#Ethiopia turns to #Kenya for sea access
Kenya recently offered to rework tariffs at #Lamu port, on the Northern coast, after a meeting of #LaPSSET technical committee. LaPSSET, a project conceived in 1975 and relaunched in 2008, is supposed to link Lamu Port to #SouthSudan and #Ethiopia. The railway line to #Juba and #AddisAbaba alone has a price tag of 13.8 billion. Construction is hoped to begin in 2025.
Although this non-announcement happened at the occasion of an ordinary meeting, one cannot help but analyze this new eagerness in completing the corridor in the light of the events that unfolded in the Horn since last summer, namely the successive courting and threats of war from #Ethiopia towards her coastal neighbours (#Eritrea, #Djibouti, #Somalia) and the #Somaliland fiasco since 1 January.
While #Somaliland has been weakened by the secession of #SSCKhatumo, contestation from ministers as well as from #Issa and #Gadabuursi clans in #Awdal (where the Ethiopian naval base should be situated) and an electoral crisis, threats of insurgencies in Somaliland and the Somali region of #Ethiopia as well as a war between Ethiopia and #Somalia are looming.
#Ethiopia had withdrawn from a previous agreement (2017), later approved by the Somali government thanks to #UAE backing (2022), that would have helped her gain access to the same port of #Berbera she tries to access through her newly signed MoU. A further agreement she signed with #Somalia to access the sea through Gara'ad (#Puntland) (2022) is now also in jeopardy.
Mathieu Gotteland