Ethiopian Tribune

የኢትዮጵያ ትሪቢውን

Month: February 2026

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News Opinion ዘገባዎች በአማርኛ

Whose Story Is It, Anyway? Al Jazeera, Ethiopia, and the Politics of Selective Outrage

Ethiopian Tribune editor

Perhaps the most intellectually dishonest feature of Al Jazeera’s recent Ethiopia coverage is what it refuses to remember. Ethiopia is home to one of Africa’s largest refugee populations not as a transit country, but as a host. Hundreds of thousands of displaced people from Somalia, Eritrea, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, and Yemen have found sanctuary on Ethiopian soil. Syrians who fled the catastrophic civil war that Al Jazeera covered with such sustained passion built lives in Addis Ababa, opened businesses, integrated into communities, welcomed, for the most part, without the violent xenophobia that has disfigured the response of certain wealthier nations considerably better placed to absorb displacement. This is an extraordinary humanitarian record. Al Jazeera, so reliably attentive to refugee suffering when it serves a particular narrative, has shown remarkably little interest in it here.

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Opinion Sustainability

Ethnicity at the Gate: The Advantage of Sounding Oromo in Contemporary Ethiopia

Ethiopian Tribune editor

In today’s Ethiopia, a few words of Afaan Oromo or even an Oromo‑sounding name can open doors that remain closed to others. Professor Girma Berhanu’s new essay exposes how language and identity have quietly become tools of power, shaping access to services, security, and citizenship itself. A gripping look at the rise of ethnicized gatekeeping and what it means for Ethiopia’s future.

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African News News Opinion Sustainability ማህበራዊ ጉዳዮች ዘገባዎች በአማርኛ

The Man Who Made Memory: A Personal Tribute to Haile Gerima

Ethiopian Tribune editor

The respect I felt rising in me during those two hours was immense, the kind of respect one cannot manufacture or perform. It came from recognising craftsmanship of the highest order in service of a moral imperative that could not be ignored. Here was a man who had spent twenty years researching the trans-Atlantic slave trade, who had been rejected by every major American distributor, and who had taken his film city by city, cinema by cinema, to Black communities across the United States until the world had no choice but to take notice. The film that no one would distribute was eventually ranked by Harvard Film Studies professors as one of the most essential films in the history of world cinema between 1980 and 2000. But that evening in Notting Hill, I knew none of this. I only knew what I felt.

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News Opinion Sustainability

Do They Know It Is Yekatit 12?

Ethiopian Tribune editor

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.

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African News News Opinion Sustainability

Diplomacy, Drones, and Delicate Optics: Ethiopia’s Tightrope Between India, Turkey, and the Whispers of the Arab World

Ethiopian Tribune editor

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.

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African News Breaking News News Sustainability ዘገባዎች በአማርኛ

Diplomacy in Melody, Silence in Memory: The Meloni-Abiy Encounter and the Unfinished Business of Italy-Ethiopia Relations

Ethiopian Tribune editor

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).

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African News Breaking News News Opinion

Letter from Ethiopia, Diplomatic Capital, Displaced Citizens: The Contradictions of Addis Ababa

Ethiopian Tribune editor

There is something peculiarly Ethiopian about the scene unfolding in Addis Ababa this February. The city presents itself with all the trappings of continental leadership summit halls filled with dignitaries, the hum of diplomatic motorcades, the unveiling of Africa’s first unmanned police station complete with biometric verification and artificial intelligence. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed tweets invitations to experience “a new era of African-led tourism development,” whilst the International Monetary Fund nods approvingly at Ethiopia’s fiscal discipline and structural reforms. On paper, at least, this is a nation ascending.

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