Ethiopia’s own logistics numbers say the Red Sea crisis has not broken Djibouti’s grip. In the 2025/26 financial year the country moved 17.57 million metric tonnes of import and export cargo, and the Port of Djibouti handled 96.71 percent of everything that crossed a maritime gateway, according to State Minister Denge Boru at the Ministry of Transport and Logistics, reported by Birr Metrics.
Berbera took 2.74 percent. Tadjourah and the Mombasa-Moyale corridor were smaller still. Road haulage carried about 80 percent of freight inland; the Ethio-Djibouti railway moved just under 19 percent. Imports dwarfed exports, and coffee led outbound volume. The ministry itself listed Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb disruption, higher freight tariffs, and corridor pressure among the year’s main logistics headaches.
That is the Horn port economics story in one table. Diversification talk has been loud for years, and Berbera’s DP World-backed build-out was sold as a second lung for a landlocked importer that still depends on one foreign quay. Then Maersk suspended new bookings to and from Berbera amid Red Sea political tension, and Zawya/Nation Media reporting warned the move would push volumes back onto already congested Djibouti and Mombasa routes. When war risk insurance and Cape diversion freight reprice the Gate of Tears, Ethiopia pays twice: once at the ship, and again at the single corridor it still cannot leave.
Abiy Ahmed’s government keeps promising multimodal reform and AfCFTA-ready logistics. The ministry’s own 2025/26 ledger shows how little of that promise has moved the needle. Until Berbera, Assab dreams, or any other Gulf of Aden option carries real share under stress, Red Sea shipping costs and Djibouti fees remain the quiet tax on Ethiopian factories and farms.
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