There is a particular kind of vulnerability that comes from having no coastline of one’s own. Ethiopia, Africa’s second-most populous nation and one of its fastest-growing economies, has lived with that vulnerability for three decades, routing the overwhelming share of its trade through a single foreign port. This week, the price of that arrangement became painfully visible yet again.
Houthi missiles struck two Saudi-flagged tankers in the southern Red Sea. Roughly ten more vessels reportedly turned back rather than risk the same fate. This comes in the wake of Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz further east.
Two of the world’s most consequential maritime chokepoints are now under simultaneous strain, and the consequences will not stay confined to the Middle East. Landlocked since Eritrea’s independence in 1993, Ethiopia sends more than 90 percent of its imports and exports through the Port of Djibouti, which sits directly at the mouth of the Red Sea’s southern gateway, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. This is not a marginal trade relationship; it is close to Ethiopia’s entire external economic lifeline, covering fuel, fertilizer, food aid, manufacturing inputs, and the coffee, flowers, and textiles the country depends on for foreign exchange.
Ethiopia already pays well over a billion dollars a year in port fees for this access, a cost so significant that Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has compared it to the price of building a new Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam every three years. The country has been here before, in a smaller way. During the previous round of Red Sea shipping disruption, Ethiopian importers saw the cost of shipping a single container from Shanghai to Djibouti roughly triple, while shipments that once took a month began taking a month to two longer, as vessels rerouted and transshipped through secondary ports.
Delays at Djibouti’s terminals stretched well beyond their normal length. If Bab el-Mandeb now faces a sustained, deliberate blockade rather than episodic drone and missile attacks, those numbers could look mild by comparison. Fuel and fertilizer are the two commodities that matter most here.
Ethiopia imports essentially all its petroleum products, and a large share of the fertilizer that underpins its agriculture-dependent economy arrives by sea. Persistent delays or price spikes in either would ripple straight into food prices an…
Summary from source