As Cairo insists that Red Sea affairs belong to coastal states while demanding recognition of its downstream interests on the Nile, a former senior U.S. diplomat is forcing an uncomfortable question back onto the regional agenda: if Ethiopia’s need for secure maritime access is legitimate, where does Berbera fit?
Egypt’s long-running confrontation with Ethiopia over the Nile has always been about more than water. It is about power, geography, and who gets to define the rules of a changing region. Now the Red Sea has become part of the same argument.
From the Nile to Berbera
In an interview with Pulse of Africa published on September 3, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Tibor Nagy challenged Cairo on both fronts. Egypt, he argued, must adjust to a new regional balance in which Ethiopia is larger, more assertive and increasingly unwilling to accept arrangements inherited from an earlier colonial era.
But Nagy’s most important intervention was not his criticism of Egypt’s Nile policy. It was the connection he drew between the Nile and Ethiopia’s search for access to the Red Sea. Egypt has repeatedly argued that the security and governance of the Red Sea should remain the responsibility of its littoral states. Egypt’s State Information Service has reiterated that position in reporting on Cairo’s regional diplomacy. Egypt State Information Service.
Nagy turned that logic around. If Egypt argues that only countries physically bordering the Red Sea should determine its affairs, he suggested, then by the same reasoning downstream states should not be able to dictate how upstream countries use the waters they contribute to the Nile. He called the contradiction “sheer hypocrisy.” Read the Pulse of Africa interview. It is a provocative comparison. It is also politically difficult for Cairo to dismiss.
Two strategic disputes are becoming one
The Nile and the Red Sea are governed by different bodies of international law, so Nagy’s analogy should not be mistaken for legal equivalence.
Egypt is a Nile basin state and has legitimate water-security concerns as a downstream country. Likewise, coastal states have sovereign rights and particular security responsibilities in the Red Sea. But Nagy is making a political argument rather than writing a legal judgment.
Cairo seeks acknowledgement that geography does not extinguish Egypt’s interests simply because the Nile’s most important headwaters are located beyond its territory. Yet when Ethiopia invokes its economic dependence on maritime trade and its historic relationship with the Red Sea, Egypt adopts a much narrower geographical principle: Ethiopia is landlocked, therefore Red Sea security and governance should remain in the hands of coastal states.
Those positions are not necessarily incompatible with the law. Strategically, however, the tension between them is obvious. Ethiopia is not a marginal inland economy. It is a country of more than 100 million people whose external trade remains overwhelmingly dependent on one maritime corridor. The World Bank has noted that more than 95 percent of Ethiopia’s import-export trade by volume moves through the Addis Ababa-Djibouti corridor. World Bank. That dependence is precisely why the maritime question keeps returning.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed brought it dramatically back into regional politics in 2023 when he described access to the Red Sea as an existential issue for Ethiopia. The rhetoric alarmed neighboring states, particularly Eritrea, because economic access, sovereign access and territorial claims are very different things.
International law gives landlocked countries the right of access to and from the sea and freedom of transit. Article 125 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea provides for such access while making clear that its terms and modalities are to be negotiated with transit states through bilateral, regional or subregional agreements. UNCLOS, Part X.
It does not give Ethiopia ownership of somebody else’s coastline. Nor does it automatically confer a right to establish a naval base. The solution, therefore, has always been negotiation. And that is where Somaliland returns to the discussion. Nagy has been here before
Nagy’s latest remarks should not be read in isolation.
In March 2024, he and Hudson Institute analyst Joshua Meservey published a defense of the Ethiopia-Somaliland memorandum signed on January 1 of that year. They argued that the arrangement had the potential to bring wider economic and security benefits to the Horn and criticized the international tendency to approach Somaliland primarily through Mogadishu’s territorial claim. The National Interest.
Their argument was straightforward: Ethiopia needed diversification from Djibouti, Somaliland had a strategic port and sought international recognition, and a negotiated arrangement could potentially satisfy interests on both sides without changing borders by force. That is important because Nagy’s September 2026 comments reveal continuity in his thinking.
He is not suddenly discovering Ethiopia’s maritime problem. He has long viewed Ethiopia’s landlocked condition as a structural vulnerability and Somaliland as one possible part of the solution. The only thing that has changed is the strategic environment around that argument.
Berbera is no longer theoretical
Berbera today is not simply an alternative harbor on a map. DP World has invested heavily in expanding the port and developing an integrated logistics hub. The terminal has a 17-metre draft and modern container-handling infrastructure, while the Berbera Economic Zone and the road corridor toward the Ethiopian frontier were conceived in part to serve the Ethiopian hinterland. DP World Berbera.
The World Bank has identified the Berbera-Hargeisa-Wajaale route as an international corridor with the potential to compete for Ethiopian trade. World Bank corridor report. Nevertheless, Berbera cannot replace Djibouti overnight. Djibouti possesses decades of accumulated logistics infrastructure, rail connectivity, commercial relationships and an established role at the heart of Ethiopia’s trade system.
For Ethiopia the issue is diversification, not replacement. The strategic objective should be multiple gateways rather than another monopoly. For Somaliland, that creates leverage.
The Ankara Declaration did not make geography disappear
The December 2024 Ankara Declaration between Ethiopia and Somalia created another diplomatic route.
Under the Türkiye-facilitated agreement, Mogadishu acknowledged the potential benefits of Ethiopia obtaining reliable access to and from the sea while Ethiopia reaffirmed Somalia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The declaration envisioned commercial arrangements including contracts and leases under Somalia’s sovereign authority. Ankara Declaration – Republic of Türkiye Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
That framework reduced tensions between Addis Ababa and Mogadishu and offered Ethiopia an internationally less controversial route toward maritime access. But it did not make Berbera disappear. Nor did it erase Ethiopia’s economic interest in developing more than one corridor.
Ports are ultimately judged by geography, infrastructure, security, cost, and reliability. Berbera remains close to Ethiopia, sits near one of the world’s most important maritime arteries and already has an established commercial corridor pointing inland toward the Ethiopian market. Ethiopia and Somaliland can build a new arrangement suited to the political realities of 2026.
Israel changed Somaliland’s diplomatic position
There is another difference between 2024 and today. On December 26, 2025, Israel formally recognized Somaliland as an independent and sovereign state. Reuters report. Egypt opposed the decision and reaffirmed Somalia’s territorial integrity. Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This makes the Red Sea dispute larger than an Ethiopia-Somalia disagreement.
Cairo is now confronting several overlapping strategic changes: Ethiopia’s continuing pressure for diversified maritime access; Somaliland’s emergence from complete diplomatic isolation; Israel’s entry into the Somaliland equation; Türkiye’s expanding role in Somalia; Gulf investment around Red Sea ports; and growing concern over security from Yemen to the Gulf of Aden. Seen from Cairo, these developments are understandably connected. However, attempting to freeze the regional order may prove harder than adapting to it.
Somaliland should not surrender the advantage
For Somaliland, Nagy’s remarks are useful – but they should not be interpreted as an argument for simply reviving the 2024 MoU unchanged. The lessons of the past two years are almost the opposite. Somaliland should negotiate from the stronger position it has today.
Berbera is an increasingly valuable strategic asset. Recognition has begun. Red Sea security has become a major international concern. Ethiopia still needs maritime diversification. Israel has entered the regional equation. The United States, Gulf states and Asian trading powers all have interests in keeping the Bab el-Mandeb and Gulf of Aden open.
A modern Ethiopia-Somaliland agreement should therefore be built around sovereignty, commercial access, infrastructure investment, transit guarantees and mutual economic benefit. Any security architecture would require far greater care.
Somaliland should avoid converting economic opportunities into an open-ended strategic concession. Port access, transit rights, logistics facilities, and even structured maritime cooperation can be negotiated without surrendering sovereign control over coastline or territory. The strongest agreement would make Ethiopia a stakeholder in Somaliland’s stability while ensuring that Somaliland receives measurable economic, diplomatic and security benefits in return.
From the Nile to Berbera
Nagy’s argument exposes a deeper problem in the regional debate. Ethiopia cannot realistically be expected to abandon its search for diversified sea access. Egypt cannot realistically be expected to ignore developments affecting Red Sea security. Somalia will continue defending its territorial claims. And Somaliland will no longer accept being discussed indefinitely as though its ports, government and strategic geography can be negotiated by others without Hargeisa at the table.
These interests must be reconciled, not wished away.
The Nile dispute already demonstrated what happens when regional governments treat geography as a veto rather than an incentive to negotiate. The Red Sea should not repeat that mistake. Ethiopia does not need to own a coastline to become less vulnerable. It needs secure and diversified access to one. Somaliland does not need to give away its coast to make Berbera indispensable. It needs to use that coast intelligently.
Egypt may eventually have to decide whether its interests are better served by resisting every change in the Horn or by helping shape a new regional balance before that balance develops without it. That is why Tibor Nagy’s comments deserve attention beyond Addis Ababa and Cairo.
Follow the argument far enough down the Nile, through Ethiopia and toward the Red Sea, and sooner or later it arrives at Berbera.
About the Author Nassir Hussein Kahin is a Hargeisa-based political analyst, educator, journalist, researcher and founder, managing editor and publisher of the independent Horn of Africa Strategic Review. A former editor-in-chief of Somaliland Times and senior editor at African Times, he writes on Israel–Somaliland relations, Red Sea security, recognition diplomacy and strategic competition in the Horn of Africa
