Issue No. 61

Poly-Crises and 'Surviving' Governments in the Horn

Few administrations are actively governing in the Horn of Africa today—but rather in a quasi-survival mode. The overlapping and self-reinforcing poly-crises of massive humanitarian emergencies, armed conflict, rising debt, and polarisation, to name a handful of issues, are diminishing both the legitimacy and capacity of central administrations in their country's peripheries. And with 'grey money' still steadily flowing from the Gulf across the Red Sea, governments have fewer incentives to be accountable beyond small constituencies and are able to buy off or suppress threats from within the palace-- until they can't. This phenomenon is not new but particularly relevant to Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, and increasingly Ethiopia, where limited government presence has dwindled or evaporated entirely. The declining influence of the central governments in all four countries has distinct roots but shares several similarities, with armed conflict being both a cause and driver of their 'survival' setting.

In Ethiopia, the 2020-2022 Tigray war has left indelible scars on the broader political settlement of the country, compounding conflict in Oromia and driving the Fano insurgency in Amhara. Since then, the federal government's presence across the former regional hegemon has entirely collapsed in many places, with the Ethiopian National Defence Force unable to exert a Weberian 'monopoly of force' over the country of over 120 million. Somalia is a little different, still wrestling with armed conflict in various forms since the state collapsed in the early 1990s. No central administration has been able to reconstitute itself and exert force from Puntland to Jubaland since, and particularly not Somaliland, which remains a de facto independent state. Instead, the state-building agenda has been in reverse in recent years, battered by the former Mohamed Abdullahi Farmaajo government's and incumbent Hassan Sheikh Mohamud administration's disregard for the fragile checks and balances that secure the country. Today, the Federal Government of Somalia (FGS) exerts little positive influence outside of Mogadishu, though it can-- and has actively sought to do-- destabilise state-level administrations.

On the most extreme end of this spectrum is Sudan, which has been riven by the massive armed conflict that erupted in April 2023. Even control of Khartoum is contested, while the rump military government in Port Sudan can provide minimal services to the population it claims to represent. Like Ethiopia and Somalia, this includes the most basic level of protection for the over 11 million displaced and the millions more facing hunger and starvation. Bureaucratic foreign policy, meanwhile, has been replaced with attempts to secure weapons and aid in the fight against the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

With limited internal control, there has been an almost concurrent drive towards an emphasis on an intangible 'sovereignty.' The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) has no presence along the Darfurian border but has nevertheless insisted upon highly bureaucratic restrictions on cross-border aid delivery into RSF-controlled territory. Somalia's federal government is particularly culpable of this, asserting that the Somaliland-Ethiopia Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was a dire violation of its 'sovereignty, unity, and territorial integrity.'

Internal conflicts, including Sudan's 'globalised' war, are both a cause and a consequence of the survival dynamic. Without the monetary capacity or inclination to restore services or representation to disenfranchised communities, administrations often turn to a militarised response, which may stabilise their positions in the short term but accelerate the broader trajectory and dynamic. In large part as a result of these responses, there are immense humanitarian crises in Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan, with tens of millions highly food insecure and famine declared in Darfur. The region has experienced major famines in the past, but the concurrent, overlapping massive humanitarian crises are bleeding into one another, undermining effective governance. The underfunded, overburdened international humanitarian system does not yet have a response.

Many of the roots of these poly-crises and diminished governance lie in the gap between the dispensable cash possessed by the various regimes and the public budgets going towards schooling, healthcare, and infrastructure. The SAF and the RSF in Sudan, the ruling Prosperity Party in Ethiopia, and a host of others derive much of their 'expendable' money from the Gulf, particularly Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. This money does not need to be funnelled towards vague 'state-building' agendas but can sustain the complex and distinct patron-client networks comprising their constituencies. It allows administrations to bypass scrutiny, not transparently expand their tax bases, and be more militarised. It is also harder for the weakened regional multi-laterals of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the African Union to influence or cajole a government with the money and weapons to secure its immediate future.

Meanwhile, aid and public budgets have fallen by the wayside or corrupted, further driving disenchantment and polarisation between communities. The scrabble for control of the money tap from the Gulf, and access to the financial levers bestowed upon 'sovereign' governments between elites and their armed forces remains one of the most powerful dynamics in the Horn today. The rise of the assertive 'Middle Powers' did not create this aspect but has rather compounded and accelerated the broader process of state fragmentation.

All share another similarity-- these are administrations without significant constituencies and are uninterested or unable to govern on behalf of the entire country. Several are perceived as having been 'captured' by ideological movements or entirely serving particular ethnic groups or both, whether that be the Hawiye and hyper-nationalists in Somalia's federal government, the Oromo with the Prosperity Party in Ethiopia, or the Islamist elements of the military regime in Port Sudan. Broader societal polarisation means they are turning to their core constituencies to shore up support, again through the swirling money that comes from the Gulf, as well as forces like the immensely wealthy Islamist Al-I'tisaam movement that operates in Somalia, Somaliland, Kenya and beyond.

There is nuance within this, and it would be a misnomer to suggest that regimes like the former Omar al-Bashir government in Sudan were seeking to positively develop its governance of Darfur in the 2000s, for instance. But it is no exaggeration to state that the Horn is wrestling with one of its most intense governance challenges in the past 50 years and is at the eye of the storm of multiple complex crises with no simple answers. And the rise of 'illiberal multilateralism' encapsulated by the BRICS with no interest in democratic state-building makes the prospect of external forces returning these central governments back to a steadier and more predictable path far less likely. The tortured 'survival' mode of these administrations is compounding many issues, with the deeper fracturing of several countries in the Horn highly likely as a result. Further conflict, humanitarian crises, and democratic backsliding make the prospect for 2025 in the region bleak.

By the Horn Edition Team