Addis Ababa, September 15, 2026 (FMC) — For Ethiopia, the search for reliable access to the sea has never been only about reaching the coastline. At the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed placed that long-standing national quest inside a much larger economic picture: how a large and growing economy can move more efficiently toward international markets, deepen trade with fellow BRICS economies, attract investment, strengthen commercial resilience and widen its participation in the global economy.
The significance of his intervention lay in the way he connected issues that are often discussed separately.
Finance, markets, payments, physical connectivity and sea access appeared not as isolated policy concerns, but as parts of the same economic equation.
“Access to finance must be matched by access to markets,” the Prime Minister told the summit on its second day.
He then moved from the question of markets to the mechanics of reaching them.
“Trade grows when both payments and goods can move efficiently,” he said, calling on central banks to take practical steps toward faster, more affordable and secure cross-border payments.
The purpose, he explained, goes beyond making financial transactions easier. Better payment links would support trade and investment and allow more businesses, including smaller firms, to reach new markets.
That is where Ethiopia’s sea-access agenda enters the picture.
“Physical connectivity is equally important,” Abiy said, before making Ethiopia’s position unmistakable: “For Ethiopia, access to the sea is first and foremost an economic imperative.”
The sequence matters.
A market cannot be fully useful if goods cannot reach it efficiently. Trade cannot expand easily if payments remain costly or cumbersome. Investment is harder to scale when commercial connections are weak. And for a large landlocked economy seeking greater participation in international commerce, physical access to reliable and diversified trade routes becomes an essential part of the equation.
For Ethiopia, therefore, the road to the sea is also part of a road to markets.
Beyond the coastline
The Prime Minister’s formulation gave Ethiopia’s maritime question a distinctly economic dimension.
“As a large and growing economy, we need reliable and diversified access to international trade routes,” he said.
That ambition points beyond the immediate geography of ports and corridors. It is about how Ethiopia can place its expanding productive capacity within larger circuits of international commerce.
The country wants to sell more, buy more efficiently, attract more investment and participate more fully in markets whose scale can accelerate domestic economic transformation.
BRICS offers one important arena for that ambition.
The bloc brings together major economies with large consumer markets, industrial capabilities, financial resources, technology and extensive trade networks. For Ethiopia, deeper economic engagement within such a grouping can potentially open additional commercial pathways—from agricultural products and manufactured goods to minerals, energy, technology and services—while creating space for investment and industrial partnerships.
That is consistent with the broader proposition Abiy brought to the summit: BRICS has capital, technology and markets, while its members and partners possess resources, production potential and opportunities that can be brought together to create greater value.
For Ethiopia, the question is therefore not simply how to obtain access to a maritime route. It is what becomes possible once that route is connected to markets.
From payment rails to trade routes
The Prime Minister’s emphasis on cross-border payments provides another piece of that picture.
International trade is not sustained by physical movement alone. Goods need financial channels through which buyers and sellers can transact efficiently.
Ethiopia’s call for faster, cheaper and more secure cross-border payments within BRICS reflects that reality. Easier payment arrangements could reduce friction in transactions between businesses in different countries, support investment and make it easier for smaller enterprises to participate in international commerce.
In that sense, Ethiopia’s proposition at BRICS extended from the physical map to the financial map.
A trade corridor moves goods.
A payment corridor moves value.
A functioning market requires both.
This is particularly significant for an economy seeking to expand beyond traditional trading relationships and deepen engagement with major emerging markets. The more efficiently goods, capital and payments can move between economies, the greater the potential for trade to become a driver of investment, production and employment rather than simply the exchange of finished products.
The broader BRICS agenda makes this conversation increasingly relevant. The bloc’s New Delhi Declaration also placed emphasis on expanding trade in local currencies and improving cross-border payment mechanisms, reinforcing the direction in which Ethiopia was arguing for practical economic connectivity.
The sea as an economic multiplier
Seen from this perspective, maritime access becomes much more than a logistical issue.
It can affect the cost of bringing Ethiopian products to foreign buyers, the cost of importing inputs and machinery, the competitiveness of domestic producers and the reliability of supply chains.
For manufacturers, exporters and importers, the availability of dependable international trade routes can influence decisions that begin far from the coast: where to establish a factory, where to source raw materials, which markets to enter and whether a product can compete on price.
That is why Abiy linked sea access directly to lower trade costs and economic resilience.
“Our aim is to lower trade costs, build greater resilience and advance shared prosperity,” he said.
The formulation also places Ethiopia’s maritime pursuit within a wider regional context.
A more efficient connection between Ethiopia and international trade routes has implications for the corridors through which goods move across the Horn of Africa. It can deepen commercial relationships with neighbouring economies while creating additional pathways between the Ethiopian economy and markets farther afield.
Ethiopia’s ambition, therefore, is not simply to reach the sea; it is to turn physical access into wider economic access.
BRICS as a larger marketplace
This is where the BRICS dimension becomes particularly important.
Ethiopia is already part of an expanded grouping that brings together some of the world’s largest emerging economies and markets. Its participation gives Addis Ababa another platform from which to pursue commercial relationships, investment partnerships and economic cooperation across a broad geography.
The opportunity is not necessarily confined to trade between Ethiopia and individual BRICS members. The wider value lies in being part of a network where financial systems, markets, production capacities, technologies and supply chains can increasingly interact.
That could matter for Ethiopia as it seeks to move from an economy whose international integration has historically been constrained by geography and infrastructure toward one increasingly defined by production, exports, investment and connectivity.
The Prime Minister’s first-day remarks had already offered an indication of what Ethiopia could bring into that marketplace.
He pointed to the country’s movement toward wheat self-sufficiency and its readiness to approach a proposed BRICS grain exchange as both a producer and supplier. He cited expanding pharmaceutical manufacturing, Ethiopia’s digital public infrastructure, its growing industrial base, renewable-energy potential and mineral resources.
His proposition was not simply that Ethiopia needs something from BRICS.
It was also that Ethiopia has something to trade, produce, develop and build with BRICS.
That distinction is important.
Turning geography into economic opportunity
For decades, Ethiopia’s landlocked geography has imposed additional costs and constraints on its participation in global commerce. Yet the economic transformation now underway creates a different question: how can the country convert its scale, production potential and expanding domestic market into stronger international economic relationships?
At BRICS, Abiy placed maritime access within that question.
The answer, as presented at the summit, involves more than a single route.
It involves diversified international trade routes; more efficient movement of goods; faster and cheaper payments; stronger links between businesses and foreign markets; greater investment; regional connectivity; and deeper economic relationships with major emerging economies.
In other words, the road to the sea is part of the road to the market.
And the market, in turn, is part of the road toward a larger economy.
This also explains why Ethiopia’s approach to the maritime question is framed in diplomatic rather than confrontational terms.
“Ethiopia will continue to pursue this objective through peaceful and negotiated arrangements,” Abiy said.
The formulation places economic necessity and diplomatic method side by side: Ethiopia is asserting the importance of reliable maritime access while maintaining that the means of achieving it should be peaceful, negotiated and oriented toward shared prosperity.
That approach matters in a region where maritime geography, trade corridors, strategic interests and regional relations intersect.
A wider economic horizon
The significance of Ethiopia’s BRICS intervention ultimately lies in how these pieces fit together.
Sea access can open trade routes.
Trade routes can lower the cost of reaching markets.
Efficient payment systems can make transactions across those markets easier.
Better market access can encourage investment and allow more businesses to expand internationally.
Investment and trade can strengthen production.
And stronger production can give a growing economy a larger role in the networks through which goods, capital, technology and services move across the world.
That is the wider horizon behind Ethiopia’s maritime quest.
At New Delhi, the sea was therefore not presented as the end point of Ethiopia’s economic journey. It was part of the infrastructure of a much larger ambition: to make a growing Ethiopian economy more connected to the markets of BRICS, more integrated into international trade and better positioned to turn its productive potential into wider economic opportunity.
For Ethiopia, the question is no longer simply how to reach the sea.
It is what a reliable route to the sea could allow the country to reach beyond it.
By Mesafint Brlie