China and the African Union: Infrastructure and Trade Deficits in Strategic Infrastructure in the Horn of Africa

Benedikt Kamski and Nizar Manek
2021, Routledge Handbook on the Horn of Africa (11-pages)

Introduction

Policy makers have recognized regional infrastructure development as a pivot for economic growth and structural transformation in Africa. Adequate transportation, energy, and communication infrastructure is an essential component for successful regional and economic integration. The Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA) was launched against this background in 2012 as the African Union’s (AU) common framework for infrastructure development. However, the African Infrastructure Development Index (AIDI) and Logistic Performance Index (LPI) both provide clear indications for existing infrastructure deficits and how regional trade is affected by limited cross-border transportation links especially across the Horn of Africa.
The nexus between infrastructure and growth has received considerable attention in the academic literature on development and a large body of work has dealt with the importance of infrastructure as a catalyst for peace and poverty reduction in Africa. Considerable literature has been published on the positive effects on trade and economic efficiency stemming from improved transportation infrastructure. Several case studies provide evidence on the ‘symbolic meaning’ and ‘practical effects’ for governments of large-scale physical infrastructure in developing states such as Ethiopia In the literature on the Horn of Africa, Djibouti’s critical geo-strategic position as the core transportation gateway from the Red Sea and an a entrepôt for world powers and the development of hydropower dams in Ethiopia takes a prominent place, while more recent attention has focused on individual projects such as the Lamu Port South Sudan Ethiopia Transport Corridor (LAPSSET) and the Addis Ababa-Djibouti Railway. Moreover, the strategic importance of Africa’s eastern maritime countries for China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) has been explored in several studies and considerable literature has been published on China’s engagement in the construction and transportation sectors in Africa. However, far too little attention has been paid to the overlapping objectives of BRI and PIDA and potential scenarios stemming from the competing priorities of Beijing and the AU in developing strategic transport and maritime infrastructure in the Horn of Africa.
The goal of the present chapter is to provide an overview of major regional infrastructure projects in the Horn of Africa and their politico-economic interlinkages. Focusing on transportation infrastructure, we review existing continental, regional, and national initiatives and policies that guide the planning, financing, and implementation of these large-scale interventions. Besides assessing the state of trans-boundary rail and road links, this chapter pays special attention to the role of seaports and maritime corridors and how the construction of new harbours is likely to affect regional trade and transportation dynamics. The case studies presented in this chapter, constructed from author interviews with ranking officials in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somaliland from 2016-19, do not exhaustively consider the large-scale infrastructure projects in the region. We restrict the geographical scope of our analysis mainly to Djibouti and Ethiopia and focus on the transport sector.
The chapter begins describing the background and implementation strategy of PIDA as well as related national and regional development priorities in the Horn of Africa. We then review institutional arrangements of the BRI and the role of the private sector for infrastructure development. While the third section also delves into selected case studies, the final section discusses potential scenarios and challenges related to the expansion of transportation infrastructure across the Horn of Africa.

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780429426957-63/china-african-union-benedikt-kamski-nizar-manek

Lasting Tigray-Ethiopian government peace agreement unlikely

Ethiopian government forces halted significant Tigray Defence Forces (TDF) advances in December, but the government's position is perilous. Jordan Anderson, Bisrat Semere, and Nizar Manek analyse three scenarios for how the Ethiopian conflict may develop.
Janes Intelligence Review, January 6 2022
The Ethiopian federal government announced on 23 December that its offensive operations against the Tigray Defence Forces (TDF) had been halted following an announcement by the TDF-aligned Government of Tigray (GoT) on 20 December that the TDF had withdrawn from Amhara and Afar regions. The move followed a counter-offensive by federal government forces in late November in response to a TPLF push that prompted a state of emergency in early November.
Ethiopia's civil war began with pre-emptive attacks by Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF)-aligned forces in Tigray against the Ethiopian National Defence Force's (ENDF) Northern Command on 3-4 November 2020. The TPLF had until then been Tigray's governing party, and the dominant wing of Ethiopia's ruling coalition until early 2018. The TDF was formed in 2020 as the military wing of the TPLF-dominated GoT.
In the three months preceding the civil war, as reported to Janes by an Eritrean opposition leader in Ethiopia in October 2020, nomads filtering into Eritrea through Ethiopia's Afar regional state and Port Sudan observed co-ordinated military training in Eritrea between the ENDF and the Eritrean Defence Forces (EDF). The sources additionally observed the installation of radar equipment in Agordat city in Eritrea's Gash-Barka region, which borders Tigray. TDF attacks followed ENDF and EDF movements towards the Badme, Zalambessa, and Rama fronts at the Eritrea-Tigray border, Eritrean soldiers and militiamen supporting relevant Eritrean mechanised and infantry divisions reported to Janes in late 2020 and early 2021 both before and after returning to Eritrea.
(2,500 words)
PDF link

Deepening division

State Stability: Delayed Ethiopian poll likely to be disrupted by ongoing conflict
Countrywide ethnic tensions and severe ongoing violence will underpin Ethiopia’s upcoming election. Jordan Anderson and Nizar Manek consider the historical backdrop and the likely outcomes.
Janes Intelligence Review, May 28 2021
Ethiopia’s general election, originally scheduled for August 2020 but delayed amid the Covid-19 pandemic, is set for 5 June. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is looking to secure a mandate for his Prosperity Party (PP), formed in November 2019 out of the parties in Ethiopia’s former ruling coalition, the Ethio- pian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), with the exception of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), with which he went to war in November 2020.
The conditions for holding the polls are worse than in 2020. Despite limited testing, by 20 April the Ministry of Health had recorded a cumulative total of almost 250,000 Covid-19 cases in a country with a population of more than 100 million. Separately, on 23 March Abiy told parliament that the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) was “in a major fight on eight fronts” against armed groups in north and west Ethiopia. These fronts include the conflict in the Tigray region, where forces working with the ENDF – Amhara special forces and militia, and Eritrean troops – are fighting forces aligned with the TPLF, the region’s former ruling party that Abiy replaced at the end of November 2020 with PP affiliates as the transitional administration. The ENDF is also combating an insurgency by the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) in western and southern Oromia.
A former official with ties to the Prime Minister’s Office told Janes in April that several of Abiy’s aides had privately expressed regret about not having held an election and secured a mandate in 2020, saying that Abiy wanted to hold an election at all costs. Major international donors from the Development Assistance Group (DAG), comprising 30 bilateral and multilat- eral development agencies, reported to Janes in April that Abiy had indicated to the DAG a willingness to negotiate, including on hold- ing a national dialogue and releasing political prisoners, but that he had made this conditional on first holding an election. According to those same sources, Abiy wanted to buy time and secure a five-year mandate.
(3,000 words)
PDF link
https://www.janes.com/defence-news/news-detail/delayed-ethiopian-poll-likely-to-be-disrupted-by-ongoing-conflict

Ethiopia’s Wars

Nizar Manek and Jean-Baptiste Gallopin, December 9 2020
London Review of Books blog
At the end of November, Ethiopia’s war with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front saw federal troops press on towards Mekelle, the Tigrayan state capital. The TPLF’s fortunes are at their nadir. From 1991 to 2018, the party was the dominant force in Ethiopian politics. Tensions with the Ethiopian prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, had been building steadily since he sidelined the TPLF from government two years ago, part of a centralising drive that put in question the regional autonomy of Tigray and other federal states, supposedly guaranteed by the constitution. For the past few months, there had been talk of possible transfers of territory from Tigray to the neighbouring region of Amhara. At the beginning of last month, the TPLF captured the federal army’s Northern Command, describing it as a pre-emptive measure against attack.
Ethiopia’s latest civil war is being closely observed by Ethiopia’s neighbours, Sudan and South Sudan, but also – from further afield – by Egypt. For Cairo, water is the issue, and the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile. On 28 November, Egypt’s president, Abd al-Fattah al-Sisi, arrived in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, to meet with his counterpart, Salva Kiir. Sisi was accompanied by the head of his intelligence service. Egypt had just completed two high-profile joint military exercises in Sudan. At the Marwa air base near Khartoum, the Sudanese military chief of staff had vowed to deter the country’s enemies and protect its borders.
(1,300 words)
https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2020/december/ethiopia-s-wars

Sudan Will Decide the Outcome of the Ethiopian Civil War

As Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed goes to war against Ethiopia’s former rulers—the Tigray People’s Liberation Front—Khartoum’s moves will determine whether the conflict remains a local affair or a regional conflagration.
By NIZAR MANEK and MOHAMED KHEIR OMAR, November 14 2020, Foreign Policy
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia—While the world girded for the U.S. election in early November, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed launched a war against the northern region of Tigray. The region is home to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front—the party that dominated Ethiopian politics for decades and has since been displaced and sidelined as Abiy has sought to consolidate power and made peace with the TPLF’s archenemy, Eritrea.
But the TPLF has not gone quietly; in September, the regional government it leads held local elections that the central government refused to recognize in October. Then, on Nov. 3, following provocations by Abiy, it took control of personnel, military hardware, and equipment from the federal army’s Northern Command, prompting Addis Ababa to declare war against a region that remains home to a sizable portion of the Ethiopian federal army’s arsenal and forces, given its position along the long-contested and still undemarcated border with Eritrea.
Abiy has long accused the TPLF old guard of seeking to sabotage his government and his purported reforms. But now, facing all-out war against a formidable foe, the outcome will turn on the choices of Ethiopia’s neighbors—Sudan and Eritrea.
(2,885 words)
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/11/14/sudan-will-decide-outcome-ethiopian-civil-war-abiy-tigray/

Sudan's International Relations in Regime Change

Jean-Baptiste Gallopin and Nizar Manek
October 2020, Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (18 pages)

Executive summary

Sudan is navigating a difficult political transition. In 2019, a revolutionary uprising brought on by an economic crisis and decades of authoritarian rule prompted a military coup against then President Omar al-Bashir. In a power sharing agreement sealed in August 2019, the political opposition agreed to share power with the generals who overthrew Bashir.
Regime change in Sudan took place at a momentous time for the country’s neighborhood. Politics in the Horn of Africa and the Persian Gulf – long considered distinct strategic regions – have become increasingly entangled. In parallel, growing inter-state competition and a predominance of bilateralism have become defining facts of regional interactions.
In the unsettled balance of power of the region, the direction of the Sudanese transition and the foreign orientation of the transitional regime have become stakes for the power plays of outside powers. Sudanese factions have sought the support of, and faced pressure from, regional states and global powers which are seeking to shape Sudan’s positions in salient issues – in negotiations over Nile waters, on the question of Arab normalization with Israel, and also in the rivalries pitting Iran, Turkey and Qatar against the so-called “Arab Troika” (the United Arab Emirates, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and Egypt).
Regional intervention decisively shaped the initial direction of Sudan’s transition in 2019, when Saudi Arabia and the UAE provided critical support to the junta that overthrew Omar al-Bashir, allowing it to resist popular demands for civilian rule and accountability for the crimes of Bashir’s government. Sudan now stands firmly in the Arab Troika’s orbit.
But the demands of the Arab Troika and those of the United States have caused tensions among the components of Sudan’s transitional authorities and placed obstacles on the country’s path to economic recovery. In October, President Donald Trump finally announced he will ask Congress to lift the State Sponsor of Terrorism (SST) Designation which has hampered economic normalization between Sudan and Western countries, but Sudan’s economy has now collapsed and the prospects for further political destabilization are rising.

https://www.kas.de/en/web/poldimed/single-title/-/content/spotlight-on-sudan-sudan-s-international-relations-in-regime-change

Eritrean refugees: Still caught in a game of “political football”

By Natalia Paszkiewicz and Nizar Manek, May 15 2020
The Africa Report
Ethiopia is planning to shut a camp and is refusing prima facie acceptance of Eritrean refugees ensnared in toxic rivalries between Addis Ababa, Tigray, and Asmara.
A year ago, Tigrayan minibus drivers gave discounted rates to newly arrived Eritrean refugees who travelled to the town of Shire, especially if they were attractive young women. There was flirting and jokes in a packed minibus with loud Tigrinya music in the background and white netela scarves frantically danced in the wind when the driver sped up to impress the girls. It seemed like a school trip. Nobody could have guessed that the young people on the bus had fled Eritrea. The driver’s brother said in a wide hypodontia smile, “These are our Tigrinya brothers and sisters: we are happy to welcome them.”
A darker reality lay not far beneath, namely views of an independent state of Tigray, incorporating at least a part of Eritrea. During the bus ride between Hitstas and the nearest town, Shire in the Ethiopian province of Tigray, which borders Eritrea, was being buoyed up with nostalgia and nationalism about the Axumite Kingdom, which many centuries earlier had lost control of Red Sea trade to an Arab caliphate. And last century, Ethiopia lost access to the Port of Assab, as Eritrea became independent.
(1,574 words)
https://www.theafricareport.com/28085/eritrean-refugees-still-caught-in-a-game-of-political-football/

Refugees in crossfire

Africa Confidential Vol 61 No 10, May 15 2020
ERITREA/ ETHIOPIA
Ethiopia no longer automatically gives refugee status to fleeing Eritreans. Neither they nor their Tigrayan hosts are happy about it
The Ethiopian federal government's treatment of refugees from Eritrea is causing concern both in the Tigray regional government, with which it is already at odds, and among refugees. The national Agency for Refugees and Returnees Affairs (ARRA) is planning to close one of the refugee camps and is refusing to automatically grant asylum to Eritreans who cross the border fleeing unemployment, poverty and compulsory lengthy service in the armed forces.
(766 words)
https://www.africa-confidential.com/article-preview/id/12964/Refugees_in_crossfire

‘Down with Issayas! Down with Abiy!’

Nizar Manek and Natalia Paszkiewicz, May 7 2020
London Review of Books blog
The refugee camp at Hitsats, an hour’s drive through the mountains from the town of Shire, in the Ethiopian province of Tigray, consists of simple block structures with corrugated iron roofs. Skinny cows congregate in the shade of the buildings, oblivious to the humanitarian agency traffic lumbering past. Tigray lies along Ethiopia’s border with Eritrea, and Hitsats now accommodates at least 12,000 Eritreans, fleeing the regime in Asmara. Last August, during the rainy season, the number stood at 34,000. New refugees were arriving daily, following a 2018 peace deal between the two countries, which threatened to choke off prospective Eritrean asylum seekers.
Abiy Ahmed, the new Ethiopian prime minister, had rolled out a policy conceived under his predecessor, Hailemariam Desalegn, to bring Issayas Afeworki’s Eritrean regime in from the cold, after years of intermittent war. The Ethiopians also wanted to guard against the activities of opportunistic outsiders who had established military bases on the Red Sea littoral, in Djibouti, Somalia and Eritrea.
(865 words)
https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2020/may/down-with-issayas!-down-with-abiy!

„Am Ende kann nur Gott uns helfen.“ Das Coronavirus in Äthiopien

Von Nizar Manek und Alexander Meckelburg
Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte,, Äthiopien, APuZ 18-19/2020, April 24 2020
Seit Mitte März 2020 klingt vor jedem Telefonat in Äthiopien eine freundliche Stimme aus dem Hörer, die auf Amharisch über den Umgang mit dem neuartigen Coronavirus aufklärt: Man möge sich die Hände waschen und genügend Abstand zum Gegenüber halten. Bereits zuvor hatten einige Apotheken in Addis Abeba handgeschriebene Schilder an ihren Türen angebracht: ፈዝ ማስክ የልለም – „fez mask yälläm“ – „keine Gesichtsmasken verfügbar“, während sich an den Tankstellen der Stadt kilometerlange Schlangen bildeten. „Korona“, so die amharische Transliteration, hat im Bewusstsein der meisten Bürgerinnen und Bürger recht plötzlich einen festen Platz eingenommen.
Schon seit Wochen war in der Stadt über das Virus und seine weltweite Verbreitung gemunkelt worden. Doch nach der Bestätigung des ersten Covid-19-Falles in Äthiopien am 12. März kam stellenweise Panik auf. Für viele Äthiopierinnen und Äthiopier war Corona vor allem eine Gefahr von außen: Das durch das Virus verursachte Lungenleiden wurde zunächst als „ausländische“ und „chinesische Krankheit“ bezeichnet. Der erste bestätigte Fall soll ein japanischer Staatsbürger gewesen sein, auch die nächsten bekannten Fälle hatten allesamt eine „Reisegeschichte“. In der Folge wurden Ausländer mehrfach von Mitfahrten in Minibussen ausgeschlossen, teilweise auch auf der Straße bedroht und angegriffen.
(2,223 words)
https://m.bpb.de/system/files/dokument_pdf/APuZ_2020-18-19_online_1.pdf
https://m.bpb.de/apuz/308160/am-ende-kann-nur-gott-uns-helfen-das-coronavirus-in-aethiopien

Cairo and Addis split over dam

Africa Confidential Vol 61 No 6, March 19 2020
EGYPT/ ETHIOPIA/ SUDAN
Ethiopia has pulled out of US-hosted talks on the Blue Nile project as bitterness and mistrust grow
Ethiopia is courting regional states and the African Union to bolster its diplomatic position after pulling out of United States-mediated talks on the filling and operations of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). Addis Ababa feels isolated and angry that, as it sees it, the US is taking the side of Egypt. The US produced a 'final agreement' which Egypt initialled but Ethiopia and Sudan did not.
(757 words)
https://www.africa-confidential.com/article-preview/id/12895/Cairo_and_Addis_split_over_dam

States of expectation

Africa Confidential, Vol 60 No 24, December 5 2019
ETHIOPIA
Other nations are queuing up to stake their claims to self-government in the wake of the Sidama referendum result
Even before voting began in November's referendum on Ethiopia's tenth regional state, plans were advancing to form a Sidama branch of Abiy Ahmed's new ruling party, the Prosperity Party. The PP is the product of Abiy's rapid recasting of the Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Democratic Front. All but one of the constituent regional parties in the EPRDF have been fused and renamed as the PP. The exception is the previously dominant Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF).
(862 words)
https://www.africa-confidential.com/article-preview/id/12813/States_of_expectation

Referendum Tests Ethiopia’s Ability for Peaceful Elections

By Nizar Manek, November 20 2019
(Bloomberg) --
Ethiopia’s ethnic Sidama voted Wednesday in a referendum on creating a new regional state, the likely precursor to a series of plebiscites that will test demands for more autonomy.
Besides offering an indication of the Horn of Africa nation’s ability to hold a peaceful general election slated for next year, it will also gauge whether the country’s political model of ethnic federalism can accommodate growing calls for self-determination amid clashes between groups.
(304 words)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-20/referendum-tests-ethiopia-s-ability-to-hold-peaceful-elections

Prize fight

Africa Confidential, Vol 60 No 22, 7 November 2019
ETHIOPIA
Selected as a Nobel Peace Laureate, the Prime Minister faces mayhem in his home region
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is pushing to merge all the ruling Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Democratic Front's regional member organisations, as well as affiliated ruling parties from other federal states, into a single unit, dissolving their particular national, or ethnic, identities. The structure under formation, whose working name is believed to be the Ethiopian Prosperity Party, would then discard the EPRDF's Leninist cladding and instead follow Abiy's Medemer ('synergy') theory, a personal philosophy he has enshrined in a book which he offers as a road-map to Ethiopia's political future. Critics have called Medemer an ideological mish-mash coated in self-help evangelism. 
Supporters assert that the merger, which Abiy wants completed before the polls set for May, would ensure true multinational federalism by integrating representatives of the five peripheral regions into national political decision-making. But that is not how hold-outs like the Tigray People's Liberation Front, once-dominant within the EPRDF, see it. The TPLF, lead architects of the 25-year-old federal system managed by the EPRDF, says now is not the right time to try and consolidate a coalition. The EPRDF is currently an alliance only in name, they say. They are afraid that removing constituent members' regional identities would be the first step towards ending devolved, ethnic self-rule, which is enshrined in the constitution. That, says Abiy's office, is mere fear-mongering. 
(1,464 words)
https://www.africa-confidential.com/article/id/12787/Prize_fight