Happy New Year Africa Briefers!

This week we’ll be taking a closer look at events in the Horn of Africa, as Ethiopia and the breakaway region of Somaliland sign an agreement on Ethiopian access to the Gulf of Aden, granting one of Africa’s most promising, but otherwise landlocked, economies better connectivity to global trade routes. We’ll give you the details and context of this story before reflecting on why it matters and what the implications might be for the wider region.

This week on Monday 1st of January, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and Somaliland President Muse Bihi Abdi announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to give Ethiopia access to the coast, a longstanding goal of PM Abiy, who has previously described the issue of Ethiopia’s lack of sea access as “existential” (BBC; Addis Standard). Ethiopia has been landlocked since 1993, when Eritrea won its independence following a 30-year civil war. The agreement thus facilitates Ethiopian access to vital maritime trade in the Gulf of Aden - a major artery for global commerce (Bloomberg).

Under the terms of the MoU, Ethiopia will lease 20km of land on the Somaliland coast and a transport corridor connecting the two polities on a 50 year tenure, and will have access to the port of Berbera and the right to build commercial maritime and military bases (Somaliland MFA; Al Jazeera). In return, Ethiopia has stated it will cooperate with Somaliland authorities on military and intelligence issues, give Somaliland an as-yet undisclosed share in its national airline Ethiopian Airlines and, most significantly, may recognise Somaliland as an independent state.

While Somaliland’s President Abdi told media on Monday that the terms of the deal included Ethiopian recognition of Somaliland, this has yet to be verified by the Ethiopian authorities, who have been curiously muted on the matter of recognition, and much more vocal about the benefits it accrues to Ethiopia (Addis Standard; Al Jazeera). In a government communiqué published Wednesday (03/01), Ethiopian authorities stated that the MoU “includes provisions for the Ethiopian government to make an in-depth assessment towards taking a position regarding the efforts of Somaliland to gain recognition”. Nonetheless, were Ethiopia to eventually recognise Somaliland, it would be the first country to do so since the region broke away from Somalia and unilaterally declared its independence in 1991.

Such a possibility - as well as the very fact that Ethiopia has signed an MoU with a Somaliland administration that some see to be inherently seditious, given Somaliland’s claim to independence explicitly violates the Somali constitution - has prompted outcry from the Somali government, which has denounced the deal as an “act of aggression” and recalled its ambassador to Ethiopia in protest. It has also called on the African Union and the UN Security Council to discuss the issue, particularly because the Ethiopia-Somaliland MoU violates the African Union’s longstanding policy on non-recognition for Somaliland and demands for respecting the territorial integrity and national sovereignty of its member states (AU; BBC; Economist). Thus far, no international body has taken any steps to hinder or sanction the players involved, but the U.S., E.U. and, African Union have all called for “calm” and restated their recognition of Somalia in accordance with its 1960 borders (EU; Bloomberg; Bloomberg). 

Al-Shabaab meanwhile, the Islamist militant group with which the Somali government has been at war since 2006, and whose emergence is in many ways tied to Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia in the same year, has also condemned the MoU, declaring that there would be “bitter consequences” for any Ethiopian effort to acquire Somali territory (Bloomberg; Economist; DW).

Somaliland and Ethiopian authorities are touting the deal as a mutually beneficial and significant accomplishment.

The benefits for Ethiopia are substantial. The country has the largest population of any landlocked state in the world and has long sought access to the Red Sea or the Gulf of Aden. In recent years, it has had to rely on a deal with coastal Djibouti, which charges Ethiopia US$1.5bn annually for the use of its ports, through which 95% of Ethiopian imports and exports pass (NYT). Many in Addis see this reality as unfortunate and unjust, claiming that historically Ethiopian people have had ready access to the sea and that this access was only taken away after the secession of Eritrea in 1993. PM Abiy has in recent months ramped up his rhetoric on this issue, declaring his intention last October to help break his nation of 126 million people out of their “geographic prison” (NYT). Access to the coast through Somaliland at such a small financial cost in relative terms is thus a huge win for PM Abiy and may alleviate concerns that Abiy’s coastal ambitions would lead him to another war with Eritrea (Economist).

Somaliland meanwhile also stands to benefit a great deal from Ethiopian recognition. The country has its own constitution and currency, issues its own passports, and runs its own elections. It is in many respects surprising that it has taken more than 30-years for it to win any kind of international recognition (Economist; Economist). While talks with the Somali government on Somaliland’s constitutional status have been ongoing since 2012 - and indeed the respective presidents of the two polities met in Djibouti just last week - some have argued that these talks have been intentionally protracted by the former, with little intention of allowing the latter any kind of independence in practice (Economist). The deal with Ethiopia may thus strengthen Somaliland President Abdi’s hand in future negotiations with Somalia, and there is also hope that Ethiopian recognition will pave the way for recognition by other African states (NYT; Economist). The MoU is thus a big win for President Abdi and the budding Somaliland state.

Beyond the impacts on Somalia, Somaliland, and Ethiopia, the deal also carries ramifications for Djibouti, who will lose out on the significant revenues it accrues from Ethiopian use of its ports. The country has thus unsurprisingly joined the calls of other nations condemning the MoU (Bloomberg).

The wider implications of this deal in terms of what it means of the balance of power in the region are, however, yet to be fully seen. Some commentators have confessed suspicion that the UAE, with which PM Abiy retains close ties and which has cordial relations with Somaliland, may have helped to broker the deal, as it endeavours to expand its sphere of influence in the Horn of Africa (Al-Jazeera; Economist). These suspicions are supported by the fact that the announcement of the MoU came at the same time as PM Abiy played host to Hemedti, the leader of Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces, who are currently seizing vast swaths of territory in that country’s civil war and who are funded by the UAE (see our previous article for more detail). The UAE, in competition with Egypt and Saudi Arabia (the former of whom was very quick to condemn the MoU) for influence in the region, will see the building of an Ethiopian military base and commercial port in the Gulf of Aden as a victory.

That’s all from us this week!

Cheers,

Josh