ETHIOPIA -PEACEFUL- ERITREA

ZALAMBESSA : Eighteen years after the guns fell silent following Ethiopia's bloody border with Eritrea, the frontier town of  Zalambessa is a quieter, rubble-strewn outpost crossed by a road to nowhere.

But change could be on the horizon after the  leaders of Ethiopia and Eritrea agreed to re-establish relations, raising hopes that trade will resume and towns like Zalambessa will boom again.

"There's no question," said Tirhas Gerekidan, a hairdresser in the town. "If the road opens, things will change."

Both small and large businesses in Ethiopia, one of  Africa's  fastest-growing economies despite widespread poverty,  would be expected to benefit from border  re-opening.

But analysts warn that Eritrea, which under President  Isaias Afwerki has become one of the world's most closed  societies with an unwelcoming business climate, may not share the economic spoils of the new era of engagement.

"The potential for this accord........to revitalize its economy is huge, " said Seth Kaplan, a professor at John Hopkins University in the  United States who has studies Eritrea's economy. "The great unknown is what  Isais will do."

Eritrea, once a province of Ethiopia that incorporated the  single nation's  entire coastline, fought a decades-long independence  war before voting to leave in 1993.

The decision  landlocked  Africa's  second most populous country    -although Ethiopia continued to export through  Eritrean ports until a border dispute erupted into war in  1998.

The World Students Society thanks author and researcher Chris Stein.