Ethiopia’s latest logistics figures show that almost all of the country’s sea trade still passes through one port. During the 2025/26 financial year, Ethiopia moved about 17.57 million metric tonnes of import and export cargo. The Port of Djibouti handled 96.71 percent of the cargo that passed through sea gateways, according to figures released by State Minister of Transport and Logistics Denge Boru and reported by Birr Metrics.
Berbera took 2.74 percent, Tadjourah 1.23 percent, and the Mombasa-Moyale corridor 0.56 percent. Those four shares, 96.71, 2.74, 1.23 and 0.56, round past 100. Road transport carried about 80 percent of freight, and the Ethio-Djibouti railway moved most of the rest. The ministry figures show imports of about 15.93 million tonnes and exports of 1.64 million tonnes in 2025/26, with fuel alone at 4.23 million tonnes.
The same release said that 47,753 of 63,857 twenty-foot containers, or 74.78 percent, were packed inside Ethiopia. The ministry said this saved about $12.08 million in foreign currency.
Al Jazeera reported on September 13 that Houthi forces had completed a takeover of Yemen’s Red Sea coastline after capturing Mokha and overrunning Mayyun, also called Perim. It said Houthi forces are now about 20 kilometers from the African coast and essentially control the Bab el-Mandeb strait. The strait handles roughly 12 percent of global trade, including 11 percent of maritime oil and 8 percent of liquefied natural gas.
Al Jazeera cited data from IMF PortWatch, the International Monetary Fund’s trade and port monitoring platform. The data showed Red Sea shipping volume and tonnage falling by 50 to 55 percent between 2023 and 2025, during earlier Houthi attacks on shipping. Al Jazeera said major shipping operators still reroute ships around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, adding more than 20 transit days and driving up global freight costs.
Estimates of the extra time differ by route and starting port. The Bloomsbury Intelligence and Security Institute (BISI) cited a briefing by UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD) on Africa, which said trips around the Cape usually add more than 10 days. BISI also cited estimates of about 10 to 15 extra days compared with the Suez route, which raises financing costs because goods spend longer at sea.
BISI also said updates from Maersk in March and April 2026 confirmed that emergency routing, surcharges, and some booking restrictions were still in place. It said war-risk insurance charges reached about 0.5 to 1 percent of a vessel’s value during periods of high threat.
Ethiopia has no coast of its own. Coffee, pulses, oilseeds, fertiliser, fuel, medicines, and factory inputs all move through a corridor that ends in the Gulf of Aden and the southern Red Sea. In March, Addis Fortune reported that Djibouti’s port authority barred shipping agents from adding retroactive war surcharges to cargo loaded before the Iran war began.
War reporting on Thursday, September 24, pointed to a risk to the same corridor on land. Regional expert Kjetil Tronvoll told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that the Tigrayan offensive into Afar is likely aimed at cutting supplies from Djibouti, which supplies almost all of Ethiopia’s international trade cargo, including fuel. The conflict monitor ACLED reported clashes along the Tonsa line of the Tigray-Afar border on September 23.
Update, September 28: ACLED analyst Jalale Getachew Birru said the Djibouti corridor remains open. He said an advance by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front into Afar could change the federal government’s calculation if it threatens the Semera-Djibouti route.
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