The negotiations for the admission of Somalia to the East African Community are at an advanced stage. This was reported by The Standard newspaper, which recalls that if the negotiations go through, Somalia could soon become a member state of the East African Community (EAC), almost eleven years after Mogadishu’s first application for membership.
The latest talks, held in Nairobi in Kenya, represented a fundamental step towards the negotiation phase, paving the way for recommendations that will see Somalia become the eighth member of the bloc after the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), which joined formally in April 2022. The negotiations that began on Tuesday last week will end on 5 September. At the end of the negotiations, a report will be drafted and presented to the EAC Council of Ministers.
The EAC secretariat, the East African Legislative Assembly, the East African Court of Justice and their counterparts from the Federal Republic of Somalia are represented in the talks: at the heart of the negotiations are political, legal and institutional issues, the infrastructure, productive and social sectors, economic and commercial issues.
Somalia applied to join the EAC in 2012, but members declined due to war and unrest in the Horn of Africa country, which had weak institutions. [Da Redazione InfoAfrica]
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