|
As a new country, Eritrea is still in a process of finding
out its comparative advantage in the world. Although
much of the international trade is driven by enduring national differences
in resource, climate, and society,
comparative advantage can also be created through technological development
and developing skilled labour
force, which can give rise to strong domestic industries. The ongoing
effort to develop human resource that is
being carried out in Eritrea is a vital step to achieve this. However,
the question is, are we exploiting the economic
opportunity of the world market with the few existing strong Eritrean
industries? For example, the shoes, Jumper,
and Pasta industries are considered to have a potential to export to other
countries. The opportunities are not
being used. Much of the problem lies with the attitude of the Eritrean
people, which is rather inward looking.
|
|
The inward looking outlook of the Eritrean people is also very much reflected
in Diaspora. For instance, you have
eight million people living in London, when Eritrean business men/women
consider opening a business, majority
only target the few thousands of Eritreans who live in London. There seem
to be also a lack of innovation and
creativity. A friend of mine visited one of the Scandinavian countries
few years ago and he was amazed to see
“Eritrean Pizza” in a Turkish restaurant. The Turks must have
studied their market demography well. There are
good numbers of Eritreans who live in the city and Eritrea’s traditional
food is spicy. A combination of the two,
you have a spicy “Eritrean Pizza” with a considerable amount
of demand.
The Indians are similarly over taking the high street market by importing
cheaply produced Indian Jeans. They’ve
achieved this by producing similar styles and qualities to the big brand
names such as Gap, Levis and others.
There is no reason why Eritreans can not do the same in a smaller scale
with Eritrean products such as Jumper
and Shoes. The irony is we are doing the opposite, we send over priced
European goods to Eritrea. The Eritrean
industries obviously need the market information in other countries in
order to sell their products, and this should
not be difficult since Eritreans are to be found in most of the countries
in the world. The question is how to
facilitate the flow of information.
|
