As part of a European tour that included Italy and the Vatican, the Ethiopian Prime Minister dissolved Abi Ahmed A guest of the French capital in May 2025, to complete the restoration of the relationship between two countries that intersect in strategic interests extending from Horn of Africa To the beaches of the Mediterranean, many vital files are hacked, such as rebuilding the Ethiopian navy and the French role in East Africa and the intense competition.
Relations between the two countries in recent years have witnessed a rapprochement with geopolitical, economic and developmental accounts, which were motivated by mutual visits that were only interrupted in the years of the war on (2020-2022) as a result of the dispute over issues related to the horrific human rights violations witnessed in the battles, and regional positions that put Addis Ababa face to face in front of the Western system.
Diplomacy of high -level meetings
The dynamics of this relationship accelerated since Abe Ahmed assumed power in the country in May 2018, when he traveled in October of the same year to Paris and set the basis for defensive and cultural agreements, to visit the French president Emmanuel Macron Addis Ababa in March 2019 and to be the first French president to visit this country since George Bombido in 1973.
He contributed to pushing this relationship to the election of Sahli Zodi, President of Ethiopia in October 2018, who is fluent in French as a result of her studies of natural sciences at the University of Montpellier, French, and she was in contact with French foreign policy in Africa on more than one level with her work as an ambassador in different Frankovonian countries, such as Senegal, Mali, Maghreb and in France itself as well.
After the signing of the Pretoria agreement that ended the Tagray war in November 2022, the diplomatic movement resumed and met Ahmed and Macron 3 times in 2023 alone, and US President Addis Ababa visited in December the following year, and in May 2025, Paris Abi Ahmed hosted again.
Many observers indicate that these successive meetings indicate a common desire to accelerate the pace of the alliance between the two countries and transfer it to strategic prospects, where the Paris Policy engineer in Ethiopia and its ambassador were martyred in Remy Marisho with the three meetings held in 2023 to describe the political relationship between his country and Adis Ababa as “solid”.
French vision of the relationship with Ethiopia
The French trend towards Ethiopia cannot be separated from a broader geopolitical context in which France is visible as it loses its main areas of influence in the west of the continent, which was manifested in withdrawals described as insulting, which was considered its “back gardens” in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Ivory Coast, and it is the reality of pushing Paris to seek opportunities to expand its presence in the southern and east African continent in which Ethiopia occupies a pivotal position in it.
The importance of this “strategic necessity” to build alternative spheres of influence in clarifying the director of Africa and the Indian Ocean at the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs Christophe Peugeot in 2021 of the challenges facing French diplomacy on the continent, said that he said that “in many ways, France’s present and future is closely related to the present and future of Africa.”
By determining its relations with Ethiopia, Paris seeks to consolidate its presence in strategic areas such as the Horn of Africa to restore its broadest position and its importance in the international community, as this strategic spot represents a global transportation knot that opens to the Red Sea And the Suez Canal In the north, and on the Gulf region rich in biological energy resources and the Indian Ocean, which turns into a global geopolitical weight center in the west, while it is the commercial entrance to many East and Central African countries.
Given that the African continent has turned into a “chess”, international competition intensified on its squares, the Parisian orientation towards new regions on the continent reveals the Elysee desire to preserve the geopolitical weight of France in the face of competitors such as China, Russia and Turkey, by presenting itself as a possible alternative in a market that is filled with competitors like the East Africa, coinciding with the consolidation of both Beijing and the ability of their feet in Ethiopia after they became at the forefront of investors in Abyssinia.
Also, the economic dimension is not absent from this trend, as France views the Horn of Africa as a promising destination for investment and expansion of trade. Paris takes a priority for economic cooperation and modernization efforts, and seeks to maximize its influence through investment, trade and defense agreements.
Economic and developmental cooperation
Despite the importance of the geopolitical dimension in the relations between the two countries, the economic aspect has witnessed a prominent development in recent years, as the total trade between the two countries has grown slightly over two billion Ethiopian bars by 2023 while in the year when Ahmed took power 5 years ago from that date about 0.37 billion Ethiopian Berbi (the dollar equals 135 Ethiopia with almost Ethiopia).
In this context, Ethiopia represented its population of more than 120 million potential alternatives to the markets that Paris lost the west of the continent, which is indicated by the great imbalance in the trade balance between the two countries in 2023, as Ethiopian exports amounted to 210 million Ethiopian bars and imports from France 1.81 billion.
The two countries have signed large deals to enhance the capabilities of Ethiopia in the field of civil and military aviation, including the purchase of Airbus and aircraft aircraft Rafa The fighter, as the French policy aims to stimulate trade and expand French investments in major sectors, including energy, transportation, infrastructure, communications, mining and extraction of hydrocarbons.
Ethiopia has also obtained a major investment from the French Investment Fund for Ground Electricity Production, and new investment opportunities are explored in sectors such as agricultural business and logistical services.
The French Development Agency in Ethiopia is active through many initiatives, as it signed with the Ethiopian Ministry of Finance on March 25, 2025 important financial agreements worth 28.5 million euros (25 million euros to support the budget, and 3.5 million euros for technical assistance) to support the ongoing economic reform agenda in Ethiopia, including supporting the local economic reform agenda, financial reform, and reforms State -owned companies policy.
France has announced funding of 100 million euros through the French Development Agency for update projects and a loan of 80 million euros to renew the Ethiopia electricity network during Macron’s visit in December 2024.
The cultural side represents one of the areas in which the Paris initiatives in Ethiopia are active, foremost of which is the restoration of churches for the carved peel in the rock and the development of its ability to attract tourists, as well as allocating 25 million euros to support the restoration of the Emperor Hillasian Palace and its park and convert them into a museum that opens its doors to the public in 2028.
Ethiopia seeking multi -dimensional support
The Ethiopian strategy in its vision of the relationship in Paris depends on a group of axes in its heart, its development plan “Ethiopia 2030”, which it launched in 2020 under the title “Ethiopia, the African prosperity beacon”, which aims – according to the Global Concivitz platform – to turn the country into an economic engines of Africa.
The platform, which provides in -depth visions on international communication programs, regional development policies and their impact on global affairs, indicates that Addis Ababa needs to achieve these goals to support foreign investors and partners, and that after Chinese investors have consistently seized opportunities in Ethiopia, the latter is now seeking to diversify its international partnerships, benefiting from France’s tendency to enhance its presence in African -speaking Africa.
The Ethiopian desire to obtain support goes beyond the investment part to the geopolitical aspects related to coordination between Addis Ababa and Paris in regional affairs, where the French ambassador to Ethiopia Remy Marishot expressed his “full support” of Addis Ababa initiatives in Sudan and Somalia, where the European Union, which is France, is one of its main guns of the main financiers of the African Union Mission in Somalia.
France also represents an important international supporter to demand Ethiopia to obtain the right to access to a marine outlet through peaceful means.
Through its presence in international economic entities, France can extend a helping hand to Ethiopia to confront the difficult economic conditions it is going through as a result of the repercussions of both the Corona epidemic and the destroyed Tgrayi war, as Macron has repeatedly affirmed France’s commitment to support economic reforms and restructuring Ethiopia’s debts.
The presidency of France, in partnership with China, contributed to the official creditor committee overseeing the obligations of Ethiopia debt in reaching late 2023 to comprehensive agreements to suspend the general bilateral debt payments of Ethiopia with a schedule for payment starting from 2027, which improved the status of cash liquidity in Ethiopia and increased the confidence of international markets in its economy, according to a statement made by the financial strategic expert in Addis Ababa Mirchim Jacobov for African Business Magazine.
Military cooperation without challenges
Addis Ababa and Paris link long -term military cooperation in many fields, and the Minister of Defense of the two countries in 2019 has signed a comprehensive agreement for defense cooperation. Among its provisions were training the army on peacekeeping missions in Somalia, as well as programs to build the capabilities of the Ethiopian army in a way that includes joint military training in land and the sea.
However, the most important provisions of this agreement were the signing of a message of intentions that support Paris, according to which the rebuilding of an Ethiopian naval fleet by exchanging experiences and documenting cooperation with the French navy in the field of training, where Paris allocated a residing cooperation officer in Ethiopia for this purpose and started training the Ethiopian officers at the French Navy, and Ethiopia owned within this project French training.
In a sign of the importance of this defensive agreement, Macron described it “unprecedented”, and many analysts pointed out that through this agreement, France was aspiring in addition to consolidating its maritime presence and protecting its interests in that sensitive area, to provide its services in the field of maritime security, combating piracy and maritime rescue, which may open up the prospects for partnerships with other African capitals looking to this type of services.
On the other hand, the support of the Ethiopian navy may open a new market for French companies to promote their products in the fields of ships, missiles, and marine monitoring systems.
Despite this multi -dimensional importance, Paris announced the suspension of its work with this agreement in 2021 as a result of the violations that accompanied the war in Tigray, and although the following year witnessed an appeal of training activities, the French position on the naval support was characterized by “conditional engagement” with progress in files, including the completion of transitional justice.
This French position, Addis Ababa, called for a transformation to Moscow, where she reached an agreement to train and build Ethiopian maritime capacity in March of this year, which was considered by a report issued by the “Institute of War Study” in support of the Kremlin’s goal to replace Western influence in Africa.
The zigzags that the French role file in building the Ethiopian navy went through many of the lights on the challenges facing Paris’s attempts to consolidate its feet in the turbulent Horn of Africa, the most prominent of which is the impact of the internal conditions of conflicts and violations of France’s ability to enforce its strategies in the targeted countries.