whatever happened to the port deal?
and terrorist charges against journalists
Hi there,
I hope your weekend was enjoyable. I spent it completing the Sisyphean task of getting my email inbox to zero.
Today’s edition is report-heavy, but I am a fan of adding context to what can sometimes feel like disjointed pieces of information on what’s happening in the country. Thank you to the great people of research and academia who spend time piecing the puzzle together for us!
My name is Maya Misikir, and I’m a freelance reporter based in Addis Abeba. I write Sifter, this newsletter where I send out the week’s top 5 stories on human rights and news in Ethiopia.
Now, to the news.
Infrastructure: revisiting the port deal
You might remember that 2024 was a bad year for Ethiopia and Somalia.
What was the reason behind this? A port agreement that Ethiopia signed with Somaliland, a breakaway region that Somalia still claims as part of its territory.
What was the port deal (Memorandum of Understanding) about? An agreement for landlocked Ethiopia to get port access in Somaliland in return for granting Somaliland statehood recognition (making it the first country to do so).
When was it signed? January 1, 2024.
Two months and lots of curt words later (‘absolute disregard for international law’, ‘unconstitutional, illegal, unacceptable’), Somalia expelled the Ethiopian ambassador. By October, a tripartite agreement was signed among Somalia, Egypt and Eritrea, an axis against Ethiopia, if you will.
While everyone was writing an analysis piece on how terrible a regional war over this could be, Turkey stepped in to mediate, and by December, the Ankara Declaration was signed between Somalia and Ethiopia, normalizing relations after a year of back and forth.
Below are excerpts from a report entitled, ‘Ethiopia’s Red Sea Politics: Corridors, Ports, and Security in the Horn of Africa’, to answer some remaining questions.
Is the port deal off now that Ethiopia and Somalia are on better terms?
…the Ankara Declaration notably omits any mention of the MoU with Somaliland or Ethiopia’s naval ambitions, leaving these critical issues unaddressed. While Somalia claims that the MoU is now off the table, Ethiopia and Somaliland have not explicitly confirmed this and remain strategically ambiguous.
But the MoU, regardless of implementation, has already served tactical purposes, argues the author of the report.
The first is that it has developed a ‘new narrative’. From opposition political groups to diplomats, ‘Ethiopia’s desire for sea access’ is acknowledged, and the question ‘is not whether Ethiopia should have access to the sea, but how’.
The second is that the MoU has served as an ‘information gathering device’: what was the reaction of different actors (the Arab League, for one, is not a fan), and where are the red lines that can’t be crossed? An opportunity to gain new insights through ‘discussion, dialogue and new narrations’.
The reasons behind Ethiopia’s push for access to the sea are usually dominated by conversations around expenses (‘port fees and demurrage costs’). While there is truth to that (‘according to the World Bank, Ethiopia’s logistics costs are equivalent to 20 per cent of its GDP’), the country’s maritime strategy has ‘deeper security concerns at its core’, explains the author.
What are these security concerns? The Ethiopian government’s ‘growing perception of encirclement by hostile states, particularly Egypt’.
Ethiopia and Egypt have been negotiating unsuccessfully for over a decade over the use of the Nile, and Ethiopia’s dam, and the rift between Ethiopia and Eritrea ‘stem from the Pretoria agreement and the conflict in Sudan’.
The tripartite agreement, ‘laid bare the extent of Ethiopia’s strained relationships with Egypt, Somalia and Eritrea’.
What else does the Ethiopian government envision with access to the sea? Emerging as a powerful country ‘that can instrumentalize the current geopolitical interest in the Red Sea to its advantage’, by leading the ‘war on terror’ in the Red Sea, fighting off the Houthis, and stabilizing the region.
What other actors are involved in the ‘complex infrastructural interdependencies’ in this region?
Turkey for one. Turkey’s success as a mediator is explained by its ‘close ties’ to both countries. It is Somalia’s ‘largest single investor’, and used to be the second largest investor after China in Ethiopia (pre-UAE). But its role is beyond a ‘facilitator’ adds the author, as Turkey ‘holds significant stakes in key regional ports’ in Somalia.
The UAE is another. In the mid-2000s, the UAE ‘established regional presence’ by investing first in Djibouti’s ports, and then in Eritrea’s Assab port in 2015, before moving on to invest in Somalia. The ‘shifting regional partnerships’ are shaped by the UAE’s ‘strategic priorities, particularly in the areas of food security and logistics’ (the country imports 85% of its food).
Here’s an excerpt from the report:
For Türkiye and the Gulf States, the Horn of Africa has become an ‘integral part of their core security perimeter’ and an ‘extension of the regional order they seek to build’.
The Ankara Declaration itself didn’t do much in terms of addressing the underlying tensions between Ethiopia and Somalia.
So, what was it then? A ‘face-saving resolution’ for both countries, which have the ‘fight against al-Shabaab’ as a mutual priority. Ethiopia gets to continue sending troops (‘maintain its buffer zone in Somalia’), and Somalia gets much-needed troop support.
The full report, which breaks down the historical aspect (‘Addis Ababa’s century-old quest to secure access to the sea’), Ethiopia’s Red Sea Doctrine, and the many stakeholders and overlapping interests in the creation of new port corridors in the region (‘logistical networks and political orders’), here.
Tigray: the return home for thousands
The latest major development in Ethiopia’s Tigray region (as of publishing!) is the appointment of its new president. Lieutenant General Tadesse Werede (former deputy president) will be leading the region’s interim administration for another year, until elections take place.
The interim administration was established after the Pretoria peace deal ended the two-year war between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and the federal government (November 2020 – November 2022).
Part of the mandate of the new president is to work on the return of war-displaced people in the region. While this is seen as a high priority, the living conditions of those who have already returned are far from ideal, according to a new report by the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission.
The report says that the return of more than 130,000 people to the region’s North West and Southern Zone has been voluntary, but that people have returned to empty or destroyed homes. In some cases, their houses and farmlands were taken over by other people.
The areas in these two zones in Tigray, where people are returning, are border areas with the country’s Amhara region, and the claim for these lands is contested between the two.
There is no local government, and the administration of these areas has fallen to the Ethiopian National Defense Forces. Schools are not open in most of these areas, teachers haven’t been paid salaries in over a year, and essential services, like health centers, are barely operational.
Coming back from displacement camps from across the region, the returnees don’t have much to sustain them, and the government has not provided any food or monetary support in most cases. This has forced some of them to leave, yet again.
The full report by the Commission, in Amharic, here, and a story by The Reporter, in English, here.
Press freedom: terrorist charges over ethics
The arrest of journalists from a private TV station, Ethiopian Broadcasting Service (EBS), on terrorism charges is a ‘disproportionate’ response from the Ethiopian government, says a statement from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
The arrests of the journalists were made over a TV episode where a woman was shown talking about being abducted and raped by military men while she was in university. The episode was aired, people were shocked, and the woman later on went on the state-owned TV station, Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation (EBC), to say that she had lied.
The TV show was suspended by the regulatory body, and the journalists were arrested for trying to ‘incite conflict, threaten the constitutional order, and overthrow the government in coordination with “extremist” groups in Amhara region,’ according to CPJ.
Here’s an excerpt from CPJ’s statement:
“Arresting journalists on terrorism allegations is a disproportionate response to concerns over lapses in journalistic ethics, particularly as EBS has already faced regulatory sanction,” said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Muthoki Mumo.
Police also raided the TV station, and the station was forced off for a few hours.
I’ll share more details on this in next week’s edition, along with a report on the safety of journalists in Ethiopia.
The full statement by CPJ, here, and the detailed breakdown, in Amharic, from Ethiopia Insider, here.
Online safety: who gets to speak, lead, and exist online?
I shared brief highlights from an investigation on hate speech in Ethiopia (on YouTube and TikTok specifically) earlier in February.
Researchers over at the Center for Information Resilience (CIR) have published the findings of the investigation, which required manually annotating over 17,000 comments on over 600 YouTube channels and TikTok accounts: ‘women are routinely dismissed or ridiculed’, they say.
Who is getting the worst of it? Here’s an excerpt from their report:
Women who challenge traditional gender roles, such as those in leadership positions, sports or those advocating for feminism and women’s rights, face particularly severe abuse, including sexualisation, discrediting, insults, and stigma.
How are they being discredited? Through ‘accusations of financial fraud or a conflation with lesbianism.’
The report also illuminates the hate that men and boys are getting online: targeted for a ‘perceived weakness, lack of masculinity, or for supporting gender equality.’
As the elections draw closer (June 2026), ‘online hate speech risks further marginalising women, deepening divisions, and undermining democracy,’ says CIR’s Research Manager, Felicity Mulford.
In the run-up to the 2021 elections in Ethiopia, social media was ‘characterized’ with hate speech, disinformation and internet shutdowns.
The full report from CIR, in English, Amharic, and Tigrigna, here and an article highlighting the main findings, in English, here.
Labor rights: its not panning out
The plan to ‘secure a steady flow of foreign currency’ by sending Ethiopian domestic workers abroad is not going as well as the government had planned. The Ministry of Labor of Skills reported a ‘76-percent shortfall in targeted income’ to parliamentarians last week, Thursday.
What was the reason for this great overestimation? This revenue was expected from 943 licensed foreign recruitment agencies, but 221 have failed to send their reports.
Similarly, last year, the Ministry had reported that only 87,000 Ethiopians had left the country to work over a three-month period, which was just 62 percent of the plan.
Questions on the safety of Ethiopian migrant workers, especially the ones in Lebanon, were raised to very unsatisfactory responses last year (‘a dedicated task force working on this’).
This year, the Ministry says that they’re busy dealing with the pervasive fraud in the industry (‘false claims purporting to offer work opportunities in places like Canada, with which Ethiopia has no worker expatriation agreement’).
The full story, on The Reporter, here.
That’s all for this week. I’ll be back next week with more updates!
In the meantime, feel free to share this with anyone you think can benefit from keeping up with what’s going on in Ethiopia.
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I had no idea Turkey abs UAE had so much involvement in Ethiopian politics. 🤔 Such interesting reporting. Thanks for sharing.
Yay on zero inbox! 📥