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

By E Frashie Ethiopian Tribune Columnist

Introduction: A Song, A Summit, and Structural Amnesia

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).

This article situates the Meloni-Abiy diplomatic encounter within the broader historical and structural continuities of Italy-Ethiopia relations. Drawing on the framework of coloniality of power (Quijano, 2000) and post-colonial memory politics (Mbembe, 2001), it examines how unresolved colonial violence intersects with contemporary economic engagement, migration control, and Ethiopia’s internal conflicts. The cheerful performance of an Italian song at a state dinner becomes, in this light, not merely a gesture of hospitality, but a symptom of what might be called structural amnesia, the diplomatic erasure of historical accountability in favour of pragmatic partnership.

I. The Historical Weight: Mustard Gas, Massacre, and the Architecture of Colonial Violence

1.1 Airpower and Chemical Warfare as Strategic Terror

Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia in October 1935 was not a conventional territorial conquest. It was a laboratory for fascist military modernity, combining mechanised ground forces, aerial bombardment, and most infamously chemical weapons. Between 1935 and 1936, the Regia Aeronautica deployed mustard gas against Ethiopian military formations, civilian settlements, water sources, and livestock (Del Boca, 1991; Baer, 1967). This was not incidental collateral damage; it was systematic use of prohibited weaponry to terrorise, disable, and demoralise.

The effects were catastrophic:

            ∙           Tens of thousands of civilians suffered injuries, including burns, blindness, and respiratory failure.

            ∙           Agricultural infrastructure was destroyed, leading to long-term food insecurity.

            ∙           Psychological trauma permeated collective memory, embedding the Italian occupation as a paradigmatic symbol of racialised violence and technological asymmetry.

Airpower, as scholars of contemporary warfare note (Singer, 2009), functions not only as a tactical instrument but also as a political statement a demonstration of technological superiority designed to undermine the sovereignty and morale of the targeted population. In 1930s Ethiopia, this took the form of what Del Boca (1969) describes as “industrialised mass violence” deployed against a predominantly agrarian society.

1.2 Yekatit 12: The Massacre as Colonial Pedagogy

On February 19, 1937, following an assassination attempt against Italian Viceroy Rodolfo Graziani, fascist forces conducted organised reprisals in Addis Ababa. Over three days, Italian soldiers and civilian collaborators systematically killed thousands of Ethiopians, including intellectuals, clergy, and ordinary residents. Entire neighbourhoods were razed. Religious institutions were targeted. The massacre, known as Yekatit 12 in the Ethiopian calendar, was not reactive mob violence, it was state-directed pedagogy, designed to communicate the consequences of resistance (Campbell, 2017).

The Yekatit 12 massacre is commemorated annually in Ethiopia as Martyrs’ Day. It occupies a place in Ethiopian historical consciousness analogous to other mass atrocities that define national identity and collective trauma. Yet in Italy, the event remains largely absent from public education, political discourse, and diplomatic memory.

1.3 Anthropology as Administrative Weapon

Italian colonial governance relied heavily on ethnographic and anthropological knowledge. Scholars such as Enrico Cerulli produced detailed studies of Oromo, Somali, and other ethnic groups, mapping linguistic, social, and political structures (Sbacchi, 1985). While some of this work had academic merit, it was instrumentalists to justify divide-and-rule strategies administrative partitioning designed to fragment national cohesion and empower intermediary elites loyal to colonial authority.

This echoes broader European colonial practices analysed by Mamdani (1996), who argues that ethnographic classification became a tool of indirect rule, embedding racialised hierarchies into governance structures that outlasted formal colonialism. In Ethiopia, these classifications influenced not only Italian administrative maps but also post-colonial debates about federalism, regional autonomy, and ethnic identity.

II. The Contemporary Landscape: Sovereignty Under Duress and the Continuity of Airpower

2.1 Ethiopian Internal Conflict and Civilian Vulnerability

Ethiopia’s internal conflicts since 2020, including the Tigray, Amhara and Oromo War, have involved extensive use of drones and airstrikes by the federal government. Reports by Amnesty International (2022) and Human Rights Watch (2023) document:

            ∙           Civilian casualties from aerial bombardments.

            ∙           Destruction of infrastructure, including hospitals and schools.

            ∙           Mass displacement, with over two million internally displaced persons and hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing to Sudan and neighboring countries (UN OCHA, 2022).

While the contexts differ markedly from the 1930s, this is not a colonial occupation but an internal federal conflict, the ethical continuity is undeniable: airpower remains a mechanism through which political authority exerts coercive force on civilian populations. The psychological trauma, infrastructural devastation, and displacement mirror, in contemporary form, the consequences of Italy’s aerial campaigns nine decades earlier.

2.2 Sovereignty, Accountability, and the Limits of Developmentalism

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government has framed its military operations as necessary to preserve national unity and territorial integrity. Yet the use of drones supplied by external actors (including Turkey and the UAE) raises questions about sovereignty under duress the extent to which Ethiopia exercises autonomous decision-making amid economic dependency and strategic partnerships with external powers.

This dilemma is not unique to Ethiopia. It reflects a broader post-colonial reality in which African states navigate structural asymmetries inherited from colonialism, including economic dependency, debt burdens, and reliance on foreign military technology. The Mattei Plan, Italy’s investment framework for Africa announced in 2024, exemplifies this tension: it promises infrastructure development and economic partnership while operating within a geopolitical architecture that restricts African mobility, limits fiscal sovereignty, and perpetuates unequal terms of trade.

III. Urban Displacement and the New Colonial Geography: Addis Ababa’s Corridor Development as Gentrification

3.1 The Corridor Development Project: Infrastructure or Exclusion?

Even as Meloni and Abiy exchanged diplomatic pleasantries in February 2026, Addis Ababa was undergoing a dramatic spatial transformation. The Abiy government’s ambitious “corridor development” projects framed officially as infrastructure modernisation and urban renewal have resulted in mass displacement of longtime residents from central and peri-urban neighbourhoods. Tens of thousands of families have been evicted to make way for highway expansions, luxury residential complexes, commercial zones, and landscaped boulevards designed to attract foreign investment and tourism.

Government rhetoric emphasises economic development, job creation, and beautification. Yet critics argue that these projects constitute urban gentrification on a massive scale, creating a new colonial geography in which working-class Ethiopian residents are displaced to make room for European and other foreign investors, expatriate professionals, and wealthy elites (Harvey, 2008; Smith, 1996).

3.2 Historical Echoes: Italian Urban Planning and Contemporary Spatial Violence

The spatial politics of contemporary Addis Ababa bear uncomfortable resemblances to Italian colonial urban planning. During the 1936–1941 occupation, Italian authorities redesigned Addis Ababa according to racialised segregation principles, creating distinct zones for Italian settlers, indigenous elites, and the broader Ethiopian population (Labanca, 2002). Markets, residential areas, and public spaces were reorganized to reflect colonial hierarchies of race, class, and administrative power.

While today’s corridor developments are not explicitly racialised in the colonial sense, the functional logic is analogous: the displacement of poor and working-class Ethiopians to create premium spaces for capital accumulation and elite consumption. The fact that Italian and other European firms are among the primary beneficiaries of construction contracts, real estate investments, and tourism infrastructure compounds the historical irony.

3.3 Displacement Without Compensation: The Human Cost

Investigative reporting and human rights documentation reveal systematic patterns of forced eviction:

            ∙           Residents receive inadequate or no compensation for demolished homes.

            ∙           Alternative housing, when provided, is located on the urban periphery, far from employment opportunities and social networks.

            ∙           Legal recourse is limited; courts frequently rule in favour of government expropriation claims.

            ∙           Community organising and public protest are suppressed through arrests and intimidation.

This constitutes what Saskia Sassen (2014) terms expulsion the violent removal of populations from economic, social, and spatial frameworks to facilitate elite accumulation. In Addis Ababa, expulsion operates through the discourse of development and modernisation, rendering displacement as progress and resistance as obstruction.

3.4 For Whom Is the City Built? The Question of Spatial Justice

The corridor developments raise fundamental questions of spatial justice (Soja, 2010): for whom is the city being built, and who has the right to occupy, shape, and benefit from urban space? When luxury hotels, gated residential compounds, and European-style cafés replace informal settlements and working-class neighborhoods, the city is effectively reoriented away from its existing inhabitants and toward an imagined cosmopolitan elite, both foreign and domestic.

This is not unique to Addis Ababa. Similar dynamics characterise urban transformation across the Global South, from Mumbai to Lagos to Rio de Janeiro. Yet in the Ethiopian context, the displacement occurs in a city that has profound symbolic significance as the site of both anti-colonial resistance (the Battle of Adwa) and colonial atrocity (Yekatit 12). The spatial erasure of working-class Ethiopians to accommodate foreign capital investment becomes, in this light, a continuation of colonial logics by other means.

3.5 The Mattei Plan and Real Estate: Italian Capital Returns to Addis Ababa

Italy’s Mattei Plan, announced in 2024, includes provisions for infrastructure investment, energy projects, and private sector partnerships in Ethiopia. Italian construction firms, real estate developers, and hospitality corporations have expressed significant interest in Addis Ababa’s transformation. Preliminary reports suggest Italian capital is involved in:

            ∙           Construction of mixed-use commercial complexes in redeveloped corridor zones.

            ∙           Partnership agreements with Ethiopian developers for luxury residential projects.

            ∙           Tourism infrastructure, including hotels and restaurants targeting international visitors.

The political optics are striking: ninety years after Italian fascists occupied Addis Ababa, demolished neighbourhoods, and massacred residents, Italian capital returns not through military invasion but through investment frameworks welcomed by an Ethiopian government desperate for foreign currency and development finance. The mechanism has changed; the asymmetry persists.

IV. Migration, Borders, and the Asymmetry of Movement

4.1 The Closure of Europe and the Securitisation of Displacement

Ethiopian refugees fleeing conflict face increasingly restrictive European migration policies. Italy, under Meloni’s government, has intensified:

            ∙           Maritime interceptions in the Mediterranean.

            ∙           Agreements with Libya and Tunisia to prevent irregular crossings.

            ∙           Legislative tightening of asylum procedures, reducing approval rates and extending detention periods (European Council, 2023; Triandafyllidou, 2022).

This policy framework reveals a fundamental asymmetry: European states encourage investment and economic engagement in Africa while simultaneously fortifying borders against African mobility. The structural logic is one of selective permeability capital, commodities, and strategic partnerships cross borders freely, while displaced persons are intercepted, detained, or deported.

4.2 Historical Irony and Moral Incoherence

The irony is historically acute. Italy, which displaced hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians through colonial occupation and continues to evade accountability for war crimes, now restricts entry to Ethiopians fleeing contemporary displacement displacement caused, in part, by conflicts involving weaponry supplied by European and Middle Eastern states, and by urban gentrification projects that benefit European capital.

This is not merely hypocritical; it reflects what Mbembe (2001) calls the necropolitics of contemporary global governance, the differential allocation of life chances, mobility rights, and protection based on racialised hierarchies that echo colonial structures of power.

4.3 Displacement at Home, Exclusion Abroad: The Double Bind

For ordinary Ethiopians, the contemporary reality is a double bind: displaced from their homes in Addis Ababa to make way for foreign-oriented development, they are simultaneously barred from migrating to the European countries whose capital profits from that displacement. They are rendered invisible in their own city and inadmissible to the cities of Europe. This is the spatial and political logic of neo-colonial accumulation: extract value, displace populations, and externalise the consequences.

V. The Meloni-Abiy Encounter: What the Music Conceals

5.1 Cultural Diplomacy as Memory Management

The performance of “Ma il cielo è sempre più blu” at the state dinner was, on its surface, a gesture of hospitality and cultural recognition. Ethiopian hosts honoured their Italian guests with a song from Italy’s own musical heritage. Meloni’s visible delight humanised the diplomatic encounter, generating positive media coverage and reinforcing the narrative of partnership and mutual respect.

Yet cultural diplomacy, particularly between former colonisers and colonised, is never politically neutral. It functions as a form of memory management, a way of foregrounding aesthetic exchange while backgrounding historical violence. The performance of an Italian song in Addis Ababa, in the absence of Italian acknowledgment of mustard gas attacks or the Yekatit 12 massacre, becomes a symbolic displacement a substitution of cultural goodwill for structural accountability.

5.2 The Silence of the Archive

What was not performed at the dinner is as significant as what was. There was no reading of the names of Yekatit 12 victims. No acknowledgment of the villages destroyed by Italian chemical weapons. No mention of the Axum Obelisk, returned in 2005 but still emblematic of decades of Italian refusal to repatriate looted cultural heritage. No reference to the fact that Italy has never paid reparations, issued a comprehensive apology, or integrated its colonial crimes into national education curricula (Labanca, 2002).

Nor was there acknowledgment of the residents being displaced, at that very moment, from neighbourhoods across Addis Ababa some to facilitate corridor developments in which Italian firms hold investment stakes. The state dinner occurred in a sanitised, elite space, hermetically sealed from the realities of both historical and contemporary violence.

This silence is not accidental. It reflects what scholars of post-colonial memory politics call strategic forgetting, the selective construction of historical narratives that emphasise reconciliation and partnership while obscuring the structural legacies of violence and exploitation.

5.3 The Gala as Spatial Performance

The state dinner itself, likely held in a refurbished or newly constructed venue designed to impress international dignitaries, is part of Addis Ababa’s spatial performance of modernity and investment-readiness. The aesthetic choreography of such events (elegant architecture, curated cultural performances, multilingual protocols) serves to project an image of cosmopolitan sophistication that attracts foreign capital and legitimises governance.

Yet this performance is built, quite literally, on the erasure of the city’s working-class residents and the silencing of historical memory. The melody of Rino Gaetano’s song filled a space from which Ethiopians have been systematically excluded both historically through colonial violence and contemporarily through gentrification and displacement.

 

VI. Ethiopianism and the Politics of Dignity

6.1 Ethiopian Exceptionalism and the Burden of Resistance

Ethiopia’s historical exceptionalism, its successful resistance to colonisation, culminating in the 1896 Battle of Adwa, has long been a source of national pride and Pan-African symbolism. Emperor Haile Selassie’s speech to the League of Nations in 1936, denouncing Italian aggression and appealing to collective security, remains a canonical text in anti-colonial history.

Yet this exceptionalism carries a burden. The expectation that Ethiopia, having resisted full colonisation, should navigate contemporary geopolitics with particular moral authority or strategic autonomy can obscure the structural constraints it faces. Economic dependency, internal conflict, and the pressures of migration management limit Ethiopia’s capacity to exercise sovereignty in the idealised sense.

Ethiopianism, the ideological assertion of Ethiopian sovereignty, dignity, and historical continuity, must therefore be understood not as a static nationalist mythology but as an ongoing political project, constantly negotiated amid internal diversity, regional tensions, and external pressures.

6.2 The Abiy Dilemma: Modernisation, Conflict, and Legitimacy

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s tenure exemplifies this tension. Initially celebrated for liberalising reforms and the 2018 peace agreement with Eritrea (for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize), Abiy’s government has since been implicated in mass atrocities, media repression, and authoritarian consolidation (Human Rights Watch, 2023). The deployment of airpower against Tigray and other regions, combined with the urban displacement of Addis Ababa residents, raises profound questions about the boundaries of legitimate state violence and the moral coherence of a government that simultaneously seeks international investment and domestic coercion.

Abiy’s engagement with Meloni must be read within this context. The Italian partnership offers economic resources and diplomatic legitimacy, but it also implicates Ethiopia in a broader geopolitical architecture that prioritises stability, investment returns, and migration control over human rights, spatial justice, and historical accountability.

6.3 The Critique from Below: Urban Movements and Counter-Narratives

Despite state suppression, resistance to corridor developments persists. Community organisations, displaced residents, and critical intellectuals have articulated counter-narratives that challenge official development discourse:

            ∙           The city belongs to its people, not to capital: Arguments emphasising the right to housing, spatial continuity, and community cohesion.

            ∙           Development for whom?: Questions about the beneficiaries of infrastructure projects and the distribution of costs and benefits.

            ∙           Historical consciousness: Linking contemporary displacement to colonial spatial violence and demanding that Ethiopianism include protection of ordinary Ethiopians, not just symbolic resistance to external domination.

These movements, though fragmented and precarious, represent the possibility of an Ethiopianism from below, one that insists on internal accountability alongside external sovereignty.

VII. Toward a Politics of Accountability: What Reconciliation Would Require

7.1 Beyond Symbolic Gestures

Genuine reconciliation between Italy and Ethiopia would require more than the return of cultural artefacts or state dinners with musical performances. It would necessitate:

            1.         Formal Apology: A comprehensive Italian acknowledgment of mustard gas deployment, the Yekatit 12 massacre, and systematic colonial violence.

            2.         Reparations: Financial compensation for victims’ descendants and funding for Ethiopian institutions dedicated to historical memory and public health.

            3.         Educational Integration: Incorporation of Italian colonial crimes into Italian national curricula, museums, and public discourse.

            4.         Archival Access: Full opening of Italian military and colonial archives to Ethiopian and international researchers.

            5.         Policy Coherence: Alignment of migration policies with ethical commitments to displaced populations, particularly those fleeing conflicts involving European-supplied weaponry or displacement caused by European-backed development projects.

            6.         Investment Transparency: Public disclosure of Italian investment stakes in Addis Ababa corridor developments and mechanisms for ensuring that profits benefit displaced communities.

7.2 Ethiopian Accountability and Internal Governance

Equally important is Ethiopian accountability for contemporary violence and displacement. The federal government’s use of airpower against civilians, detention of journalists, suppression of dissent, and forced eviction of urban residents undermine Ethiopia’s moral authority in demanding accountability from former colonisers. A credible Ethiopianism must integrate internal critique alongside resistance to external domination.

This requires:

            ∙           Independent investigations into civilian casualties from drone strikes.

            ∙           Transitional justice mechanisms for victims of the Tigray War and other conflicts.

            ∙           Halting forced evictions and implementing participatory urban planning that prioritises the housing rights and livelihoods of existing residents.

            ∙           Compensation and rehousing for displaced families, with community oversight of corridor development projects.

            ∙           Constitutional reforms that balance federal authority with regional autonomy and minority rights.

            ∙           Media freedom and civil society space to enable public debate and accountability.

7.3 Spatial Justice as Decolonial Practice

Addressing urban displacement in Addis Ababa requires recognising that spatial justice is inseparable from decolonial politics. If Ethiopianism is to mean more than symbolic sovereignty, it must encompass the right of ordinary Ethiopians to remain in, shape, and benefit from their own capital city. This means:

            ∙           Participatory planning: Involving affected communities in decision-making about urban development.

            ∙           Affordable housing: Ensuring that new construction includes social housing accessible to working-class residents.

            ∙           Economic inclusion: Creating employment opportunities for displaced populations in corridor development projects.

            ∙           Cultural preservation: Protecting historical neighbourhoods and sites of memory from demolition.

 

VIII. Conclusion: The Sky Is Not Always Bluer And the City Is Not Always Ours

The title of Rino Gaetano’s song, “Ma il cielo è sempre più blu” (But the sky is always bluer), carries a lyrical optimism a promise of continuity, renewal, and hope. Yet for Ethiopians who remember the Italian aircraft that once darkened their skies with mustard gas, and for those now watching bulldozers demolish their homes to make way for foreign investment, the phrase resonates differently. The sky has not always been bluer. It has been a site of terror, displacement, and unacknowledged trauma. And the city Addis Ababa, the site of both Adwa’s pride and Yekatit 12’s sorrow is increasingly not theirs.

The February 2026 diplomatic encounter between Meloni and Abiy, framed by cultural exchange and economic partnership, illustrates the persistence of structural amnesia and spatial violence in contemporary Italy-Ethiopia relations. Investment frameworks, migration restrictions, urban gentrification, and symbolic gestures coexist with the unresolved legacies of colonial violence and the ongoing deployment of coercive force by Italy in the 1930s through airpower and massacre, by Abiy’s government in the 2020s through drones and bulldozers.

Ethiopianism, as a political and ethical project, demands more than the assertion of sovereignty or the celebration of resistance. It requires the integration of historical memory with contemporary accountability, the balancing of external critique with internal governance reform, and the recognition that true partnership cannot be built on the erasure of the past or the displacement of the present.

Until Italy acknowledges the full scope of its colonial crimes, and until Ethiopia confronts the ethical implications of its own use of coercive force, both military and spatial, the music at state dinners will remain what it is: a beautiful melody that conceals an unfinished reckoning. The sky may be bluer in song, but on the ground, the shadows of history remain long, the eviction notices are real, and the work of justice unfinished.

The question is not whether Ethiopians can hum along to an Italian song. The question is whether they will be allowed to remain in their own city, to shape their own future, and to demand accountability, both from former colonisers and from their own government. Until that question is answered affirmatively, in policy and practice, the gala remains a performance of amnesia, and the corridor developments a continuation of colonial geography by other means.

 

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