Ethiopia
Federal governance, economic reform and regional diplomacy define Ethiopia's role in the Horn.
Maarifa Yanayohusiana
Sudan's Army Just Struck a Third Country. Its Government's Answer to Washington Was to Talk About Ethiopia Instead.
Chad says Sudanese military aircraft pursued a convoy more than 100 kilometres inside its territory on 20 August and, six days later, struck a fuel market near the border, killing at least 12 people and prompting Chad to raise its alert level to maximum. Massad Boulos, the Trump administration's senior adviser for Arab and African affairs, publicly condemned the Sudanese Armed Forces and warned the war risked spreading further. Sudan's foreign ministry rejected the accusation without an independent inquiry and pointed instead at what it called international silence over daily drone incursions from Ethiopia, the same front FIKIR Institute reported on after Rapid Support Forces assaults on Geisan and Kurmuk in mid-August. Sudan's civil war now has two live spillover fronts, and Khartoum is using one to answer for the other.
2 September 2026
Ethiopia's Civil War Enemies Just Became Allies. Fano and the TPLF Fought Each Other in 2022. Now They Both Want Abiy Gone.
Fano militia leader Zemene Kassie announced on 15 August that his forces had concluded eight to nine months of negotiations, anchored by talks in Port Sudan, resulting in a unified command allied with the TPLF and six or seven other armed factions across Ethiopia, with the explicit goal of removing Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. Fano and the TPLF fought each other during the 2020-2022 Tigray war, when Amhara militias fought alongside Abiy's federal government against Tigrayan forces. The Ogaden National Liberation Front joined two days later. The announcement lands the same week Tigray has recorded its heaviest fighting since the Pretoria peace deal effectively collapsed, with an estimated 100,000 Eritrean troops reportedly involved and aid deliveries to five million people in Tigray halted.
26 August 2026
For Two Weeks, Ethiopia's Drones Struck Villages Outside Mekelle. On Thursday, They Hit the City Itself.
Drone strikes hit two locations inside Mekelle on 20 August, wounding at least 13 people, five of them children, after two earlier strikes this month landed at a school outside Merewa and a farm-training centre outside the city. Tigray's regional government blamed Addis Ababa for all three; Ethiopia's federal government has not confirmed or denied any of them. On 21 August, Tigray's culture bureau cancelled Saturday's Ashenda festival gathering, citing the strikes directly.
22 August 2026
Ethiopia Just Said It's Ready to Build Three More Dams on the Blue Nile. Combined, They'd Outpower the GERD Itself.
Aregawi Berhe, who led public mobilisation for the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, said this week that Ethiopia has shown it can build more mega dams and pointed to three already announced: Karadobi, Mandaya and Beko Abo, together worth roughly $10.5 billion and 5,700 megawatts, more generating capacity than the GERD they would follow. A same-week Al Jazeera analysis asks whether Egypt, having failed to stop the GERD, can still shape what comes next. FIKIR Institute traces the dam specifications, the Trump administration's revived mediation offer, and the Cairo-Asmara alignment this dispute is now feeding.
21 August 2026
Eritrea Was Asked to Step Back From the Border. It Sent Tanks Across It, Then Spent Five Days Saying in Writing It Won't Talk.
FIKIR Institute's 11 August analysis of the Tigray clash asked whether Eritrean forces would stay garrisoned or move, and whether Asmara would distance itself from the fighting or not. Eritrean commanders crossed into Zalambesa to fly their flag two days earlier than that piece published; tanks followed on 6 August. Since then, Eritrea's government has published three statements, on 14, 17 and 18 August, explicitly refusing to re-engage on the border, while both armies continue large-scale mobilisation.
19 August 2026
Ethiopia Says It Has No Role in Sudan's War. The Force That Retook a Border Town Attacked From Its Territory Four Days After a Mass Grave Was Found There.
Sudan's Rapid Support Forces and an allied faction seized the towns of Geisan and Kurmuk in Blue Nile state in the space of a week, the second of them four days after Sudanese soldiers uncovered a mass grave of 25 executed civilians inside it. Both assaults opened with a ground push from the direction of the Ethiopian border, the same border a Yale-based satellite investigation says an Ethiopian army base has been supplying since at least December. FIKIR Institute examines what a war fought largely on Ethiopian soil's edge means for a region already absorbing an AUSSOM funding collapse and an unravelling Ethiopia-Eritrea peace.
18 August 2026
The Pretoria Peace Is Effectively Dead. A 24-Hour Battle in Tigray Just Confirmed It.
Ethiopian federal forces and Tigrayan fighters fought a day-long battle in western Tigray on 1-2 August, the most serious clash since the 2022 Pretoria agreement ended Africa's deadliest recent war. FIKIR Institute examines how the collapse of the deal's interim governance structure, Eritrea's continued presence in the region, and an unresolved dispute over the port of Assab are converging into the most serious war risk the Horn has faced in years.
11 August 2026