Ethiopia's Tigray Region Seeks Warmer Ties with Eritrea

The chairman of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), Debretsion Gebremichael, recently vowed (AllAfrica) to strengthen ties with neighboring Eritrea. The TPLF is a political party active in the Tigray region of Ethiopia’s north and Gebremichael currently controls the Tigray Interim Regional Administration. Thie interim administration was created as a direct result of the 2020-2022 war that pitted the region’s military against those of Ethiopia and neighboring Eritrea. Gebremichael’s statement comes in the backdrop of the party’s official de-registration by the Ethiopian government in mid-May.

Background

Ethiopia is a landlocked country in east Africa. It possesses the second largest population in the whole of Africa, with approximately 135 million (Wordlometer) people as of 2025. The country is largely mountainous, with the Amhar mountains surrounding the Awash River valley and basin that runs from its source near Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa, into Lake Abe, the latter of which is shared by Ethiopia and Djibouti. As a result, the river is not commercially navigable, but the river provides freshwater for agricultural purposes; 77% (Semantic Scholar) of irrigable land used goes towards crop cultivation, cementing the country’s status as a regional breadbasket.

Though Ethiopia once had access to the sea, this access was lost once Eritrea gained its independence from Ethiopia in 1993 after a protracted struggle between 1961 and 1991. Without major river access to the open sea, Ethiopia’s landlocked situation is a major liability. 95% (Mwaniki) of Ethiopia’s foreign trade by volume passes through the tiny port nation of Djibouti, the majority of which traverses along the Addis Ababa-Djibouti line. This bottleneck at the port of Djibouti is a major geopolitical concern for Addis Abeba as Djibouti sits at a pivotal location on the Bab-el Mandeb strait between it and Yemen, a major shipping chokepoint. Ethiopia, therefore, needs to diversify away from its heavy reliance on Djibouti. This explains why Ethiopia recently inked (Walla, K.) a deal between it and the breakaway state of Somaliland in January 2024.

Decades of relative peace ended in 2020. Tensions with the Ethiopian federal government reached a boiling point as Tigray attempted to hold regional elections against the wishes of Addis Ababa. These elections catalyzed the ensuing war between the two factions, which ended with the 2022 Pretoria agreement, formally ending the war.

Decades earlier, during the independence war, the TPLF joined the Eritrean independence movement in its fight against the central Ethiopian government. After the war ended in the recognition of Eritrea, its former allies started to distance themselves and the two fought a border war in the late 1990s.

Analysis

The move to revitalize ties between Eritrea and Tigray, who had been fighting on opposite sides of the Tigray War, may seem unusual. In reality, it was a calculated maneuver on the part of the Eritrean government as it sought to pursue its geopolitical objectives. Eritrea is a small, largely inhospitable country of about 3.6 million. Its coastline is essentially desert, with most of the population living in the country’s interior, close to the border with Ethiopia. Strategic depth and defensibility are major problems for the Eritrean state, given its long war, destructive independence war. That war saw an estimated death toll of around 65,000 during the conflict which killed about 4.5% of the country’s 1975 population over the course of active hostilities.

When the newly appointed prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, successfully negotiated an agreement officially ending the border war with Eritrea in 2018, the two countries became aligned in policy, eventually joining forces during the Tigray war. Now, the power dynamics have shifted. The TPLF has recently suffered in fighting between two factions, one of which is led by Gebremichael, the other being Getachew Reda, currently a minister (Ethiopia Tribune) in the Ethiopian government since April of 2025. By throwing its weight behind Gebremichael’s faction, Eritrea hopes to keep the TPLF weak and divided, reducing the possibility of future threats emanating from the region.

In his statement, Gebremichael indicated that a major reason behind the rapprochement with Eritrea is due to the perceived failures (AllAfrica) of the Pretoria agreement, such as the de-registration of his party. Eritrea will likely use this friction between the federal government and the Tigray region to pursue its geopolitical and security objectives. They will be seeking to cast strategic alliances within Tigray itself that would prevent the domination of any one group in Tigray’s government.

Given the history between it and the TPLF, Eritrea, if it does reciprocate in the way Gebremichael hopes, will either be slow and gradual or wholly ephemeral.

Citations

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Eritrea population (2025). Worldometer. (n.d.-a). https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/eritrea-population/

Ethiopia population (2025). Worldometer. (n.d.). https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/ethiopia-population/

Ethiopia: TPLF Chair warns Pretoria deal facing “worsening” setbacks, vows to strengthen Eritrea ties. allAfrica.com. (2025, June 23). https://allafrica.com/stories/202506230419.html

Ethiopian Tribune editor 13 April 2025 0, editor, E. T., About Post Author Ethiopian Tribune editor editor@ethiopiantribune.com

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