The Ethiopian Paradox: A Nation’s Four Acts in Search of a Script

By Sewasew Teklemariam columnist

In a week that epitomises the bewildering contradictions of modern Ethiopia, four stories have emerged that, when read together, paint a portrait of a nation caught between fiscal responsibility and fundamental freedoms, between international charity and domestic accountability, between celebrating its cultural legacy and silencing its contemporary voices.

What a peculiar week it has been in the land of thirteen months of sunshine. On Monday, Addis Ababa’s city administration announced with considerable fanfare that government officials could no longer book into hotels for their meetings and workshops. The directive, issued under Mayor Adanech Abiebie’s administration, was framed as a necessary measure to enforce fiscal discipline within their whopping 350 billion birr budget for 2025/26.

How refreshingly austere of them. One can almost picture the mayor’s office: “Right then, no more five-star conferences for the water ministry. The community centre will have to suffice.” It’s a curious sort of belt-tightening that makes headlines, the sort that suggests previous belt-tightening was more theoretical than practical. Still, one must applaud the symbolism, even if it arrives rather like a fire engine showing up after the house has been reduced to ash.

What makes this penny-pinching particularly intriguing is the timing. Just as City Hall discovers its inner Scrooge, along comes the UK government, cheque book in hand, ready to donate £600,000 to the Ethiopian Red Cross Society. Ambassador Darren Welsh announced this donation during World Humanitarian Day celebrations, noting the challenges facing the humanitarian sector, including, and here’s the delicious irony, “restricted funding.”

One might wonder whether there’s a certain cognitive dissonance at play here. On one hand, Ethiopia’s capital city claims it can fund 98% of its massive budget internally, suggesting a level of fiscal self-sufficiency that would make the IMF weep with joy. On the other hand, international donors continue to step forward with humanitarian aid, apparently unconvinced that this fiscal miracle extends to basic healthcare and emergency services.

The Red Cross donation ceremony was, by all accounts, a lovely affair. President Abera Tola spoke movingly of ninety years of humanitarian service, whilst US Ambassador Erving Masinga emphasised that humanitarian workers should never be targets of attack. Noble sentiments, delivered with the sort of earnestness that humanitarian events demand.

Which brings us, rather uncomfortably, to our third act in this Ethiopian drama: the disappearance of Yonas Amare, senior editor at Ethiopian Reporter and The Reporter. On the very evening that humanitarian principles were being celebrated across town, masked individuals in military uniforms were allegedly conducting their own sort of workshop, one that involved confiscating mobile phones, ordering residents indoors, and spiriting away a journalist into the night.

The symmetry is almost poetic, isn’t it? While diplomats toast the protection of humanitarian workers, a media worker vanishes without a trace. The Addis Ababa Police Commission has helpfully confirmed they don’t have Mr Amare in custody, a statement that raises as many questions as it purports to answer. After all, in a country where fiscal discipline apparently extends to banning hotel bookings, one might reasonably expect that keeping track of detained journalists would fall within administrative capabilities.

But wait, there’s more to this Ethiopian theatre of the absurd. Just as we’re processing this trinity of contradiction, news arrives of the passing of Debebe Eshetu, the legendary actor who graced both Ethiopian stages and Hollywood screens. The US Embassy, ever diplomatic, issued heartfelt condolences for the man who starred in “Shaft in Africa” and championed African voices in the arts.

How fitting that in a week when one voice disappears into the night, we lose another to the natural course of time. The embassy’s tribute to Debebe was warm and deserved, here was a man who spent decades ensuring African stories reached global audiences, who fought for representation when it wasn’t fashionable, who built bridges between cultures through the power of performance.

The contrast couldn’t be more stark: whilst diplomats pen eloquent eulogies for an artist who spent his life amplifying African voices, a contemporary voice, that of journalist Yonas Amare, vanishes without so much as a press statement. One can’t help but wonder whether the only safe way to be celebrated by authority is to be safely deceased.

The juxtaposition is almost theatrical in its irony: a city administration so concerned with fiscal propriety that it monitors where civil servants have their coffee breaks, yet seemingly unable to account for the whereabouts of a prominent editor. Meanwhile, they can produce glowing tributes for artists who are no longer around to ask awkward questions. It’s rather like discovering that your neighbour, who lectures you about leaving lights on to save electricity, has been operating an underground casino in their basement whilst hosting poetry readings for the recently departed.

Perhaps there’s a lesson here about which voices get heard and when. Debebe Eshetu’s legacy is rightly celebrated, his contribution to Ethiopian and African culture is immeasurable. But one suspects he might have had something to say about a system that honours dead artists whilst living journalists disappear. After all, what good is cultural recognition if it comes with an expiry date on contemporary critique?

The timing feels almost scripted: as Ethiopia mourns the loss of a voice that carried its stories to the world, another voice that might carry uncomfortable truths simply… isn’t there to be mourned. When a government celebrates its financial independence whilst accepting international humanitarian aid, honours deceased cultural icons whilst silencing living ones, one begins to wonder what sort of independence, and what sort of culture, is actually being celebrated.

The Ethiopian Red Cross Society, to their credit, continues their vital work regardless of these contradictions. Ninety years of service deserves recognition, and the UK’s £600,000 will undoubtedly save lives. But one can’t help wondering whether the most humanitarian act of all would be ensuring that voices like Yonas Amare’s remain free to speak.

After all, what good is a balanced budget if it comes at the cost of a balanced society? And what worth is fiscal discipline if it’s accompanied by a rather different sort of discipline entirely?

As Ethiopia moves forward with its internally-funded budget, its externally-funded humanitarian programmes, its glowing tributes to departed artists, and its conspicuous silence about missing journalists, perhaps it might consider that the most sustainable investment of all would be in the sort of transparency that makes hotel booking bans meaningful rather than merely symbolic.

Debebe Eshetu understood that stories matter, that representation matters, that voices from the margins deserve global stages. His life’s work was about ensuring Ethiopian and African narratives weren’t silenced or sidelined. How tragic, then, that his death coincides with a week when contemporary Ethiopian voices face a rather different fate.

Until those in power learn to distinguish between honouring the safely dead and protecting the dangerously alive, we’re left with this Ethiopian paradox: a nation apparently wealthy enough to fund itself, generous enough to receive charity, cultured enough to celebrate its artistic legacy, and powerful enough to make people disappear, all whilst diplomats draft condolences and administrators count hotel receipts.

Sewasew Teklemariam is a columnist for The Ethiopian Tribune. Views expressed are his own.