Ethiopia needs a reliable seaport and a navy

In order to secure its economic future, Eastern Africa's wobbly giant must overcome the landlockedness penalty.

I: The largest landlocked country in the world

I have always found it puzzling that, in negotiating the potential future independence of Eritrea, Meles Zenawi and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) did not put up a spirited fight to lock in direct ownership of a port on the Red Sea. Throughout the war to dislodge the Derg from power, the TPLF never wavered on its support for eventual Eritrean independence. Perhaps it was the ineluctable consequence of the Eritrea Peoples Liberation Front’s (EPLF) upper hand in the early stages of the military alliance against the Derg, especially after the 1985 ideological fallout; a resignation to the fact that federation or annexation was never going to work; or a belief that Eritrea would see the economic benefits of being the gateway to a post-Derg Ethiopia.

It is also possible that the TPLF leadership thought they could keep the EPLF onside to honor port access rights by directly interfering in Eritrean politics after independence. After …