The Red Sea Is Not Abu Dhabi’s Chessboard

Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan and the Limits of External Power in the Horn of Africa

By Alula Frezghi

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The most important question confronting the Horn of Africa is not whether the United Arab Emirates is “losing Africa,” nor whether an alleged “Emirati project” is collapsing. The larger and more consequential question is this: Who gets to define the strategic future of the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea: the states that inhabit the region, or the external powers that increasingly compete for its ports, corridors, resources, and political alliances? From an Eritrean perspective, this is the question beneath the headlines.

The UAE matters, as do its economic reach, ports and logistics networks, relationships with Ethiopia, Sudan and Somaliland, and partnership with Israel. Yet Abu Dhabi remains only one actor within a much larger strategic contest involving Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Israel, the United States, China, Japan, Russia, European states and, most importantly, African governments themselves.

The story, therefore, is not simply about the rise or fall of an Emirati project. It is about the transformation of the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa into one of the world’s most contested strategic spaces, and about the continuing struggle of African states to preserve meaningful agency within it.

The UAE’s African Strategy—and the Limits of External Power

There is no doubt that the UAE has constructed an unusually broad network of interests across Africa. Its strategy has combined ports and logistics with investment, agriculture, food security, aviation, mining, financial relationships, military cooperation and maritime security. Through DP World and other state-linked entities, Abu Dhabi has pursued commercial positions along important maritime and trade corridors, particularly around the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.

Yet describing all of this as a single, centrally controlled “UAE project” risks misunderstanding how power actually operates in Africa. African governments are not passive pieces on an Emirati chessboard. They negotiate, bargain and compete with one another; governments change, contracts are renegotiated, and one foreign power may be invited precisely to counterbalance another. At other times, African governments simply say no.

This distinction is crucial because, while the UAE may seek influence, the outcome of Emirati policy is ultimately shaped by the political calculations of the African states with which it deals. The more revealing question, therefore, is not whether Abu Dhabi is winning or losing, but whether the balance between external influence and African agency is changing.

Among Abu Dhabi’s African relationships, Ethiopia occupies a particularly important position. When Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came to power in 2018, the UAE moved rapidly to deepen relations with Addis Ababa. In June of that year, Abu Dhabi announced a $3 billion economic package for Ethiopia, including a $1 billion deposit with the National Bank of Ethiopia to support foreign-exchange liquidity and another $2 billion earmarked for investment and joint economic activity. The relationship subsequently expanded into financial, diplomatic, commercial and strategic cooperation. In 2024, the two countries also signed a currency-swap agreement worth up to roughly $817 million.

Ethiopia should be viewed not merely as an Emirati partner but as a Trojan Horse for external destabilization plans of the region where several external strategies intersect. Ethiopia’s current instability is therefore more than a test of the durability of one bilateral relationship. It is a test of how much influence outside powers can actually exercise when the domestic political foundations on which their strategies depend begin to fracture.

Ethiopia, Assab and Eritrea’s Sovereignty Question

The renewed war in Ethiopia makes that test particularly urgent. Fighting has returned to Tigray, with Tigrayan forces seizing airports and clashes extending into Afar and Amhara. At the same time, an alliance has emerged involving the TPLF and other armed Ethiopian groups opposed to the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, whose increasingly repressive rule has generated opposition from multiple quarters.

These developments remain fluid, and Ethiopia’s recurring claims of foreign sponsorship for domestic armed factions should, as always, be treated with considerable skepticism unless supported by credible and independently verifiable evidence. What is already clear, however, is that another prolonged period of Ethiopian instability or fragmentation would force every external actor with substantial interests in the country to reassess its calculations. That applies not only to the UAE, but also to Turkey, China, Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, the United States, European governments and other regional actors.

Ethiopia therefore cannot be reduced to an “Emirati asset.” It is better understood as a strategic hinge around which numerous regional and international interests intersect. Its renewed internal conflict also carries another dimension that, from an Eritrean perspective, is impossible to ignore: the Red Sea.

Ethiopia is landlocked, and its search for reliable maritime access has increasingly been presented by its leaders as an issue of economic necessity and national strategy. Eritrea, by contrast, regards its sovereign coastline—including Assab and Massawa—as non-negotiable national territory. The danger arises when the legitimate question of maritime access is transformed into a claim to sovereign ownership of another country’s coastline.

Successive Ethiopian governments have, at different moments, viewed access to an Eritrean port—particularly Assab—not simply as an economic question but as one intertwined with Ethiopian domestic politics and nationalism. The temptation for the current government is especially dangerous if it calculates that confrontation over the Red Sea could divert attention from Ethiopia’s internal fractures and rally otherwise divided political elites around a nationalist cause. In such circumstances, rhetoric about maritime access ceases to be merely an economic argument and becomes a potential instrument of domestic political mobilization.

For Eritrea, the distinction could hardly be more important. Negotiated access to ports, commercial transit arrangements and regional economic cooperation are one thing; attempts to acquire sovereign Eritrean territory through coercion or force are something entirely different. If Ethiopian leaders begin to treat Assab as a means of overcoming internal divisions or generating national unity, Ethiopia’s domestic political crisis immediately acquires a regional security dimension. It is at precisely this point that an internal Ethiopian crisis becomes an Eritrean national-security question.

Understanding Eritrea’s response requires looking beyond the way its foreign policy is often interpreted by outsiders, who tend to explain it primarily through the personalities of its leadership or its disputes with neighboring governments. A more useful approach is to examine the strategic logic that has consistently emphasized sovereignty, independence of decision-making and resistance to externally imposed political arrangements.

This does not mean that Eritrea rejects relations with foreign powers or refuses strategic cooperation when interests coincide. Rather, it has historically resisted making the country’s security and strategic survival dependent upon any single external patron. The essential questions are therefore not whether Eritrea cooperates with a particular foreign power, but on what terms that cooperation occurs: Does the relationship preserve Eritrean sovereignty? Does it contribute to regional stability? Does it create strategic dependency? Does it establish a foreign military presence capable, over time, of constraining Eritrea’s freedom of action?

Those questions apply regardless of whether the external actor is Washington, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, Ankara, Beijing, Cairo or Moscow. The nationality of the outside power is ultimately less important than the nature of the relationship and whether Eritrea retains control over its territory and strategic decisions.

This principle becomes especially important when the view shifts westward from Ethiopia to Sudan. There, the dangers posed by domestic fragmentation, armed competition and external involvement are no longer hypothetical. Sudan demonstrates in far more destructive form what can happen when an internal political struggle becomes entangled with the competing strategic interests of outside powers. For Eritrea, which shares a long border with Sudan and a direct stake in Red Sea stability, the consequences are immediate rather than theoretical.

Sudan, Algeria and the Growing Resistance to External Entanglement

If Ethiopia represents the political hinge of the Horn, Sudan represents its strategic fracture. The Sudanese war has become a devastating conflict whose consequences extend across the Red Sea, the Sahel and the Nile Basin, while also becoming a major arena for accusations of external involvement.

Sudan has accused the UAE and Ethiopia of supporting the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), allegations that Abu Dhabi and Ethiopia deny. Sudan took the dispute to the International Court of Justice in 2025, while UN experts and U.S. lawmakers had regarded allegations of UAE support as credible. Geopolitically, however, allegations of external involvement can themselves have profound consequences. The Sudanese war demonstrates the danger that arises when national conflicts become intertwined with external financing, weapons transfers, logistics networks, gold interests and competing regional agendas.

By September 2026, the conflict remains active, with the RSF intensifying drone attacks while Sudan experiences severe economic fragmentation. The Sudanese pound has lost nearly half its value in army-controlled areas since the beginning of summer, while the country’s export economy has become increasingly divided between rival zones of control. Sudan therefore offers a broader warning: when external competition becomes embedded within a domestic war, the distinction between national conflict and geopolitical proxy competition begins to disappear.

For Eritrea, this is hardly an abstract concern. Sudan is its western neighbor, and instability there directly affects Eritrean borders, migration, trade, food security and the security of the Red Sea. A prolonged Sudanese war creates precisely the regional environment Eritrea has historically sought to avoid—fragmented states, armed movements, foreign sponsors and competing military corridors.

The rupture between Algeria and the UAE adds another dimension to this changing landscape. On September 10, 2026, Algeria severed diplomatic relations with Abu Dhabi, citing what it described as “provocative or hostile” actions without publicly identifying a single triggering incident. The disagreement reflected broader tensions involving Israel, Western Sahara, the Sahel and allegations of Emirati interference, while the UAE expressed hope that the rupture would prove temporary.

It would be excessive to interpret Algeria’s decision as evidence of an organized African revolt against the UAE. It does, however, demonstrate something significant: African states are increasingly willing to contest the strategic preferences of powerful external partners.

Algeria’s military weight, energy resources and position on the southern Mediterranean make it a consequential African actor, and its disagreement with Abu Dhabi illustrates that Gulf influence does not operate in an uncontested political environment. The same principle can be observed in different forms elsewhere, from Sahelian governments demanding greater strategic autonomy to African states renegotiating foreign commercial and security arrangements. These governments do not necessarily share Eritrea’s political system or foreign-policy philosophy, nor are they united by a common ideology. What they increasingly share is an insistence that foreign partnership does not automatically confer foreign authority.

Sudan and Algeria illustrate two very different manifestations of the same underlying problem. In Sudan, external entanglement risks becoming embedded in a destructive internal war; in Algeria, a powerful African state has chosen openly to resist what it regards as unacceptable foreign interference. Between those two cases lies the central question facing much of the continent: how can African states benefit from foreign relationships without allowing those relationships to determine their political or strategic choices? And there is Ethiopia serving as a client state of UAE and other powers.

That question becomes particularly important along the coast, because nowhere is the boundary between commerce and geopolitics becoming more difficult to distinguish than in the rapidly developing network of Red Sea and Gulf of Aden ports.

Berbera and the Red Sea’s Emerging Strategic Architecture

DP World’s involvement in Berbera is substantial, with the company committing up to $442 million for the development and expansion of the port while promoting the Berbera Corridor as a trade route connecting the Gulf of Aden with Ethiopia. Ethiopia separately entered into arrangements concerning development of the Ethiopian side of the corridor. Yet Berbera is more than a port story. Ports create corridors, corridors generate political relationships, and political relationships can produce strategic leverage—especially when the infrastructure concerned lies close to one of the world’s most consequential maritime chokepoints.

Berbera’s strategic significance increased further after Israel recognized Somaliland as an independent state on December 26, 2025. The decision triggered opposition from Somalia, Egypt, Turkey and Djibouti, while the African Union reaffirmed Somalia’s territorial integrity. The United Nations likewise recorded strong regional objections and emphasized the continuing international position regarding Somalia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Strategic analysts had already identified the potential importance of an Israel-Somaliland relationship around the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea. One can explicitly connect possible Israeli engagement with Somaliland to existing UAE ties and Emirati investment in Berbera.

None of this proves the existence of a unified UAE-Israel-Somaliland military “axis.” It does, however, demonstrate that commercial infrastructure and strategic geography are increasingly converging. A port can begin as an economic investment and subsequently acquire diplomatic, intelligence, security and military significance because geography gives infrastructure a strategic life beyond its original commercial purpose.

This is precisely why the Red Sea should no longer be viewed as a collection of unrelated crises. Ethiopia’s maritime ambitions, Sudan’s civil war, Somalia’s territorial dispute, Somaliland’s international diplomacy, UAE port investments, Israel’s growing Red Sea interests, Egypt’s Nile and maritime calculations, Saudi Arabia’s western coastline, the war in Yemen and the security of the Bab el-Mandeb increasingly form parts of the same strategic environment.

Geography binds them together. The Red Sea is simultaneously an African waterway, an Arab waterway, a global commercial artery and a military theater. The Bab el-Mandeb connects it to the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean, while the Suez Canal connects the same maritime system to the Mediterranean. Disruption in one part of this corridor therefore reverberates throughout the others.

The recent maritime crisis demonstrated this reality dramatically, as Houthi attacks forced shipping companies to divert vessels around the Cape of Good Hope and imposed significant financial costs on global trade. DP World itself reported substantial financial effects from the disruption. The implication is profound: the Red Sea is no longer merely a regional waterway; it is part of the infrastructure of global power. Eritrea sits directly on it.

That geographic reality explains why the question of sovereignty cannot be separated from the wider transformation of the Red Sea. As competition intensifies around ports and corridors, Eritrea’s coastline inevitably acquires greater strategic value—and with greater strategic value comes greater external interest.

Eritrea’s Strategic Geography: Cooperation Without Dependency

Eritrea possesses an extensive coastline along one of the world’s most consequential maritime environments. Massawa, Assab, the Dahlak Archipelago and the western Red Sea littoral are therefore not simply geographic features; they are strategic assets.

This geography helps explain both the recurring interest of external powers in Eritrea and its longstanding caution toward foreign military entanglements. The fundamental Eritrean concern is not foreign investment, trade with Gulf states or cooperation with outside powers. The concern arises when temporary cooperation threatens to become structural dependency. That is the dividing line.

A sovereign state can cooperate with numerous countries while preserving its independence. Conversely, a state can become so dependent upon a single patron that it gradually loses the ability to determine its own strategic direction. Eritrea’s approach has therefore emphasized maneuverability rather than isolation. The objective is autonomy.

Seen from this perspective, the thesis of an “end of the Emirati project” becomes inadequate. Even if Abu Dhabi loses influence in Ethiopia, China does not disappear. If Emirati influence in Sudan declines, Turkey does not leave the Horn. If Berbera becomes more closely aligned with Israel, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United States, and other actors do not cease to have interests in the regional equation.

Governments may rise and fall, but geography remains. Ports remain, trade routes remain, minerals remain, and the Bab el-Mandeb and Red Sea remain central to global commerce and security. Foreign powers will therefore continue competing for influence in the region.

The challenge facing African states is not to eliminate foreign interest, which is neither realistic nor necessarily desirable. It is to ensure that foreign interest does not become foreign control. Here again, Eritrea’s experience at Assab offers a useful regional case study. The UAE could build infrastructure, deploy forces and use Eritrean territory in connection with a specific war, but when strategic circumstances changed, the relationship changed while the territorial status of Assab did not.

That distinction deserves wider attention in African strategic thinking. Investment is not sovereignty. A port concession is not territorial ownership. Military cooperation is not a transfer of national authority. A security partnership does not create a permanent geopolitical entitlement. Foreign capital does not grant another government the right to determine an African state’s national priorities.

These principles do not require isolation from the world. On the contrary, they provide the basis on which mutually beneficial international cooperation can take place without compromising national sovereignty. They also suggest a broader African lesson: the value of strategic geography increases when states retain the freedom to negotiate with multiple partners rather than becoming permanently incorporated into the security architecture of any one external power.

This brings the argument back to the larger issue with which it began. The central question is not whether the UAE, China, Turkey, the United States or another power is winning the latest round of geopolitical competition. The real question is whether African states themselves will determine the terms on which that competition takes place.

The Red Sea Must Not Become Another Foreign Chessboard

The UAE’s African strategy may contract in some theaters and expand in others, just as the influence of China, Turkey, the United States, Russia, Israel, and Saudi Arabia will continue to evolve. External powers will come and go, alliances will change and strategic priorities will shift, but Africa will remain.

The central issue is therefore who controls the political terms under which external powers operate. This is why the debate must move beyond the simplistic language of “winners” and “losers.” The UAE is not necessarily “losing Africa,” nor is Africa collectively “rejecting” the UAE. Something more complex is taking place.

African states are becoming increasingly conscious that ports, minerals, agricultural land, airspace, maritime corridors, military facilities and diplomatic recognition are not merely isolated transactions. Taken together, they constitute strategic power. Once that reality is recognized, foreign partnerships must be evaluated through a more consequential question: What does Africa receive in return for granting access to its strategic geography, and what degree of political autonomy does it retain after doing so?

For Eritrea, the answer begins with geography because the Red Sea is not an external theater; it is the country’s immediate strategic environment. Assab is more than a port, Massawa more than a commercial facility, and the Dahlaks more than a collection of islands. Together with the broader coastline, they form an integral part of Eritrea’s sovereignty and national security.

That reality cannot be negotiated away according to changing geopolitical fashions. Governments, alliances, investors and military partnerships may change, but sovereign territory does not become temporary merely because an external power develops an interest in it. This is the enduring lesson of Assab, the lesson made increasingly urgent by Ethiopia’s current crisis, and the lesson made increasingly painful by Sudan’s war.

The Horn of Africa has spent too much of its modern history being treated as an arena for other powers rather than as a collection of sovereign political communities. Foreign states have repeatedly arrived with security doctrines, ideological projects, military partnerships, development programs and commercial ambitions. Some have built useful infrastructure and productive alliances; some have contributed to temporary stability; others have deepened conflict and war.

The record is not uniform, but one lesson appears repeatedly: when African states lose control over the strategic terms of foreign involvement, foreign competition eventually becomes an African security problem.

That is why the emerging Red Sea order must be viewed from Asmara, Addis Ababa, Khartoum, Mogadishu and other African capitals, not merely from Abu Dhabi, Washington, Ankara, Cairo, Riyadh, Jerusalem, Beijing or Moscow. The future of the region cannot be reduced to the success or failure of one Emirati strategy. The UAE will remain an important actor, but it is only one among many.

The deeper contest is between a Red Sea increasingly organized around external strategic competition and one in which the littoral states retain meaningful political agency. For Eritrea, the principle is straightforward: foreign military cooperation must not become permanent dependency; sovereign territory must not be surrendered; external security arrangements must not override national decision-making; and African geography must never be converted into somebody else’s strategic property.

None of this precludes cooperation. Trade, investment, diplomacy and security partnerships remain possible and, under the right conditions, desirable. But sovereignty must remain their foundation.

The future of the Horn will therefore not ultimately be determined by whether Abu Dhabi succeeds in Ethiopia, whether an alliance in Addis Ababa survives, whether the RSF retains territory in Sudan, whether Berbera develops into a larger maritime hub, or whether another external power establishes a foothold along the Red Sea. Those developments matter, but they are variables within a much larger strategic equation.

The enduring question is whether African states can transform their geography from an object of foreign competition into an instrument of African strategic agency.

For Eritrea, this is not a new doctrine. It reflects a logic that has shaped its approach to sovereignty for decades: cooperation without dependency, access without ownership, and partnership without surrendering national decision-making.

The Red Sea is not Abu Dhabi’s chessboard. It is not Washington’s chessboard, nor Ankara’s, Tehran’s, Moscow’s or Beijing’s. Eritrea’s coastline is not a bargaining chip.

The decisive contest of the coming era will therefore not simply be over which foreign power gains the greatest influence in the Horn. It will be over whether the states of the Horn retain the sovereign capacity to define their own future.