Joanna Lumley OBE talks with Mulugeta Asrate Kassa Ethiopian embassy official

By Sewasew Teklemariam At Addis Ababa University’s 75th anniversary celebration, a remarkable exchange unfolded, one…

Ethiopia, the new year does not feel like a beginning. It feels like a continuation a long, unbroken thread of crisis, mismanagement, external meddling, and narrative manipulation. The fireworks have barely faded, yet the country already finds itself back on the docket of global concern, its name invoked not with solidarity but with suspicion.

Yet The Economist’s reporting and critical academic analysis converge on a troubling reality: the project’s commercial soundness collides violently with Ethiopia’s political fragility. The fundamental counter-argument is stark: large-scale infrastructure cannot manufacture stability it requires stability to succeed. As Ethiopian scholars bluntly observe, “growth without peace is a mirage.” Ethiopia’s recent history validates this warning. The two-year Tigray war, alongside persistent conflicts in Amhara, Oromia, and elsewhere, has devastated infrastructure, displaced millions, and eroded the investor confidence that megaprojects depend upon. Data from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project recorded 1,105 political violence events in Ethiopia during 2023 alone, resulting in more than 5,428 reported fatalities.

Ethiopia’s history, from Korea to Cold War abandonment, from peacekeeping leadership to domestic fragmentation, offers a lesson that extends beyond Addis Ababa. It is a lesson about the limits of loyalty in an international system that rewards power and punishes principle. Strategic partnerships grounded in development and mutual respect, such as the one recently signed with India, strengthen sovereignty because they assume equality of agency and mutuality of benefit. Security arrangements imposed by geopolitical necessity do not, because they assume hierarchy and instrumentality.

UAE: your hands are not clean. London Fano protesters stand at the UAE Embassy demanding an immediate end to UAE support for Abiy Ahmed’s genocidal war on the Amhara people. Stop funding mass Killing!! الإمارات: أيديكم ليست نظيفة. يقف متظاهرو فانو في لندن أمام سفارة الإمارات مطالبين بالوقف الفوري لدعم الإمارات لحرب آبي أحمد الإباديّة ضد شعب الأمهرا. أوقفوا تمويل القتل الجماعي!! #AmharaGenocide #UAEStopTheWar #BloodMoney #LondonProtest #StopAmharaGenocide #JusticeForAmhara #UAEComplicity #Fano #amharagenocide #Amhara #Ethiopia