It’s always amusing to watch the panic some Ethiopian elites slip into, whenever Eritrean and Egyptian leaders meet. Eritrea is a fiercely independent state; everyone knows it doesn’t play proxy for anyone.
But here’s the point of this post: over the past 34 years, Eritrea–Egypt leader-level meetings are a fraction of Ethiopia–Egypt meetings. In fact, Ethiopia’s leaders have met Egyptian presidents nearly three or four times more often.
So what do we make of that? If frequent meetings signal proxy behavior, then what do we say about Ethiopia’s near-annual meetings? Or, as Getachew Reda once put it after Abiy’s last trip to Cairo,
Abiy sold GERD to Egypt.