Issue No. 316

Six general elections in Ethiopia have been held since the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) implemented its ethnic-federal system in 1995. Each has delivered victory to the incumbent government of the day — including, most recently, the deeply discredited 2021 polls held in the shadow of the Tigray war. Once again, with Ethiopia's 7th elections — scheduled for 1 June 2026 — fast approaching, few anticipate anything other than a coronation in a country mired in raging insurgencies, state contraction, and the threat of broader inter-state conflict.

The Horn of Africa's political fate has always been wired to external commercial interests, with its expansive eastern edge on the Red Sea serving as an aorta of trade for millennia. A Greek merchant's manual from the 1st century AD describes the port of Obone in modern-day Puntland as a hub of ivory, tortoiseshell, enslaved people and cinnamon destined for Egypt. Today, as so often quoted, between 12-15% of the world's seaborne trade passes along the arterial waterway, with the Suez Canal bridging Europe and Asia. But well before the globalised world or the vying Gulf and Middle Powers over the Red Sea's littoral administrations, the logic of 'gunboat diplomacy' underpinned the passage over these seas.

Almost exactly 130 years ago, a vast Ethiopian army led by Emperor Menelik II outmanoeuvred and overran the invading Italian army at Adwa in Tigray, bringing the first Italo-Ethiopian war to a decisive close. By midday on 1 March 1896, thousands of Italian soldiers and Eritrean 'askaris' had been killed, sparing Ethiopia from the carving up of the African continent by European colonisers.

The first known reference to the Tekezé River is an inscription that describes the Axumite King Ezana boasting of a triumph on its banks near the "ford of Kemalke" in the 4th century AD. Emerging in the Ethiopian highlands near Mount Qachen in the Amhara region, the major rivers' tributaries flow north and west, forming part of the westernmost border between Eritrea and Ethiopia.

Where to begin? The Middle East aflame, the Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei killed by an Israeli airstrike, a slew of Gulf capitals and infrastructure under Iranian bombardment, and a war instigated by two powers with no clear end or scope. Few could say they were surprised by the coordinated Israeli-American bombardment of Iran, but the immediacy of its metastasis has been shocking, and the spillover of this war is already stretching from Cyprus down to the Strait of Hormuz. And there are almost too many unknowns to count, from the endgame logic of Washington to the vulnerability of the wounded Iranian regime to the broader reaction of the besieged Gulf.

Earlier this month, dozens of heads of state and government gathered in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, for the 39th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the African Union (AU). The theme of this summit prioritised water security and sanitation, discussing various ways to address these issues amid the unrelenting climate crisis. A worthy subject, no doubt, but the geopolitical backdrop of the summit remains unremittingly grim. Taking place in Addis —amid war looking ever more likely in Tigray —the gathering of leaders again served to uncomfortably emphasise the decline of the AU.

With Israeli President Isaac Herzog expected in Addis Ababa today, the steady drumbeat of war to the north continues apace. Preparations for renewed conflict are stacking up, hand over fist. Having dangled Western Tigray before both Amhara and Tigray since the end of the Tigray war in 2022, this week the National Electoral Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) suddenly announced that 5 zones in Western Tigray would be removed from Mekelle's jurisdiction.

In the days before the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Moscow quietly pre-positioned field blood supplies along the Ukrainian frontier. Contrary to those arguing that Russia was posturing to secure concessions from Kyiv and its allies, to military analysts, the deployment of plasma was a logistical signal that Russia was preparing for sustained combat, not bargaining. No one is tracking the movement of plasma —or lack thereof —towards Tigray in Ethiopia, but with thousands of soldiers streaming towards the northern region, it is hard not to feel an impending dread that full-scale war may soon return.

In April 2026, two points along the porous Kenya-Somalia border will finally reopen, nearly 15 years after it was first shuttered by Nairobi. Last Thursday, during a visit to Mandera, Kenyan President William Ruto announced that plans for the much-awaited reopening —first sanctioned in 2023 —would be resuscitated. Declaring it "unacceptable that fellow Kenyans in Mandera remain cut off from their kin and neighbours in Somalia", Ruto's intervention is the latest in a long history of Nairobi-led attempts to influence (and for the most part, contain) events along the 700-kilometre border between Kenya and Somalia.