New Regionalisms in Africa as Responses to Environmental Crises: IGADD and Development in the Horn in the Mid-1990s

Abstract

The Horn of Africa is experiencing profound changes in the mid-1990s — ecological, economic, political, social and strategic — which will affect development prospects into the twenty-first century. These are exacerbated by equally fundamental shifts in the global order, notably the end of both the Cold War strategic and post-war economic systems along with fragmentation and transformation of the post-1945 Eastern bloc. If the former ‘Soviet Union’ and its satellites symbolize global changes then those in the old ‘Ethiopian’ empire and its neighbours do so for Africa. Indeed, given the close historical, structural and contemporary connections between the two, their respective transformations are not unconnected. Moreover, sequences and outcomes of their respective fragmentation, liberalization, pacification and reorientation — from economic stabilization/adjustment to political democratization/decentralization — are by no means certain.

(This chapter benefits from research undertaken for ICOD with assistance from Robert McKinnell and Mark Butler on potential marine development in the Horn in cooperation with IGADD in the early-1990s. However, it reflects the author’s opinions only and should not be taken to represent the policy of either ICOD or CIDA.)