Something important is happening across the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa. Wars that appear local are drawing in actors from increasingly far away. Ports built for commerce acquire military uses. Gold mined in conflict zones travels through international financial centers. Drones purchased abroad alter wars. Governments negotiate with foreign powers while those same powers cultivate armed groups or parallel authorities elsewhere.

Sudan, Libya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Somaliland and Yemen are usually discussed as separate crises. Look more closely and the connections become difficult to ignore. A United Nations investigation found that forces aligned with Khalifa Haftar helped move Colombian fighters through Libya to support Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces. Sudanese gold travels toward the Gulf, while Chatham House has documented the importance of the UAE to the regional gold economy. In western Ethiopia, a Reuters investigation found a large training camp for fighters intended for the RSF, with reliable sources saying the UAE financed the facility and provided trainers and logistical support. 

These are not isolated developments. They point toward a changing system of power around the Red Sea.

What is emerging is not another Berlin Conference. Foreign governments are not openly dividing Africa into colonies, and African governments are not passive spectators. They bargain, invite investment, seek weapons and sometimes use outside powers against domestic or regional rivals. But something more than ordinary diplomacy is taking place.

One striking change is the growing importance of powers once treated as secondary actors in African geopolitics. The United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Israel do not possess the worldwide reach of the old European empires. Yet wealth, military technology, commercial networks and strategic geography allow these middle powers to exercise influence far beyond their borders.

They are also flexible about how that influence is exercised. A government can be the useful partner in one country, a paramilitary organization in another, a parallel authority somewhere else and a commercial company across several of them. The relationship need not be ideological and the partner need not even be a state. Strategic usefulness can be enough.

The UAE provides perhaps the clearest example. In Sudan, it has been supporting the RSF.

In Libya, it became an important external supporter of Khalifa Haftar’s eastern forces. Reuters has documented earlier UN findings that the UAE helped Haftar’s forces build their air power, while Turkey supplied drones and air defenses to the government in Tripoli.

The Sudan and Libya stories have since begun to merge. The UN Panel of Experts on Libya found that Colombian fighters transited through Haftar-controlled territory to support the RSF and described Libya as an operational, logistical and tactical base.

Gold reveals the economic side of the same system. Chatham House describes gold as a major driver of Sudan’s conflict. Between 2012 and 2022, according to figures examined by Chatham House, the UAE imported 2,569 tonnes of African gold that African countries themselves did not record as exports, worth approximately $115 billion.

The connection between gold and armed power is not abstract. The U.S. Treasury sanctioned UAE-based companies connected to the RSF network. It said AZ Gold purchased Sudanese gold apparently for the benefit of the RSF and transported it to Dubai.

Money, weapons and military support can therefore move toward African conflicts while gold and other resources move outward. The old colonial economy required foreign administrators. The contemporary system does not necessarily need them. Governments, armed groups, mining companies, traders, port operators and financial intermediaries can perform different parts of the process.

A recent Financial Times investigation traced a much wider Emirati expansion involving ports, mining, agriculture and infrastructure across Africa. A port can be a commercial asset, logistics hub, source of political leverage and, under different circumstances, military platform.

It is here that the idea of a new scramble for Africa becomes useful.

The old scramble sought possession of territory. The emerging one can operate at a distance. An outside power does not necessarily need to govern the mine, occupy the port or administer the population. It needs influence over the networks through which weapons, money, commodities and political power move.

We might call this long distance colonialism. I use the term as a question rather than a label for every foreign relationship. Foreign investment is not colonialism. An arms sale is not colonialism. A port concession is not colonialism. The important question is what happens when these relationships accumulate, when investment becomes dependency, military assistance strengthens coercive power, and control over ports, resources or security begins narrowing meaningful sovereignty.

The Red Sea is one of the best places to ask that question because the Red Sea has two sides.

Analysis still tends to privilege the Arabian shore: Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Israel and the Houthis. Yet Eritrea, Sudan, Djibouti and Somalia possess the ports, coastlines and strategic locations without which Red Sea politics cannot be understood. Bab el-Mandab does not separate these worlds. It connects them.

There is historical precedent. During the Cold War, the United States valued Eritrea partly because of Kagnew Station, its strategic communications facility in Asmara. Declassified State Department records described American military assistance to Haile Selassie’s government as the quid pro quo for Kagnew. Haile Selassie understood American strategic interest in Eritrea and used it while Eritrean self-determination was being destroyed.

That history makes Ethiopia’s renewed campaign for the Red Sea especially important. The English word “access” makes the dispute sound almost innocuous. Commercial access to a port and sovereignty over territory are entirely different matters.

Ethiopia itself demonstrated the distinction after Eritrean independence. Under the 1993 Transit and Port Services Agreement, Assab and Massawa were designated as transit ports for Ethiopian commerce. Ethiopian goods moving through them were exempt from Eritrean taxes and customs duties. Ethiopia could maintain offices and warehouses.

Ethiopia therefore does not need to own Assab to use Assab. Commercial access can be negotiated between sovereign states when relations are peaceful and based on trust. Territorial sovereignty is another matter entirely.

The issue became even clearer on October 4, when the leaders of Egypt, Eritrea, Sudan and Somalia met in New Alamein. Their joint declaration reaffirmed sovereignty and territorial integrity, rejected recognition or support for Somaliland, supported Sudan’s territorial integrity and, most importantly, declared that governance of the Red Sea is the exclusive responsibility of littoral states.

Ethiopia was not named. It hardly needed to be.

Addis Ababa answered almost immediately. On October 5, after being sworn in for another term, Abiy again insisted that Ethiopia must obtain an outlet to the sea. Ethiopia’s Foreign Ministry argued that changing political boundaries do not erase Ethiopia’s historical connection to the Red Sea and insisted upon its “legitimate interests” and “enduring connection” to it.

The disagreement could hardly be clearer. Four states possessing the coastline say governance of the Red Sea belongs to littoral states. A landlocked state answers that proximity and national interest give it a legitimate place in the maritime order.

But proximity is not sovereignty. Geography can create economic and security interests. It does not create ownership of somebody else’s coastline.

The four states also appear to be moving beyond declarations. Reuters reported, citing Egyptian and other political officials, that Egypt, Eritrea, Sudan and Somalia agreed to coordinate military and intelligence efforts if Ethiopia’s conflict reaches its borders with Eritrea, Sudan or Somalia. That understanding does not appear in the published declaration, but it suggests that political coordination is acquiring a security dimension.

The geography explains why. Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea and Somalia form an African strategic arc stretching from the northern Red Sea through Bab el-Mandab and into the Gulf of Aden. Sudan connects this system to the RSF war and Gulf competition. Eritrea possesses Assab and a long Red Sea coastline. Somalia confronts the Somaliland question and Ethiopia’s attempt to secure a coastal foothold through its memorandum with Hargeisa. Egypt brings the Nile dispute into the same strategic space.

This response also reminds us that Africans are not passive terrain upon which outside powers compete. But “African agency” should not become another abstraction. We need to ask which Africans possess agency, what they use it for and who pays the price.

That distinction is particularly important in Ethiopia. It would be misleading to describe Abiy Ahmed and the UAE simply as partners pursuing mutual national interests. The UAE has a broad regional strategy involving ports, logistics, minerals and political influence. Abiy’s political calculus is much narrower. His overriding interest is remaining in power.

Ethiopia is not Abiy Ahmed, and his interests should not automatically be treated as Ethiopian national interests. His government has presided over devastating internal wars, displacement and the militarization of political disputes. Foreign money, weapons, drones and diplomatic relationships can strengthen the government at the center while ordinary Ethiopians bear the consequences.

This is precisely how the new scramble can work. Outside powers do not need local partners who share their long-term objectives. They need partners who find the relationship useful. An outside power may want a port, minerals, military access or regional influence. A ruler receiving its support may primarily want the resources necessary to remain in power. They do not need the same objective. They only need to find one another useful.

Ethiopia’s Red Sea ambitions also intersect with outside military relationships. France agreed in 2019 to help landlocked Ethiopia rebuild a navy. French government sources describe assistance in reconstructing Ethiopian naval capacity and training. There is an irony here. France has been pushed out of parts of West Africa while helping a landlocked government on the other side of the continent develop naval capabilities as that government increasingly asserts a strategic claim to the Red Sea.

Israel represents another variation. In December 2025, Israel became the first country to recognize Somaliland, despite Somalia’s objections and opposition from the African Union. Somaliland has subsequently acknowledged receiving Israeli military and police training. Israel has also publicly supported Ethiopia’s pursuit of maritime access.

These developments do not prove a single coordinated project among Israel, Ethiopia and the UAE. Their interests differ. But they show how local territorial disputes become intertwined with the ambitions of outside powers.

Turkey represents another form of influence. Turkish drones were among the foreign weapons that altered the earlier Tigray war. Reuters reported that Washington raised concerns about Turkish armed drone sales to Ethiopia. Ankara did not need to occupy Ethiopian territory to become consequential. Military technology itself became an instrument of influence.

Russia provides another variation. Wagner developed relationships around mineral extraction and security in Africa, including Sudan’s gold economy, while Moscow has pursued a naval presence on Sudan’s Red Sea coast. Organizations and partners can change while the strategic objective survives.

This is not simply Africa versus outsiders. Saudi Arabia and the UAE compete. Turkey and Israel pursue their own relationships. African governments bargain, resist and change partners. What connects these developments is not a secret alliance but a method of exercising power.

Ports, drones, minerals, military training, diplomatic recognition, investment, paramilitary forces and political relationships can all become instruments within the same geopolitical system.

The African shore becomes even more important when instability affects other maritime routes. Reuters reported on October 5 that Eritrea’s roughly 1,000-kilometer Red Sea coastline is attracting renewed outside attention as conflict involving Iran raises concern about shipping through Hormuz.

This is why the Red Sea cannot be understood from the Arabian Peninsula alone. Hormuz, Yemen, Bab el-Mandeb and the African shore form one interconnected system. A disruption in one part changes the strategic value of another.

Geography can be a fortune for relatively poor countries. Strategic waterways, ports and coastlines can generate transit revenue, investment and bargaining power. But geography can become a curse when powerful actors decide that strategic value gives them entitlement. A commercially valuable port requires peace, insurance, predictable shipping and trust. A war fought to obtain a port could destroy precisely the economic value supposedly being sought.

The Houthis demonstrate another part of this changing order. They are commonly reduced to an Iranian proxy, although the movement predates contemporary Iranian support and emerged from Yemen’s own history. Yet they have demonstrated how a non-state actor positioned near a strategic chokepoint can acquire international influence vastly disproportionate to its conventional economic power. Geography, missiles, drones and political organization can compensate for weakness.

Middle powers understand the same lesson. They do not need to dominate everywhere. They need leverage at particular nodes.

This is why long distance colonialism is worth considering. The question is not whether every unequal relationship is colonial. It is whether apparently separate relationships are accumulating into something more durable: control exercised through networks rather than governors.

Who owns the infrastructure? Who finances it? Who controls the port or airfield during a crisis? Who supplies the weapons? Where do the minerals go? Who profits? Who makes the political decisions? And who bears the danger?

Those questions reveal something the conventional political map hides.

Sudan connects Gulf money and gold to western Ethiopia and Libya. Ethiopia’s confrontation with Eritrea connects its internal crisis to Assab and the Red Sea. Egypt connects Ethiopia’s regional confrontation to the Nile. Somaliland connects recognition politics to ports and military access. Yemen and the Houthis connect the African shore directly to Bab el-Mandab. Russia seeks access on Sudan’s coast. France trains a navy for landlocked Ethiopia. Israel recognizes Somaliland and supports Ethiopia’s maritime ambitions. UAE networks cross several of these theaters.

Once these relationships are placed on the same map, they no longer look like unrelated crises. They form a connected but fragmented system of finance, weapons, commodities, political survival and strategic leverage.

The old scramble sought possession of African territory. The new scramble can be more flexible. It can seek ports without colonies, minerals without territorial administration and military influence without permanent occupation. It can work through a president, a general, a paramilitary organization, a corporation or a port operator.

That may also explain why it is easier to overlook. The colonial flag has disappeared. The networks have not.

The decisive question is no longer simply whether foreign powers are present in Africa. They are. The more important questions are what their presence produces, which African actors benefit from it, whose power it strengthens, whose sovereignty it diminishes and who ultimately pays the price.

The Red Sea has two sides bur the African side is rarely acknowledged.

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