21 April 2025     

Eritrea: A Story of Success or Failure in Africa?

Ambassador Andebrhan Welde Giorgis
 

The brilliant triumph of the armed stuggle against all odds had inspired hope among prominent Pan-Africanists like Abdulrahman Babu and Africa historians like Basil Davidson that independent Eritrea would lead the way to the successful future of Africa. There was great optimism, potential and capacity for independent Eritrea to deliver democratic development, emancipation, prosperity and human security for the Eritrean people where other independent African states had failed. 

The Eritrean people fought hard and paid huge sacrifices to attain and preserve independence. The great majority of Eritreans at home and abroad love their country and defend its national security, sovereignty and territorial integrity. Most Eritreans oppose Ethiopia’s expansionist ambitions and threats of aggression against their country and people.

While defending the national security, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Eritrea and firmly opposing the Ethiopian regime’s expansionist ambitions and threats of aggression against Eritrea, patriotic Eritreans should not turn a blind eye to the present predicament of the State of Eritrea and the suffering of the Eritrean people. 

The struggle of the Eritrean people for self-determination was waged as much for national independence as for social liberation. Indeed, the armed struggle was waged and the sacrifices made for freedom, democracy and justice. There was great hope and expectation that the exercise of self-determination would enable the revolutionary capture of state power and usher in democratic development that empowers the people to form a government of their choice, actively participate in national policy and decision making, and manage their own affairs. 

Instead, there emerged a highly centralised, authoritarian and self-serving predatory regime under an autocratic life president. The dictatorial regime monopolised state power, usurped national symbols and established total control over all aspects of national life. It owns the domestic media, restricts public access to independent sources of information other than that provided by the government owned media, and criminalises political dissent. It relies on brutal repression, unmitigated violence and coercion to maintain its grip on power. 

Arrested and jailed without due process in September 2001, most of the luminaries of the armed struggle and the post-independence government continue to languish in solitary confinement under indefinite detention without charge or trial. Eritrea’s prisons are overflowing with political prisoners, prisoners of conscience, journalists and ordinary citizens. Arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearances without recourse to justice are the order of the day. 

The government has closed the political and economic space, impeded domestic and foreign investment and imposed a dysfunctional coupon economy with its insufficient, substandard and often unavailable rations. The economy’s steady downslide has produced extreme poverty and severe impoverishment. Lack of basic social goods and services, ruined physical and social infrastructure, declining standards of education and health care, dilapidated urban architectural landscape, idle undeveloped ports, unaccounted for mining revenues, etc., are the hallmarks of Eritrea today. With no manufacturing industry or surplus agriculture and service commodities, Eritrea’s main exports remain irregular migrants and raw minerals.

It is indeed a shameful anomaly that President Isaias Afewerki obstucts domestic investment and sponsors PFDJ investments in infrastructure and housing construction in countries like South Sudan and Equatorial Guinea while neglecting infrastructure building and imposing a ban on housing construction in Eritrea itself, causing an acute shortage of housing and driving real estate prices and rent sky high. 

The objective consequences of the policies, decisions and actions that President Isaias has pursued to tighten his grip on the state apparatus, prolong his stay in power and aggrandise himself have mired Eritrea in a quagmire of political paralysis, economic decline, societal disruption and international isolation. The harsh repression perpetrated and extreme poverty caused have driven massive flight into irregular migration. The regime has squandered a great potential for development and perpetrated backwardness. All this added up pose an existential threat to the stable future and permanent national interests of Eritrea as well as the durable human security of the Eritrean people. 

That the government of Eritrea has failed to build democratic governance structures and functional institutions, achieve sustainable development, ensure human security and deliver prosperity and wellbeing for most of Eritrea’s citizens during its tenure in power over the course of thirty-four years of independence is a sad commentary that pains and makes all Eritreans of good will cringe. No empty slogans or idle flattery of the regime and its autocrat can hide this dismal reality on the ground in Eritrea today. Eritreans who wish well for their country and people should not try to deny or hide this bitter truth but acknowledge and struggle to change it.