The Somaliland MoU

The Somaliland MoU and the dream of Assab

Ethiopia signs a memorandum of understanding with a state most of the world does not recognise, in exchange for sea access most of the world’s diplomatic system has decided Ethiopia cannot have on these terms. The fallout consumes a year of regional bandwidth, produces an Egypt-Eritrea-Somalia security axis aligned against Addis, strengthens al-Shabaab’s recruitment narrative, and ends in December 2024 with the agreement effectively shelved under Turkish mediation. Net result: no port.

Filed mid-December 2024, after the Ankara Declaration

The political project that produced the 1 January 2024 Memorandum of Understanding between Ethiopia and Somaliland had been visible in Abiy Ahmed’s policy communications for at least the preceding year. In an October 2023 parliamentary speech that became, in retrospect, the formal opening of what would become the year-long Horn of Africa sea-access crisis, Abiy described Ethiopia’s access to the Red Sea as “an existential issue for his country.” The framing was not, in the strict literal sense, accurate — Ethiopia had been operating without direct sea access since Eritrean independence in 1993 and had developed a functional commercial relationship with Djibouti’s port that handled approximately 95% of Ethiopian foreign trade. The framing was, in its political function, the articulation of a strategic ambition that Abiy and his close advisors had been developing through the post-Pretoria period: the restoration of Ethiopia as a regional naval power and the recovery of what Abiy characterised as historical Ethiopian access to the Red Sea coastline.

The October 2023 framing was accompanied by a public hint that Ethiopia would pursue sea access “by peace or by force” — a phrase Abiy used in parliamentary sessions and in subsequent public remarks. The phrase was widely interpreted in regional diplomatic communications as a signal to Eritrea, Djibouti, and Somalia — the three states whose coastlines were the actual location of any plausible Ethiopian sea access — that the Ethiopian federal government would be pursuing the question through whatever diplomatic, commercial, or eventually coercive means were available. The phrase’s framing was, in regional diplomatic communications through November and December 2023, treated as alarming; the three coastal states declined to enter the kind of bilateral negotiation that the framing was intended to produce. [International Crisis Group, “The Stakes in the Ethiopia-Somaliland Deal,” 6 March 2024, https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/ethiopia-somaliland/stakes-ethiopia-somaliland-deal]

The Somaliland MoU of 1 January 2024 was, in this context, the federal-government’s first operational move on the sea-access agenda. The MoU was signed in Addis Ababa by Abiy Ahmed and Somaliland President Muse Bihi Abdi. The full text was not released; the public communications from both sides described the principal provisions. Under the reported terms, Somaliland would lease approximately 20 kilometres (some accounts placed the figure at 19 kilometres, some at 20 kilometres and 20 square kilometres of land-and-sea area) of its Gulf of Aden coastline — in the Awdal region near the towns of Lughaya and Saylac, close to the Djiboutian border — to Ethiopia for a 50-year term, for the purpose of establishing an Ethiopian naval base. Some account also suggested commercial-port use through the Berbera facility 200 kilometres to the east. In exchange, Somaliland would receive a stake in Ethiopian Airlines (the percentage was not specified in public communications; estimates ranged from 19% to “significant minority shareholding”) and Ethiopia would undertake “in-depth assessment” toward formal recognition of Somaliland as an independent sovereign state. Recognition would have made Ethiopia the first UN member state to formally recognise Somaliland’s statehood — a significant diplomatic precedent that the Somaliland political leadership had been pursuing for thirty years. [Wikipedia, “2024 Ethiopia–Somaliland memorandum of understanding,” accessed June 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Ethiopia%E2%80%93Somaliland_memorandum_of_understanding; Government of Somaliland Ministry of Foreign Affairs press release, 1 January 2024]

The MoU’s legal character was, on both sides’ public communications, that of a non-binding preliminary agreement that would require subsequent ratification through both parties’ constitutional processes to take legal effect. The Ethiopian Council of Ministers and the Federal House of Peoples’ Representatives would, in normal practice, need to approve any binding agreement on territorial matters; the Somaliland Parliament would need to approve the lease. The MoU’s status as a non-binding document was, in the federal-government’s communications, evidence that the agreement was an early-stage diplomatic move rather than a final commitment; in the regional response, the non-binding character was given less weight than the substantive provisions and the political signal the MoU constituted.

The regional response was immediate, comprehensive, and adverse.

Somalia. The Somali federal government in Mogadishu convened an emergency Cabinet meeting on 2 January 2024. President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud characterised the MoU as an act of aggression that violated Somalia’s territorial integrity, denounced it as conducted “without legal basis,” and accused Ethiopia of “disdaining the rule of the UN, AU, and IGAD.” On 6 January, the Somali Parliament passed legislation nullifying the MoU. The Somali ambassador to Ethiopia was recalled. The Somali government demanded that Ethiopia formally withdraw from the MoU before any bilateral dialogue could resume.

Eritrea. The Eritrean government, which had been moving toward a more confrontational posture with Addis since 2022, characterised the MoU as evidence of Ethiopian “expansionist ambitions” and aligned diplomatically with Somalia’s opposition.

Egypt. The Egyptian government, which had been in long-running tension with Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) project and which had been seeking ways to constrain Abiy’s regional ambitions, treated the MoU as a strategic opportunity. In the months that followed, Egypt signed a security cooperation agreement with Somalia, shipped weapons to Somali federal forces (publicly characterised as supporting the Somali government’s territorial integrity against Ethiopian expansion), and accelerated the development of what would become the Egypt-Eritrea-Somalia security axis aligned in explicit opposition to Ethiopia.

African Union, IGAD, Arab League, China, Turkey, European Union, United Kingdom, United States. All publicly backed Somali sovereignty in statements issued through January and February 2024. The international diplomatic consensus on the Somali side was substantial; no major state or international organisation publicly supported the MoU’s premise that Somaliland’s territorial sovereignty was a matter Somaliland and Ethiopia could resolve bilaterally.

Al-Shabaab. The militant Islamist movement, which had been operating in southern Somalia and on the periphery of Ethiopian territorial influence for over fifteen years, issued a statement of war against Ethiopia and Somaliland following the MoU’s announcement. The political framing of the statement was that the Somali federal government was too weak to defend Somali territorial integrity from a foreign power and that only al-Shabaab could provide effective resistance to Ethiopian expansion. Intelligence assessments through 2024 documented an increase in al-Shabaab recruitment that analysts attributed in part to the MoU’s political effect; the Crisis Group’s March 2024 analysis explicitly identified the MoU as “useful for al-Shabaab’s recruitment narrative” and warned that the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia (ATMIS), then drawing down to a successor mission, could face increased operational pressure from al-Shabaab as a consequence.

The federal Ethiopian government’s response to the regional opposition was, through January and February 2024, to maintain its position and to argue that the MoU was a legitimate bilateral arrangement that did not constitute interference in Somali territorial integrity (a characterisation that depended on accepting Somaliland’s independence claim as the operative legal premise, which the international system did not accept). The federal Foreign Ministry pursued bilateral diplomacy with non-aligned states to seek individual statements of support; the diplomacy produced limited results. The federal-government domestic communications emphasised the strategic necessity of sea access, the historical justification, and the popular Ethiopian support for the project; the communications produced substantial domestic political support for Abiy’s position, particularly within the Amhara and broader pan-Ethiopianist political constituencies.

Through 2024, the operational consequences of the MoU accumulated.

The Egypt-Eritrea-Somalia security axis solidified. Egypt and Eritrea signed a maritime cooperation agreement in October 2024 — a substantive piece of bilateral diplomacy that established Egypt-Eritrean naval coordination in the Red Sea. The Egyptian foreign minister visited Asmara repeatedly through 2024. Somali federal forces received Egyptian military equipment and training. The three states’ political coordination, while not constituting a formal alliance, produced operational consequences across multiple dimensions: combined diplomatic pressure on Ethiopia at the African Union and the UN, coordinated military positioning in the southern Red Sea, joint approach to the Sudan war (in which Egypt was supporting the Sudanese Armed Forces and the relationship was complicated by Ethiopian sympathies for the RSF that would surface in later 2024 and 2025).

Al-Shabaab benefited from the recruitment narrative. The Somali federal government’s struggles against al-Shabaab through 2024 were complicated by the persistent political background of the MoU. Al-Shabaab’s territorial position in southern Somalia, while not dramatically expanded by the MoU, was politically consolidated by it; the AU’s successor mission to ATMIS, the AU Support and Stabilisation Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM), faced operational conditions more difficult than its predecessor’s.

The Ethiopian Navy programme proceeded slowly. The MoU had been intended, in the federal-government’s communications, as the foundation for the operational restoration of an Ethiopian naval force. The first batch of Ethiopian navy recruits had graduated in June 2023; subsequent recruitment continued through 2024 and into 2025. The actual establishment of an operational naval base at the leased Awdal-region location did not, however, occur during the MoU’s effective period. The Ethiopian government did not have the diplomatic or financial capacity to construct a naval base in a location that the international system did not recognise as legitimately leased, and the federal government’s other priorities (the Amhara conflict, the OLA insurgency, the macroeconomic crisis, the post-Pretoria Tigray situation) absorbed the operational bandwidth that base construction would have required.

The international diplomatic isolation deepened. Through 2024, the federal-government’s diplomatic position in the Horn of Africa progressively narrowed. The Ankara process — Turkish-mediated talks between Ethiopia and Somalia that began in early 2024 and continued through three rounds across the year — provided the operational mechanism for eventual de-escalation. The talks were not, in their political character, a negotiation between two equal parties; they were a structured mediation in which Turkey, acting as a regional power with substantial commercial interests in both Somalia and Ethiopia, attempted to broker an arrangement that would allow both governments to step back from positions both had publicly committed to without immediate political cost.

The Ankara Declaration, signed on 11 December 2024 in Ankara by Abiy Ahmed and Hassan Sheikh Mohamud under Turkish mediation, was the operational conclusion of the MoU crisis. The declaration’s substantive provisions: Ethiopia formally recognised Somali sovereignty and territorial integrity (a reversal of the implicit position of the January 2024 MoU); both governments committed to negotiate “mutually beneficial commercial arrangements” for Ethiopian sea access “under Somalia’s sovereignty”; both governments agreed to continue dialogue under Turkish mediation; and both governments committed to “putting aside” the questions that had produced the crisis. The Somaliland MoU was, in operational terms, shelved. The recognition undertaking was not formally rescinded but was operationally non-operative. The naval base construction did not proceed. [Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, “Reshaping the Horn of Africa,” April 2025, https://gjia.georgetown.edu/2025/04/15/unconventional-transactions-and-alliances-in-the-horn-of-africa-statehood-dams-ports-and-peace-support-operations/]

The Ankara Declaration was, in its formal characterisation, a successful de-escalation. The Ethiopia-Somalia diplomatic relationship was restored to functional working terms. The immediate political pretext for the Egypt-Eritrea-Somalia security axis was removed. The al-Shabaab recruitment narrative based on Ethiopian expansionism lost its immediate operational salience. Turkish mediation was credited by all parties with producing the resolution; Turkey emerged as a regional diplomatic broker with substantial soft-power gains across the Horn.

The Ankara Declaration was also, in its operational substance, a comprehensive federal-government retreat from the position the January 2024 MoU had established. The strategic ambition that had motivated the MoU — a unilateral Ethiopian sea-access arrangement, structured to bypass Somali federal sovereignty, supported by recognition of Somaliland — was no longer operative. The bilateral commercial arrangement contemplated by the Ankara Declaration as the eventual basis for Ethiopian sea access would, by its terms, require Somali federal sovereignty over the eventual port — a substantially different model from the one the Abiy government had been pursuing for a year. The Ethiopian Navy programme would, going forward, operate without the territorial base the MoU had been intended to provide.

The net result of the year of regional sea-access crisis was, in operational terms, the following: Ethiopia had not gained a port; Ethiopia had not gained Somaliland recognition; the federal government had alienated Somalia, Eritrea, and Egypt; the federal government had hardened the regional security axis aligned against Addis; the federal government had complicated its relationships with the African Union, IGAD, the European Union, and the United States; al-Shabaab had benefited politically from the crisis; Turkey had gained soft-power influence across the Horn; the Somaliland political leadership had been left without the recognition it had been promised. The diplomatic crisis had consumed the federal-government’s regional bandwidth for a year and had produced, at the end of the year, the operational position of having to negotiate sea access under conditions Somalia controlled.

The retrospective question — whether the federal government’s strategic calculation in pursuing the MoU was correct in its initial terms — admits a clear answer in operational hindsight. The MoU’s premise was that Ethiopia could acquire sea access through a bilateral arrangement with Somaliland that bypassed Somali federal sovereignty, that the international system would accept the arrangement once it was a fait accompli, and that the regional fallout would be manageable through Ethiopia’s diplomatic and economic weight. All three premises were substantially wrong. The international system did not accept the arrangement; the regional fallout was not manageable; the bilateral arrangement could not produce operational sea access without international acceptance. The strategic calculation that produced the MoU was, in the operational record, a misreading of the regional and international political environment.

The deeper question — whether Abiy’s stated “existential” claim about Ethiopian sea access reflected a genuine strategic necessity or a constructed political objective — has been actively debated in subsequent Ethiopian political analysis. The genuine-necessity view holds that Ethiopia’s reliance on Djibouti’s port creates an unacceptable strategic vulnerability and that sea access is a long-term requirement for any sustained Ethiopian economic growth and security autonomy. The constructed-objective view holds that the sea-access agenda was, in significant part, a political instrument designed to consolidate domestic pan-Ethiopianist support around a national-greatness narrative and to provide the federal government with a strategic ambition that could mobilise constituencies that the post-Pretoria political situation had alienated. Both views have substantial supporters; the empirical evidence is ambiguous; the operational consequences of the MoU’s failure suggest that, whichever motivation was primary, the strategic costs of the pursuit exceeded the available diplomatic capacity to manage.

By mid-2026, the sea-access question has substantially receded from the federal-government’s active diplomatic agenda. The Ankara Declaration framework continues in formal operation but has not produced operational sea access; the Eritrean alternative — Assab, the historic Ethiopian port that was the most plausible direct sea-access location and that has been a recurrent theme in Ethiopian-Eritrean tensions — has not become accessible to Ethiopia (and may, by 2026, be the object of preparations for a future Ethiopia-Eritrea war that the federal government’s current posture is not aligned with); the Somalia framework requires Somali federal sovereignty over any eventual port, which substantially constrains the federal-government’s strategic ambitions. The “existential” claim of October 2023 has, in operational terms, not been resolved.

The Somaliland MoU’s twelve-month arc — January 2024 through December 2024 — is, in retrospect, a case study in the operational limits of the federal-government’s regional diplomatic capacity in the post-Pretoria period. The pre-MoU calculation had assumed substantial federal-government regional weight; the post-MoU operational record demonstrated substantial regional weakness. The federal government’s policy bandwidth had been consumed; the regional alignment had hardened against Addis; the strategic ambition had not been realised. The sea-access agenda, which Abiy had characterised as “existential,” remained unresolved at the end of the year that had been consumed in pursuing it.

The Eritrean coastline that had been Ethiopian until 1993, and that the federal government’s strategic ambitions in 2023–2024 had progressively oriented around, remained on the other side of a border that was, by mid-2026, being prepared for the next war. The political and military costs of that war, if it occurs, will substantially exceed the diplomatic costs of the year of crisis the MoU produced. The strategic calculation that produced the MoU, on this longer-term view, was the early move in a sequence that may yet end with a war over the same coastline. The Ankara Declaration purchased a one-year diplomatic respite. The structural pressure for sea access remains. The next move in the sequence has not yet been made; the timing of its making is not yet visible; what is visible is that the pressure has not been resolved and that the political logic that produced the January 2024 MoU has not been retired.

The Somaliland MoU is, in the operational reading of mid-2026, the first move of a larger strategic game whose next moves are not yet made and whose outcome is not yet determined. The federal government’s posture remains substantially the posture it adopted in October 2023: that sea access is existential. The regional and international response remains substantially what it was in January 2024: that sea access on the terms the federal government has pursued is not available. The structural condition produced by the gap between these two positions is, by 2026, one of the central forward-looking political risks of the Horn of Africa.

The dream of Assab has not been realised. The dream has also not been abandoned. The space between realisation and abandonment is the space in which the next phase of the federal government’s regional strategy operates.

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Sources for Article 18

1. Wikipedia, “2024 Ethiopia–Somaliland memorandum of understanding,” accessed June 2026 — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Ethiopia%E2%80%93Somaliland_memorandum_of_understanding
2. International Crisis Group, “The Stakes in the Ethiopia-Somaliland Deal,” 6 March 2024 — https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/ethiopia-somaliland/stakes-ethiopia-somaliland-deal
3. ACLED, “Ethiopia’s Quest for Sea Access - January 2024” — https://acleddata.com/update/ethiopias-quest-sea-access-january-2024
4. Government of Somaliland Ministry of Foreign Affairs, MoU signing press release, 1 January 2024 — https://mfa.govsomaliland.org/article/immediate-release-republic-somaliland-government-signs-memor
5. IISS, “The Ethiopia–Somaliland deal,” March 2024 — https://www.iiss.org/publications/strategic-comments/2024/03/the-ethiopia-somaliland-deal/
6. Institute of Foreign Affairs Ethiopia, “Navigating Autonomy: Ethiopia’s Quest for Naval Power in the Red Sea,” 25 December 2025 — https://www.ifa.gov.et/2025/12/25/navigating-autonomy-ethiopias-quest-for-naval-power-in-the-red-sea/
7. Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, “Reshaping the Horn of Africa,” April 2025 — https://gjia.georgetown.edu/2025/04/15/unconventional-transactions-and-alliances-in-the-horn-of-africa-statehood-dams-ports-and-peace-support-operations/
8. Reuters reporting on Ankara Declaration, December 2024
9. African Union and IGAD statements on Ethiopia-Somalia tensions, 2024
10. Al Jazeera reporting on Ethiopia-Somalia-Somaliland relations, January–December 2024

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End of expanded article for Dispatch 18. One article, approximately 2,900 words.