Somalia will become the eighth East African Community member by the middle of this year, said Abdusalam Omer Hadliye, the country's presidential special envoy for the EAC in an interview with local media.
According to an EAC statement, the organization officially launched the verification mission "to assess the Federal Republic of Somalia's readiness to join the block" on Wednesday. The mission comprises senior officials from all EAC states and will operate in Mogadishu.
"We expect that [verification] will be done by early next month before the report is forwarded to the EAC foreign ministers for approval for full membership. Once that is done, then during the EAC special summit we can be fully welcomed as the 8th member of the bloc, which we all know will be the mid-this year," Hadliye told the media.
The launching event of the mission was attended by the EAC's Secretary General Peter Mathuki.
"The verification team is set to make findings relating to the institutional frameworks in place; legal frameworks; policies, strategies, projects and programs; areas of cooperation with other EAC partner states and expectations from its membership," Mathuki said as cited by the EAC's social media page.
He also noted that Somalia has the longest national coastline in Africa (over 3,000 km). The coastline links Africa to the Arabian Peninsula, he underlined, saying that this can help "increase intra-regional trade and improve the lives of East Africans."
Somalia officially applied to the East Africa Community in 2012 during the term of President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed and has been since awaiting accession to the block.
The EAC currently consists of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, Kenya, Burundi, Rwanda, South Sudan, and Uganda. In 2010, the block launched a common regional goods, labor, and capital market. The EAC also plans to establish a common currency and eventually a political federation.
Peter Mathuki earlier said that a single currency for the EAC could be achieved within the next three or four years.