The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS)
Go to https://www.iiss.org/events/2018/09/intervention-political-developments-horn-of-africa
Thursday 20 September 2018
12:30 – 13:30
Radical developments in the Horn of Africa are reshaping the region. After 20 years of hostility Eritrea and Ethiopia have made peace, Somalia and Eritrea have restored diplomatic ties, and unresolved tensions between Eritrea and Djibouti are flaring up again.
National governments, however, are not the only players determining developments. Gulf states are playing an increasing role in the region, using their wealth to promote their interests. The United States and China are among the many states with military bases in the Horn, a region which borders one of the world’s busiest maritime trade routes. States in the Horn are trying to leverage changing dynamics to promote their own interests. However, in a region with multiple fault lines and security challenges, the insertion of new alliance dynamics, military bases and power plays creates the risk for conflict.
What is driving the renewed interest in the Horn, and what is the impact of this attention on domestic and regional stability? What are the costs and gains to the Horn and, more broadly, to Africa? With transactional and transitory interests at play, where do recent developments leave the region?
Rashid Abdi is International Crisis Group’s Horn of Africa Project Director, based in Nairobi. He previously served as a senior editor with the BBC Monitoring Service and Kenya’s Daily Nation. He is a fellow of the Rift Valley Institute.
Mary Harper is the BBC’s Africa Editor and has reported on the continent for the past 20 years, with a focus on the Horn of Africa. She has published extensively on the region, focusing on Somalia and the Islamist group al-Shabaab. She is a fellow of the Rift Valley Institute and the Mogadishu-based Heritage Institute for Policy Studies.
Martin Plaut is a Senior Researcher Fellow specialising in the Horn of Africa and Southern Africa at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies. He is a former Africa Editor at BBC World Service, and has published extensively on African affairs. He has also acted as an adviser to the Foreign Office and the US State Department.
This event will take place in the Lee Kuan Yew Conference Room.
Please join us for tea and coffee from 12pm.
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