As the small East African coastal nation of Djibouti prepares for presidential elections on Friday, longtime leader President Ismail Omar Guelleh is expected to win the election without challenge.
Djibouti, a country of about one million people that neighbors Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia, is politically relevant in the Horn of Africa region. It is also internationally important due to its strategic location on the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which provides access from the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea and through which a large part of the global trade between Asia and the West passes.
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Djibouti hosts significant military bases for the United States, France, China and other powers, earning it the tag of the country with the highest number of foreign military bases. It is also an important port hub for large landlocked countries such as Ethiopia.
Incumbent candidate Guelleh is running for his sixth term as president. Although originally ineligible due to term limits and age, lawmakers removed the age limit last year, paving the way for another term in office.
Formerly known as French Somaliland under colonialism, the country continued to maintain large numbers of French troops after independence in 1977, but the September 11, 2001 attacks in the US drew new attention as Washington sought closeness to armed groups in Somalia and Yemen.
Djibouti was also a strategic military launchpad for naval units during the anti-piracy fight in the mid-2000s, when the US, EU and other allies tried to fight pirates off the coast of Somalia.
Both French and Arabic are official languages ​​in Djibouti. Somali and Afar are also widely spoken by Somalis, who make up about 60 percent of the population, and people of the Afar group, who make up about 35 percent.
About 94 percent of the people in Djibouti follow Islam. The local currency is the Djiboutian franc.
Here’s what to know about Friday’s election:
Who is eligible to vote?
According to the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, about a quarter of the population, or 243,471 people, are registered to vote in the election. This is up from the last presidential election in 2021, when about 215,000 were registered.
The average voting percentage is around 67 percent.
Voting is expected to open early on April 10 and close in the evening.
Although Djibouti has been described by monitors as an “electoral autocracy”, election observers from the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), an eight-nation regional bloc, arrived there on Tuesday.
IGAD said 17 observers from Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan and Uganda would be deployed to all regions, and would issue a statement after the vote on April 12.
Who is running?
Ismail Omar Guelleh: The 78-year-old incumbent, known as “I.O.G.”, is running for his sixth term as president. He first came to power in 1999. His party is the ruling People’s Rally for Progress.
Guelleh’s latest bid came after lawmakers in November unanimously voted to amend the constitution to remove the 75-year-old age limit. In 2010, Parliament abolished term limits in a constitutional reform.
Guelleh has been criticized for ruling with an iron fist and remaining in power unconstitutionally. However, he is also credited with maintaining a relatively stable hold in a region that is usually fraught with instability.
Under his rule, Djibouti, which has no natural resources, has signed infrastructure deals with China and leveraged its location to sign lucrative military hosting deals with Western powers.
Djibouti’s Finance Minister Elias Dawaleh said in 2017 that the country earns $125 million a year from hosting American, French, Chinese, Italian and Japanese military bases, of which Washington pays about half.
The US base, Camp Lemonnier, is the only permanent US military base in Africa.
Guelleh spoke to hundreds of supporters in his party’s leaf-green colors during campaign rallies held in the capital this month.
In a campaign speech, he said the elections and the choices available to voters are “consistent with democracy” in the country and promised more “significant success” if elected. His supporters carried banners that read “National Unity and Social Cohesion”.
Mohammad Farah Samatar: Guelleh’s only rival is a former member of the ruling party. He is running under the Unified Democratic Center Party.
Samatar rallied his supporters in the Tadjoura and Obock regions and claimed that “another Djibouti is possible”.
“There’s not much at stake (in the election). It’s just a symbolic contest,” Sonia Le Gourillec, a Horn of Africa expert at Lille Catholic University, told news agency AFP.
Omar Ali Iwado, head of the Djibouti League of Human Rights (LDDH), called the vote a “pretext” and said it was a “foregone conclusion”.
“The person who will challenge President Guelleh is a member of a small party subordinate to those in power,” he told AFP.
What are the key issues?
Democratic freedoms are shrinking
Guelleh’s critics are increasingly concerned about the shrinking of civic space in the country.
The elections have been described as a mere ritual, with Guelleh securing more than 90 percent of the votes in the 2021 elections. Opposition parties have boycotted elections since 2016.
Guelleh’s government is also accused of high levels of corruption and nepotism, with some speculating that his stepson and Secretary General of the Prime Minister’s Office, Naguib Abdullah Kamil, is being groomed for the top post.
The country is regularly targeted by human rights organizations for repression of dissenting voices. It is currently ranked 168th out of 180 in the 2025 Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
Alexis Mohammed, an aspiring presidential candidate who previously served as a presidential adviser until resigning in September, told reporters that he was “unable” to pursue his candidacy because he had no “security guarantees” upon returning to the country from his current location abroad.
Mohammed, who held the official position for 10 years, accused Guelleh of “patronage-based management of the state”.
According to the International Federation for Human Rights, elections in Djibouti are “not free”.
increasing debt
Many accuse Guelle of promoting flashy infrastructure projects built by China, such as a railway for Ethiopia, but point to the country’s stagnant economy and mounting debt to Beijing.
country by 2026 Arrears A $1.2 billion loan to China, plus many others. The International Monetary Fund said in a report in 2025 that Djibouti’s debt profile is “in crisis and unsustainable”.
Some of these expensive infrastructure projects have had no impact on reducing poverty rates. For example, about 73 percent of the country’s youth population is unemployed due to lack of jobs.
During this time, A major source of the country’s revenue is at risk: Djibouti’s ports almost entirely handle Addis Ababa’s maritime imports and exports worth about $2 billion annually.
However, in 2024 Ethiopia is looking to reduce that independence. The country signed a port agreement with autonomous Somaliland, a matter that has created tensions with Djibouti as well as with Somalia, which considers Somaliland part of its territory.
Following Turkiye-led mediation, Ethiopia and Somalia reached a preliminary understanding in late 2024 to resolve their dispute. Ethiopia has agreed to move toward “reliable and sustainable” maritime access with Somalia rather than Somaliland.
