Amid all the Red Sea drama, Ethiopia now appears to have access to the sea through an agreement with the breakaway region of Somaliland.

🔶️ Detailed negotiations to reach a formal agreement will be concluded in a month, said Redwan Hussein, national security adviser to Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.

🔶️ The MoU will enable Ethiopia to lease access to the Red Sea from Somaliland to use as a military base and for commercial purposes for 50 years, Hussein said. Ethiopia can also build infrastructure and a corridor, he said at a briefing on Monday in the capital Addis Ababa attended by Somaliland President Muse Bihi Abdi.

🔶️ In October, Abiy in a televised lecture identified access to the ocean as a strategic objective and warned that failure to secure it could lead to conflict before toning down his comments.

🔶️ Abiy’s remarks drew rebukes from Eritrea, Somalia and Djibouti, all of whom described their sovereignty and territorial integrity as sacrosanct and not open for discussion.

🔶️ The Horn of Africa nation lost direct access to the sea in 1993, when Eritrea gained independence after a three-decade war. Its main trade route now runs along roads and a railway that link the capital, Addis Ababa, to a port in Djibouti, one of five neighbors with coastlines that include Somalia, Eritrea, Sudan and Kenya.

🔶️ More than a fifth of the world’s global commerce transited the Red Sea that connects the Indian Ocean to the Suez Canal before attacks on commercial vessels by Houthi rebels led some ships to re-route around Africa to avoid the violence.

🔶️ Amid all the Red Sea drama, Ethiopia now appears to have access to the sea through an agreement with the breakaway region of Somaliland.