By Paulos Milkias (PhD)1
December 12, 2015
This piece is inspired by Dr. Worku Abera’s post on Ethiomedia, “The Uncommon Common Market: How the EPLF Plundered Ethiopia’s Wealth.” While I wholly agree with Dr. Worku’s point that the so called Ethiopian-Eritrean Common market from 1991 to 1998 was a sham with Ethiopia being allocated the negative side of a zero-sum-game, I take issue with his use of the analogy of Meiji-Japan to contrast with post-1991 Eritrea.
Japan’s lack of abundant natural resources can be said to be true compared to some Western countries such as the U.S. and Canada. However, the paucity of Japan’s resources during the period of its development under the Meiji restoration is unduly exaggerated when we compare with Eritrea’s basket case phenomenon that even the U.N. had recognized officially when it federated it with Ethiopia in 1952.
One should not look only at aggregate resources. Yes, Eritrea is now benefitting from new found minerals such as gold, copper and zinc but these are deplete-able resources that are bound to be exhausted within a couple of decades.
Instead, there are other key geographical variables that should be considered. For example, Japan has a temperate climate, plentiful rainfall, rich soil and congenial topography all of which were important bounties of nature that helped fuel its engine of growth. Indeed, these were the main sources behind Japan’s spectacular rise as a major economic powerhouse to become a dominant player in trade and industrialization starting as early as the last quarter of the19th century. Japan does not only have a temperate climate: it is well watered. Tokyo shares the 35th parallel with the U.S.’s Atlanta Georgia and the Mediterranean county of Cyprus.
Eritrea, one should note, struggles, with the exception of some highland areas such as the environs of Asmara, within a predominantly hot climate and its scanty farmlands are denuded of fertile soil. To make matters worse, its provinces from Barka to the Red Seas coast are slowly being swallowed up by the expanding Sahel desert. Eritrea’s agricultural land is so degraded that it may never produce a descent harvest even with technological intervention. Worse yet, there are natural nutrient deficiencies in the soil, and soil fertility is declining by leaps and bounds through “nutrient mining”, where essential nutrients are removed over the harvest period and dissipated through erosion and leaching.
Eritrea relies primarily on food items originating outside its territorial boundary. It imports grain of gargantuan amount – a whopping 90%! IRIN reports that in 2009, Eritrea produced only about 30 percent of its food requirements the rest being imported from abroad. (See, http://www.irinnews.org/report/84827/eritrea-how-bad-is-the-food-crisis-really-analysis) Furthermore, repeated chronic food shortages are hampering economic development in Eritrea.
By contrast, the mild Japanese climate and plentiful rainfall favours agriculture which has nourished its growing work force and contributed to its rapid industrial development. Indeed, the bounty of agriculture was so vital that the central government of the Meiji court had depended much on agriculture for its revenue providing it with land taxes which amounted to about 35% of the estimated crops from the land. According to a U.N. report, it is net agricultural ‘surplus,’ that helped finance Japanese industrialization in the early periods, from around the Meiji Restoration in 1868, up to the onset of the First World War. (See Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, Economic and Social Commission Agricultural Development in Modern Japan, Commission Papers/63/CP/IIC/I February 16, 1963).) It was during this period, that a greater agricultural productivity was able to feed the growing urban population while also supporting a rise in exports.
Eritrea cannot even dream of the bounty of Tea and silk that Tokyo counted among the main items of exports providing the necessary foreign exchanges with which it could secure vital tools of industrialization. Japan’s natural terrain, provided plentiful rainfall which in turn generated large-volume and fast-running body of water. It also happened to have a significant natural source of energy and ample water supply for industrial and residential use. Whereas Eritrea has to struggle to build multitudes of small embankments all over the country to meet the challenge of water shortage, Japan has so many rivers that a significant percentage of its electricity requirements are generated from hydroelectric power. In short, Dr. Worku’s comparison of Japan and Eritrea is evidently misplaced.
Professor Paulos Milkias currently teaches Globalization and Sustainable Development at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada
Source = Ethio Media