Djibouti’s President Guelleh urges Somalis to unite, rebuild Somalia through self-reliance

Djibouti’s Guelleh Calls for Somali Unity — While Quietly Extending His Own Rule

Analysis

At a commemorative ceremony steeped in the memory of the 2000 Arta Conference — the meeting that helped coax Somalia from state collapse toward a fragile transitional government — Djibouti’s PresidentIsmaïl Omar Guellehdelivered a familiar message with a fresh edge. “Somalis, only you can rebuild your country,” he said, encouraging neighbors to rely on themselves rather than on foreign patrons. It was the kind of exhortation that plays well in a region tired of outside meddling and broken promises.

But the setting and the messenger invite a broader reading. Guelleh, 77, spoke days after Djibouti’s parliament removed the constitutional age limit for presidential candidates, effectively clearing a path for him to run again in 2026 and extend a tenure that began in 1999. The vote was unanimous among the 65 lawmakers present, a reminder of how firmly the levers of power are gripped in the tiny, strategically vital nation at the mouth of the Red Sea.

The Arta echo — and a subtle pivot

The Arta Conference, held a quarter century ago in Djibouti, symbolized a rare breakthrough in Somali politics. It drew elders, civil society and political actors into the same tent, and from its deliberations emerged Somalia’s first transitional government after years of militia rule. For Guelleh, invoking Arta is both a history lesson and a positioning tool. Djibouti hosts Africa’s only permanent U.S. military base and foreign installations from France, China, Japan and others — and it has long parlayed that strategic heft into a mediator’s role in Horn of Africa crises.

This time, his message carried a twist. “If yesterday I said, ‘stand with me,’ today I say, ‘stand with one another,’” Guelleh told the crowd. It was a nudge to Somalia’s factions to close ranks at a moment when their politics remain brittle, and when the African Union’s transitional mission to Somalia, which Djibouti supports, is drawing down. It also reflected a broader fatigue across the region with the politics of dependency: the sense that Western donors and Gulf patrons, though essential, can skew local priorities and outlast local patience.

The power play at home

Even as he spoke of self-reliance and unity abroad, Guelleh’s domestic maneuver underscored a different regional trend: leaders remodeling constitutions to remove restraints on their own tenure in the name of stability. Uganda did it in 2017 by lifting the presidential age cap. Rwanda redesigned its constitution in 2015, allowing President Paul Kagame to extend his time in office. Côte d’Ivoire navigated its way to a contested third term in 2020. Guinea pushed through a controversial change in 2020, and then found itself in a coup less than a year later. The playbook is familiar.

Djibouti, a country of roughly 1 million people perched on the Bab el-Mandeb strait, stands at the confluence of global trade and security. The argument for continuity there can be compelling: the Red Sea corridor has been rattled by Houthi attacks on shipping, while Ethiopia to the west is grappling with the aftermath of a brutal civil war and a tense standoff over access to the sea. In such a neighborhood, Djibouti’s predictability carries a price premium — and Guelleh has been the chief vendor of that commodity.

But stability by personal rule comes with risks. It tends to harden political competition into a closed circuit, limit accountability, and incubate generational resentment. Djibouti’s economy relies heavily on rent from bases and port logistics. Youth unemployment and cost-of-living pressures persist. When a leader blurs the line between national continuity and personal permanence, what happens when the region, or the global market, forces a turn?

Somalia’s long road — and Djibouti’s stake

Guelleh’s call to Somali self-reliance is hard to dispute. Somalia’s federal experiment remains incomplete; its security forces, though improving, are still consolidating gains against al-Shabab; and its political elite wrestle with the slow, uneven transition from clan-driven bargaining to rule-bound competition. The country’s progress has almost always coincided with periods when Somalis, from Mogadishu to Hargeisa to the diaspora, have claimed ownership of their political process. The Arta moment in 2000 was one such period. So was the drafting of a provisional constitution in 2012 that opened space for broader representation.

Djibouti’s interest in that trajectory isn’t purely altruistic. Instability in Somalia threatens shipping lanes and invites cross-border militancy. A functioning federal Somalia could also complicate or clarify the delicate geometry around North Western State of Somalia, which has carved out de facto autonomy and is now entwined in fresh regional bargaining over maritime access. By encouraging Somali unity, Djibouti is also trying to lower the temperature on a set of disputes that, left unattended, could spill into its own backyard.

The geopolitics of a small state

Djibouti’s outsized influence lies in being indispensable to multiple powers at once. Camp Lemonnier anchors U.S. counterterrorism and naval operations. France retains a historic footprint. China opened its first overseas military base there in 2017, a sign of its expanding blue-water ambitions. Japan and Italy maintain facilities, with Gulf states influential through finance and trade. When global powers look at Djibouti, they see a linchpin in the flow of goods and security through one of the world’s narrowest chokepoints.

That unique role is both a shield and a spotlight. The shield protects Djibouti from the kind of isolation small states fear. The spotlight, however, throws any perceived democratic backsliding into sharper relief. Investors and allies value certainty; citizens value legitimacy. Can Guelleh remain both the cautious steward of a strategic corridor and the self-renewing architect of his country’s politics? And if he can, for how long?

The stability bargain — still acceptable?

There is a broad recalibration underway across Africa about what stability means and who gets to define it. In some places, voters are absorbing the costs of consistent strongman rule and asking for something more participatory. In others, armies claim to step in as “corrective,” only to entrench new forms of dominance. Djibouti is not on the verge of upheaval. Yet it sits in this conversation, too, as a model of the stability bargain: sacrifice rotation and open contestation in exchange for security and predictable services.

Guelleh’s speech about Somali unity was, in its way, a generous one. It extended the logic of local ownership, which is essential for a durable peace next door. But it also highlighted a paradox at home: the idea that unity is strongest when it isn’t organized around a single figure, and that self-reliance begins with trust in institutions robust enough to outlast their founders.

At Arta 25 years on, the applause was real. So were the questions left hanging in the air. In Djibouti, as across the Horn, the next chapter will be written not only by leaders’ calculations, but by whether citizens believe the bargain still works — and whether, when the time comes, they get a genuine chance to renegotiate it.

By Ali Musa
Axadle Times international–Monitoring.