Addis Abeba — Ethiopia has longstanding relations with countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America. These relations–political, security, diplomatic, economic, and cultural–have been developing over the years. While these relations naturally experienced ups and downs at different points in the past, the interactional experience along the way partly helped forge relatively predictable, stable, and dependable interactions–something the post-Trump world appears to question.
In this specific context, Ethiopia has managed to secure relatively predictable, stable, and dependable relations with such countries as China, Türkiye, India, Russia, and others. However, as the next paragraphs attempt to explicate, it would be at best an overestimation to think the same for the UAE-Ethiopia relations.
The UAE’s relation with Ethiopia (the configuration of this sentence is for a reason that comes next) has two unequivocal temporal contours: pre-2018 and post-2018. Before the advent of Ethiopia’s current administration, the UAE was none other than a remote and tiny monarchy that had no strategic or tactical value to the TPLF-led EPRDF regime in Ethiopia.
Certainly, there were some Ethiopian importers from Dubai, Ethiopian women laborers (legal or not), illicit financial flows (and possibly gold), and others. On the other hand, the same thing could be said about the UAE’s actual engagement with Ethiopia. At best, the UAE could have only maintained a lower-to-modest level of economic and diplomatic relations with Ethiopia. However, this was changed suddenly and radically in 2018, something that led many to question the nature and future of the UAE-Ethiopia relations.
Essentially, the UAE came out of the blue and started overtly showing interest in Ethiopia and its foreign relations. In June 2018, Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed visited Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Abeba, and announced a plan to provide a $3 billion economic lifeline, $1 billion in central bank deposits, and $2 billion in investments to relieve Ethiopia’s severe foreign currency shortages. Subsequent engagements, including agreements and memoranda of understanding (MoUs), promised investments in industrial parks, renewable energy, manufacturing, food security and agricultural development, and tourism. In a span of five years, the UAE managed to invest nearly $2.9 billion, making it one of the top five FDI countries in Ethiopia. Now, the UAE closely follows China, Türkiye, India, and Saudi Arabia in Ethiopia.
On the other hand, spearheaded by the UAE and its partner-turned-geopolitical contender, Saudi Arabia, they were able to initiate the now-defunct “rapprochement” between Ethiopia and Eritrea in 2018, subsequently paving the way for Ethiopia’s current prime minister to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019. Following the short-lived euphoria and the intense rhetorical exchanges between the governments of Eritrea and Ethiopia, the Saudi monarch largely chose to side with Eritrea. However, the UAE has conveniently switched sides between the two and now openly works with and supports the Ethiopian government.
The same is true when it comes to the ongoing civil war in Sudan. In short, one hardly finds a fundamental difference and incompatibility between the UAE’s Horn of Africa foreign policy and that of Ethiopia, from Sudan and Somalia to Somaliland; rather, what we are increasingly observing is nothing short of complementarities and compatibilities in different times and places since 2018. Yet, one would question, to what extent does this post-2018 relationship represent a strategic partnership between the UAE and Ethiopia? Below is a reflective summary of two major problems that arguably betray any hope in this direction.
UAE in Horn of Africa: Power, profit, and dangerous ties
For one thing, it must be plainly spelled out that interstate relations, essentially any relations for that matter, that have not evolved through time, often tested and strengthened by (and/or in) the process, are less likely to be mutual, dependable, and sustainable. Approached from the perspective of least developed countries like Ethiopia, as they are not the ones who strategically initiate the interaction in the first place, they are unlikely to determine the nature, course, and future of relations. It is almost a cliché that economically poor and politically weaker states are less likely to act assertively in the international arena. Rather, they are more likely to be on the receiving end of the terms and conditions of wealthy and powerful states. We are talking about relatively vertical, not horizontal, relations.
There is hardly any evidence that substantiates mutually beneficial relations between the UAE and any other poor or developing country.”
Not only do weaker and poorer states generally lack political agency in international relations, but some circumstances aggravate their conditions vis-à-vis powerful states. Among other things, natural disasters, economic crises, and wars in poor and weak states readily invite powerful states and actors. Usually, this happens by forceful intrusion (“exporting” democracy and human rights) or following the desperate call for help from the poor countries themselves. Admittedly, these two sometimes can get blurry. Yet, the cumulative experience from Africa, South America, and the Middle East shows that those on the receiving end are only expendables that eventually languish in dependency and exploitative relations. Accordingly, it is in this context that we need to (re)think about the nature, course, and future of the UAE-Ethiopia relations.
Secondly, the UAE remains one of the states with the worst records in international relations and political and economic ventures worldwide. Some recent experiences provide more meaningful context to this claim. Abu Dhabi and its partner-turned-geopolitical contender, Saudi Arabia, were able to collectively and systematically choke Qatar via diplomatic, transport, and trade blockades in 2017. Similarly, before rejuvenating its murky relations with Türkiye very recently, the UAE was allegedly involved in the 2016 coup attempt to topple Türkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Furthermore, the monarch has been known to finance warlords and chaos in such countries as Yemen, Libya, Egypt, and Sudan. The Trucial States provided everything needed to help bring El-Sisi to power in Egypt. For many years, it backed the Libyan warlord general Khalifa Haftar in its fight against the UN-recognized Libyan government. The UAE has been accused of secretly supplying the necessary military equipment, such as drones and weapons, to Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemedti), the warlord who leads the RSF fighters in Sudan’s ongoing civil war.
Except for Ethiopia, the UAE remains the least liked foreign actor in the Horn of Africa. Among other things, the UAE’s Red Sea venture largely proved fatal and counterproductive, especially the effort to facilitate Somaliland’s recognition in exchange for something else, including access to the Red Sea from the east coast.
Interestingly, Israel’s recent recognition of Somaliland brought to life another palpable dimension equally important in making sense of the recent and sudden appearance of the UAE in the Horn of Africa. Nevertheless, for this and other reasons, the monarchy now has extraordinarily poor relations with Eritrea, Djibouti, and Somalia while arguably maintaining dubious transactional interaction with Ethiopia and Somaliland.
It is not only that the UAE has a bad reputation for forging and maintaining dependable and sustainable international relations in the sphere of politics, but also equally problematic are its financial and investment deals in Africa and beyond. The monarch has been accused of engaging in resource misuse, exploitation, corruption, and human rights abuses in many African countries. This included the UAE’s relatively complex network of undeclared, illegal, and/or illicit gold and other mineral smuggling and acquisition activities (such as in Zimbabwe and Sudan), high and unfair tax avoidance (such as in Mozambique), and land grab, displacement, and misuse (such as in Madagascar and Tanzania). Of these, it was reported, “Zimbabwe leads Africa in undeclared gold exports to UAE,” perhaps now next to Sudan.Close
UAE’s unhinged realism, Ethiopia’s fragility
What do all these mean for UAE-Ethiopia relations? If anything, the UAE’s recent political and economic ventures in Africa and elsewhere can only signify two things. First, the monarchy pursues its economic and geopolitical aspirations, often at the expense of others, poor and weak states. In other words, the UAE’s foreign policy is largely driven by Machiavellian political realism, often leaving wounds and scars wherever it goes and on everything it touches. In this regard, the UAE’s recent adventures in Libya, Egypt, and Sudan provide watertight cases.
Second, there is hardly any evidence that substantiates mutually beneficial relations between the UAE and any other poor or developing country. Rather, it appears those countries stand to lose, not gain, from their relations with the UAE. While the UAE’s sudden appearance in the Horn of Africa in general and Ethiopia in particular might have been driven by its own geopolitical and economic aspirations as well as its allies, such as Israel, the overall political economy of Ethiopia in post-2018 cannot be overlooked in this regard.
Since 2018, Ethiopia has been going through a period of contested political transition, the proliferation of insurgent groups, civil war, dwindling foreign currency reserves, unprecedented currency depreciation, and growing inflation. This was further exacerbated by foreign aid cuts like the USAID and Ethiopia’s suspension from AGOA membership. Consequently, Ethiopia’s overall desperate conditions might have called for desperate actions, making a Faustian bargain with the devil necessary and palatable. AS
Editor’s Note: Mukerrem Miftah (Ph.D.) is a senior researcher and lecturer of political sociology and policy studies at the Ethiopian Public Service University in Addis Abeba. He can be reached at mukeremmifta@gmail.com