The article “Explaining Ethiopia’s Red Sea Gamble: Security, Identity, Economics, and Politics” discusses Ethiopia’s recent agreement with Somaliland, which aims to enhance Ethiopia’s access to the Red Sea by allowing goods to be transported through the port of Berbera.
This deal, which could lead to international recognition of Somaliland’s independence, has significant implications for the region, particularly in terms of power dynamics and political tensions with Somalia, which views the agreement as a threat to its territorial integrity.
Ethiopia, under Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, sees access to the Red Sea as crucial for its economic and strategic interests, especially given its status as the world’s largest landlocked country. The reliance on Djibouti for trade has left Ethiopia vulnerable and has led to soaring port fees. The deal with Somaliland not only provides an alternative trade route but also enables Ethiopia to reestablish a naval presence, which is pivotal for enhancing its geopolitical influence.
Domestically, Ethiopia has been facing political instability and social unrest, particularly following ethnic tensions and conflicts like the Tigray War. The agreement with Somaliland is also an attempt by Abiy to unify the diverse ethnic groups within Ethiopia and reinforce his power by appealing to a sense of national identity rooted in Ethiopia’s imperial history.
In summary, the agreement with Somaliland represents a strategic move for Ethiopia to regain access to maritime routes, bolster its economy, and address internal challenges while navigating complex regional dynamics and tensions with Somalia and other neighbors.
The complete piece is as follows:
Explaining Ethiopia’s Red Sea Gamble: Security, Identity, Economics, and Politics
By Federico Donelli
Federico Donelli is tenure-track Assistant Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Trieste
The recent Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Ethiopia and the Republic of Somaliland – a de facto independent but internationally unrecognized state – has had a significant impact on regional politics over the past nine months. If enforced, the agreement will allow goods to be transported to and from Ethiopia through the port of Berbera. In addition, the authorities in Hargeisa have agreed to provide Addis Ababa with a strip of coastline for the construction of a military base to serve as Ethiopia’s future naval headquarters (ICR, 2024).
In return, Ethiopia has pledged to offer shares in lucrative state-owned companies like Ethiopian Airlines and, more critically, begin the process of formally recognizing Somaliland’s independence (Bakonyi, 2024). This would be game-changing development regionally and internationally.
For three decades, no state has formally recognized Somaliland’s independence from Somalia due to several political, legal, and geopolitical factors. These include concerns about the effects of independence recognition on regional stability, the conservative nature of the international system of states that privileges existing state borders, and an unquestioning international consensus about Somalia’s territorial integrity – regardless of whether this is optimal for Somalia, Somaliland and the wider region.
Ethiopia’s recognition, as the largest state in the Horn of Africa and host to the African Union (AU) and several high-profile international organizations, would possibly ensure that the decades-long rupture of Somalia and Somaliland is formally and internationally recognized. In short, Somaliland’s flag could soon be flying at the United Nations and the AU.
This development has necessarily sparked outrage in Somalia, which perceives Ethiopia’s planned course of action as the most substantial threat yet to what Mogadishu’s leaders see as Somalia’s territorial integrity. Mogadishu has actively engaged in diplomatic efforts to denounce Ethiopia’s plan and isolate Addis Ababa diplomatically. The Somali Federal Government (SFG) has also entered into defense cooperation agreements with Turkey (Cannon, 2024) and, subsequently, Egypt (AN, 2024) in a carefully calculated show of their collective strengths.
All these moves should be contextualized against the backdrop of Somalia’s domestic political and economic instability, the resurgence of the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Shabaab terrorist group, the growth of the local branch of the Islamic State, and ever-greater uncertainty about the future of the AU’s mission to Somalia that has kept peacekeeping troops, in some form or another and has included soldiers from Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia and others, on the ground since as early as 2007 (EPC, 2024).
To say that the Horn of Africa and its wider region – to include the Arabian Peninsula and the Arab Gulf States – are facing numerous and potentially explosive challenges would be an understatement. If Ethiopia and Somaliland’s deal is engendering such regional and international pushback, why did they come to this understanding in the first place? The answers lie in Somaliland’s existential search for independence recognition.
As importantly, and the focus of this INSIGHT article, they can be found in Ethiopia’s identity as an historically imperial and powerful state stretching from the Ethiopian Highlands to the Red Sea.
The Red Sea’s importance
For Ethiopia, and for Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (2018-present) in particular, the Red Sea has far-reaching strategic, economic, political, and narrative significance. First, Ethiopia’s strategic considerations are tied to its national role conception. This refers to the role a state (or institution, group, or individual) envisions for itself and the way it believes it should act at the domestic, regional, and international levels (Cannon & Donelli, 2024, p. 297).
Ethiopia’s national role conception prizes its geographic size, its imperial history, and its economic and political weight in the Horn of Africa and throughout the continent (Gebreluel, 2023, pp. 1130-1132). Despite the natural shifts that occur to a state’s national role conception over the years and decades, Ethiopian policymakers have almost wholly ascribed to the view that access to the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden are critical to Ethiopia’s wellbeing, longevity, and security (Gebreluel, 2023, p. 1132).
Thus, the loss of sea access after Eritrea’s successful bid for independence in 1993 was devastating and has led, for the most part, to abysmal relations between the two states. It also means that Ethiopia is the biggest landlocked state in the world with all of the (in)security factors and deprivations associated with landlockedness (Cannon and Rossiter, 2018, p. 8). Adding fuel to the fire, the Horn of Africa has become increasingly important to non-regional actors such as Turkey, certain Arab Gulf states, European powers, and China (Donelli, 2024).
Ethiopia’s aspirations to reestablish itself as a clear regional hegemon are therefore complex and severely challenged. For Addis Ababa under Abiy, the panacea can be found in regaining Ethiopia’s access to the Red Sea and the re-establishment of the Ethiopian Navy.
Given the rise of China and India as well as the economic and fiscal power of the Arab Gulf states, Ethiopia’s current leadership very much views access to the sea as a strategic asset for trade and associated opportunities that will only come with its long-term access to points East of Suez. Addis Ababa is cognizant of the growing importance of the Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb Strait to world geopolitics and as the door to both the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea and Europe. Houthi missiles and Somali pirates have both conspired to severely limit waterborne traffic.
Coupled with geopolitical wrangling and the rise of great power rivalry, Ethiopia sees its role as a constructive defender of trade and access. It thinks its navy, supported by like-minded partners, may play a critical role in bringing normalcy back to the waterways of the region. As such, establishing an Ethiopian presence in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden are essential for the country to play a role in deciding the region’s future.
Economically, Ethiopia’s access to trade has been severely hampered for over two decades. This is because, since the early 2000s, Addis Ababa has had to rely almost exclusively on ports in neighboring Djibouti for imports and exports. Eritrea’s ports are closed (and moribund) and Somaliland’s port at Berbera was a forgotten backwater. This dependence on Djibouti has left Ethiopia vulnerable and given Djibouti the upper hand in financial negotiations (Donelli, 2023). Port fees at Doraleh have risen steadily in recent years to nearly $2 billion a year (BM, 2023).
Since taking office, Abiy Ahmed has been exploring alternative options. Initially, the option of using Assab port in Eritrea was considered, in part because of improved relations with Eritrea. Later, the Somali option was also considered, given the positive personal relationship between Abiy Ahmed and former Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, aka Farmajo (2017-2022). However, the instability in Somalia made investing there too risky (De Waal, 2023). Ultimately, the option of using Somaliland’s key port at Berbera on the Gulf of Aden gained traction.
This is because, since an agreement with Ethiopia and Somaliland in 2015, Dubai’s DP World has expanded and updated the port infrastructure significantly. The option is now on the table for Ethiopia to divert 12 to 15 percent of total Ethiopia-Djibouti cargo traffic via Berbera. This would negatively affect Djibouti’s ports. But what really worries it, is Ethiopia’s public, overarching goal to establish economic and trade corridors linking Addis Ababa to the Red Sea as well as points east and south, to include Kismayo in Somalia and Lamu in Kenya (Teshale, 2024).
Domestic meltdown
Despite the rationale for Ethiopia’s MoU from a national role conception and economic perspective, domestic and regional political factors have been just as important. Long before Abiy came to power in 2018, the country’s political landscape was undergoing significant upheavals. Following the death of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi (1995-2012), protests and escalating inter-ethnic tensions coincided with the rise of a new political leadership that challenged Meles and his Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) coalition’s 20-year dominance of national politics and the economy.
Slowly but surely, leaders after Meles – most pronouncedly Abiy – initiated a project of medemer, or synergy that aimed to bridge the divisions that had crystallized under Meles’ emphasis on ethnic federalism (Bélair, 2016). However, this clashed with desires for revenge and the aspirations of Ethiopia’s approximately 80 tribes and ethnic groups. The conflict in the northern state of Tigray that culminated in the Tigray War (2020-2022), and the subsequent tensions in Amhara and Oromia states, have exposed the deep internal divisions in Ethiopian society.
The costs of instability have also exacerbated the country’s problems: inflation has eroded purchasing power and famine has hit many regions. Addis Ababa has also lost much of its international clout and its regional influence and reputation has taken a beating. It is important to note that most of this has occurred under Abiy’s watch.
Regaining the Red Sea
Abiy’s bold MoU with Somaliland to gain coastal access to the Red Sea is thus as much about the deleterious domestic situation as it is about regaining Ethiopia’s regional clout. Abiy’s vision uses Ethiopia’s imagined past as the foundation to build a more prosperous, cohesive future as a state. In doing so, Abiy is harking back to Ethiopia’s imperial past of emperors and their maritime trading ties. He paints a picture of continuity between Ethiopia’s emperors and his regime – a continuity that was ruptured by the overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974 by the Marxist Derg regime (Gardner, 2024).
Throughout Abiy Ahmed’s political career, the Red Sea has come up again and again. Yet, his deep-seated passion is shared by many Ethiopians, too. As such, while it may mask Abiy’s own personal ambitions, it is also ambitious and widely popular. Thus, embracing the concept of Greater Ethiopia (that would, at the very least, have access to the Red Sea via a series of ports and roads corridors) is at the core of his vision of what Ethiopian scholar, Goitom Gebreluel (2024) has termed “Abyssinianist” nationalism. By pursuing the MoU with Somaliland, Abiy hopes to forge common ground with Ethiopia’s disparate and fractious peoples and regions to regain a firmer grip on power in Addis Ababa.
Conclusion
Ethiopia’s agreement with Somaliland is of critical political, strategic, and economic value for both its leader and peoples. The deal provides Ethiopia with access to the Red Sea through Berbera, which is key to regaining economic and geopolitical influence. As the largest landlocked state in the world, Ethiopia’s need for a coastal outlet has been long-standing, and Somaliland offers the most viable option. It can float a navy again and decrease its trade reliance on Djibouti.
Furthermore, the Berbera corridor is now open thanks to the newly expanded and modernized roads and port facilities in Somaliland. It is thus difficult to imagine Ethiopia reneging on the possibility of gaining Red Sea access for the first time in over 30 years. This, despite the very real danger of escalating tensions with neighbors like Djibouti and Eritrea, and traditional regional rivals like Somalia.
References
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Dr. Federico Donelli is tenure-track Assistant Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Trieste, Italy. His research fields have covered international politics and security of the Middle East and Africa, focusing on the foreign policy of the different regional and extra-regional players in Sub-Saharan Africa. 
