The year 2025 marks a critical turning point for the Horn of Africa, characterized by deepening political fragmentation, militarization and intensifying global competition. Throughout the year, the boundaries between domestic instability and regional rivalry along the western flank of the Red Sea basin became increasingly blurred. The Horn of Africa’s security architecture, once sustained through fragile postwar arrangements and intermittent regional cooperation, steadily eroded under the pressure of resurgent insurgencies, maritime competition and energy-driven geopolitical realignment. The emerging landscape reflects not merely a new cycle of crises, but the consolidation of a new strategic order shaped by security-centered diplomacy, proxy alliances and the long-term entrenchment of external actors in the region.
At the center of this transformation lies Ethiopia’s effort to reassert its regional centrality. Simultaneous internal crises in the Amhara, Oromia and Tigray regions exposed the fragility of post-Tigray war governance and the weakening of federal authority. The erosion of the Pretoria Agreement framework, the renewed intensification of insurgent attacks and shifting regional alignments transformed Ethiopia’s domestic instability into a broader regional risk factor. Ethiopia’s maritime and energy ambitions, including its pursuit of access to the Red Sea and the operationalization of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), symbolized a transition from a defensive understanding of sovereignty toward a more assertive model of power projection. However, these initiatives also deepened tensions with Egypt and Eritrea while fueling an increasingly sharp contest between competing national narratives centered on the Nile and the Red Sea. In this regard, the repercussions of Ethiopia’s alliance with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) became directly visible in the dynamics of the Sudan War.
Somalia entered 2025 attempting to balance efforts to transition from a fragile state structure toward a stronger centralized authority with expanding external engagement. Despite Al-Shabaab’s renewed influence across the country’s central regions, the federal government advanced institutional reforms and broadened its diplomatic partnerships. The Ankara Declaration, signed between Ethiopia and Somalia under Türkiye’s mediation, represented a rare example of de-escalation in a region increasingly shaped by maritime competition and strategic rivalry. Somalia’s deepening cooperation with Türkiye and the UAE, particularly in the fields of defense and offshore energy exploration, further redefined the country’s external orientation. Nevertheless, persistent fragmentation between federal and regional authorities, coupled with ongoing disputes over sovereignty in natural resource governance, continued to expose the limitations of state consolidation in Mogadishu. Meanwhile, Israel’s recognition of Somaliland as the first state to do so in the final days of 2025 emerged as another destabilizing dynamic with potentially far-reaching regional implications.
Eritrea’s reemergence as a geopolitical actor constituted one of the most significant developments of 2025. Long positioned as an isolated state, Asmara capitalized on shifting regional fault lines to restore its influence through expanding security ties with Egypt and Sudan. Eritrea’s alleged arms support for the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), combined with its military buildup along the Ethiopian border, reflected a deliberate strategy centered on deterrence and coercive pressure against Ethiopia. Eritrea’s eventual withdrawal from the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and its explicit rejection of Ethiopia’s maritime claims signaled a new phase defined by uncompromising diplomacy. This dynamic positioned the country simultaneously as both a disruptive actor and a strategic pivot within the emerging regional balance.
Djibouti, by contrast, continued to serve as the Horn of Africa’s quiet balancer and principal economic connectivity hub. Its ports, logistics networks and multilateral partnerships reinforced the country’s role as a regional center of commerce and political coordination amid an increasingly fragmented environment. Nevertheless, Djibouti’s efforts to manage overlapping alignments with Egypt, China and Gulf states while hosting multiple foreign military bases exposed the paradox of stability sustained through dependency. In particular, its close ties with global actors enhanced Djibouti’s political leverage in regional crises across the Horn of Africa. The country further expanded its maritime and energy partnerships, yet this also positioned Djibouti as an indispensable but fragile intermediary actor within the broader landscape of regional competition.
Beneath these state-level maneuvers, the maritime domain of the Horn of Africa increasingly emerged as the new center of geopolitical competition. Control over ports, maritime trade routes and coastal infrastructure became increasingly synonymous with political power. Ethiopia’s discourse and policies surrounding its strategy for Red Sea access, Eritrea’s rigid defense of coastal sovereignty and Egypt’s efforts to strengthen Red Sea coordination collectively transformed maritime governance into a distinct arena of strategic contestation. The resurgence of piracy off the Somali coast, Ethiopia’s increasingly assertive pursuit of maritime access and the militarization of the Bab al-Mandab Strait demonstrated that maritime insecurity had evolved into a phenomenon that both reflected and reinforced land-based rivalries. By the end of 2025, the Red Sea had become not only a commercial lifeline but also a strategic fault line linking Africa, the Gulf, Israeli expansionism and global power competition in unprecedented ways.
Energy competition added another layer to this broader restructuring process. Ethiopia’s completion of the GERD and the launch of its nuclear cooperation with Russia, Somalia’s offshore oil diplomacy with Türkiye and Djibouti’s renewable energy initiatives collectively transformed energy from a developmental objective into a political instrument. The growing involvement of Gulf states and major powers, including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Russia, China and the U.S., through investments and military infrastructure projects turned the Horn of Africa into a testing ground for energy-linked influence competition.
These transformations also generated profound institutional consequences. The dysfunction of the IGAD, the fragmentation of African Union (AU) frameworks and the proliferation of bilateral military agreements collectively eroded regional cohesion. As states increasingly turned inward or aligned themselves with external actors, African-led diplomacy encountered mounting structural constraints. Nevertheless, limited breakthroughs such as the Amhara-Fano Peace Accord and the diplomatic de-escalation between Ethiopia and Somalia demonstrated that local mediation efforts remained possible, albeit on an extremely fragile foundation.
By the end of 2025, the Horn of Africa had fully evolved into a multilayered security arena in which land, maritime and energy politics had become inseparable. Ethiopia’s assertive posture, Eritrea’s militarization process, Somalia’s strategic repositioning and Djibouti’s central role, combined with the growing engagement of external actors, are collectively reshaping the region’s balance of power. In this increasingly uncertain landscape, the stability of the Horn of Africa will ultimately depend on whether regional states can transform the divisions arising from their roles within the Red Sea and Indian Ocean systems, as well as from their alliances with external powers, into mechanisms of cooperation before those fractures reach an irreversible depth.
This report examines the evolution of the Horn of Africa’s security and geopolitical order through three interconnected lenses. The first section, “Conflict Dynamics,” analyzes the internal fragmentation of states and the rise of interstate rivalries reshaping the region’s political core. The second section, “Maritime Security,” explores the expansion of conflict into the maritime domain, demonstrating how naval power, access to the sea and the enduring presence of external actors are redefining traditional alignments. The final section, “Energy and Geopolitical Dynamics,” examines the intersection of resource politics, energy nationalism and great power competition, assessing the factors that have transformed the Horn of Africa into a critical node of global strategic rivalry. Taken together, these sections provide a comprehensive framework for understanding the transformation of this strategic geography into one of the world’s most contested geopolitical arenas, shaped by ongoing struggles over sovereignty, access and influence.
