Somalia’s new president, Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo, was to visit Ethiopia on Wednesday in a much-anticipated meeting aimed at smoothing over decades of mistrust. Farmajo has been criticised for waiting three months before going to Addis Ababa.
The Ethiopia trip is by far the most important visit abroad that President Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo will make and it is also the most difficult, says Gérard Prunier, a French historian specialising in the Horn of Africa.
Farmajo has visited five other countries, including Kenya, beforehand.
“He didn’t have the guts to go there first,” Prunier told RFI by phone on Tuesday.
“Since it’s going to be a controversial visit with difficult circumstances, difficult dialogue, he probably postponed it until he felt it was absolutely necessary.”