By The Diplomat | Created at 2026-06-11 07:27:11 | Updated at 2026-06-16 18:53:41
5 days ago
The Strait of Hormuz dominates headlines, but the threat from Iranian senior adviser Ali Akbar Velayati to force the closure of Bab el-Mandeb, the narrow strait linking the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, is equally grave. Velayati warned that the flow of global energy and trade could be disrupted “with a single move.” And while Hormuz is critical for energy transit, Bab el-Mandeb, separating the Gulf and East Africa, carries roughly 10-12 percent of global maritime trade.
This serves as a powerful reminder that East Africa is no longer a sideshow in global strategy. The region’s ports, sea lanes, and gas fields have become part of a wider contest for a region stretching from the Gulf to the Pacific Ocean. And while great powers scramble to unlock its potential, East African states must ensure their assets benefit their own development.
The region’s importance begins with geography. East Africa sits along the maritime system linking the Gulf, the Red Sea, and the wider Indian Ocean. The broader Indian Ocean carries more than one-third of the world’s bulk cargo traffic and around two-thirds of global oil shipments. From Djibouti down to Mozambique, East Africa’s coastline touches the routes that move energy, manufactured goods and food between Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Competition in this region goes beyond commerce to questions of access, security, and the power to shape future supply chains.
The field is growing more crowded, however. China, the European Union, and the United States have all launched initiatives to ensure security, access to resources, and shipping lanes in the region. India, too, is paying closer attention, folding Africa more clearly into its Indo-Pacific outlook. The Gulf states are already there: the UAE, through DP World and Abu Dhabi Ports, has built a formidable footprint in African ports, especially along the eastern seaboard. Europe and Japan also remain in the mix.
No outside power has understood the need to capture supply chains more clearly than China. Over the past two decades, it has built roads, railways and ports across the continent under the banner of the Belt and Road Initiative. In East Africa, the pattern is especially striking: the Addis Ababa-Djibouti railway, the standard-gauge line to Mombasa, heavy commercial stakes in port infrastructure and, in Djibouti, China’s first overseas military base, which opened in 2017.
Beijing presents this as South-South cooperation and development finance, but critics have argued that this Chinese engagement is motivated by a desire for political leverage and power projection. The truth is more complex than simply ports becoming military bases. Infrastructure can translate into influence, but with strong governance, East African nations can leverage their assets on a more equal footing.
Tanzania shows how this works in practice. For years, the proposed Bagamoyo port north of Dar es Salaam, once pitched as one of East Africa’s biggest maritime infrastructure projects, embodied both the promise and the unease of Chinese capital. First agreed in 2013 with Chinese and Omani backing, it stalled after former President John Magufuli denounced the terms as encroaching on Tanzanian sovereignty.
Under Tanzania’s current President, Samia Suluhu Hassan, it was revived and altered. By late 2025, the project had effectively shifted from a Chinese-led vision to a new arrangement with Africa Global Logistics, part of MSC, the largest container shipping company in the world. That suggests that Tanzania did not simply accept or reject foreign money, but renegotiated with its own interests in mind. The same logic applies offshore. Tanzania’s vast gas reserves, often estimated at 57 trillion cubic feet, have attracted Chinese, Western, and Gulf interest alike. Attracting investment, building wealth and keeping opportunities open across alliances requires a strategy of calibrated non-alignment.
President Samia Suluhu Hassan’s recent visit to Russia, the first by a Tanzanian leader in decades, came at an important moment in Tanzania’s relations with the West. Tanzania’s Mkuju River project, a $1.2bn venture with Russian state enterprise Rosatom, was renegotiated during the presidential visit. Access to critical uranium supplies will give Russia an important foothold in the region.
Yet Tanzania is not drifting into a Russian orbit. It is doing what any emerging middle power should do: keeping its options open and attracting investment from those willing to provide it. This week, Singapore’s President Tharman Shanmugaratnam is in Tanzania to strengthen bilateral relations, particularly in the economic sphere – further evidence that non-alignment pays dividends.
Asian countries have long practiced similar forms of balancing. Indonesia under President Prabowo Subianto, for example, has maintained its “free and active foreign” policy. Prabowo was in Moscow in April to discuss cooperation with Russia on energy and security. In the meantime, the Indonesian defense minister embarked on a trip to the U.S. where he signed a new security deal. The lesson for East Africa is that diplomatic pragmatism, if successfully pursued, strengthens domestic resilience and preserves room for maneuver. It can also channel an array of economic partnerships into jobs, infrastructure, and value addition at home.
In the past decade, the West has come to learn that a lot was at stake in not engaging with East Africa. America’s 2022 National Security Strategy spoke more openly about the geopolitical importance of African partnerships. Since then, Washington and its allies have pushed the Lobito Corridor, a planned rail-and-port route meant to move minerals and goods from central Africa to the Atlantic and eventually connect more efficiently to the Indian Ocean trade. It is both a commercial project and a strategic answer to Chinese infrastructure statecraft. In December 2024, the White House said the initiative had drawn more than $4 billion in American commitments and over $6 billion overall.
That is also why talk of a new scramble for Africa is too crude. East African governments are not passive ground over which others compete. They are increasingly adept at extracting value from geopolitical rivalry, whether in terms of diplomatic support or potential investments in ports, rail, gas reserves, and logistics networks. The real test is whether this surge of interest helps build durable prosperity in the region. Competition can still reproduce dependency in a new guise if investment projects serve outside interests more than they do local economies.
