Ethiopia: Playing with Numbers to Support Red Sea Access

 Ethiopia Insight published on 17 November 2025 a commentary titled "From Tigray's Cleansing to the Red Sea: The Tyranny of False Numbers" by an anonymous author.

Ethiopia's military chief recently said that the "fate of 200 million" Ethiopians cannot be decided by "2 million" Eritreans over Red Sea access.  The numbers used by the general significantly increase Ethiopia's population and reduce by half Eritrea's.  The author suggests this is a demographic narrative intended to help justify taking Eritrea's port of Assab by force in order to gain access to the Red Sea. 

Tracking Political Violence in Ethiopia

 The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, a US-based non-profit organization, has a separate "Ethiopia Peace Observatory" data base that tracks political violence throughout the country.  

Update on China-Africa Trade

 The China Africa Research Initiative recently posted an update of China-Africa trade titled "Download China-Africa Annual Trade Data, Country by Country, 1992-2019."

The value of China-Africa trade in 2019 was $192 billion, up from $185 billion in 2018 but still below the peak year of 2015.  China's exports to Africa also remain significantly higher than its imports from Africa.  In 2019, the largest African exporter to Africa was Angola (oil), South Africa (minerals), and Republic of Congo (oil).  Africa's major importers in 2019 of Chinese goods, almost entirely value added goods, were Nigeria, South Africa, and Egypt.  

China's Investment in Africa: Problems with Numbers

Asia Times published on 7 March 2018 an article titled "How Accurate is Investment Reporting on China in Africa" by Doug Tsuruoka.

The article cites a recent analysis by the Financial Times that reports China invested $36 billion in Africa in 2016. It then provides China's official FDI flows to Africa in 2016 at just over $2 billion.

Neither of these figures represents the real number, which is not known with any certainty. The $36 billion cited by the Financial Times is much too high for the flow of Chinese FDI to Africa in 2016 for the reasons stated in the Asia Times article. At the same time, the official Chinese figure is too low because it only captures FDI reported to China's Ministry of Commerce. It does not include smaller investments and fails to capture Chinese FDI that passes through Hong Kong, the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands, and other tax havens. Take all of these numbers with a grain of salt.