Tag: Ethiopia

Somalia-Ethiopia jitters could plunge the Horn of Africa into chaos

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The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent in any way the editorial position of Euronews.

A breakout of a war between Ethiopia and Somalia would carry catastrophic consequences not just for the region, but for Africa as a whole, Mohamed El-Bendary writes.

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As the world welcomes the arrival of a new year and eyes are focused on the war in Gaza, tension continues to escalate in the Horn of Africa — a region of immense political instability. 

This comes following Somalia’s cancellation on 6 January of a pact which Ethiopia signed five days earlier with Somalia’s breakaway territory of Somaliland. 

The agreement would grant landlocked Ethiopia access to the Somaliland port in the Gulf of Aden to establish a marine force base that aims at strengthening political, economic and security ties between them. 

Somaliland, which seceded from Somalia in 1991, borders the Red Sea — a security hotspot and a strategic maritime corridor not just for African and Arab Gulf states, but also for world powers such as the United States, China, and Russia. 

The port agreement will grant Addis Ababa access to Red Sea shipping lanes through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait between Djibouti (in the Horn of Africa) and Yemen (in the Middle East), and which connects the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

The controversial deal has received condemnation from other Red Sea neighbours, including Egypt and Eritrea, which fear a possible naval access to the Red Sea which Ethiopia lost the right to use following Eritrea’s secession in 1993. 

Little attention paid to one of the world’s most volatile regions

Ethiopia has instead been utilising the port in neighbouring Djibouti for channelling the vast majority of its imports and exports in return for generous financial returns. 

There is also fear that the agreement could mount tension among Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia over the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile.

Regrettably, the West’s perception of Horn of Africa countries is weak with little attention currently paid to the rising concern among Africans that the port agreement could enflame conflict in one of the world’s most volatile regions. 

With a population of close to 120 million, Ethiopia is the biggest landlocked country globally and is viewed as an African giant after Nigeria. 

Somaliland, on the other hand, is far smaller in population and size and, hence, it can’t counter the giant next door which has been indulged in acts of retaliations and retributions.

Somaliland is not recognised by the United Nations or the African Union as an independent state, and this has hindered its economic and political development. 

Yet, one must admit that the de facto independent Republic of Somaliland has achieved some progress in those areas than several recognised states in west and central Africa. 

It is viewed today as one of the continent’s most democratic countries, with Kenya, Denmark, the UK, and the EU having offices or some form of presence in its capital Hargeisa.

Colonialism and autocracy at the root of conflict

Access to the Red Sea is viewed as an existential issue by many Ethiopians, with Addis Ababa promising to recognise Somaliland as an independent country in the near future. 

Most Somalis still, however, consider Somaliland as part of their territory, and hence tension is likely to increase. 

And with the African Union planning to withdraw its peacekeeping force from a politically bankrupt Somalia by the end of 2024, we are likely to witness an increase in attacks by al-Shabaab — a non-state militant group which controls half of Somalia’s territory — against Ethiopia.

Yet, the Somaliland-Ethiopian port agreement can also be viewed as an endeavour by the Ethiopian government to divert the world focus from its economic difficulties and internal conflicts, particularly in the aftermath of the 2020-2022 Tigray War — which has left hundreds of thousands of people killed and displaced — and the eruption of a new war with the Amhara and Oromia militias. 

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The Tigray War has left Ethiopia on the brink of a humanitarian disaster and further underlined its need for a port.

The port agreement has indeed uncovered the labyrinth of interests and political realities across the beleaguered Horn of Africa — in a region in which decades of colonialism, along with the autocratic rule implemented thereafter, have deeply planted schisms, rivalries and territorial disputes. 

Rising fear of conflict to engulf the entire continent

The rupture in Ethiopian-Somali ties could have grave consequences for the region and the Red Sea countries as a whole. 

The ongoing US-British attacks on the Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen — which is located along the Gulf of Aden at the intersection of the Red Sea and Arabian Sea — could also threaten shipping operations through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait.

Guarding the strategic strait poses a major challenge to today’s Arab Gulf states, with Saudi Arabia and Emirates fearing attacks on shipping lanes in it and the Red Sea. 

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The Gulf states have always viewed the Horn of Africa region as a strategic borderline, with claims made that the United Arab Emirates — which has diligently been increasing its economic clout in the region — played a role in striking the port agreement. 

There is also rising fear of conflict extending to endanger ships passing from Egypt’s Suez Canal which connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean via the Red Sea.

The political and economic grievances of the Horn of Africa region are so great that they can’t solve them alone. 

A breakout of a war between Ethiopia and Somalia would carry catastrophic consequences not just for the region, but for Africa as a whole. 

It is incumbent upon the UN and the African Union to push for calm and play a more active role in settling the dispute.

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Mohamed El-Bendary is an independent researcher based in Egypt and a former journalism lecturer in the US and New Zealand. He is the author of “The ‘Ugly American’ in the Arab Mind: Why Do Arabs Resent America?”.

At Euronews, we believe all views matter. Contact us at [email protected] to send pitches or submissions and be part of the conversation.

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Crimes ‘beyond imagination’: Saudi border guards killed hundreds of migrants, HRW report says

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Between March 2022 and June 2023, Saudi border guards killed hundreds of Ethiopian migrants attempting to cross the border from Yemen into the oil-rich kingdom, according to a new Human Rights Watch report released on Monday. The report comes as Saudi Arabia implements an anti-migrant policy at home and a campaign to boost its image abroad.

The rocky, mountainous region around Sadaa – a hardscrabble city in northern Yemen right by the Saudi border – has turned into lethal terrain, according to human rights groups. Bodies of dead or seriously wounded migrants, mostly from Ethiopia, have been spotted in satellite imagery and social media posts from the border, providing harrowing testimony of abuses, notes the latest report by the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW).

“They Fired on Us Like Rain”, an HRW report released on Monday, August 21, records widespread abuses committed on the Yemen-Saudi border between March 2022 and June 2023.

“Saudi border guards have used explosive weapons and shot people at close range, including women and children, in a pattern that is widespread and systematic. If committed as part of a Saudi government policy to murder migrants, these killings would be a crime against humanity,” notes the report.

‘Guards forced 17-year-old boy to rape girl survivors’


Over the past few months, reports have been mounting of grievous violations on the migration track known as the “Eastern Route” or the “Yemeni Route”, which runs from the Horn of Africa, across the Gulf of Aden, through Yemen and into Saudi Arabia.

A July 5 report by the Mixed Migration Centre, an independent data institution within the Danish Refugee Council, said Ethiopians were being “systematically” killed by “security officials operating under Saudi Arabian state authority”.

In October 2022, the UN published its Expert Communications by special rapporteurs and working groups highlighting cross-border killings, “using artillery shelling and small arms fired by Saudi security forces”. Nearly 430 people were killed between January 1 and April 30, 2022, according to the communique.

The latest HRW report provides witness accounts of Ethiopian migrants who tried to cross the border from Yemen to Saudi Arabia – and it makes grim reading.

‘I saw 30 killed people on the spot’

In February 2023, a 14-year-old from Ethiopia’s Oromia region, identified in the HRW report as “Hamdiya”, attempted to cross the Yemeni-Saudi border in a group of around 60 people.

The horror unfolded immediately after they crossed into Saudi territory, when they came under attack by border guards, Hamdiya told HRW.  

“I saw people killed in a way I have never imagined,” said Hamdiya. “I saw 30 killed people on the spot.”

In a bid to escape the repeated firing, the Ethiopian teenager crawled under a rock and at some point, fell asleep. “I could feel people sleeping around me. I realised what I thought were people sleeping around me were actually dead bodies. I woke up and I was alone,” she said.

Like Hamdiya, many witnesses claimed to have been shot with mortars or other explosive weapons by Saudi border guards.

‘The dead bodies are there’

In one incident, a survivor recounted that he was part of a group of 170 people who attempted to cross the border when they came under fire. “I know 90 people were killed, because some returned to that place to pick up the dead bodies – they counted around 90 dead bodies,” he explained.

Another interviewee went to the Saudi border to collect the body of a girl from his village. “Her body was piled up on top of 20 bodies,” he said. “It is really impossible to count the number. It is beyond the imagination. People are going in different groups day to day. The dead bodies are there.”

While the exact number of migrants killed while crossing the border is impossible to determine, the HRW report was compiled from interviews with 42 Ethiopians or relatives of Ethiopians who attempted the border crossing. The rights group also analysed more than 350 videos and photographs posted on social media or gathered from other sources in addition to satellite imagery.

Data gathering from the remote border area is hampered by the lack of international mechanisms to monitor the human rights situation in Yemen.

Barely two years ago, the UN Human Rights Council voted to disband the Group of Eminent Experts on Yemen (GEE), an international investigating body, following a “tireless lobbying campaign” by Saudi Arabia, according to a 2021 HRW statement.

The decision has left no system of accountability in the world’s poorest Arab nation ravaged by a civil war that has killed more than 150,000 people. It is also failing citizens on another continent who are fleeing poverty and ethnic conflict.

‘Saudization’ increases targeting of migrants

An estimated 750,000 Ethiopians currently live in Saudi Arabia according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Roughly 500,000 entered the country illegally, according to the IOM, forcing them to hide from Saudi authorities.

The oil-rich Gulf kingdom has long been a magnet for impoverished migrants in the region, particularly from Yemen, which shares a 1,300-kilometre border with Saudi Arabia. Non-Saudi nationals account for more than 30 percent of the kingdom’s population.

But in 2017, Riyadh implemented a massive “Saudization” policy, aimed at reducing its dependence on migrant workers. It resulted in intensified police crackdowns, detentions of illegal migrants and massive expulsion campaigns.

Riyadh’s “Saudization” policy came as fighting raged in neighbouring Yemen and in the Horn of Africa, turning migrants into pawns in regional tensions.

Pawns in regional conflicts

In Yemen, a civil war erupted in 2014 when Iran-backed Houthi rebels swept down from their northern stronghold and chased the internationally recognised government from the capital, Sanaa. A Saudi-led coalition intervened the following year on behalf of the government, and in time the conflict turned into a proxy war between Riyadh and Tehran.

The restoration of ties between Saudi Arabia and Iran in April sparked hopes of an end to the conflict. But Houthi attacks have picked up over the past few weeks, prompting a warning by UN special envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg of “public threats to return to war”.

Across the Gulf of Aden, conflict erupted in Ethiopia in the northern Tigray region, between Ethiopian military forces and Tigrayan troops along with allied Oromo militants. Following a Tigrayan peace deal in November, fighting erupted in the Amhara region over the Ethiopian military’s efforts to disband Amhara militias who fought with the army against Tigrayan rebels, exposing the country’s deteriorating ethnic relations.

Saudi Arabia has long been a destination for Ethiopian migrants, but following the conflicts in the region, their situation has turned desperate. In April 2020, Houthi fighters forcibly expelled thousands of Ethiopian migrants from northern Yemen, forcing them to cross the border into Saudi Arabia. Several dozen of them were killed and many survivors sent to detention centres on the border. Violations in Yemeni detention centres have been extreme, with rights groups documenting allegations of torture and rape.

The latest escalation of violations along the Saudi-Yemen border appears to be “deliberate” and “targeted”, according to HRW.

“While Human Rights Watch has previously documented killings of migrants at the border with Yemen and Saudi Arabia since 2014, the killings documented in this report appear to be a deliberate escalation in both the number and manner of targeted killings,” notes the report.

“In recent years, Saudi Arabia has invested heavily in deflecting attention from its abysmal human rights record at home and abroad, spending billions of dollars to host major entertainment, cultural, and sporting events,” the report notes.

Less than five years after Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was dismembered in Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul, Western nations are warming up to the kingdom’s crown prince and de-facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, as the Ukraine war unleashes tectonic geopolitical shifts, particularly in the energy sector.

The findings of the latest report highlight the need for international calls for accountability, according to Nadia Hardman, author of the HRW report.

“Concerned governments should publicly call for Saudi Arabia to end any policy, whether explicit or in effect, to target migrants with explosive weapons and close-range attacks,” noted Hardman. “Human Rights Watch calls on organisers and participants in major international events sponsored by the Saudi government to speak out publicly on rights issues or, when whitewashing Saudi Arabia’s human rights record is the primary purpose, not to participate.”

This article is a translation of the original in French.

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IMF projects Ethiopia, Angola economies to overtake Kenya

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Economy

IMF projects Ethiopia, Angola economies to overtake Kenya

Wednesday January 25 2023

President William Ruto with Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in Addis Ababa in October 2022. PHOTO | PSCU

Kenya is set to be replaced as the third-largest economy in sub-Saharan Africa by Angola and Ethiopia, weakening the East African country’s power to tap investors enticed with a population that has more cash to spend.

Faster GDP growth in Angola and Ethiopia will see Kenya relegated to number five in sub-Saharan Africa’s economic rankings, according to projections by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that show Nigeria as the largest economy on the continent.

A return to growth linked to higher oil prices saw Angola overtake Kenya last year, according to the IMF, after the nation—which is the continent’s second-largest oil producer after Nigeria—ended years of recession.

Ethiopia is this year set to replace Kenya from position four on the back of easing armed conflict in the nation and the continuation of the ambitious economic reform drive aimed at opening up one of Africa’s fastest-growing but most closed economies.

The IMF expects the economies of Ethiopia and Angola this year to expand by 13.5 percent and 8.6 percent respectively on dollar terms.

However, Kenya is projected to record a slower growth of 2.4 percent in the review period as the country grapples with the aftershocks of the Covid-19 pandemic, drought, election jitters and disruption of global supply chains by the Russia-Ukraine war.

Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 46 of the continent’s 54 countries, excluding giants like Morocco and Egypt.

The relegation of Kenya to position five will weaken its hand in the race for foreign direct investment (FDI), which is critical in easing the growing youth unemployment on the continent.

So far, South Africa and Ethiopia have fared better than Kenya in attracting foreign investments eyeing a population that has more cash to spend.

The IMF projects Kenya’s GDP to hit $117.6 billion this year, behind Nigeria ($574 billion), South Africa ($422 billion), Angola ($135 billion) and Ethiopia ($126.2 billion).

From mobile phones, cars, food, and clothes to financial services and entertainment, multinational companies are homing in on lucrative new markets as millions of Africans aspire to claw their way out of still widespread poverty.

Read: IMF downgrades Kenya’s economic growth forecast

African countries that promise to expand middle-class buyers with swelling disposable incomes are in a pole position to attract foreign investments.

Oil-rich Angola will reclaim its third position, which it lost to Kenya in 2020 following years of contraction due to a slump in oil prices.

Angola is the continent’s second-largest oil producer after Nigeria, according to OPEC, while Kimberley Process data ranks it as the world’s seventh-biggest producer of rough diamonds.

After five years of recession, Angola’s GDP increased 0.7 percent in 2021, according to the World Bank.

Long dominated by state-owned companies, a legacy of its socialist past, Angola has also embarked on ambitious privatisation programmes but progress has been slow.

Wahoro Ndoho, an economist and past director-general of Public Debt Management for the Treasury, noted that Ethiopia has been on an upward trajectory owing to its aggressive industrialisation and Chinese-like State capitalism where the government cherry-picks sectors and projects to be prioritised.

“But also it (Ethiopia) has a huge population. It was always going to overtake us because of its huge population base,” said Mr Ndoho.

Until the civil war broke out in November 2020, Ethiopia — Africa’s second-most populous country with over 115 million people — had been regarded by development economists as a success story.

Its economy, driven by investment in agriculture, industry and infrastructure, grew on average 7.0 percent annually per capita in the 15 years to 2019, according to World Bank data — one of the fastest rates in the world.

Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who took office in 2018, launched an ambitious reforms drive aimed at opening up one of Africa’s most closed economies.

It has started the process of privatising its telecoms, banking and sugar sectors. Fighting erupted in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region in November 2020, hitting state economic programmes and deterring foreign investors.

A ceasefire reached in November has raised hopes that Ethiopia’s economic momentum can be restored.

The country is among Africa’s top recipients of foreign investments, becoming a magnet for manufacturers ahead of Kenya.

While Kenya has struggled to retain and attract multinational manufacturers, it has recently become a magnet for technology firms and financial service companies seeking a hub for a larger share of the African market.

Global tech giants, including Microsoft, Alphabet Inc and Facebook, have been increasing investment in Kenya in recent years to take advantage of growing economies with rising access rates to the Internet by a youthful population.

But industrialists, especially multinationals, are constantly on the hunt for bargain production locations much like they do tax havens, a trend that has seen Kenya lose firms like Schneider Electric, Colgate Palmolive and Reckitt Benckiser.

The IMF rankings, however, have been disputed in some quarters.

Mark Bohlund, a Senior Credit Research Analyst at REDD Intelligence, an online information platform that provides intelligence and data on emerging market corporates, noted that the projections are likely to be incorrect.

“Yes, the IMF forecasts are showing that both Angola and Ethiopia are going to be larger than Kenya in 2023 in nominal USD terms. However, these projects are likely to be incorrect as they are based on unrealistic FX estimates and forecasts for both Angola and Ethiopia,” said Bohlund in an email.

Read: Mixed bag as Kenya races to implement Sh288 billion IMF plans

According to Bohlund, the Angolan 2023 nominal GDP projection is based on a forecast of Angolan Kwanza (AOA)452/USD which is where the currency traded in October when the World Economic Outlook forecasts were released.

“But it is now trading at AOA504/USD which leaves the Angolan economy just slightly larger than Kenyan in 2023, ceteris paribus (all factors constant),” said Bohlund.

“The Ethiopian forecast is based on an assumption of ETH 65/USD, which is weaker than the official exchange rate but far stronger than the black-market rate which I believe currently is around ETH95-100/USD.”

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