The former Senior Egyptian Foreign Ministry official, Ambassador Raouf Saad, warned this week of the acute danger Israel is posing to Egypt and the Red Sea region while calling for building a strong engagement with Africa as a counter action. In a commentary published in the 2 July government backed daily Al Ahram, Saad pointed to Israel’s establishment of diplomatic relations with the self-proclaimed entity of Somaliland, a breakaway province of Somalia. Somaliland has just opened a diplomatic mission in Jerusalem. Taiwan is the only other state besides Israel that recognizes it.
Located just below the entrance to the Red Sea, Israel’s presence in Somaliland in the region poses an obvious obvious destabilizing factor in the Horn of Africa and a potential threat to Egypt’s Suez Canal,
To counter this potential threat, Saad calls for creating a comprehensive policy of engaging with Africa where there are, “vast opportunities available for cooperation with Africa, a continent endowed with immense industrial, mineral, and energy resources, as well as exceptional investment opportunities.”
According to Saad Egypt has a lot to offer Africa including “defence industries, economic and social reform, conventional and renewable energy, information technology, food security, water security, infrastructure, healthcare, pharmaceutical manufacturing, communications, information systems, banking, electricity, transportation, climate action, environmental protection, and other related fields.”
