Far from the madding crowd characterised by in-country political tensions and economic vicissitudes in much of Africa, litigation that in most cases escapes the international media glare is playing out in parts of the continent. The bone of contention is where national maritime boundaries should lie.

The protagonists in one of the more high-profile case are East African neighbours Somalia and Kenya, which are at loggerheads over sovereignty over a 100 000 km2 triangular patch in the Indian Ocean that is believed to host huge oil and gas deposits.

Somalia, which has not enjoyed peace since the 1991 ouster of Mohamed Siad Barre, wants the maritime border to run diagonally as an extension of the land boundary. Kenya is having none of that, arguing that, for the past 100 years, it has considered the line of latitude, running eastwards, to be the maritime frontier.

Each of the countries’ claim excludes the other from the offshore oil and gas endowment.

Somalia took the matter to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), at The Hague, in 2014, contending that Kenya was conducting illegal activities on its territory. The latter filed a counterargument in 2017, rubbishing Somalia’s claim as being inconsistent with a long tradition between the two nations where the “parallel of latitude” was understood to be the maritime boundary.

The ICJ is due to hand down judgment from September. Analysts say the court case is high risk for both countries. Comments Timothy Walker, a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies: “The ICJ decision is binding and there is no appeal, and, in this case, it is a zero-sum game result where one side will benefit at the expense of the other.”

Concerns about a judgment that goes against Kenya are palpable even from a cursory reading of the country’s media. Last week, the highly regarded Standard newspaper reported: “Kenya risks being a landlocked country if Somalia has its way on the maritime border dispute before the ICJ.

“It has emerged that the maritime boundary which is being claimed by Somalia will join that of Tanzania, [thus] eliminating Kenya’s access to the ocean at the coast.

“Kenya has a mutual agreement with Tanzania on a maritime border, which is a straight line along Pemba Island. If Somalia’s claim is allowed by the court, its boundary closes through the Kenyan coast and joins that of Tanzania, locking out Kenya in a triangle.”

Of greater concern is that an ICJ determination favouring Somalia will potentially spell disaster for the Lamu port, a multibillion-dollar monstrosity being built on the Kenyan coast. A Lamu Chamber of Commerce representative lamented in an interview with the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation last week that the project could become a white elephant, as vessels seeking to enter Kenyan waters would need to ask for permission from Somali authorities.

Conceived as part of an East African infrastructure plan that includes an oil pipeline from north-western Kenya, where the multinational Tullow group is scheduled to start commercial production in 2022, Lamu will be Kenya’s second seaport after Mombasa.

South African State-owned freight logistics group Transnet is leading a consortium of companies that are pitching to provide equipment for the port’s initial 32 berths and to operate the facility. The first ship is expected to dock at Lamu in November.

But the Somalia-Kenya tussle is not the only potential threat to the viability of the Lamu port and the broader Lamu Port–South Sudan–Ethiopia Transport Corridor project. For one thing, Ethiopia, which, it was believed, was going to be the biggest user of the corridor and the port, has kissed and made up with perennial foe and northern neighbour Eritrea, which provides it with shorter routes to the coast for its imports and exports. For another, the area in South Sudan that the corridor traverses is a security nightmare.

As indicated, the Somalia-Kenya scrimmage is not the only simmering maritime border dispute in Africa. The others include West African neighbours Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, which are awaiting a decision by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, an alternative to the ICJ. Malawi and Tanzania are also locked in a dispute, this time in Lake Malawi, which divides the two nations.