In May 2019 BBC Business reporters Milena Belloni and James Jeffrey asked whether Eritrea, after years of war, authoritarian rule, and United Nations sanctions, could finally grow an economy that exported more goods than people.
They noted that Abiy Ahmed’s July 2018 peace deal with Isaias Afwerki had reopened the border, let Ethiopian goods flow north, and revived talk of Massawa as a Red Sea outlet for landlocked Ethiopia that had depended on Djibouti.
The hurdles stayed plain: indefinite national service, a militarised one-party state, and a mostly agrarian poverty that still pushed a huge diaspora abroad. Business hopes and political fear traveled in the same convoy.
As Horn geopolitics archive, the BBC file remains useful. Peace on paper did not automatically mean open politics, and later years showed how thin the economic thaw could be when Asmara kept the old security habits.
Sources: BBC News