Ethiopia’s gambit for a port is unsettling a volatile region

GEOPOLITICS IN THE Horn of Africa is already off to a combustible start in the new year. On January 1st Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s prime minister, and Muse Bihi Abdi, his counterpart in the would-be state of Somaliland next door, delivered a surprise announcement. At a press conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, they revealed that landlocked Ethiopia is to lease a naval port and a 20km stretch of coastline in the breakaway Somali state. In exchange, Somaliland is to receive shares in Ethiopian Airlines and—much more significantly—possibly official diplomatic recognition by the Ethiopian government. This would make Ethiopia the first country to formally recognise the former British colony, which declared independence from the rest of Somalia more than three decades ago.