Ethiopian authorities are looking for a way to break through the established geographical blockade. The ambitious Ethiopian Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, took up this task. Experts say that Ethiopia’s determination to have its own port facilities in the Red Sea is leading to increased tensions in the strategically important Horn of Africa region.

More than six months have passed since Ethiopia fell out with Somalia over a controversial agreement that Addis Ababa signed earlier this year with the unrecognised Republic of Somaliland (formerly British Somaliland), a breakaway region of Federal Somalia. Somalia, currently a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, is witnessing a devastating war with terrorist groups like As-Shabab, which cost the once powerful country almost everything its people dreamed of, leaving millions of its citizens scattered, including in neighbouring Ethiopia.

Ethiopia’s ambitions of a port in the Red Sea

Although Ethiopia is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa and has access to the port of Djibouti, which is a lifeline for more than 90 percent of its foreign trade, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed wants his country to have its own port in the strategically important Red Sea. He argues that for his country – the second most populous in Africa and more developed than all its neighbours in terms of economic development – it is unacceptable to depend so much on others for its economic survival. Perhaps he is right and Ethiopia to some extent needs to have at least one port on the Red Sea coast, but only after peaceful and lengthy negotiations with other neighbouring states.

Under former Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia lost its claims to........

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