East Africa: EAC Starts Assessing Somalia's Readiness to Join Bloc

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East African Community (EAC) is an intergovernmental organization composed of six countries in the African Great Lakes region in eastern Africa: Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda.
25 January 2023
The New Times (Kigali)
By James Karuhanga

The East African Community on Wednesday, January 25, launched its verification mission to assess Somalia's readiness to join the regional economic community.

This comes after the President of Somalia, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, on July 21, 2022, rekindled his country's request to join the bloc. At the time, during an EAC Heads of State meeting in Arusha, Tanzania, the President of Somalia requested officially, on behalf of his nation, that "we need to join this great community."

READ ALSO: Somalia makes fresh appeal to join EAC

"The verification team in Mogadishu comprises senior officials from all EAC Partner States," the EAC Secretariat tweeted on Wednesday.

In July 2022, President Mohamud said it will be a dream come true for Somalia to join the bloc.

For more than 10 years, his country has sought to join the bloc but circumstances did not permit and, he is now optimistic that the time has come for his country to join "this great Community."

After the DR Congo completed the process of admission as the seventh EAC Partner State, in july 2022, Somalia wants to be the eighth member.

In February 2021, the EAC Summit, among others, considered a progress report on the verification exercise for admission of Somalia.

At the time, the Summit noted that the verification exercise for the admission of Somalia into the Community "had not been undertaken" and directed the Council of Ministers to follow up on the exercise.

The Horn of Africa nation submitted its application in February 2012

In July 2022, the President of Somalia - who has served as the president of Somalia since May 2022 - told his EAC colleagues that his country is part of the very resource-rich part of East Africa, with 15 to 20 million people, close to 10 million hectares of arable land, vast marine resources, livestock, and others, but, above all, "a human resource which is very entrepreneurial and very much active."

Somalia has the longest coastline on Africa's mainland.

The country continues to wrestle with the general insecurity caused by the Al-Qaeda-linked jihadist group Al-Shabaab.

Read the original article on New Times.

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