over three months in Eritrean captivity was inhumane, he added.

“We were subject to hard labor such as loading the tankers. If we didn’t work, we would not be given food,” he said.

Another fisherman who was also arrested in September 2012, Abdulla Ayash Ayash, said he and fellow prisoners who were kept at two different camps, Marfa and Al-Qadam, were not provided shelter or anything to protect themselves from the elements like the cold and rain.

Unlike Omar, Ayash says Yemeni fishermen know they are entering foreign waters, but that they have no other choice as fish are becoming more and more scarce in Yemen’s waters.

Alyan is critical of what he calls government apathy in securing the release of the other detained men. He acknowledges that Yemen’s ambassador to Eritrea visited a detainee camp last year, but no governmental action was taken after that. As of now, Alyan is unaware of any plans in motion to secure the release of the remaining men.

Source : Yemen Times

Several former senior US diplomats have called for an end to the unresolved border dispute between Eritrea and Ethiopia and a rapprochement between the US and Eritrea.

There has been a series of open letters in recent weeks from prominent members of the US foreign policy establishment, including the US ambassador to Ethiopia in the late 1990s, David Shinn, and a former ambassador to Nigeria and South Africa, Princeton Lyman. All advocate a thaw in relations between the US and Eritrea and for Eritrea and Ethiopia to commence moves towards normalising their relations.

Talk of a possible easing of Eritrea’s international political isolation was initiated in mid-December 2013, when a former US assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Herman Cohen, wrote an article arguing for an end to UN sanctions that would “bring Eritrea in from the cold“, leading ultimately to a normalisation of Ethiopian-Eritrean relations, and promising a “win-win future for both nations“.

Eritrea has frequently stated that its only condition to enter into dialogue isfor Ethiopia to remove its troops from border territory awarded to Eritrea by the UN-backed Eritrean-Ethiopian Boundary Commission, including the town of Badme, the original flashpoint of the war between Eritrea and Ethiopia in 1998-2000. The US is one of the few countries that has enough influence to have a chance of cajoling Ethiopia into making such a move.

Any initiative to ease the long-standing tensions between Ethiopia and Eritrea will be widely welcomed in the international community, with important implications for peace and security across the entire Horn of Africa region. Reducing Eritrea’s general mistrust of the international community politically will inevitably be a protracted process, but it would narrow the gap between political isolation on the one hand and Eritrea’s increasing economic linkages via mining.

The buoyancy of Eritrea’s mining sector was demonstrated on January 13th when a UK-based exploration and development company, Ortac Resources, announced an arrangement to acquire up to 42.2% of shares in UK-based Andiamo Exploration, which has a portfolio of advanced-stage high-grade copper and gold projects in Eritrea.

The deal follows an announcement in December by China-based Sichuan Road and Bridge Group (SRBG) that it had entered into a long-term agreement with the government-owned Eritrean National Mining Corporation (ENAMCO) to develop and explore an area between the existing Bisha and Zara gold mining projects.

Impact on the Forecast

There is a reasonable chance over the forecast period of Eritrean officials meeting their counterparts from Ethiopia to begin discussions of the two countries’ long-running border dispute, which we will factor into our forecasts.

Source:  The Economist