Joanna Lumley OBE talks with Mulugeta Asrate Kassa Ethiopian embassy official

A Date That Refuses to Fade and a City That Cannot Recognise Itself Fly into Bole International Airport on any given morning and the new visitor to Addis Ababa will likely be struck by something unexpected. Glass towers catch the equatorial light. Half-finished luxury condominium blocks crowd the skyline. Billboards in Arabic and English advertise residential developments with names that evoke the Gulf. A certain class of returning diaspora, a certain strain of breathless travel writing, and a particular kind of investor prospectus have begun circulating a phrase that would have bewildered the city’s founders: Addis Ababa is the new Dubai.

Ethiopia’s political theatre, under Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, has become a masterclass in the management of appearances, whispers, and global expectations. The recent succession of high-profile international visits  the conspicuously warm hand-holding with India’s Prime Minister and the measured, almost surgical formality of Türkiye’s President Erdoğan revealed far more than diplomatic protocol. They exposed the entangled web of elite culture, public rumour, and the ordinary citizen’s bewildered gaze upon a country balancing precariously between internal fractures and external pressures.

The death rumour of Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed has placed the survival of Abiy Ahmed’s government under uncomfortable scrutiny. For eight years, Abu Dhabi’s billions have underwritten Ethiopian stability. The question now is whether a new ruler in the Gulf will honour the debts of a very personal friendship.

Dear Readers, We are deeply grateful to receive this powerful contribution from you. Thank you for sharing this inaugural edition of “From Oblivion to Memory” a newsletter that breaks decades of silence around a painful yet essential chapter of Ethiopian history.

In February 2026, at a state dinner in Addis Ababa during the Second Italy-Africa Summit, Ethiopian singers performed “Ma il cielo è sempre più blu” (But the sky is always bluer), a 1975 classic by Italian singer-songwriter Rino Gaetano. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy was captured on camera by the Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation smiling, humming along, and applauding the thoughtful musical tribute. The video, titled “Diplomacy in Melody! Meloni Amazed Addis Ababa,” circulated widely as an emblem of cultural exchange and warm bilateral relations. Yet beneath this surface cordiality lies a profound historical asymmetry. The same Italian state that Meloni represents deployed mustard gas against Ethiopian civilians ninety years earlier, conducted systematic aerial bombardments of villages and infrastructure, and orchestrated the Yekatit 12 massacre in Addis Ababa—one of the most notorious acts of fascist colonial terror in Africa. Italy has never issued a comprehensive formal apology for these crimes, nor has it undertaken a systematic public reckoning with the legacy of its occupation of Ethiopia (1935–1941).