Investment Opportunities in Somali Regional State Putting the Pastoralists Political Economy in Perspective

Abstract

Modern states and societies development can hardly be achieved without an appropriate policy and action that delivers greater economic outcomes. To this end, all states starting from the ancient times to the modern era practiced economic policies that rely greatly on the accumulation of wealth through different means of the production process that leads to extraction hence accumulation of wealth based on which the state builds and maintains its internal as well as external sovereignty. It was in yesterday this motive for achieving unlimited growth and accumulation of wealth that drives the first British East Indian company to open its first overseas production plant in India in the 18th century.Today the multiple economic social and technological imperative of investment and that of foreign direct investment have become clear. Foreign direct investment is the most important engine based on which sates economy gain income in terms of National Gross Domestic Production, foreign exchange earnings and employment opportunity as well as technological and capital transfer. To this end, countries compete for attracting capitals to flow to their economy in the form of investment. This has greatly benefited countries of South East Asia in the last couple of decades. Africa, though not benefited as much as the what the Asian tigers and other eastern economies gained from foreign direct investment, many of African states are striving to use the advantage of investment in their national endeavor to achieve economic and socio-political development .Yet, the pattern of the distribution of this gain from the foreign direct investment is limited in its scope and not enabled states to benefiting the different sections of their population equally.This problem of uneven distributions of gains from economic development has been common problem in many of the emerging economies.Ethiopia is not peculiar.Despite the progress made in atracting more investors to the national economy,the distribution of these has been uneven.Most of the FDI gains are concentrated in few clusters in the major regions of the country. One of the least benefited livelihhod and economic areas has been the pastoralist roaming areas. Comparatively speaking,thus far,the Somali regional state gained little or no foreign direct investment since the new EPRDF government came into power 30 years ago .This has been despite the region has a huge potential for making gain from FDI given that the required attention and intervention is made.This article makes a description of the investment potentials in Somali regional state baed on the political economy framework. The review concludes that The review fininds out that the region has a huge potential for investment given the right attention by both policymakers and investors.