Ethiopia’s Statistical Smokescreen: How Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Spun Numbers to Hide Economic Reality

Our columnist Sewasew Teklemariam exposes systematic distortion of growth figures and cost-of-living data in parliamentary address

Addis Ababa — When Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed stood before parliament on 3rd February to deliver his government’s mid-year performance report, he painted a picture of economic triumph. Ethiopia, he declared, was experiencing 9.3 per cent growth according to both the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Utilities, he assured legislators, were cheaper than in neighbouring countries. It was a masterclass in political theatre and, according to our columnist Sewasew Teklemariam’s damning forensic analysis, a masterclass in statistical manipulation.

The reality, as Teklemariam meticulously documents, tells a starkly different story. Behind the veneer of technocratic credibility lies what he characterises as “selective endorsement,” “decontextualisation,” and the systematic omission of inconvenient truths, all designed to construct a narrative of progress whilst obscuring the grinding economic difficulties facing ordinary Ethiopians.

At the heart of the Prime Minister’s economic case lies a figure that sounds impressively precise: 9.3 per cent GDP growth. Mr Abiy attributed this projection to both the IMF and the World Bank, lending his government’s performance the imprimatur of international financial orthodoxy. The problem, as our columnist meticulously documents, is that it simply isn’t true.

The World Bank never projected 9.3 per cent growth for Ethiopia. Their January 2026 Global Economic Prospects report clearly states 7.2 per cent for calendar year 2026. That’s not a rounding error, it’s a 2.1 percentage point discrepancy that represents tens of billions of birr in economic activity. Development economists who have followed Ethiopia’s trajectory note that this difference is enormously significant in real-world terms.

The IMF did indeed project 9.3 per cent growth, but only after its fourth review under the Extended Credit Facility arrangement a programme through which the Fund provides financial support conditional on reform implementation. The IMF’s forecast is made within the context of a funded programme. It’s inherently more optimistic because it assumes the government will deliver on its commitments. The World Bank’s independent assessment, by contrast, incorporates risks like ongoing conflict, climate shocks, and elevated public debt precisely the factors that would temper any growth outlook.

The Ethiopian government’s own projection, quietly revealed by Mr Abiy during the session, goes even further: 10.2 per cent. What emerges, Teklemariam argues, is a hierarchy of optimism. The government produces the rosiest figure, then publicly anchors the debate to the IMF’s high but more credible projection, whilst conveniently erasing the World Bank’s more cautious view. It’s statistically sophisticated narrative construction, designed to manufacture consensus where significant disagreement actually exists.

Yet even if one accepts the highest growth projections at face value, economists warn that the figure obscures as much as it reveals. Ethiopia’s economic expansion has historically been driven by state-led infrastructure investment vast dam projects, railway construction, and industrial parks financed through debt. Whilst such capital expenditure shows up handsomely in GDP statistics, its impact on ordinary livelihoods is far less clear.

The crucial question isn’t whether Ethiopia is growing, but who benefits from that growth. If the expansion comes primarily from building Chinese-financed railways that employ relatively few people and don’t immediately generate income for smallholder farmers or urban informal workers who together represent the vast majority of Ethiopians then that 9 per cent growth figure becomes somewhat abstract for the average family struggling to afford teff and cooking oil.

The World Bank’s own report, cited in Teklemariam’s analysis, explicitly flags “elevated public debt, domestic conflicts, and climate shocks” as dampening factors. These are not minor footnotes but fundamental structural challenges that question the sustainability and inclusiveness of any headline growth figure. Mr Abiy’s parliamentary address, however, contained no such caveats. The narrative presented was one of unalloyed triumph, validated by international institutions speaking with one voice except they weren’t.

If the growth claim represents distortion through conflation, the Prime Minister’s assertion about utility prices demonstrates decontextualisation of an altogether more brazen variety. His claim that electricity, water, and fuel costs are “cheaper” in Ethiopia than in Kenya, Somalia, and Tanzania appears designed to counter domestic frustration over cost-of-living pressures. Our columnist’s statistical analysis dismantles it entirely.

Teklemariam deploys Consumer Price Index data for housing, water, electricity, and fuel, the most reliable cross-country comparison available. Ethiopia’s CPI for this category stood at 300.7 in June 2023, using a 2015/16 base of 100. This means costs had tripled in roughly seven years. Tanzania’s equivalent index, by contrast, stood at 118.3, and Somalia’s at 149.5 increases of 18 per cent and 50 per cent respectively, albeit from different base years.

Even accounting for methodological differences, the scale of the divergence is extraordinary. Ethiopian households have experienced vastly steeper historical increases in utility costs than their regional counterparts. To now claim that utilities are “cheaper” requires ignoring this inflationary history entirely. It’s rather like boasting that your house is affordable because you’ve forgotten to mention that the price has tripled since you bought it.

The inflation context compounds the problem. As of December 2025, Ethiopia’s general inflation rate stood at 9.7 per cent more than double Tanzania’s 3.6 per cent and Kenya’s 4.4 per cent. When inflation is running at nearly 10 per cent, even a nominally static price is effectively rising in real terms. Households must allocate an ever-larger share of stagnant or slowly growing incomes just to maintain the same consumption level. The purchasing power of ordinary Ethiopians is being steadily eroded, even if the nominal birr price on their electricity bill remains unchanged.

Yet the most glaring omission in Mr Abiy’s utility comparison, Teklemariam observes, is the one factor that determines whether a price is genuinely “affordable”: income. A kilowatt-hour of electricity might theoretically cost fewer birr in Addis Ababa than shillings in Nairobi, but if the average Ethiopian earns a fraction of what the average Kenyan does, the relative economic burden could be far heavier.

This is basic comparative economics. Price without reference to purchasing power is a meaningless datapoint. The Prime Minister presented a nominal price comparison as if it were a valid measure of living standards. It’s a category error, and one that appears entirely deliberate. Obtaining consistent, comparable income data across the region is notoriously difficult, given vast informal economies and differing statistical methodologies. The Ethiopian government provided no such data to contextualise its claim—a fact our columnist highlights as indicative of the assertion’s fundamental intellectual dishonesty.

It’s a classic populist move. You make a claim that sounds specific and factual—“our utilities are cheaper”—knowing that ordinary citizens can’t easily verify prices in Dar es Salaam or Mogadishu. It creates a perception of competent custodianship whilst diverting attention from domestic failures. The claim doesn’t need to withstand rigorous scrutiny; it merely needs to sound plausible enough to shape the immediate political narrative.

What makes the statistical engineering particularly striking is the contrast with other elements of Mr Abiy’s parliamentary performance. The same session that featured optimistic growth projections and utility comparisons also included an unprecedented admission: that Eritrean troops had committed massacres in the Tigrayan town of Axum during the devastating civil war. This was a significant, if belated, acknowledgement of atrocities that the government had long deflected or denied.

There is an extraordinary duality at work here, Teklemariam argues. On matters of geopolitical blame and historical violence, the Prime Minister can be remarkably candid—perhaps because it deflects responsibility onto an external actor. But on socioeconomic metrics where his government’s competence is directly being judged, the discourse shifts to obfuscation, conflation, and selective omission. One can admit to Eritrean massacres because the culpability lies elsewhere; one cannot admit to economic mismanagement because that responsibility is unavoidably internal.

Yet perhaps the most troubling moment in the parliamentary session came when Mr Abiy addressed the ongoing conflict in the Amhara region. When questioned about the government’s approach to the Fano militia—armed groups that emerged initially to defend Amhara communities but have since become a significant insurgent force the Prime Minister declared his willingness to engage in dialogue. “We are ready to discuss with anyone who wants peace,” he stated, adding that his government would consider talks with armed groups if they demonstrated genuine commitment to resolving the conflict peacefully.

On the surface, this sounds like statesmanship, a leader extending an olive branch to end bloodshed. But our columnist identifies a deeply cynical calculus at work. This is the same government that has repeatedly refused meaningful dialogue with Amhara political figures, that has imprisoned journalists and activists from the region, and that has conducted military operations resulting in civilian casualties. The offer of talks with “armed insurgents” comes only after conventional political channels have been systematically closed, after peaceful dissent has been criminalised, and after communities have been pushed into armed resistance as their only remaining avenue for political expression.

“The offer to negotiate with those who take up arms whilst simultaneously crushing those who seek peaceful political change sends a chilling message,” Teklemariam writes. “It tells Ethiopians that violence, not constitutional politics, is the pathway to being taken seriously by this government. It validates the gun over the ballot box.”

The timing is particularly revealing. The Amhara conflict has proven far more intractable than the government anticipated. Fano groups control significant rural territory, the regional economy is paralysed, and federal forces have struggled to reassert control despite months of military operations. The offer of dialogue comes not from strength or genuine reconciliation, but from military stalemate. It’s the same pattern observed in Tigray-talk peace only when you cannot impose military victory.

Moreover, the framing of potential interlocutors as “armed insurgents” rather than representatives of legitimate Amhara grievances is itself instructive. It strips the conflict of its political context the controversial dissolution of regional special forces, the perceived marginalisation of Amhara interests in federal politics, the unresolved questions of territorial administration. By reducing complex political disputes to a security problem requiring negotiation with “armed groups,” the government avoids accountability for the policies that created the crisis in the first place.

Our columnist notes the bitter irony: a government that came to power promising to open political space and embrace dialogue has instead created conditions where Ethiopians increasingly see armed resistance as more effective than peaceful opposition. The ruling Prosperity Party faces virtually no meaningful challenge in parliament, where it holds an overwhelming majority. Independent media has been shuttered or intimidated into self-censorship. Civil society operates under constant surveillance and threat. In this environment, Mr Abiy’s offer to talk with those who’ve taken up arms is less magnanimity than recognition that force has achieved what constitutional politics could not the government’s attention.

“This is how democracies die,” Teklemariam observes. “Not with a single coup, but with the gradual erosion of peaceful political competition until violence becomes the only language the state understands. The Prime Minister’s offer to negotiate with armed groups in Amhara would be laudable if it were accompanied by genuine opening of political space. Instead, it’s a tactical response to military pressure, one that will likely result in a temporary ceasefire that addresses none of the underlying political grievances.”

Opposition MP Dr Abebaw Desalegn’s pointed criticism during the session, highlighting the “pervasive lack of peace” and ongoing human rights violations underscores the broader context in which these economic claims and political manoeuvres are being made. Ethiopia remains a country navigating post-war trauma, regional instability in Amhara and Oromia, severe foreign exchange shortages, and diplomatic isolation following the deterioration of relations with Eritrea. In such an environment, projecting economic competence and conflict resolution becomes an existential political imperative. The government cannot afford to appear as though it is failing on all fronts simultaneously.

The sophistication of the Prime Minister’s rhetorical strategy should not be underestimated. By invoking the IMF and World Bank, institutions whose technical credibility exceeds that of any political actor, Mr Abiy wraps his narrative in what Teklemariam calls “a technocratic seal of approval.” The selective nature of that invocation is easy to miss in the moment but devastating upon scrutiny.

This is how modern governments with authoritarian tendencies operate in an age of information abundance. They don’t crudely fabricate numbers from whole cloth, that’s too easily disproven in the digital era. Instead, they cherry-pick from legitimate sources, conflate where convenient, and omit context. The result is a narrative that sounds data-driven and can survive a casual fact-check, but collapses under rigorous examination. It’s statistical sophistication in service of political survival.

The strategy reveals a broader pattern identified across developing economies attempting to balance reform commitments to international lenders with domestic political survival. The IMF programme requires Ethiopia to demonstrate progress. But delivering painful reforms, subsidy cuts, currency devaluation, liberalisation, creates immediate political backlash. The urban poor feel the pinch when fuel subsidies are withdrawn; businesses struggle when the currency weakens and imports become expensive. So the government amplifies the positive indicators the IMF generates whilst downplaying the conditionalities and risks the World Bank emphasises. It’s a delicate dance between satisfying international creditors and placating domestic constituencies.

For Ethiopian citizens, the implications extend beyond academic critique of governmental rhetoric. If parliament theoretically the premier forum for executive accountability, cannot effectively interrogate statistical claims, the democratic check on executive power is fundamentally weakened. What our columnist’s analysis demonstrates is the vital importance of independent verification. A functioning democracy requires a free press that can access and interpret World Bank reports, opposition MPs with research capacity, and academic economists who can unpick CPI data and identify discrepancies. Without these institutional counterweights, the government’s narrative simply becomes “the truth” by default.

International partners face a similar reckoning. Western donors and multilateral institutions that continue to support Ethiopia, despite its recent conflicts and democratic backsliding, rely heavily on economic metrics to justify continued engagement. If those metrics are being systematically spun, the basis for that support becomes questionable. The IMF and World Bank need to be far more explicit about the divergences in their assessments. When their figures are being weaponised in domestic political discourse, silence or diplomatic discretion isn’t neutral, it becomes complicity in misrepresentation.

At its core, Teklemariam identifies what he terms an “ontological tension” in Ethiopian governmental communication: the struggle between acknowledging profound challenges and maintaining an unwavering narrative of progress. This tension produces the paradoxes evident in Mr Abiy’s parliamentary performance bold admissions on Eritrean atrocities coexisting with rose-tinted economic claims and cynical offers of dialogue with armed groups whilst peaceful opposition is crushed. It’s a form of compartmentalisation, common in individuals and institutions under extreme stress. You can acknowledge failure in one domain because it’s externalised Eritrea’s fault, Fano militants’ fault, not ours whilst rigidly defending competence in another domain where responsibility is unavoidably internal.

The question facing Ethiopia is whether this compartmentalised discourse can be sustained indefinitely. Economic realities—inflation, unemployment, foreign exchange shortages, the simple difficulty of putting food on the table—are lived experiences that no amount of statistical reframing can fully obscure. Similarly, political realities—the growing armed resistance, the shuttered media, the imprisoned activists—cannot be wished away through selective offers of dialogue. When the gap between narrative and reality becomes too wide, political legitimacy erodes. Citizens may tolerate being told that growth is robust when their own experience suggests stagnation, but only for so long. Eventually, the cognitive dissonance becomes untenable.

Our columnist’s forensic deconstruction of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s parliamentary claims offers more than a fact-check. It provides a case study in how governments in fragile states use data not merely to inform but to construct reality itself a reality designed to legitimise, to reassure, and ultimately to survive. The conflation of IMF and World Bank growth projections, the decontextualised utility price comparisons, the systematic omission of contradictory evidence, the tactical offer to negotiate with armed insurgents whilst denying space to peaceful opposition, these are not mere rhetorical flourishes but calculated strategies of narrative control. They reveal a government acutely aware that in the modern information environment, statistical authority and strategic concessions can substitute for democratic accountability.

For Ethiopia, the stakes could not be higher. A nation emerging from civil war, grappling with regional instability, and facing profound economic challenges needs honest reckoning, not statistical theatre. The country’s ability to attract genuine investment, to rebuild trust with international partners, and to foster social cohesion amongst its deeply fractured population depends on credible governance, and credibility begins with truthfulness.

As Teklemariam concludes, the health of Ethiopian democracy depends on “rigorous, sceptical, and unwavering commitment to discursive accountability.” This means citizens who demand evidence, journalists who investigate claims, opposition politicians who challenge narratives, and international partners who refuse to accept convenient fictions. It means building and protecting the institutional capacity to say, loudly and clearly, when the emperor’s statistical clothes don’t quite fit, and when his offers of peace ring hollow against the backdrop of systematic political repression.

Whether that commitment can be sustained, in parliament, in the press, and amongst citizens, may well determine not just the accuracy of the government’s numbers, but the trajectory of the nation itself. Ethiopia stands at a crossroads. Down one path lies genuine reform, painful honesty about challenges, the opening of real political space, and the slow reconstruction of trust. Down the other lies increasingly sophisticated narrative management, tactical negotiations that preserve power whilst avoiding structural change, a widening gap between claim and reality, and the eventual collapse of credibility. The choice, ultimately, rests with those in power, and with those willing to hold them to account. Our columnist has done his part. The question is whether anyone with the power to act is listening.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​