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Journal of African trips

African trip [I]

Agelasto
2004-05-20 20:57:33

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probably cannot grow sufficient food to
feed itself and depends on foreign aid, projects like the Peace Corps and VSO. NGOs and multinational
agencies are everywhere. In any event, Eritrea is a full state, I assume with its own UN
seat. After independence it did not print up its own currency, but rather continued to use the
Ethiopian birr. Then about a year ago, the government recalled birr from its citizens and gave
them their new currency, the nakfa, on a 1 to 1 exchange. Nothing else was going to change.

The nakfa would be used for business with Ethiopia, which exports a lot of food to Eritrea.
Ethiopia took notice. All of a sudden its neighbor, its former province had doubled its money
supply. Ethiopia told Eritrea that this was not acceptable. Eritrea was an independent state; from
now on, Ethiopia said, all transactions between the two countries would be in foreign exchange.
Since the Eritrea nakfa is not a convertible currency, exchange would have to be in US D.
(Ethiopian birr is not a convertible currency either, but Ethiopian banks will exchange it for US
dollars, but not vice-versa. It is worthless outside the country). I suspect this currency dispute is
the reason for the current war. The immediate cause of the hostilities (soldiers have been shot and
the Ethiopian air force bombed the Asmara airport - about two weeks after I had used the very
same airport) was an encroachment into the no-man's land by Eritrean soldiers who started
planting crops in unused fields.

Borders are not always agreed upon. China and Russia (also China and India) print up maps that
show different borders and the disputed area is a no-man's land. Similarly, the Eritrea/Ethiopia
border is not very fixed. The overall lesson here, for wantabe countries like Quebec and southern
Sudan, is that statehood is not easy, is not cheap and it carries ...