Landlocked Ethiopia Plans to Build Navy, Prime Minister Says

Ethiopian PM Abiy Ahmed

Landlocked Ethiopia to reestablish navy


By Xinhuanet

ADDIS ABABA, June 3 (Xinhua) — Landlocked Ethiopia is to establish a naval force more than two decades after it was disbanded, state media Radio Fana has said.

The announcement was made by Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed during a meeting with officials from the Ethiopia National Defense Force, said the Radio Fana report.

However, the announcement did not specify where the navy would be based or when it would be established.

Ethiopia had a navy up to the early 1990s, when the independence of Eritrea left Ethiopia landlocked and prompted the Ethiopian government to disband the navy.

____

Landlocked Ethiopia Plans to Build Navy, Prime Minister Says

By Nizar Manek | Bloomberg

Landlocked Ethiopia is planning to build a navy, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said during a briefing of the heads of the country’s National Defense Force.

“Following the efforts made to build capacity of our national defense, we built one of the stronger ground and air forces in Africa,” the ruling party-funded Fana Broadcasting Corp. reported Abiy as saying on Friday. “We should build our naval force capacity in the future.”

Two calls to the mobile phone of Abiy’s national security adviser, Abadula Gemada, didn’t connect.

Ethiopia currently has a civilian Ethiopian Maritime Training Institute on Lake Tana. It trains more than 500 marine engineers and electro-technical officers each year and plans to increase this to more than 1,000 officers annually, according to its website.

Abiy’s government in May agreed to develop Port Sudan on the Red Sea and agreed with Djibouti to swap shares in state-owned ports, airlines, and telecommunications. It also agreed to acquire land at Kenya’s Lamu Port for “logistical facilitation,” according to a joint communiqué issued after a meeting between Abiy and Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta.

Earlier this year, Ethiopia took a stake in a port in Somaliland, a semi-autonomous part of Somalia that aspires to statehood and borders Djibouti. Somaliland will host a naval base for the United Arab Emirates.

Sponsored Ads