The Ethiopian civil war broke out after the November 4 attack by Tigray forces on the base of federal troops in Mekelle, capital of the northern Ethiopian regional state. Although the relationship between Addis Ababa and Mekelle has been strained since the transition in which Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came to power in 2018, few expected tension to erupt at the time and in the way it did.
Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, who chairs the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (Igad), was among the first to try to mediate the tension. After repeated efforts to secure an end to the fighting and find a peaceful resolution to the conflict, Hamdok succeeded in making the issue an Igad agenda. He convened the 38th Extraordinary Summit to discuss the Ethiopian conflict, among other pressing developments across the region.