In September 2016, the Somaliland government agreed a thirty-year concession with DP World, the Dubai-based ports operator, to develop and operate the port of Berbera. The US$440 million expansion will transform Berbera – already a significant hub for the Horn of Africa’s regional livestock trade – beyond recognition. The two-phase development incorporates plans for a new 400m quay, a 250,000 m2 yard and upgrades to the city’s airport. The Berbera corridor will expand port access for neighbouring Ethiopia, which has a 19 per cent stake in the development. With Somaliland holding a 30 per cent stake, this leaves DP World as the majority stakeholder. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has committed over US$100 million in additional investment to upgrade the 250 km road connecting the port with Hargeisa, Somaliland’s capital, and Togwajale, a town astride the border with Ethiopia (see Map 9.1).

The Berbera corridor development is part of a wider drive by Gulf rivals the UAE and Qatar to cement their geostrategic standing in the Horn of Africa. Through large-scale investments in infrastructure, they seek to secure preferential access to potential developments and trade under China’s Belt and Road Initiative (International Crisis Group 2019). Yet, these large-scale investments are being pursued in ‘ways that increase rather than decrease regional polarisation’, with political considerations to squeeze rivals trumping economic interests (Verhoeven 2018: 334). Tensions engendered by new large-scale infrastructural investments reach more deeply into Somali society itself, with concerns that Gulf investments and funding will deepen pre-existing societal divisions and, thus, foment instability (Meester et al. 2018).

The UAE’s large-scale investments, unprecedented in Somaliland’s history, have precipitated a scramble among the region’s clan-based economic networks. Past patterns of exclusion, and intense competition to command a favourable position in regional trade networks, influence new struggles to capture the expected windfall of Berbera’s development. This chapter examines the political economy of the Berbera corridor and the competition and conflict it has unleashed.

History of corridor contestation

By the early 1900s, Berbera and Zeila ports on the Gulf of Aden were already established as key ports for caravan-based trade from what is now Somaliland, as well as neighbouring areas of Ethiopia (Mohamed 2004). During this period, Zeila remained a principal port for exports of coffee, gum, hides and skins, ivory, livestock, guns and slaves, most of which came from Ethiopia via Harar (Pankhurst 1965).