ASMARA (Dispatches) — Eritrea’s foreign minister has accused the United Arab Emirates of pursuing “port imperialism” across Africa, questioning whether Abu Dhabi’s expanding network of maritime infrastructure serves purely commercial ends.
“The UAE has port facilities everywhere in the region, and African countries have to ask why,” Foreign Minister Osman Saleh told Middle East Eye in an exclusive interview from Asmara. “Is it just for economics? No.” 
The UAE’s two state-linked port groups, DP World and AD Ports, hold stakes in or manage facilities in Egypt, Tanzania, Somaliland, and Puntland, according to the interview. Saleh said the scope of the footprint suggests strategic objectives that African governments should scrutinize. 
Eritrea’s own experience offers a case in point. The UAE established a military base at the southern port of Assab in 2016, used to support Saudi-led attacks on Yemen. But ties soured as Abu Dhabi sought deeper presence. 
A senior Eritrean official told MEE that Asmara rejected a UAE request around 2016 to establish a military facility on a Dahlak Archipelago island that would have been shared with Israel — roughly five years before the two regimes publicly normalized relations under the Abraham Accords. 
“We didn’t want DP World [in Eritrea],” Saleh said. “We do not want any foreign power to have a ‘hub’ in Eritrea.” 
The UAE’s port expansion has encountered resistance elsewhere. Djibouti cancelled a DP World concession in 2018. Sudan’s government called off a 2022 agreement for a $6 billion AD Ports project on its Red Sea coast as relations deteriorated over Abu Dhabi’s support for the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary. 
Saleh also voiced concern over deepening UAE-Israel alignment in the Horn of Africa. “The UAE and Israel have already converged on Somaliland,” he said, referring to the breakaway region that Israel – itself an illegal entity – “recognized” in December 2025. 
“We have to ask why Israel is running to control the Horn of Africa? Why do they need a base in Somaliland?” 
Eritrean officials linked these concerns to Ethiopia’s expanding ties with Abu Dhabi and its renewed pursuit of sovereign Red Sea access. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has cultivated a close relationship with the UAE, which supplies Addis Ababa with drones and weapons systems. 
The accusations come as competition intensifies among Persian Gulf states and other powers for strategic positions along the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden corridors. Egypt and Saudi Arabia have recently sought closer security ties with Eritrea, partly to check Emirati influence.