In the first bilateral visit to Somalia since the two nations plunged into a diplomatic rift last year, Ethiopia’s Defence Minister Aisha Mohammed Mussa paid a significant visit there on Thursday. Relations had soured after Ethiopia entered into a controversial agreement with Somaliland, a breakaway Somali region, to establish a naval base and commercial port. This deal has been met with widespread outrage in Mogadishu, which considers Somaliland as part of its territory and termed the agreement an act of aggression.
The Somali state minister for foreign affairs, Ali Omar, confirmed Mussa’s visit but did not specify the topics discussed during her trip. Ethiopia has a military presence in Somalia, with approximately 10,000 troops deployed to combat the Islamist militant group al-Shabaab. However, the strained relationship over the naval base deal prompted Somalia to threaten expelling Ethiopian forces unless the agreement was revoked.
The deal, signed in 2023, is a deal whereby Somaliland leased part of its coastline to Ethiopia to build a naval base and port. In return, Ethiopia was to consider supporting Somaliland’s bid for independence, which the latter declared unilaterally in 1991 and has not been recognized by the international community since then.
As tensions heightened, Ethiopia and Somalia agreed to resume talks in December 2024, after a series of talks held in Turkey. The two sides agreed to start technical negotiations by February 2025 to solve the dispute. While the Ethiopian troops are deployed in Somalia within the context of a deployment of an African Union peacekeeping mission and bilateral cooperation, regional anxieties have grown surrounding the potential blowback if troops are withdrawn, especially in combating al-Shabaab. Somalia had reacted to Ethiopia’s deal with Somaliland by deepening its relations with Ethiopia’s regional arch-rivals, Egypt and Eritrea.
This visit could signal a potential thaw in relations, as both countries seek to address their differences while continuing to combat regional threats.
