Issue No. 88

The Unravelling of the Horn of Africa

Facing its bleakest nadir in decades, every country in the Horn of Africa is currently grappling with some form of constitutional or succession crisis. Over several years, the region has gradually slid into a state of near-permanent emergency, with armed conflict, major humanitarian disasters, and political instability all rife. In turn, the legitimacy and presence of the 'state' is contracting across the board, driving nearly every debt-saddled regional government to the Gulf for discreet patronage to prop up their fragile ruling coalitions. This combination of state capture and broad insecurity is both compounding and undermining attempts at a coherent regional response to issues such as the war in Sudan. There are few bright spots, and frankly, it appears that the worst may be yet to come, with Gen Z protests in Kenya still escalating, conflict between Eritrea and Ethiopia looming, Somalia steadily losing ground to Al-Shabaab, and Sudan mired in a brutal conflict with no end in sight. 

The scale of the governance crises across the region is hard to overstate. Armed conflict in Sudan has suspended constitutional rule, but the war itself is a reaction against the democratic aspirations of the civilians that emerged in the April 2019 revolution-- and the subsequent attempts to dismantle the elite's entrenched patron-client networks. Fundamental questions about devolution, federalism, and the nature of the historically predatory Sudanese state have never been answered. However, Sudan is far from the only country facing vexed crises about its constitution and the legitimacy of its government-- or lack thereof. 

Similarly, South Sudan's constitution remains unagreed and unratified, having been repeatedly kicked down the road amidst fitful conflict and enduring power-sharing disputes. Somalia's Provisional Constitution, meanwhile, was upended in 2024 by Villa Somalia, which essentially seeks to replace federalism with a far more centralised government and electoral system without consensus-- pushing the country's political settlement to breaking point. And Ethiopia's ethnic-federal 1995 Constitution, established by the Tigray People's Liberation Front, is widely considered one of the main targets of the current federal government's illiberal state-building agenda. With elections scheduled for 2026, a heavily slanted electoral process and the amending of the constitution will quite probably cement PM Abiy Ahmed's grip on power for years to come. In every Horn country, leaders have either broken or nearly upended fragile political settlements as a means to secure their own futures, at incalculable cost to broader society.

In turn, these are not governments ruling with legitimacy imbued by any kind of social contract with their population, but often through securitised, increasingly autocratic control-- sustained by patronage from the Gulf for their narrow domestic base. In South Sudan, it is a slim band of Nuer elite; in Ethiopia, an Oromo one —albeit divided —and in Somalia, a Hawiye/Abgaal core. The legitimacy constraints of these are immense, and little is being done to expand their bases into the broader population and peripheral communities by investing in healthcare, education or infrastructure. Instead, government funds are being overwhelmingly diverted for patronage to prop up these narrow regime patron-client networks. This feeds back into the broader governance crisis, where essential services have been largely abandoned by Addis, Juba, and Mogadishu to the international aid and development industry. Kenya remains perhaps the only exception to this dynamic, still able to project force as well as services into its peripheries. The savaging of USAID, however, is certain to accentuate the state contraction-- and is already compounding the major humanitarian crises in every country. This did not happen overnight, but with unstable and self-interested leadership, there is little indication that such regimes are willing to address the drivers of state contraction, tackle the origins of their insurgencies, or confront external challenges like the climate crisis.

Instead, the levers of governments have been repositioned and reconstituted not for governing, but for privatisation and sustaining power indefinitely. Perhaps in no sector is this clearer than in the 'securitisation' of government, which increasingly exists under Ethiopia, Eritrea, South Sudan, and beyond. Justified in terms of dealing with threats to the centre, the security services are playing increasingly political and central roles within governments, and are constituted to be directly loyal to the authoritarian leader. This is not a new phenomenon: in several countries —particularly Eritrea and Sudan —a government-military fusion has existed for decades. But as part of this, key military leaders and security services are becoming increasingly prominent within the political economies of their countries. This has included the government parcelling up stakes in industries, land, and rent flows as a means to 'coup-proof' their regimes. However, patronage cannot last forever, and such dynamics can ultimately consume governments, as seen in 2019 with Sudan's Omar al-Bashir. 

The outlook is dire, and jockeying within these fragile states is also likely to become more pronounced in the coming years, amidst an ageing cabal of leaders in their 70s and 80s and an increasingly disillusioned youth bulge. With Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki already 79, his Djiboutian counterpart Ismaïl Omar Guelleh 77, and Kiir being 73, all three countries are facing increasingly contentious questions of succession. None are democratic, but there are nevertheless various factions contending to take the reins from their ageing rulers. Again, this has little to do with any egalitarian urge or ideological vision, but rather to assume control of the rent-generating streams and patronage that come with the juridical sovereignty of the state. Navigating such transitions with the extreme fragility of these ruling coalitions in South Sudan, Eritrea, and Djibouti courts a heightened risk of conflict. Naturally, some crises are more acute than others, with South Sudan at the extreme end of the spectrum. 

At the nexus of the near-collapse of the state and the injection of patronage and arms from the Gulf is the Sudan conflict. The instability engendered by the war is bleeding across the region, with hundreds of thousands displaced across the borders into Ethiopia and South Sudan-- two countries facing their own intense humanitarian crises. The glut of weapons, human trafficking, and gold smuggling as part of the illicit economy booming from the war is directly impacting its neighbours as well. The scale and influx of sophisticated weapons will be of concern for decades to come, for whatever form of government comes next in Sudan, as well as the broader Horn of Africa. But most critically in the immediate, nearly every regime in the region is implicated in facilitating weapons flows to the parties to the conflict. Forging any kind of coherent political platform for dialogue is impossible without acknowledging this reality; that the leaders of the Horn have become, in differing degrees, personally and dangerously invested in the Sudan war due to the discreet wealth injected into their governments.

These dynamics have effectively paralysed the multilateral system within the Horn. The anaemic African Union has been badly undermined by the direct and obscure bilateral approach preferred by the Gulf actors. IGAD has been handicapped by the rival agendas of its Member States. And the once-critical axis of Kenya-Ethiopia, which worked in tandem on regional issues in the 2000s, has largely evaporated, contributing to the rudderlessness of the Horn. Cooperation regarding joint security interests in Somalia, for instance, has become fitful and sporadic. In Ethiopia, a far more transactional and haphazard foreign policy has taken root, and the cooperation between Nairobi and Addis in multilateral and bilateral efforts regarding peace and security has been diminished.

Understanding these national crises not as singular issues, but in the broader malaise and deterioration of the regional principles of cooperation and political dialogue, is critical. A narrow framing, couched in the language of 'African solutions for African problems,' fundamentally misunderstands the scale and complexities of the governance and political emergencies facing the Horn today, and their deeply interconnected nature with the Gulf. The Gulf's zero-sum competition and the Red Sea's militarisation, driven by major power rivalry, are likely to be accentuated in the coming months and years, but without any meaningful input from littoral African states. A coherent, unified position today amongst the countries in the Horn currently appears out of reach. Perhaps a more realistic first step would be for them to agree on the nature of the regional crisis-- and their collective responsibility for charting a course forward.

The Horn Edition Team