EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The Horn of Africa confronts the credible prospect of a second Ethiopia–Eritrea war. Since late 2024, both states have mobilised troops, mechanized units and heavy equipment to their shared frontier of over 1,000 kilometres, exchanged formal diplomatic accusations at the United Nations, and embedded the dispute within an expanding web of regional rivalries linking Egypt, Sudan and the Gulf powers. Ethiopia accuses Eritrea of military encroachment into its northern territories and of channelling arms to insurgent groups, including factions of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and Fano militias, to fracture federal authority. Eritrea, in turn, frames Ethiopia’s increasingly assertive quest for Red Sea access as an existentialist threat to its sovereignty and territorial integrity. Meanwhile, the Pretoria Agreement of November 2022, which ended the catastrophic Tigray conflict, remains incompletely implemented, and TPLF leaders have decried what they describe as a federal blockade and the non-fulfilment of key political and security commitments. This brief analyses the layered drivers of the current escalation and advances sharp, actionable recommendations to avert a war that would devastate civilian populations, destabilise the Red Sea corridor, and set back a decade of fragile regional integration.