SSA Watch: Regional Hurdles and Domestic Flashpoints Across the Horn of Africa

Ethiopia–Eritrea: The Return of a Dangerous Rivalry

From Nobel Peace Prize to War Footing

Ethiopia has accused Eritrea of preparing to wage war against it in collusion with an opposition grouping, in the latest sign of escalating tensions between the two neighbours over control of the Red Sea. In a letter dated 2 October 2025 addressed to UN Secretary-General António Guterres, Ethiopian Foreign Minister Gedion Timothewos alleged that Eritrea and a hardline TPLF faction were “funding, mobilizing and directing armed groups” in Ethiopia’s Amhara region, where Fano militiamen have been battling federal forces.

The 2018 rapprochement between Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki — which earned Abiy the Nobel Peace Prize — has since given way to a new belligerence. Asmara has accused its landlocked neighbour of eyeing the port of Assab on the Red Sea in southeastern Eritrea.

The Red Sea Dimension

Ethiopia’s ambitions to secure Red Sea access have also drawn in Egypt, which is already at odds with Addis Ababa over the Nile dam. Cairo has responded by reinforcing political and military support to Somalia and Eritrea, insisting that only littoral states should control Red Sea access. The convergence of Egyptian and Eritrean interests against Ethiopia transforms what might otherwise be a bilateral dispute into a wider Horn of Africa realignment, raising the stakes considerably for any miscalculation on either side.

Strategic Assessment

The allegations, if substantiated, point to a deliberate proxy strategy by Asmara: keeping Ethiopia internally fragmented to prevent it from translating its demographic and economic weight into coercive maritime pressure. A direct confrontation would prove costly for both states. Ethiopia remains beset by domestic instability, while Eritrea endures deepening international isolation. Without sustained external mediation — and with regional actors actively taking sides — reconciliation appears increasingly remote. The window for de-escalation is narrowing.

Kenya: Beijing’s Yuan and the Limits of Financial Sovereignty

A Historic Currency Swap

Kenya has completed converting three railway construction dollar-denominated loans from China into yuan in order to save on interest payments, cutting annual debt-servicing costs by approximately $215 million, Finance Minister John Mbadi confirmed. Kenya originally took the $5 billion in loans from the Export-Import Bank of China for a standard gauge rail line connecting Mombasa to the outskirts of Nairobi, with about $3.5 billion remaining unpaid as of mid-2024 and Kenya spending approximately $1 billion annually servicing its Chinese debts.

The decision to convert the debt from US dollars to Chinese yuan marks a historic first for sovereign borrowing in Africa.

Beijing’s Broader Agenda

Analysts believe the decision could pave the way for other African nations facing debt pressure to deepen their ties with China. The growing globalisation of the yuan has also been driven by the weakening of the US dollar during the Trump administration — China is promoting the yuan globally to challenge the dollar’s dominance, with currency swaps already extended to Nigeria and South Africa.

Strategic Assessment

The immediate fiscal logic is sound: lower interest rates, reduced currency risk, and breathing space for a government managing a debt load approaching 70 per cent of GDP. But the longer-term structural question is whether Kenya is exchanging one form of dependency for another. About 68 per cent of Kenya’s external debt is denominated in dollars — a concentration that makes diversification genuinely urgent. The challenge for Nairobi is to use this fiscal relief as a platform to broaden its creditor base and strengthen domestic revenue mobilisation, rather than allowing the yuan conversion to become the beginning of a deeper financial lock-in with Beijing.

Sudan: Chemical Weapons and the Collapse of Accountability

Verified Evidence of a War Crime

A France 24 investigation has provided the first public evidence to corroborate US allegations that Sudan’s military may have used chlorine in two incidents in September 2024. The France 24 Observers team geolocated photographs and videos from the Garri military base and the nearby Jaili oil refinery north of Khartoum — both then controlled by the RSF — showing chlorine containers near craters and a characteristic yellow-green gas cloud. Human Rights Watch independently verified the geolocation.

Five independent chemical weapons experts reviewed the evidence and confirmed it matched the characteristics of aerial chlorine barrel attacks — a capability held only by the Sudanese Armed Forces.

The Legal and Political Consequences

The US State Department formally determined on 24 April 2025 that the Government of Sudan used chemical weapons in 2024 and subsequently imposed economic sanctions on SAF leadership. The use of chlorine as a weapon constitutes a grave violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention, to which Sudan is a party, and a war crime under the Rome Statute.

Strategic Assessment

The Sudanese Alliance for Rights has called for an urgent international investigation led by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), urging the UN Human Rights Council, the African Union, and the broader international community to take concrete steps toward justice and accountability. The revelations consolidate Sudan’s trajectory toward pariah status and underscore the total erosion of accountability within the conflict. Without an independent OPCW-led inquiry, there is no credible mechanism to deter further escalation — an outcome that sets dangerous precedents across the continent.

 South Sudan: A Peace Deal on the Brink

The Arrest That Changed Everything

South Sudan’s opposition declared that the arrest of First Vice President Riek Machar had invalidated the 2018 peace deal and risked plunging the country back into war. Machar and seven colleagues were formally charged with treason, murder, and crimes against humanity linked to clashes in Nasir in northeastern Upper Nile state earlier in 2025.

Institutional Collapse in Motion

The trial represents one of the greatest threats to South Sudan’s stability since the end of its civil war in 2018. Machar’s defence team has contested the legality of the proceedings, arguing that the Special Court is unconstitutional — the 2018 peace deal mandates that alleged crimes against humanity be tried by an African Union-led hybrid court, not a South Sudanese tribunal appointed by the president. The Special Court dismissed these objections, ruling that it had jurisdiction.

Analysts argue the trial is fundamentally a political manoeuvre designed to exploit South Sudan’s deep-seated ethnic fault lines, consolidate power, and sideline opposition ahead of the peace agreement’s deadline, set for December 2026.

Strategic Assessment

South Sudan is not merely experiencing a political crisis — it is witnessing the systematic dismantling of the institutional framework designed to prevent a return to civil war. The Reconstituted Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission (RJMEC) has warned that the accord is on the verge of collapse. Without meaningful intervention from IGAD, the African Union, and key bilateral partners, South Sudan faces a realistic risk of renewed large-scale conflict. The international community’s record of translating concern into leverage in Juba remains weak.

Tanzania and Uganda: Authoritarian Drift Ahead of Elections

Tanzania: Abductions and Electoral Repression

On 6 October 2025, Tanzania’s former ambassador to Cuba, Humphrey Polepole, became the latest victim in a spate of abductions stoking public resentment against President Samia Suluhu Hassan. Polepole had been a respected stalwart of the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party until he resigned from his diplomatic post in July, voicing dismay at the trajectory of Tanzania’s leadership.

According to Human Rights Watch, authorities arbitrarily arrested hundreds of opposition supporters, imposed restrictions on social media access, banned independent media, and were implicated in the abduction and extra-judicial killing of at least eight government critics in the run-up to the October 2025 elections.

Uganda and Transnational Repression

The Tanzanian pattern sits within a broader regional dynamic. Two Kenyan activists attending opposition leader Robert Kyagulanyi’s campaign rally in Uganda were abducted. Cross-border repression has become a documented practice: Ugandan dissidents have been forcibly returned from Kenya, while activists including Boniface Mwangi and Agather Atuhaire were detained and tortured in Tanzania earlier in 2025. Uganda has never experienced a peaceful transfer of power in its 63 years of independence — a historical fact that frames the current repression not as aberration but as structural pattern.

Strategic Assessment

As Tanzania’s official opposition remains banned from participating in elections, the abduction of figures like Polepole sends a chilling message: dissent is being silenced at precisely the moment when open political competition should be most protected. The convergence of electoral timelines, shrinking civic space, and cross-border repression constitutes a compounding threat to regional democratic norms. African Union electoral observer missions and regional bodies have so far proven inadequate to deter or document these abuses in real time. Structural reform of regional accountability mechanisms is overdue.

Conclusion:

Compounding Fragility and the Case for Regional Agency

The five cases examined in this briefing share a common thread: the erosion of the institutional frameworks — peace agreements, international law, democratic norms, sovereign fiscal autonomy — that underpin stability. In each case, the deficit is not primarily one of information or analysis. It is one of political will and institutional capacity to act.

For external partners, multilateral bodies, and African regional institutions, the choices made in the coming months on each of these fronts will have consequences extending well beyond their immediate geography. The Horn of Africa and East Africa remain among the world’s most strategically consequential subregions. The compound fragility they are now exhibiting demands more than monitoring — it demands structured, coordinated engagement from actors with the credibility and leverage to make a difference.