Ethiopia and Djibouti Race to Link Ports by Rail as the Sea-Access Question Simmers

Landlocked Ethiopia's quest for reliable access to the sea — one of the defining strategic questions of the Horn of Africa — is advancing on parallel tracks: pragmatic infrastructure deals with Djibouti on one hand, and contested diplomatic gambits on the other.

The pragmatic track is moving fastest. Ethiopia and Djibouti have agreed to connect key strategic ports to the Ethio-Djibouti Railway by the end of 2026, with rail links to the Doraleh Multipurpose Port and an oil terminal targeted for completion by November. For Ethiopia, which spends about $1.5 billion a year on Djibouti port access alone, tighter rail integration promises to lower the cost of the corridor that carries the vast bulk of its external trade.

The diplomatic track is more tangled. Djibouti revealed that Ethiopia declined an offer to acquire a majority stake in one of its ports — the government had offered a 60 percent share in the port of Tadjoura — with Addis Ababa preferring a corridor arrangement instead. The episode hinted at Ethiopia's deeper ambition: not merely renting access to someone else's coastline, but securing sovereign or quasi-sovereign access of its own.

That ambition is precisely what has unsettled the region since Ethiopia signed a memorandum of understanding with Somaliland in January 2024, offering potential coastal access in exchange for possible recognition of the breakaway republic — a deal that enraged Somalia and drew in outside powers. Talks between Ethiopia and Somalia over port access have made progress since, but the underlying tension remains unresolved.