Iron Rivers and Empty Kitchens: Ethiopia’s Theatre of Progress
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By Sewasew Teklemariam Ethiopian Tribune columnist
Ethiopia has always been a land of grand announcements, but December 2025 has been particularly theatrical. The government now promises an “Iron River of Energy,” a 73,500‑kilometre gas‑by‑rail network linking forty Sub‑Saharan nations. The project, valued at a staggering $29 trillion, is billed as the salvation of Africa’s energy poverty. One imagines the locomotives steaming past villages where families still cook with firewood, the smoke of poverty rising in parallel to the smoke of progress. It is a project so vast it could only be conceived in PowerPoint, yet so distant from the kitchen stove that its promise feels like satire written by the state itself. Ethiopia is to anchor a continental pipeline of prosperity while its citizens still queue for kerosene.
Egypt, meanwhile, has dusted off its diplomatic wardrobe. Cairo insists the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam is illegitimate and negotiations are over. Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty declared Ethiopia’s unilateral measures illegal, echoing President Sisi’s warnings that “water security is an existential threat.” Scholars note that Egyptian politicians are playing a losing game over the Nile, using the dam as a distraction from domestic failures. Ethiopia inaugurated Africa’s largest hydroelectric project in September, generating over 5,000 MW, yet Egypt responded with letters to the UN Security Council denouncing Addis Ababa’s defiance. Old foes never retire; they simply rebrand their vetoes as dialogue. The Nile dispute is less about water than about sovereignty, and Egypt’s colonial‑era entitlement remains the ghost at the banquet.
Inside Ethiopia, fissures are fertilised with foreign hands. The ghosts of TPLF and Shabiya are kept alive with external finance, while Somalia’s politics are stirred like a cauldron, the froth of hate spilling conveniently across borders. The Amhara peace deal, signed on 4 December between the regional government and a faction of the Fano Popular Organization, was hailed by the AU and IGAD as a landmark. Yet diaspora groups denounced it as fabricated theatre, accusing continental bodies of legitimising regime propaganda. The Amhara Association of America condemned IGAD and AU for endorsing what they called a genocidal war disguised as reconciliation. The scepticism is not cynicism; it is democratic hygiene. Agreements without accountability are theatre, and theatre without audience is propaganda.
Technology is paraded as salvation. Ethiopia’s Council of Ministers has adopted the Digital Ethiopia 2030 strategy, replacing the 2025 plan. Registrations for the Fayda national digital ID have reached 28.8 million. Officials promise digital inclusion, cybersecurity, and innovation. Yet while neighbours deploy drones to sow crops and ferry goods, Ethiopia’s drones circle skies with military intent. Reports detail how combat drones, often Turkish Bayraktar TB2s, have been used in Amhara and Tigray, causing horrific civilian casualties. Modernisation, in this lexicon, is less about service than surveillance. AI dashboards and digital IDs render citizens visible before rendering them empowered. The citizen hears “innovation” and feels “inspection.”
And then there is aviation. Bishoftu International Airport, a USD 12.5 billion marvel‑in‑waiting, promises to host 110 million passengers. Ethiopian Airlines’ CEO announced groundbreaking in December, with Chinese banks pledging $500 million. Global investors at the Africa Investment Forum expressed enthusiasm. One wonders how many of those seats will be filled by Ethiopians rather than transiting elites. The hub dream is intoxicating, but the arithmetic of daily life, fuel prices, food costs, jobs, remains stubbornly unaltered. Ethiopia is invited to imagine itself as a continental crossroads, while its citizens still queue for basic services.
Coffee, Ethiopia’s gift to the world, is now a climate casualty. The Coffee Origins Trip 2 brought global professionals to Sidama, Guji, and Gedeo to examine ecological pressures. Research shows Arabica’s genetic diversity is under siege from deforestation, erratic rainfall, and climate change. Agroforestry‑grown coffee offers resilience, but the EU’s deforestation‑free regulation looms, threatening exports unless Ethiopia adapts. The irony is rich: Ethiopia markets coffee heritage while farmers face shrinking forests and unpredictable skies.
And then came the Prime Minister’s speech. Abiy Ahmed, in a televised address, declared that Ethiopia’s enemies were like “head‑lice” that must be exterminated. The metaphor was grotesque, the intent unmistakable: dissenters are parasites, opposition is infestation, and extermination is policy. It was a chilling reminder that beneath the choreography of peace and progress lies a vocabulary of elimination. Diaspora groups recoiled, human rights advocates condemned the rhetoric, and opposition figures warned that such language legitimises violence. Yet state media replayed the clip as if it were a patriotic anthem. The Prime Minister’s words revealed the contradiction at the heart of Ethiopia’s narrative: a government that speaks of unity while describing its citizens as vermin. The speech was not a slip of the tongue but a window into the governing psyche, where enemies are not debated but eradicated, and where metaphors of infestation replace metaphors of inclusion.
So Ethiopia marches on, a nation of announcements, a republic of contradictions. It builds corridors of energy while households burn wood. It signs peace while critics are silenced. It digitises identity while citizens fear visibility. It dreams of hubs while kitchens remain cold. It speaks of enemies as lice while demanding loyalty from the same population. The irony is not in the ambition itself, but in the refusal to reconcile promise with practice. If Ethiopia is to be the hub, let it be a hub of accountability first—for power without trust is merely choreography, and choreography without truth is just another performance in the long‑running play of African politics.
