Somalia: How GERD is steering Mogadishu into the crossfires of Egypt & Ethiopia

Somalia’s regional diplomacy is on overdrive, but is it creating more issues than it is solving? A new alliance with Ethiopia and Eritrea – under the ‘Horn of Africa Cooperation’ agreement – has, for example, frustrated the regional bloc IGAD, which has its own ambitions for regional institutional leadership.

Meanwhile, Somalia’s renewed alliance with Turkey may also be upsetting Egypt’s desire for hegemony in the horn of Africa. In the past, Somalia-Egypt bilateral relations have been lukewarm at best.

Somalia may have wanted to keep a neutral stance in the ongoing row over Ethiopia’s giant hydropower project known as the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). However, the situation has become more complex following the statement from the Arab League that “Ethiopia must respect the Nile rights of Egypt and Sudan.”