False claims about Ethiopia’s pursuit of Red Sea access add to tensions with Eritrea

Instability in the Horn of Africa region is leading to renewed tensions between landlocked Ethiopia and rival Eritrea after a brief détente during the Tigray war, which ended in 2022. Ethiopia is eager to gain direct access to the Red Sea, which it once enjoyed through the Eritrean port of Assab. Social media accounts are spreading images and videos claiming to show Ethiopian warships and troops regaining control of Assab port. But the posts are false and experts say the disinformation is adding to concerns about an imminent war breaking out.

Restoring access to the Red Sea is a burning ambition for Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who told parliament in 2023: “Ethiopia is a nation whose existence is tied to the Red Sea” (archived here).

Both options, real or imagined, are prickly subjects in the Horn of Africa where “misinformation and disinformation are further destabilising the fragile political context in the region”, said Kjetil Tronvoll, a professor of peace and conflict studies at Oslo New University College (archived here).

On February 25, 2025, a video published on Facebook claimed Abiy had asserted ownership of the Red Sea during his parliamentary address two years ago, purportedly calling it “Ethiopia’s property”.

The clip contains more than a minute of Abiy’s speech and includes generic footage of commercial port operations. A similar post was shared here.

However, the claim is misleading.

A reverse image search of keyframes from the video  led to Abiy’s original speech from 2023 when he told parliament: “Ethiopia’s quest for access to the Red Sea is a matter of survival.”

He repeated his remarks that Ethiopia needed access to the sea based on international trade laws, but he did not claim ownership rights (archived here).

The same speech was misleadingly used in posts claiming that Abiy said “the new Ethiopian generation must at all costs recapture the Red Sea coast that his forefathers once enjoyed”. But he did not make the remark attributed to him.

Clionadh Raleigh, the head of Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED), told AFP Fact Check that both sides are resorting to using disinformation as a weapon (archived here).

“Disinformation comes from across all levels in the renewed tension between Ethiopia and Eritrea,” she said.

Assab port 

Eritrea was a province of Ethiopia and gained independence in 1993 after three decades of brutal war. This cut Ethiopia off from Assab port, now part of Eritrea, on the Red Sea (archived here).

We found footage that was published on Facebook on March 3, 2024 claiming to show Abiy in the military uniform along with the Ethiopian army at the Red Sea coast.

At the beginning of the video, a male narrator says: “The world is shocked at how a great country like Ethiopia has been cut off from access to the sea because of the independence of one of its former provinces”.

“The measure was deliberately imposed on Ethiopia because it strongly opposes colonisation and prides itself on never having been colonised," the narrator claims.

An illustration showing warships marked Ethiopia are shown on the sea to make an impression that the Ethiopian army controlling the Red Sea coast. The footage also contains the Ethiopian flag waving at the Red Sea.

However, search results again show that the image shows Abiy on the battlefield with military commanders during the war between the Ethiopian army and the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) in 2021. The image was edited with the Red Sea footage to falsely make the impression that the Ethiopian army controls the Red Sea coast.

Oslo-based researcher Tronvoll noted: “There are a lot of rumours on troop movements and preparations for war that are peddled by various actors, enhancing the perceptions of a destined coming conflict.”

Ethiopia once used an oil refinery at the port of Assab, built by its late Emperor Haile Selassie, for its domestic oil needs until a border conflict broke out between the two countries in 1998 and killed 80,000 people (archived here).

A diplomatic stalemate that lasted two more decades ended in 2018 with peace efforts.

Following the unprecedented rapprochement, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) offered to build a pipeline connecting Ethiopia to the port of Assab (archived here).

Despite the overtures, Ethiopia still has no access to the port of Assab and continues to rely on foreign trade through  Djibouti.

According to Wasihun Teshager, a journalism lecturer at Ethiopia’s Jimma University, there are several reasons why social media disinformation surged in the new tensions between Ethiopia and Eritrea (archived here).

“The existing rivalry and complex relations between the two countries, the armed conflict in Ethiopia and the lack of balanced reporting in the mainstream media have exacerbated the spread of disinformation on social media and its impact," Waishun told AFP.

AI-generated images 

Other claims related to the Eritrean port include images showing large warships inscribed with the words “Asab Ethiopia” docked at a port said to be on the Red Sea.

However, this is misleading.

Although Ethiopia started the re-establishment of a naval force in 2018, it does not yet own a naval base, nor is it known to possess warships (archived here).

Moreover, we compared a photo of Assab port taken by Voice of America (VOA) and the social media image of the warships in the harbour and found no similarities between the two (archived here).

AFP Fact Check used an AI detection tool called Sensity that shows there is a 90 percent probability that the image was made with an online generative tool (archived here).

Similar AI-generated images claim to show a shiny new port with modern facilities and a signpost in English reading: “Welcome to Assab Port Ethiopia.”

The posts, while false, appear to hammer home the claims that Assab rightfully belongs to Ethiopia and not Eritrea.

“The surging disinformation may help to create or renew enemy images needed to mobilise for war,” warns Tronvoll, adding that “caution is needed when interpreting the situation.”