• Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed remains unable to turn his goal of Red Sea access into concrete results, with alternative routes through Somaliland, and the Ankara Declaration unfulfilled.
• Opposition from Eritrea, Somalia, and Djibouti, paired with a new multi-front domestic insurgency, is sharply escalating Abiy Ahmed’s political and military costs.
• Unable to secure a physical port, Abiy Ahmed is increasingly using the Red Sea campaign and external threat narratives to shore up domestic political legitimacy.

Why is Abiy Ahmed COLD?

Answer: Abiy Ahmed is COLD as he is struggling to turn his central national-security project for Red Sea access into concrete maritime access.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali has been on a mission to regain Ethiopia’s sea access since it became landlocked after Eritrea’s independence in 1993. After the Eritrean War of Independence, Ethiopia was left dependent on foreign ports, namely Djibouti, for all international trade. As of 2026, more than 90% of Ethiopian trade continues to pass through the Djibouti corridor. 

Abiy Ahmed has increasingly framed regaining reliable sea access as a matter of national sovereignty, economic security, and strategic autonomy. His government has pursued several avenues to achieve this, including the 2024 Somaliland Memorandum of Understanding, negotiations involving Somalia, and continued efforts to secure access through Eritrea. 

The Ankara Declaration marked a shift towards the diplomatic route, committing Ethiopia and Somalia to mutually beneficial commercial arrangements that would give Ethiopia Red Sea access under Somalia’s sovereign authority. Although the declaration raised expectations that such access would be secured, it has thus far not produced any outcomes. 

In January 2024, Ethiopia and Somaliland, which Somalia treats as part of its territory, signed a Memorandum of Understanding for sea access through Somaliland’s coast, in exchange for Ethiopian recognition of Somaliland. Somalia rejected the MoU, calling it a violation of international law. That dispute deepened when Israel’s recognition of Somaliland in December 2025, the first by any state, further intensified the sovereignty dispute. Somaliland is a key hub for Emirati investment, with DP World holding a 30-year concession at Berbera port.

By January 2026, Somalia cancelled all its agreements with the UAE, covering ports, security and defence, citing violations of Somali sovereignty. That makes Somaliland access harder for Ethiopia to pursue without Mogadishu, and Somali officials now say the MoU has lost weight in the Ankara talks. That leaves the Ankara process, which runs through Mogadishu, as the main remaining route for Abiy Ahmed, and one that has not yet delivered.

Addis Ababa maintains that it is prepared to negotiate sea access through the Eritrean port city of Assab, but relations with Asmara have deteriorated sharply, with Ethiopia accusing Eritrea of military aggression and demanding the withdrawal of Eritrean forces. With Abiy Ahmed’s agenda blocked on all angles, his pursuit of sea access is leaving him COLD

What is changing Abiy Ahmed’s heat level?

Answer: Abiy Ahmed faces veto players with little incentive to give Ethiopia the access he wants, while growing domestic conflict raises the political cost of pursuing the project.

Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki has rejected Ethiopia’s claims over maritime access, viewing it as a threat to Eritrean sovereignty. On October 1, 2026, Addis Ababa closed its embassy in Asmara and expelled Eritrea’s diplomats, prompting Eritrea to sever ties. While the maritime dispute strained ties, the final rupture was triggered when Addis Ababa accused Eritrea, Sudan, and Egypt of supporting an ‌opposition alliance led by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. Although the three countries deny the accusation, the fallout effectively ended the 2018 normalization between the countries.

In September 2026, seven armed groups, including the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, the Amhara Fano National Movement, and the Oromo Liberation Army, formed the Ethiopian Peoples’ Forces Alliance for Survival explicitly to remove Abiy Ahmed from office. On September 23, Tigrayan forces seized Mekelle airport in Northern Ethiopia, and fighting has since spread into the Northern states of Afar and Amhara. For Abiy Ahmed, the developments signal that support for Red Sea access does not translate into support for how he has gone about achieving it.

Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud treats Somalia’s sovereignty over Somaliland as non-negotiable, and that position has held even as Somalia’s own federal states disregarded Mogadishu’s cancellation of competing UAE agreements. This indicates that Ethiopia is negotiating with a federal government that cannot fully enforce its own decisions. For Abiy Ahmed, this reality exposes the limits of his regional strategy, as he is left navigating a fractured political landscape where centralized agreements fail to guarantee actual enforcement.

Djibouti remains Ethiopia’s main maritime gateway, and Djiboutian President Ismail Omar Guelleh’s government has had little commercial reason to alter the arrangement, as an estimated 25% of Djibouti’s national GDP comes from port fees paid by Ethiopia. Djibouti also signed its own security agreement with the EU in July instead of offering Ethiopia new terms.

To defuse regional tensions sparked by Ethiopia’s hunt for alternative routes, Djibouti has strategically offered full commercial management of the Port of Tadjoura, Djibouti. However, Djibouti’s resistance poses a major obstacle to Abiy Ahmed’s ambitions, as its international military alliances effectively block his goal of securing a sovereign Ethiopian navy and coastal presence.

What is driving Abiy Ahmed?

Answer: The policy’s political benefits for Abiy Ahmed explain why he persists despite its repeated failure to deliver an actual port.

Abiy Ahmed has built his political identity around correcting the loss of Red Sea access, a loss he frames as a historic injustice, and carried the cause to the 18th BRICS Summit in September as formal national-security doctrine rather than grievance. This framing has become more useful since renewed fighting in northern Ethiopia that began in September 2026: blaming Egypt and Sudan for backing the groups now fighting his government lets Abiy Ahmed fold a domestic insurgency into the same external-threat narrative he has been using for Red Sea access since 2023.

Abiy Ahmed is aiming to reduce Ethiopia’s reliance on a single foreign port and lower the economic and strategic vulnerability created by that dependence. Yet Ethiopia remains highly reliant on Djibouti in terms of international trade. Proposed railway links to alternative ports could diversify Ethiopia’s transport routes, but they depend on financing, construction and cooperation from neighbouring states. These networks include a multibillion-dollar electric rail link jointly planned with Somaliland to Berbera Port, an expansive Standard Gauge Railway extended through Kenya from Lamu Port, and a cross-border rail connection mapped alongside Sudan to Port Sudan. Until these connections deliver reliable access to alternative ports, they complement the existing Djibouti corridor rather than replace it. 

Abiy Ahmed has been more successful at politicising Ethiopia’s maritime vulnerability than at reducing it. This is evident through his persistent deflection towards external actors and veto players, and the increasing domestic tensions and criticism. Ultimately, Abiy Ahmed is driven to frame maritime access as a core national security issue, shifting the political focus from internal challenges to a unifying regional goal.

What does this mean for you?

Answer: Abiy Ahmed’s Red Sea campaign illustrates how an unresolved strategic vulnerability can be sustained as a source of political legitimacy.

Abiy Ahmed’s pursuit of Red Sea access reflects a broader pattern among landlocked states, where leaders increasingly derive legitimacy from the pursuit of sovereignty rather than from its achievement. 

In Ethiopia, reclaiming maritime access has become a visible demonstration of state purpose at a moment when citizens face economic strain, an active internal conflict, and years of unmet promises on security and governance. Yet sustained visibility also raises the cost of continued failure. 

Red Sea access, the Nile dispute, and Sudan’s civil war are now openly connected in official rhetoric, with Ethiopian Chief of General Staff Birhanu Jula naming Egypt and Sudan alongside Eritrea as backers of the armed alliance seeking to remove Abiy Ahmed’s government. Having tied maritime access closely to national purpose, Abiy Ahmed has little room to retreat without undermining his own political narrative.

In September, Houthi forces completed their takeover of Yemen’s Red Sea coastline, giving them effective control of the Bab el-Mandeb strait that any Ethiopian port would still have to pass through; shipping volumes through the Red Sea are down roughly 50 to 55 percent from 2023 levels, with major carriers rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. 

Regional and outside powers are already repositioning around that reality rather than waiting for Ethiopia’s negotiations to conclude: Saudi Arabia launched its own Maritime Security Alliance in August, and Djibouti’s July agreement with the EU folds Guelleh’s government into the same security architecture now forming around the strait.