Maritime Strife in the Horn of Africa: When Infrastructure Deepens Division

The Facts:

The Horn of Africa faces escalating maritime tensions as Ethiopia’s Prime Minister renewed calls for sea access in early 2024, reopening historical wounds dating back to Eritrea’s independence thirty years prior. Despite substantial port infrastructure development across Djibouti, Eritrea, Somalia, and Sudan—funded by global powers including China through its Belt and Road Initiative and Gulf states like UAE and Saudi Arabia—the region remains politically fragmented. The January 2024 Ethiopia-Somaliland Memorandum of Understanding, offering land access in exchange for port rights, exemplifies how maritime access negotiations involve sovereignty issues beyond mere economic considerations. Scholars like Gartzke (2003), Cardoso, Potgieter, Getahun (2023), and Ylönen (2022) note that trade has failed to stabilize the region due to absent trust, with infrastructure projects increasing disparities rather than fostering cooperation. IGAD’s Red Sea Task Force remains largely symbolic due to political divisions, while foreign investments create dependency and fragment the region into competing spheres of influence.

Opinion:

This situation exposes the brutal reality of how Western-designed international systems continue to perpetuate division and dependency across the Global South. The Horn of Africa’s maritime crisis isn’t merely about ports and trade routes—it’s about the enduring legacy of colonialism that fragmented historically connected regions and the neo-colonial practices that maintain these artificial divisions. While Ethiopia’s quest for sea access is entirely legitimate for a nation forced into landlocked status, the response from Western-aligned powers reveals their true intentions: keeping African nations divided and dependent.

The involvement of Gulf states and China through infrastructure investments mirrors the same imperial patterns the West established centuries ago, where economic development becomes a weapon for geopolitical control rather than genuine cooperation. It’s outrageous that in 2024, African nations must still negotiate their basic maritime rights while foreign powers patrol their waters under the guise of anti-piracy operations. The so-called ‘international rule of law’ proves once again to be selectively applied, favoring powerful nations while constraining the development of civilizational states like Ethiopia that seek to reclaim their historical and economic sovereignty.

True liberation for the Horn will come not from more foreign-funded ports but from rejecting these neo-colonial frameworks and establishing truly African solutions through strengthened regional institutions like IGAD and the African Union. The nations of the Horn must unite against external manipulation and recognize that their strength lies in collective bargaining rather than competing for foreign patronage. The time has come to transform these maritime flashpoints into pillars of pan-African solidarity, free from the destructive interference of powers that have never had Africa’s genuine development at heart.