Category: MIL-OSI

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Hafte Gebreselassie Gebrihet, Research fellow, University of Oslo; University of Cape Town

The large-scale war between the Ethiopian federal government and Tigray regional government forces ended in November 2022 with the signing of the Pretoria Agreement. The two sides agreed that the Tigrayan forces would disarm, and that foreign forces and other troops outside the federal army would withdraw from Tigray. They also agreed to restore constitutional order in Tigray and resolve disputes over contested areas in accordance with the constitution.

I study armed conflict, governance and political communication in Ethiopia. I recently analysed the Pretoria Agreement and its implementation. I examined official statements from Ethiopian, Eritrean and Tigrayan authorities, reports by international organisations and conflict monitors, and news reports published between November 2022 and June 2026. This enabled me to trace how disputes over disarmament, territory and political representation became connected to the rivalry between landlocked Ethiopia and Eritrea over access to the Red Sea.

I found that while the Pretoria Agreement remains accepted by the Ethiopian federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), its main commitments have been applied selectively.

The peace agreement has formally survived, but the conflict it was meant to end continues in other forms. I call this conflict consolidation. Large-scale fighting stopped, federal services resumed, and an interim regional administration was established. But Western Tigray has not been returned to Tigrayan administration, foreign and non-federal forces have not fully withdrawn, and Tigray has not been fully reintegrated into federal politics. Disarmament remains incomplete, and displacement, political exclusion and local fighting continue.

At the centre of it all are tensions between Ethiopia and Eritrea, which have been sharpened by Ethiopia’s pursuit of access to the Red Sea. These tensions have made incomplete implementation of the November 2022 peace agreement more useful to the Ethiopian federal government, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front and Eritrea than full implementation would be. This is the case even though Eritrea is not a signatory to the agreement.

Red Sea tension complicated the Pretoria Agreement

Ethiopia has been landlocked since Eritrea became independent in 1993. It currently relies on the port of Djibouti for most of its international trade in goods. Previously, Assab – a port in Eritrea’s southern Red Sea region – was Ethiopia’s main entry point until the 1998 to 2000 war between Ethiopia and Eritrea.

This history has made Assab the subject of a dispute between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Within Ethiopia, the TPLF has been blamed for leaving the country without access to the sea. This is because a transitional government dominated by the TPLF accepted the 1993 referendum that established Eritrea as an independent state.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed argues that a population of 150 million cannot live in a geographic prison. Ethiopian rhetoric moves between seeking commercial access to the sea and asserting a historical claim to Assab. It portrays the acceptance of Eritrean independence without securing Ethiopian control of a port as the mistake that left Ethiopia without a coastline.

For Eritrea, Assab is not simply a port. Control of the coastline is part of the independence secured after 30 years of war against Ethiopia. When Ethiopian politicians present sea access as a historical right, Eritrea hears a possible claim to its territory.

Over time, port access, border control and armed opposition inside Ethiopia have become parts of the same confrontation.

Tigray is where these issues meet. It borders Eritrea. Western Tigray, a large part of Tigrayan territory, remains under Amhara administration and military control. Furthermore, Tigrayan forces have not fully disarmed. For the federal government, securing the border and disarming Tigrayan forces would reduce the risk of Eritrean support reaching Tigray or of Ethiopia facing two connected northern fronts.

The wartime alliance between Addis Ababa and Asmara during the Tigray war broke down after the Pretoria Agreement was signed in November 2022. One consequence is that Eritrea and the TPLF have found common ground against the federal government. No formal alliance has been announced. But reports of contacts and possible coordination, together with federal accusations of joint military preparations, suggest an informal tactical alignment. The TPLF has rejected claims that it is coordinating with Eritrea.

For Eritrea, continued conflict inside Ethiopia reduces the threat to Assab. A federal government fighting in the Amhara, Oromia and Tigray regions has fewer troops, less money and less political space to pressure Eritrea. Eritrea does not need a permanent alliance with the TPLF. Even limited cooperation can force Addis Ababa to focus on several internal fronts.

My analysis suggests that the Ethiopian government has made the opposite calculation. This is supported by federal government warnings that the TPLF is siding with Eritrea in a possible proxy war, an accusation the TPLF denies. But by presenting the TPLF as an Eritrean partner, the federal government can portray resistance to disarmament as a foreign-backed threat. This helps Addis Ababa defend its failure to fully implement the Pretoria Agreement and rally domestic support around national unity and sovereignty.

The federal accusation also creates a political logic for weakening the Tigray People’s Liberation Front before increasing pressure on Eritrea over the Assab port. I interpret this as a two-part sovereignty argument. The Tigray People’s Liberation Front can first be treated as an internal partner of a foreign enemy. The same defence of sovereignty can then support pressure on Eritrea over Assab.

Claims that Assab historically belongs to Ethiopia can make that pressure appear as recovery of national territory. This does not prove that the federal government has adopted such a military plan. It shows how the same sovereignty argument can be directed against both the Tigray People’s Liberation Front and Eritrea.

The Tigray People’s Liberation Front can make its own calculation. Hostility between Ethiopia and Eritrea gives the TPLF an opportunity to use possible Eritrean support as leverage to press Addis Ababa to implement the Pretoria Agreement. For Eritrea, supporting pressure from Tigray can weaken the Ethiopian government as it presses its claim to the Assab port.

Local observers in Tigray and Eritrea use the Tigrigna term Tsimdo for the reported cooperation between Eritrea and the TPLF. Its extent remains contested. But Addis Ababa treats the possibility as a security threat.

Red Sea rivalry keeps Pretoria on hold

The rivalry blocks the Pretoria Agreement at its most important point. The military implementation plan linked Tigrayan disarmament to the withdrawal of foreign forces and forces outside the federal army. Tigrayan forces were expected to surrender their weapons as the forces that threatened Tigray withdrew.

That exchange has been interrupted. Tigrayan actors ask why they should disarm while Western Tigray has not returned to Tigrayan administration. Keeping their weapons also provides protection if the tension between Ethiopia and Eritrea develops into war.

My analysis suggests that federal authorities may be reluctant to restore a strategically important area to a divided Tigrayan leadership. Restoring the area could also bring the federal government into confrontation with Amhara political and military actors and cost it Amhara political support.

Each side treats its own obligation as a loss of security and demands that the other move first.

And Western Tigray bears the heaviest cost of the impasse. More than 760,000 Tigrayans remain displaced. The dispute concerns not only where displaced people can live, but which regional authority will govern the area. Displaced people are therefore trapped inside a security contest they did not create.

Political exclusion makes armed power more valuable. Tigray did not take part in the 1 June 2026 election. Tigray People’s Liberation Front leaders who cannot bargain through parliament have stronger reasons to retain military leverage. Federal authorities can then cite that military power as evidence that Tigray is not ready for political reintegration.

Protect peace in Tigray from regional rivalry

Preventing another war requires two connected processes.

Ethiopia and Eritrea must address the Assab dispute peacefully, including access to the port, sovereignty and alleged support for armed groups. The Pretoria Agreement cannot carry the burden of a dispute that was not part of the peace deal.

In Tigray, the implementation of the peace deal needs a verifiable order: withdrawal of foreign forces and forces outside the federal army, restoration of Tigrayan administration in Western Tigray, safe return of displaced people, disarmament of Tigrayan forces and political reintegration.

These steps would narrow the opportunities created by Red Sea tension. Eritrea would have less room to use conflict in Tigray to constrain Ethiopia. Ethiopia’s federal government would have less reason to treat Tigrayan demands as foreign threats. Tigrayan forces would have less reason to seek Eritrean support as protection. Peace in Tigray depends on making implementation more valuable than continued uncertainty.

– Ethiopia-Eritrea tensions over Red Sea port have turned the Tigray peace deal into a political weapon
– https://theconversation.com/ethiopia-eritrea-tensions-over-red-sea-port-have-turned-the-tigray-peace-deal-into-a-political-weapon-290096

Source: The Conversation – Africa – By Pritish Behuria, Reader in Politics, Governance and Development, Global Development Institute, University of Manchester

Rwanda is routinely celebrated as a growth miracle on the African continent. The country’s GDP growth averaged 7.4% annually between 2000 and 2023, one of the fastest in Africa.

Three decades after the 1994 genocide, Kigali has been transformed. It is a services hub, with a gleaming convention centre, a growing airline and a skyline of new hotels. Most scholarship has argued that this has either been driven by party-affiliated firms or through foreign investment.

However, the most significant driver is Rwandan workers’ retirement savings through the country’s pension fund. The Rwanda Social Security Board manages assets of roughly 2 trillion Rwandan francs (about US$1.4 billion to US$1.5 billion). This makes it one of Rwanda’s largest institutional investors. Its portfolio spans government securities, bank deposits, equities, real estate and other investments.

My research examines the politics of economic transformation under contemporary globalisation in eastern and southern Africa. In a new paper, I describe how the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front has used the country’s pension fund as an instrument of what political economists describe as the new state capitalism. The state capitalism literature refers to how some governments have used state-controlled institutional investments (including pension funds) to invest in strategic assets in their own economies and not just act as regulators from the sidelines.

My paper shows how the Rwandan case demonstrates potential to use pension fund assets for strategic investments in the national economy. However, it suggests that the potential gains of such investments will not be sustained unless they focus on employment-generating sectors. Sustaining structural transformation, as per the arguments of developmental state scholars like Alice Amsden, also requires the support of domestic firms to invest in technological capabilities and become competitive in global markets.

How Rwanda did it

At independence in 1962, the Rwandan government created the Caisse Sociale du Rwanda (Social Security Fund of Rwanda). It was a public institution charged with managing pension and occupational hazard schemes. Since the early 2000s, the Rwandan government has focused on increasing pension fund contributions, as well as mobilising pension fund resources to invest in strategic priorities. Between 2003 and 2020, the number of Rwandans contributing to the scheme nearly tripled from 200,000 to 691,756. As a way to streamline the management of public pension funds, the Rwanda Social Security Board was established in 2010. This was a merger of the Social Security Fund of Rwanda and Rwandaise d’Assurance Maladie, Rwanda’s health insurance system.

The Rwanda Social Security Board’s assets under management have grown from US$212 million in 2012 to US$2.07 billion in 2025.

The fund owns shares in domestic commercial banks and holds significant deposits in several banks. It invests in local and foreign fixed-income investments in government securities, fixed deposits and corporate bonds. There are also local and foreign non-fixed income investments in publicly listed equity, private equity and real estate.

The Rwandan government uses the Rwanda Social Security Board – alongside its party- and military-owned firms – to steer investments in line with its services-first development strategy. In this way, Rwanda’s approach is partially modelled on Singapore. Singapore has used government-linked companies, pension funds and government-owned holdings in Temasek, a multinational investment firm, to steer investment to strategic sectors.

Where the model runs into limits

The Rwandan government’s use of the Rwanda Social Security Board has delivered in many ways. It has provided the government with significant funds, which it directly controls and can use for strategic priorities. The board has also been the key financial driver of the transformation of Kigali into a tourism and services hub.

But my research also shows where pension fund activism may be more fragile than it seems. North American, European and east Asian developmental states all employed pension funds to direct investment into employment-generating sectors, particularly manufacturing. Crucially also, pension fund investment encouraged and worked alongside the growth of domestic firms.

The Rwandan case has differed in two fundamental ways.

First, the Rwanda Social Security Board has directed its investments into bolstering Rwanda’s services-first model, which has not yielded substantial formal sector employment.

Second, the board has done very little to support the growth of domestic firms to invest in technological capabilities. This has reinforced the economy’s reliance on state-affiliated firms and foreign firms.

Rwanda’s youth dominate its demographics but east Asia may show a picture of its future and the possible vulnerabilities a reliance on pension fund investments may lead to. The histories of Japan and South Korea show how ageing demographics place increasing pressures on pension systems. It narrows the once longer-term horizons through which pension fund managers could make investments.

This is because, as societies get older, there are more demands to pay out pensions. There may also be reduced contributions to the pension system if the working-age population shrinks. Rwanda is not yet facing these challenges.

Rwanda is currently experiencing a “youth bulge”: more than 60% of the population is under 25.

The Rwanda Social Security Board estimates that it has a 25-year time span to receive a return on its investments. Most pension contributors are currently in their mid-30s and will only retire in three decades.

While time may be on the side of Rwanda’s pension fund managers, the economy is not. Rwanda’s services-based strategy has not yielded sufficient employment generation. In 2025, unemployment was at 12.4%, far above the government target of 7%.

The employment rate also masks the number of workers who work fewer hours than they wish to. This has resulted in Rwandans working several precarious jobs. Based on the government’s own labour market data, the combined rate of workers who work fewer hours than they want to and unemployed workers was estimated at more than 50% in 2025.

Another source of vulnerability is that the government is reliant on either state-affiliated firms or foreign investors as lead investors in nearly every sector of the economy. The government has failed to use pension funds to invest in supporting domestic private sector firms. One reason is that the government has not developed effective relationships built on reciprocity with domestic private firms. This is partly because some formerly prominent Rwandan business people funded opposition movements outside the country once they had fallen out with the government.

Relying on a single state-owned pension fund has its benefits. It enables the ruling party to concentrate control. However, the pension fund’s investments have not been used to support investments in manufacturing or agro-processing, key sectors that could not only diversify exports but also create employment.

A model for the rest of Africa?

Rwanda is often presented, by the Rwandan Patriotic Front and outside observers, as a template for other African states to follow. However, its economic model is still poorly understood. Its pension fund – perhaps the key institutional investor in the economy – is rarely discussed. However, it is perhaps the most innovative example of state intervention in Rwanda.

The Rwanda Social Security Board has driven the growth of Rwanda’s services-first model. But whether it can sustain economic momentum depends on employment generation, the growth of domestic firms and ensuring that investments are in line with long-term goals rather than short-term profit-making.

– Rwanda’s national pension fund has helped power the economy, but it faces new challenges
– https://theconversation.com/rwandas-national-pension-fund-has-helped-power-the-economy-but-it-faces-new-challenges-289633