Recently there has been great ferment within infrastructure development in Somalia. After the now close-to-completion construction project of the Berbera corridor - a route connecting the port of Berbera to the Ethiopia market - and the announcement of the imminent opening of a fifth deep-water port in Gara’ad, a project for the rehabilitation of 62 km of road and four bridges linking the seaport city of Berbera with Burao has been inaugurated today. The Burao-Berbera Road Rehabilitation Project aims at opening a new trade route in Somaliland for cattle trade, as Burao hosts one of the largest livestock markets in Somalia and in all the Horn of Africa, in an attempt to boost the economic growth of the entire region.

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Somalia plans to open in October a new deep-water port in Gara’ad, a coastal city in the Puntland State close to the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, one of the most important sea crossing points in the world. Currently, there are four major operational ports in Somalia, i.e. Mogadishu, Berbera, Kismayo and Bosasso. The Gara’ad port is part of a $531 million investment plan aimed at opening up a hub in central Somalia to facilitate the import of food supplies into a region which is chronically plagued by droughts, desert locust infestations, flooding and conflict, in an attempt to enhance food security in the whole Federation. The Gara’ad port also aims at offering to the eastern regions of landlocked Ethiopia an additional access to the sea (particularly for trade with the Arabian Gulf countries and Asia), in line with the port diversification strategy launched by the government of this country less than a decade ago to reduce its dependance on the Djibouti port, that currently handles the lion's share of Ethiopian trade.

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