Somaliland President Muse Bihi Abdi landed today at Bole International Airport of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he was warmly received by Federal Ethiopia Minister of Finance, Ahmed Shide, and Redwan Hussein, Federal State Minister at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
President Bihi and his delegation will be holding bilateral talks on several fronts revolving around outstanding economic and security issues, according to reliable sources, with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and his government during the next two to three days.
Among these, although not officially confirmed, is the resumption of Ethiopia’s 19% stake at Berbera port which the latter did not actively pursue since the Republic of Somaliland, DP World, and Ethiopia formally endorsed it in May 2019. Ethiopia, since then, did neither contribute to the development of the port by coming up with its share of the effort nor show any particular warmth to the country that so vigilantly guarded its eastern flanks for the past 30 years or so.
Another possible point in the discussion is Zeila port. Ethiopia, according to multiple sources had been eyeing the port since its first agreement with Britain in 1897. The Abyssinian Kingdom even tried to carve a 100-mile wide corridor to the see in another agreement with Great Britain in 1946 which only failed when the then House of Commons quashed it.
The Somaliland Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dr. Essa Kayd, Finance Development Dr. Saad Ali Shire, and Special Envoy for the failed Somalia-Somaliland Talks, Dr. Edna Adan Ismail, accompany the President in this visit.
Of recent, Ethiopia resumed its ambitions without directly saying so. France has been helping landlocked Thousands upon thousands of cassette tapes and master reels were quickly removed from the soon-to-be targeted buildings. They were dispersed to neighboring countries like Djibouti and Ethiopia build a strong navy without neither country revealing where such a navy would and on what seas it would patrol since the owner had none.
President Bihi’s visit to Ethiopia comes at a juncture of time Ethiopia’s internal politics is shaken by regional feuds and a devastating with war with the Tigray State to the north that left its economy in a precarious state. The TPLF was pushed back from a point less than 300kms to the capital with great difficulty. Foreign countries including Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Russia, China, and many more came together to support Abiy’s counter-offensive- bringing together strange bedfellows.
The visit also comes at a time the UK parliament is discussing a motion tabled by former Minister Gavin Williamson on the issue of Somaliland diplomatic recognition.
Britain granted the former protectorate on 26 June 1960. More than 35 countries, including the United States of America, acknowledged the passing into statehood of the then Somaliland Republic. Israel was the first to do so.
https://twitter.com/GeorgeAnders007/status/1483358073536270341?s=20
The President of the Republic of Somaliland, H.E. Musa Bihi Abdi, and his delegation arrived in Addis Ababa, the Capital City of Ethiopia, and was warmly welcomed by Ethiopian government officials. pic.twitter.com/mQomxRbTAc
— MFA Somaliland (@somalilandmfa) January 18, 2022
The Somaliland statehood only lasted five days as the newborn nation rushed into an ill-starred union with Somalia that had never been legally entered into ending in one-sided domination of Italian Somalia over Somaliland and genocide that left the world in shock some twenty years later.
lamented Beijing’s economic engagement model, saying it undermined democracy and mired African countries in debt. When he landed in Ethiopia was the first country to set up a semi-diplomatic office in Hargeisa although it accorded a similar concession to Puntland – a regional state under federal Somalia which Somaliland is not. Other countries that are commercially or diplomatically represented in the Republic of Somaliland are the United Kingdom, Taiwan, Turkey, Djibouti, Kenya, and the United Arab Emirates.
