Issue No. 123

Another Election and Djibouti's Succession Problem

Apathy pervades the Djiboutian population. A week tomorrow, on April 10, the country will head to the polls, with President Ismaïl Omar Guelleh seeking a 6th— essentially uncontested — term in office. With his coronation inevitable, his family's dynastic rule over this rentier city-state will be extended once more. But in a region wracked by armed conflict and geopolitical contestation, the ageing Guelleh's capacity to manage the familial, ethnic, and regional fractures within and without grows ever more complicated. And Djibouti's apparent stability is no product of institutional strength, but rather an increasingly fractious balance of external rents and coercive control-- underpinned by geopolitical relevance.

Familial politics have dominated Djibouti since its independence from France in 1977, with its first president, Hassan Gouled Aptidon, ruling for two decades before handing off power to his nephew, Guelleh, in 1999. Five consecutive terms later, Guelleh remains unopposed, with Djibouti an electoral autocracy in all but name. In 2010, parliament abolished the presidential term limit at his command, though it introduced an age ceiling of 75 as well. But that too was simply brushed aside last November, when Djibouti's lawmakers unanimously overhauled the age limit, clearing the way for the now 78-year-old to slip into another term. To no one's surprise, Guelleh emerged as the winner of the 2021 election with almost 99% of the vote, with the limited opposition simply boycotting the poll. This time out, just a token challenger from the Centre Démocrate Unifié Djiboutien has been offered up, with few internationals genuinely caring about Guelleh's orchestrated elections as long as he maintains stability.

But Guelleh's decision to run again comes at a fractious moment for his own family, his nation, and the Horn writ large. Essentially a rentier city-state, Djibouti's population is just over a million people, and yet, because of its position on the Bab al-Mandab chokepoint at the mouth of the Red Sea — through which an estimated 12–15% of global maritime trade passes — it holds an outsized geostrategic position. In a region, and a world, wracked by dizzying geopolitical churn, Djibouti has evolved into a 'security-rent state', monetising its sovereignty and strategic location. It has long profited off the securitisation of the Red Sea, hosting military bases of the US (Camp Lemonnier, the largest American military installation in Africa), France, and China — its first overseas base, established in 2017 — alongside facilities operated by Italy, Japan, and others. Rents from these countries sustain the fragile economy, alongside the estimated USD 2 billion paid by Addis annually in port fees, with Djibouti being the commercial gateway for over 120 million landlocked Ethiopians. Such a model, though, has produced an enclave economy, with limited spillover into broad-based employment or industry. Even so, compared to its neighbours — a fragmented Somalia, an Ethiopia riven by internal conflict, the hermit state of Eritrea — Djibouti has remained broadly stable in the 21st century, if wracked by poverty and bereft of any domestic industry.

Principally, though, the visibly ageing Djiboutian president appears to have run again so as to delay a pernicious succession battle at his doorstep. With Guelleh's health fluctuating, his wife — First Lady Kadra Mahamoud Haid — has come to play a particularly influential role in Djibouti's politics. Hailing from the Isaaq clan, a Somali minority that the Issa-dominated system has historically marginalised, she has gradually built her own parallel patrimonial networks since the late 1990s, installing allies in parliament, the courts, and the central bank.

Already serving as a quasi-vice president, it is widely believed that she seeks to install her son from a previous marriage, Naguib Abdallah Kamil, as Guelleh's successor. Such palace intrigue, however, has sat uneasily within the Issa/Mamassan establishment, not least because Kamil's father is Afar. Factional divisions within Guelleh's coalition are not proving easy to quash, either, with Djibouti's army and police commanders briefly arrested in 2022 amid reports of coup-plotting. If the presidency is to remain in the first family, one preferred candidate amongst the Issa/Mamassan elite is Guelleh's biological daughter, Haibado Ismaïl Omar, who advises her father and is linked to her country's security architecture, as well as having cultivated ties with Mogadishu. One probable outside contender — former Foreign Minister and African Union Commission Chairperson Mahamoud Ali Youssouf, an Afar, was quietly eased out of the running before the campaigning began. Despite Guelleh's advancing age, with the incumbent in power, these rivalrous factions are held in suspension.

But these internal familial strains are reflecting the broader national tensions as well. The historic domination of the Somali Issa/Mamasan-- politically and economically-- has long grated with the Afar population, which constitutes around 35% of the population. Split across three nations-- Djibouti, Eritrea, and Ethiopia-- the Afar remain marginalised in each, and have battled for greater rights for decades. In November 1991, a brutal civil war erupted between the government and the Afar Front for the Restoration of Unity and Democracy (FRUD), resulting in widespread abuses carried out against the Afar population. 

Peace accords in 1994 and 2001 brought FRUD in from the cold, and the current prime minister, Abdoulkader Kamil Mohamed, is Afar — a post-sharing formula that has held, imperfectly, ever since. Elite cooptation is no alternative to redistribution of power or resources, however, and the ethnic group remains structurally marginalised, and sporadic Afar protests and clashes erupted in the 2000s and again around the 2011 elections. In the past year, Addis Ababa's stoking of Afar grievances — however legitimate they may be — has generated significant anxiety in Djibouti City, where an emboldened cross-border Afar political movement is watched with unease, resulting in a handful of drone strikes on the border and within Ethiopian territory. 

But for ordinary Djiboutians, grinding poverty continues to define their lives, with the country ranking towards the bottom on all development indices. The highly patrimonial economy has concentrated patronage and wealth in the hands of the Issa/Mamassan elite, with the peripheries-- particularly the Afar-- chronically underserved. And yet, the longevity of Djibouti's economic model, too, is a source of mounting anxiety. Ethiopia has repeatedly threatened to diversify its port dependence away from Djibouti, and Addis's frustrations with high transit fees have given those threats new urgency. 

The US, too, has explored expanding its military footprint away from Camp Lemonnier, possibly toward Somaliland, amid concerns about growing Chinese influence — influence that is structural as well as military, since Beijing holds over half of Djibouti's public debt, principally from infrastructure loans for the Doraleh terminal expansion and the standard-gauge railway to Addis. The disruption to Red Sea shipping wrought by Houthi attacks in Yemen since late 2023 has demonstrated how quickly geopolitical events can throttle the revenues on which the entire patronage structure depends. And with the Houthis having reentered the latest conflict in Iran, concerns are abounding about the possible implications on the Djiboutian economy if the Red Sea is destabilised once more.

With another coronation imminent, the ageing president may have bought himself more time, but it is not clear that the questions of succession are any closer to resolution, while the issues gnawing at Djibouti's system remain unresolved. Indeed, much like South Sudan, Eritrea, and Uganda, in the event of Guelleh's untimely death, the tensions of a semi-militarised, clan-riven state might well bubble over-- if the international guardrails do not curb the worst excesses. And outside of Djibouti's tiny border, the geopolitics of the Red Sea and the Horn continues to churn. 

Djibouti has long sold itself as an island of stability in a fractured region, but that equilibrium has always been highly personalised and managed-- and now appears increasingly brittle once again. As the president's long twilight stretches on, the question is perhaps not whether the system can endure into his 6th term in office, but whether it can survive beyond him.

​The Horn Edition Team