Countries in the Horn of Africa have for long maintain foreign relations with their counterparts in the Arabian Peninsula. These relations have been described as asymmetric because the Arab states involved in the Horn of Africa have often been viewed as more powerful in the relationship. This asymmetricism is often also seen to be related to the largely transactional economic nature of these relations. However, although asymmetricism and associated transactionalism are often used as a theoretical framework to explain interaction in the relations between the Arab and Horn of Africa states, this approach fails to fully account for the agency of the latter. Considering the states in the Horn of Africa as subservient, the asymmetric approach based on bilateral relations depicts the Horn countries as having narrower space for pursuing their foreign relations than what the case is in reality. It also largely fails to emphasize the broader role of economic diplomacy in these states’ wider relations with their foreign partners. The proposed paper will deal with current relations between the states in the Horn of Africa and the influential countries in the Arabian Peninsula. It shows how the narrowness of the asymmetric approach is unable to fully capture the reality in these relations by diminishing the agency of the Horn of Africa states. The paper, therefore, highlights the importance of adopting a broader approach, including factoring in domestic political dynamics and wider foreign relations, in order to gain an improved understanding of the agency of Horn states in their relations with powerful countries in the Arabian Peninsula.

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