Abiy Ahmed’s imperial ambitions are bad news for Africa, and the world
Al JazeeraEthiopia’s claim that it has a ‘natural right’ to directly access the Red Sea, and its dreams of building a ‘great power’ in the region, should worry all Africans. On October 13, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed raised eyebrows in the region and beyond by forcefully asserting that gaining low-cost, permanent access to a Red Sea port is “an existential matter” for his landlocked country. “A population of 150 million can’t live in a geographic prison.” Ethiopia lost all its Red Sea ports and became the world’s largest land-locked country in 1993, when Eritrea gained independence following a 30-year war of liberation. That the prime minister of Ethiopia is openly talking about the possibility of “fighting” over water access, and publicly flaunting the establishment of a single nation within Ethiopia’s imagined sphere of influence – a region that has suffered Ethiopian imperial aggression in the past and is currently awash with civil conflicts – is a cause for immense concern. As Ethiopia appears to get ready, in plain defiance of the United Nations Charter, to fulfil its self-declared “rights” to the Red Sea, the African Union must keep an eye on Abiy’s apparent ambition to transform Ethiopia into a “great power” in Africa.
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Abiy Ahmed and the future of Ethiopia
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