Abiy Ahmed’s bid to reshape Ethiopia’s economic future now carries a growing security risk, as he presses publicly for sovereign access to the Eritrean port of Assab and does so in a way that officials and analysts say is meant to be seen in Eritrea.
According to the Associated Press, the Ethiopian prime minister staged a parade in a stadium in southern Ethiopia last Sunday, where Ethiopia’s special forces demonstrated maneuvers in a spectacle widely seen as intended for Eritrea to observe. Organizers put up a banner proclaiming that Ethiopia would not remain landlocked “whether ‘you like it or not,’” and it included imagery of a soldier breaking a door while aiming toward Assab.
Assab is central to the dispute because it has been part of Eritrea since 1993, after Eritrea broke away from Ethiopia following decades of guerrilla warfare. Ethiopia, meanwhile, remains a landlocked country, and most of its trade uses the port of Djibouti, which Ethiopia’s government has said comes with high fees. The Associated Press reported that Africa Practice, a London-based consulting firm, estimated those fees cost Ethiopia about $1.5 billion per year, a figure the report said was greater than the country’s foreign exchange reserves at the time.
Ethiopia’s sea-access push has already tested regional relationships. The Associated Press said Abiy sought a “controversial deal” for sea access with Somaliland two years ago, a move that angered Somalia because Somalia claims authority over the semiautonomous Somaliland area. At that time, the deal raised regional tensions, even as the Somaliland dispute has since cooled.
In recent months, the focus has narrowed again on Assab and the Ethiopia-Eritrea border. The Associated Press reported that Abiy’s stance has raised “genuine fears” of war that could put him at odds with Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki and his allies, possibly including leaders of Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region. The article said the International Crisis Group concluded in its most recent assessment that while a “catastrophic turn of events is by no means inevitable,” the belligerents “could find themselves party to a new regional war that would prove difficult to contain or end,” without international intervention.
Analysts also pointed to visible signs of pressure along the frontier. The Associated Press reported that there has been a military buildup along the border with Eritrea, and it said Kjetil Tronvoll, a professor of peace and conflict studies at Oslo New University College, described Tigray’s rebellious leaders and Eritrea as apparently “coordinating” against Ethiopian forces.
The Associated Press also described competing accusations inside Ethiopia. Tigrayan officials accuse Ethiopian federal forces of carrying out drone attacks, while Ethiopia says Eritrea is “actively preparing to wage war against it” and that its forces are operating in Tigray, which borders Eritrea. Eritrea, in turn, warned that Ethiopia has a “long-brewing war agenda” to seize Assab, an allegation the Associated Press said Abiy appeared to confirm when he staged a military parade in Hawassa that was witnessed by top government and military officials.
Ethiopia’s broader political ambitions are also part of the context for why the Assab focus is being watched. The Associated Press said Abiy took office in 2018 as a reform-minded pragmatist and rose from relative obscurity to power at age 41. It reported that Abiy’s ties with Eritrea had been cold since the 1990s and that his efforts to repair relations with Afwerki helped him win the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize, before expectations were confounded by Ethiopia’s military operation against the rebellious leaders of Tigray a year later.
That later conflict, the Associated Press said, ended with a peace agreement in 2022 after Ethiopia’s military and allied forces, including Eritrea, fought against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF. The report said the war was marked by “sexual violence and other crimes by both sides.” By contrast, this time the question for security watchers is whether the sea-access push will again pull the region into a wider confrontation.
At the diplomatic level, the Associated Press said United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres urged Eritrea and Ethiopia to respect the Algiers Agreement, describing it as a treaty that formally ended the border conflict between the two and was signed 25 years ago. The Associated Press added that other countries in the region have called for talks, as the dispute continues alongside sporadic clashes and a war of words between the two sides.
In Ethiopia, Abiy frames his program as a renewal project. The Associated Press said he has spoken about “medemer,” an Amharic concept associated with strength in unity, and it described planned infrastructure projects including a mega power dam on the Nile, improvements to Addis Ababa, a nuclear power program, housing plans, and the construction of what the report called Africa’s largest airport outside the capital.
But opponents in Eritrea depict the Assab drive as misplaced and destabilizing. The Associated Press said Eritrean officials dismiss Abiy as foolish and argue that public provocations mask internal problems. It reported that Yemane Gebremeskel, the Eritrean government spokesman, described Abiy’s Prosperity Party as the “Potemkin party” and, in a statement Monday, said the party “continues to spew and ramp up, at almost every public occasion, toxic and provocative vitriol against the sovereignty and territorial integrity” of neighboring nations.
The Associated Press reporting presents Abiy’s sea-access ambition as both a central plank of Ethiopia’s future plans and a flashpoint that could harden existing military and political tensions, with outside calls for restraint increasingly urgent.