Issue 110

What does 2026 hold for the Horn of Africa?

It is easy to reach for clichés when looking back at 2025 for the Horn of Africa: civil war in Sudan, insurgency in Ethiopia, a collapsed peace settlement in South Sudan, and youth discontent throughout Kenya, Tanzania, and beyond. But what is apparent is that, just a couple of weeks before 2026, the region is facing its worst moment for decades.

The violence and instability of Sudan, first and foremost, show no sign of abating, with the morass of competing interests from the Gulf continuing to play out on a destructive scale. Moving into 2026, the glimmers of movement towards at least an external Arab resolution-- with the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt the principal sponsors of the war-- have quickly faded, with the US still prioritising its strategic relationships over securing a settlement. Having ransacked Darfur and left El Fasher in ruins, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) are now battling with the Sudanese army for the Kordofans, and the see-saw nature of the conflict will likely continue next year, accentuated by the glut of weapons from the belligerents' foreign patrons. And as ever, it will be Sudan's civilian population that suffers through the famine, mass displacement, human rights atrocities, genocide, and more besides.

The grim history of Sudan's post-independence coup-war cycles has persisted for decades, and the varied, entrenched interests of the warring parties are no closer today than they were 12 months ago. Such stakes range from the vast quantities of gold mined by the RSF to the resurrection of the Islamist factions within the Sudanese army. And there remains little notion of what the 'day after' a putative ceasefire might look like, no re-imagining of the fundamentally predatory Sudanese state, nor any prospects of rebuilding eviscerated cities of Khartoum, El Fasher, and Wad Maddani, among many others. And to be clear, any settlement driven from the Gulf might be able to bring a temporary cessation of hostilities —a welcome change, for sure, from the brutality —but only a sustainable peace can come from the Sudanese. In turn, the effects of the conflict system that is the Horn of Africa-- with Sudan at its heart-- continue to spill over into every neighbouring country.

Further, the region's broader trends-- stagnant economies, a declining multilateral order, the retrenchment of international development, the accentuation of a small ruling elite disinterested in governing-- all appear here to stay for the foreseeable future. Beyond sustaining one's cabal and patron-client networks, there is little ideology present in the palatial governing residences in Juba, Addis, or Djibouti City. Mogadishu, perhaps, is the exception, where several Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated movements continue to squabble over the spoils of the state. But while the repurposing of the levers of the state into self-enrichment is hardly a new phenomenon, nor, clearly, unique to the region, it has been supercharged by the penetration of clandestine Gulf interests in particular. The Saudi-Emirati schism, alongside Qatar's enduring Islamist 'peacemaking' agenda, is likely to be one of the defining political drivers in 2026 as it has been this year.

Looking around the Horn, the gerontocracy shows no sign of abandoning power either-- with Djiboutian leader Ismail Guelleh running again for president in April 2026, South Sudanese President Salva Kiir having defenestrated his supposed successor, Benjamin Bol Mel, and Isaias Afwerki, the Horn's long-serving despot, unmoved. Guelleh's decision to delay the appointment of a successor and seek an inevitable electoral coronation, despite his poor health, reflects the broader internal divisions within the ruling elite and the corrosive Issa-Afar ethnic imbalance of power. And with the removal of Bol Mel in South Sudan, the proposition that Salva Kiir might be finally grooming a successor has fallen away once more as well. Juba's politics have instead returned to their chaotic stasis, while the rest of the country remains mired in rising insecurity and poverty. The main stories of 2026 for South Sudan are likely to be the further degeneration of the much-abrogated 2018 peace agreement and the psycho-drama that is Riek Machar's trumped-up charges.

Elections may dominate the headlines in the coming months, with Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibouti, and South Sudan all theoretically headed for the polls. But to hope for a genuine opportunity for political alternation is misguided, with Ethiopia and Djibouti certain to rubber-stamp the incumbent regimes and Juba likely to delay-- again-- the nation's first elections. Somalia, as ever, remains somewhat of a wildcard, with the format and nature of the elections scheduled for May 2026 still unagreed. Kenyan politics, meanwhile, following the death of the long-serving opposition figurehead Raila Odinga in October, remains in an awkward transition as his party—the Orange Democratic Movement—navigates how to fill the substantial void. And the quietened discontent among the young population may resurface, particularly as the country approaches elections in 2027. How this broader, simmering youth discontent expresses itself —through protests, migration exodus, and insurgencies —will continue to shape the distinct political economies of each nation in the region.

Conflict and political chaos, though, are sure to reign throughout the coming months. The region is still adjusting to the dizzying new world order smashed into place by Trump, a more explicitly transactional manner of geopolitics that leaves plenty up for grabs. Whether that can be seized upon by the leaders of the Horn is another matter altogether, and recent history would suggest a continued subsuming of the political order into the Gulf and short-termist politics. Further, the diminishing of the 'traditional' international community in the region may see China and Russia play more prominent roles in the coming months, as a host of actors particularly battle for access and control over the militarised Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. Here, too, are the Houthis seemingly gearing up on both sides of the arterial waterway for conflict with Emirati-sponsored polities in Yemen and Somalia.

One of the great unknowns for next year remains whether Ethiopia will invade Eritrea, with the knock-on impacts of such a decision sure to be seismic as well. Inevitably intersecting with Sudan's destructive civil war, it would create a strip of conflict all the way from Darfur to the Bab al-Mandab, with innumerable devastating political, economic, and humanitarian consequences. The region can ill-afford another war on such a scale, but IGAD enters 2026 effectively immobilised, leaving regional diplomacy without a functioning centre of gravity. One place of little change, though, is Eritrea, which remains the status quo spoiler, arming and training the Fano insurgency in Ethiopia, as well as a host of eastern Sudanese militias. So great has been the deterioration of Ethiopia's standing as the once-regional anchor that Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki has come in from the geostrategic cold, strengthening ties with Cairo and Riyadh in particular.

Finally, the Horn enters 2026 with multiple intersecting humanitarian emergencies set to escalate further still, with around 48-50 million people already in acute food insecurity. Across Ethiopia's lowlands, Somalia, and South Sudan, more than 18 million people are wrestling with IPC 3+ levels of hunger due to drought, but Sudan's near-total breakdown of its food systems is the most alarming. The Gezira Scheme —the largest irrigation scheme in Africa —has been rendered unproductive by conflict, leaving the region's 'breadbasket' wrestling with widespread famine and malnutrition. These are societal scars that will be felt for decades to come.

The Horn of Africa's multifaceted, distinct crises were not born in 2025, but the cumulative hollowing out of the political order has pushed the region towards grave instability. Whether this can be arrested in the coming months depends on the leaders in Juba, Addis, Mogadishu, Khartoum, and beyond developing a political imagination to break from the destructive cycles they have subjected their citizens to. At present, there is little sign of such a shift, with the months ahead likely to be defined not by renewal, but by an inexorable slide into further fragmentation.

​The Horn Edition Team