“Trade between countries in the Horn of Africa is largely unofficial and unrecorded. The recent recorded data show that Ethiopia’s trade with its neighboring countries is very little and is limited to some manufactured
imports from Kenya and vegetable and chat exports to Djibouti and recently to Somaliland (Northern Somalia). On the other hand, hundreds of thousands of all types of livestock and bulk of coffee, vegetables and chat originating from Ethiopia are smuggled to neighboring countries. In return, a wide range of manufactured goods is imported illegally. This illicit cross-border trade
has been there for a long time.The paper has five sections organized as follows. Section two presents the profile of the eastern Ethiopia borderlands. Section three discusses the structure of both official and unofficial trade in Eastern Ethiopia Region. Section four is about the relationship between market access and food security in the pastoral areas. Finally, concluding remarks are made in Section 5.”
