Ethiopian Tribune editor – Ethiopian Tribune

The Church They Cannot Name

Ethiopian Tribune editor — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 09:10:29 +0000

Read Time:23 Minute, 23 Second

ETHIOPIAN TRIBUNE

Analysis & Commentary | Horn of Africa Affairs

SPECIAL REPORT: FAITH, ETHNICITY & ERASURE

The Church They Cannot Name

How the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church became a target without a headline and why the massacres in Arsi indicted not only the perpetrators, but the silence of the world

4 June 2026

WHEN a ten-year-old boy was shot in a teff field in the Merti district of Arsi, his photograph travelled briefly across Ethiopian social media before disappearing entirely from the international press. His leg was amputated. His name was not reported by the BBC. Al Jazeera did not dispatch a correspondent. CNN did not file a segment. The child survived; the silence was complete.

The date was November 2025. In the weeks surrounding that shooting, more than 140 Orthodox Christian civilians had been killed in the Sherka district of Arsi alone since September. By late October, coordinated attacks across Guna, Merti, Sherka and Holonto districts, carried out on the night of the 24th to the 25th had left at least 24 dead in a single assault, including a toddler and an 86-year-old. The total across October reached 33 confirmed dead. Church representatives in the Arsi archdiocese told reporters that over 200 believers had been killed in Merti district in recent years. Local youths who attempted to share information about the killings were subsequently arrested.

The Oromia regional administration’s response was immediate and unambiguous. The Arsi Zone Administrator, Ibrahim Kedir, declared that no one had been killed. The Oromia regional police described the area as ‘peaceful.’ The Inter-Religious Council of Ethiopia, dispatched to investigate, released a report claiming the victims ‘were not from one faith group’ a formulation that enraged the dioceses in the region and was characterised by prominent Ethiopian political figures as an attempt to dissolve the religious character of what had occurred into a neutralised, depoliticised abstraction.

When governments deny the dead and international media looks away, silence does not merely describe an absence. It becomes a policy.

This essay is concerned with that silence not primarily as a moral failure, though it is certainly that, but as a structural and politically explicable phenomenon. To understand why Arsi received no meaningful international coverage, one must first understand what the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church represents in the contemporary political imagination of Ethiopia’s ruling dispensation, and why it has become strategically advantageous for multiple actors domestic and foreign to render Orthodox Christian suffering legible only through the distorting lens of Amhara ethnic politics.

I. THE LABEL AS WEAPON

Professor Girma Berhanu, writing in these pages on 3 June 2026, observed that a painful and recurring pattern had emerged across major international outlets: when Ethiopia is discussed, Amhara perspectives are minimised, generalised, or excluded. The observation is precise, but the problem it diagnoses runs deeper than representation. The mechanism by which Amhara voices are excluded from international discourse is inseparable from the mechanism by which the Ethiopian Orthodox Church is persistently mis-categorised and it is this mis-categorisation that makes violence against Orthodox Christians so consistently invisible.

The EOTC is, by any historical reckoning, a pan-Ethiopian institution. Founded in the fourth century, it predates the category of ‘Amhara’ as a political identity by more than a millennium. Its liturgical tradition, the Ge’ez rite, is shared across Tigrayan, Amhara, and many Oromo communities. Approximately forty-five per cent of the Oromo population is Christian, and Orthodox Christians account for a substantial proportion of that figure. The Church’s membership spans ethnic and linguistic lines in ways that the contemporary ethnic-federal architecture of Ethiopia is systematically unable to acknowledge.

Yet the political weaponisation of ethnicity since the early 1990s has produced a powerful counter-narrative: that the EOTC is, at its core, a vehicle of Amhara cultural supremacy, a relic of imperial domination that must be reformed, broken, or subordinated to achieve genuine multiethnic democracy. This framing, promoted by elements within Oromo ethnonationalist discourse and by certain international analysts sympathetic to it, has served a double function. It delegitimises Orthodox Christian civic action as ethnic chauvinism rather than religious conviction, and it provides intellectual cover for state and non-state actors engaged in what can only be described as targeted violence against the Church and its adherents.

The consequences are empirically documented. A 2025 research paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Humanities concluded that the weaponisation of ethnic politics since 1994 had enabled religion to be instrumentalised, resulting in ‘the demonisation of the Amhara people and, by extension, the EOTC.’ A January 2026 Rift Valley Institute report noted that the security crisis had ‘disproportionately affected new regional minorities, in particular the Amharas living outside the Amhara region and Orthodox Christians, where they are a religious minority,’ and linked this directly to the political logic of ethnonational insurgency particularly in Oromia, where violence was being ‘strategically deployed to disrupt political alliances.’

Yet this body of evidence has produced almost no sustained international journalism. The question is why.

II. ARSI AS MICROCOSM

The Arsi zone of Oromia is not, for those familiar with Ethiopian ecclesiastical history, an incidental location. It is part of the Arsi Archdiocese, one of the most historic and deeply rooted of the Church’s regional structures. Orthodox Christians in Arsi are not recent settlers; many are the descendants of communities who have inhabited the region for centuries, their faith woven into the landscape through churches, monasteries, and the rhythms of the liturgical calendar.

What occurred in Arsi between September and November 2025 was not, according to multiple independent sources, a spontaneous outbreak of violence. It was sustained, coordinated, and geographically targeted. The attacks in Sherka, Guna, Merti and Holonto were carried out by armed groups operating with a consistency of method targeting farmers in their fields, entering homes at night, shooting worshippers that left church representatives describing the pattern in terms of deliberate ethnic and religious cleansing. The Oromo Liberation Army, which has operated extensively in Oromia since at least 2018, was identified in multiple reports as responsible for or implicated in the attacks.

In February 2026, the violence continued. On the 26th of that month, armed attackers struck a market in East Arsi, killing twenty Orthodox Christians and one Muslim guard. Two days later, gunmen entered a church and opened fire on those gathered for worship. By April, the International Christian Concern was documenting a pattern of killings, looting and forced displacement that it characterised not as isolated incidents but as a growing and repeated programme of violence. Thousands of Orthodox Christians were by that point displaced from their homes across East Arsi Zone.

The Crown Council of Ethiopia, in a statement issued on 31 October 2025, noted with particular gravity that ‘in recent years, the targeted killing of Orthodox Christians in Ethiopia has become a regular occurrence,’ citing additionally the massacre of monks at the Debre Kewakibt Ziquala monastery in June 2025, where four monks were abducted and killed. The statement called upon authorities to protect the faithful from ‘those elements who continue to persecute and kill people, targeting them on the basis of religion, ethnicity or any other criteria.’ No major international news organisation covered the Crown Council’s statement.

The Oromia authorities said ‘no one was killed.’ The international press agreed, not by disputing the claim, but by ignoring the question entirely.

The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, no radical body, confirmed in November 2025 that it had gathered information on killings in East Arsi’s Guna, Merti, Sherka and Holonto districts, and that five further farmers had been killed in Merti in early November, one of them a ten-year-old child. It confirmed that armed groups were responsible. The Inter-Religious Council’s counter-report, attempting to muddy the religious character of the targeting, was denounced by the affected dioceses as an exercise in institutional erasure.

None of this, not the numbers, not the official confirmation, not the children in hospital, not the displaced thousands generated a single substantive segment on the BBC’s Africa coverage, on Al Jazeera’s Ethiopia desk, or on CNN’s international broadcasting. The question of why requires more than an observation about editorial oversight.

III. THE POLITICAL ARCHITECTURE OF INVISIBILITY

There is no single conspiracy that explains the erasure of Orthodox Christian suffering in Arsi from international consciousness. What there is, instead, is a convergence of structural incentives, ideological assumptions, and access dynamics that together produce a reliable outcome: the disappearance of this violence from the global record.

The first and most important factor is the framing problem identified above. Because the EOTC has been successfully coded in much international analysis as an ‘Amhara institution,’ violence against its members is perceived however unconsciously as an episode in the ethnic conflict between Amhara and Oromo communities. This coding converts what is, at its core, a programme of religiously and ethnically targeted killing into a ‘both sides’ conflict, one that international editors have learned to treat with the caution they apply to all contested ethnic disputes. The victims become combatants by proxy; their faith becomes a political faction; and the massacre becomes an episode in a war, rather than a crime against a congregation.

The second factor is access. The Oromia regional government, under the political architecture of Abiy Ahmed’s Prosperity Party, has not been hospitable to independent journalism in areas where OLA-linked violence is occurring. Journalists who have attempted to report from Sherka, Merti or Holonto have encountered military checkpoints, obstruction, and the risk that local sources will be arrested as indeed happened to youths who shared information about the November killings. Without boots on the ground, international desks default to official sources; and the official Oromia sources were saying, unambiguously, that nothing had happened.

The third factor is what might be called the denominational blind spot. It is a fact, uncomfortable for some, that violence against Orthodox Christian communities in Africa receives systematically less international media attention than equivalent violence against Muslim communities, or against Protestant minorities in authoritarian contexts. This is not primarily a conspiracy; it reflects the distribution of journalistic focus, the preoccupations of editorial boards, and the particular attentiveness that certain NGO networks have cultivated with major news organisations. Orthodox Christianity is perceived, in much of the global North, as a conservative and somewhat archaic tradition. This perception colours coverage in ways that its practitioners rarely have the platform to contest.

The fourth factor is one that Professor Berhanu’s essay illuminates with particular clarity: the structural exclusion of Amhara voices from the panels, briefings and expert circuits that feed international journalism. When Al Jazeera assembles a panel on Ethiopian democracy, and no Amhara representative is present, the conversation proceeds without the constituency that has been most directly subjected to organised violence under the current political order. When Mehdi Hasan interviews Getachew Reda on the future of Ethiopia, and the Amhara dimension of the post-Tigray settlement is not raised, the absence shapes what millions of viewers understand to be the relevant landscape of Ethiopian politics. The silence in Arsi and the silence on international panels are not separate phenomena. They are the same phenomenon.

Two silences, one structure: the voice not invited to the panel and the village not visited by the correspondent are governed by the same logic of erasure.

IV. THE PROSPERITY PARTY AND THE ASSAULT ON THE CHURCH

To understand Arsi fully, one must situate it within the broader strategy of the ruling Prosperity Party towards the EOTC, a strategy that has proceeded along two tracks simultaneously. The first is institutional: the engineering, in January 2023, of an illegal parallel synod in Oromia and the Southern Nations, orchestrated by three bishops led by Abune Sawiros and, according to extensive and credible reporting, backed by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s inner circle. The goal of this schism was the fragmentation of the Church along ethnic lines, converting it from a pan-Ethiopian institution into a contested space divided between an ‘Oromia Church’ and a rump ‘Amhara Church.’ This effort ultimately failed, defeated by mass non-violent civic action from Orthodox Christians across the country. But the attempt was revelatory.

The second track is security: the failure, whether through incapacity or design, to protect Orthodox Christian communities in Oromia from the militia violence that has killed hundreds in recent years. EOTC leaders from Arsi and Bale reported more than 200 Orthodox killed since 2024, communities frequently described in official and semi-official communications as ‘Amhara Christians’ a label that, once applied, removes them from the category of Ethiopian citizens requiring state protection and relocates them in the category of ethnic encroachers whose presence in Oromo land is itself a political provocation.

This is the mechanism by which the label becomes lethal. When an Orthodox Christian farmer in Arsi is killed, and the official response characterises the dead as ‘Amhara Christians in Oromia,’ the state has not merely misidentified the victim. It has pre-authorised the crime by establishing that the victim’s presence was itself anomalous, and that the violence visited upon them is a legible if regrettable consequence of ethnic geographic politics. The victim is twice erased: first in death, then in classification.

This logic is not unique to Ethiopia. It is the grammar of all ethnic cleansing operations in the modern era, from the Balkans to Myanmar: the target community is first categorised as alien, then their victimisation is absorbed into the narrative of an ethnic dispute, and finally the international community, confronted with a ‘both sides’ story, opts for studied neutrality. The EOTC and its communities in Arsi are living through a version of this grammar. The unique feature of the Ethiopian case is that the Church against which it is being deployed is among the oldest continuous Christian institutions on earth.

V. WHAT THE WORLD CHOSE NOT TO SEE

There is a standard objection to the argument presented here, and it deserves a direct response. That objection runs as follows: Ethiopia is a country with multiple simultaneous crises the Tigray war, the Amhara conflict, the Oromo insurgency, the Somali border tensions. International media has limited bandwidth; not every atrocity can receive equal coverage; and the absence of reporting on Arsi reflects resource constraints rather than ideological selection.

This objection would be more persuasive if the same standard were applied consistently. It was not applied to the June 2025 bombing of the Mar Elias Church in Damascus, Syria, which received extensive and immediate coverage across every major Western outlet, with detailed analysis, expert commentary, and on-the-ground reporting within hours. That attack killed thirty people. In Arsi, over a comparable period, more than 140 were confirmed dead in Sherka alone and the silence was total.

The differential is not explained by resource constraints. It is explained by the differential legibility of victims. Syrian Orthodox Christians killed by an ISIS-linked bomber fit a recognisable international narrative: the endangered Christian minority, the Islamist perpetrator, the secular state struggling to contain extremism. This narrative has an established audience, an established set of NGO interlocutors, and an established emotional grammar in Western journalism. Ethiopian Orthodox Christians killed by OLA-linked militants in a region governed by a ruling party whose leader received the Nobel Peace Prize do not fit that narrative. Their suffering requires context that most editors are unwilling to supply and most correspondents have not been briefed to seek.

This is what Professor Berhanu means when he writes that ‘silence can become part of the story’ and that ‘selective attention can become a form of erasure.’ The erasure of Arsi from the international record is not a passive omission. It is an active consequence of the architecture of international attention and that architecture, as he rightly notes, shapes diplomatic conversations, humanitarian priorities, and historical memory.

It is worth noting, in this context, the tribute Professor Berhanu pays to photojournalist Jemal Countess and journalist Jeff Pearce individuals who have pursued the truth about anti-Orthodox and anti-Amhara violence in Ethiopia at personal and professional cost. That such figures must be mentioned as exceptions, rare exemplars of integrity in a field that has largely looked away, is itself a measure of how far the norm has departed from what journalism is supposed to be.

VI. THE OLDEST CHURCH IN THE WORLD AND THE NEWEST SILENCE

The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church is not a political party. It is not a militia. It is not an instrument of any ethnic group’s hegemony, however vigorously that claim is prosecuted by its enemies. It is a living, ancient institution with a canon of scripture that predates the Arab conquest of North Africa, with illuminated manuscripts that predate the printing press, with a monastic tradition in Lalibela and on Lake Tana that has preserved theological and cultural knowledge through every catastrophe that the Horn of Africa has endured over seventeen centuries.

That this institution is under assault through schism, through land confiscation, through the killing of its priests and monks and farmers and children in their fields is a matter of historical record. That this assault has been made possible, in part, by an international discourse that has accepted the framing of the Church as ‘the Amhara institution’ is a matter of consequence that extends beyond Ethiopia’s borders.

Because if the oldest church in sub-Saharan Africa can be rendered invisible by the application of an ethnic label if two hundred dead in a single district of Oromia can be waved away by a regional administrator saying ‘no one was killed,’ and the world’s major newsrooms can nod along in silence then we have learned something important about the limits of the international community’s commitment to the protection of religious minorities and the documentation of atrocity.

What occurred in Arsi between September 2025 and April 2026 was not a communal conflict. It was not a land dispute. It was not the regrettable by-product of a complex civil war in which all sides bear responsibility. It was, as the Church’s own representatives described it, the targeted and sustained killing of a community on the basis of their religion and their ethnicity a campaign of elimination conducted in broad daylight, denied by the authorities responsible for the area’s security, and ignored by the institutions that exist, in theory, to bear witness.

The witnesses who did speak the dioceses of Arsi, the Crown Council, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, the International Christian Concern, the few independent journalists who managed to file from the ground spoke into a void. This essay is an attempt, however belated, to fill some part of that void. Not because the filling of a void in a periodical constitutes accountability. But because accountability begins, always, with the refusal to be silent.

VII. THE PANEL THAT PROVED THE POINT

On the occasion of Ethiopia’s June 2026 general election, the broadcaster TRT World’s programme The Newsmakers aired a segment titled ‘Ethiopia’s Abiy Ahmed seeks re-election amid fears of renewed civil war.’ It ran for approximately twenty-nine minutes. It is, for the purposes of this essay, a document of considerable instructive value not primarily for what it said, but for what it demonstrated about the architecture of international media representation of Ethiopia in practice, in real time, before a global audience.

The programme was structured in two parts. The first was a solo interview with Getachew Reda, identified on screen as adviser to Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on Eastern African affairs and former president of the Tigray interim regional administration. The second was a panel of three analysts: Maza Gidei Gebremedhin, described as an international relations specialist, speaking from Washington; Robel Alemu, senior analyst and director of communications at the Amhara Association of America, speaking from Toronto; and Tsedale Lemma, journalist and founder of the Addis Standard newspaper, speaking from Frankfurt.

The presenter introduced this arrangement as a broadening of the discussion. In terms of the claims this essay has advanced, it was something rather more precise than that: it was a live demonstration of the erasure thesis, conducted under studio lighting, with credentials displayed, and streamed to an international audience.

One Amhara voice. Two Tigrayan voices. One figure from a publication with a documented record of minimising Amhara suffering. This was presented as ‘balance.’

Begin with Getachew Reda. His credentials as the interview’s primary subject were presented straightforwardly: adviser to Abiy Ahmed, former Tigray interim president. What the introduction did not dwell upon and what the presenter did not press was the particular quality of the political journey being described. Getachew Reda is a former senior official of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front: the organisation whose nearly three-decade dominance of Ethiopian politics Abiy Ahmed’s rise was explicitly designed to end, and whose subsequent armed conflict with the federal government produced hundreds of thousands of dead, the displacement of millions, and documented atrocities against civilian populations in Tigray, Amhara, and Afar alike. He is now, in the service of that same Abiy Ahmed, a figure of the federal establishment commenting on the fairness of an election from which the communities most subjected to state violence were systematically excluded.

When asked about the Amhara and Oromia regions, Getachew’s framing was revealing in its precision. He acknowledged ‘low-intensity conflicts’ in both areas, but his concern was not with the casualties or the humanitarian toll. His concern was with the fact that armed opposition elements were attempting to prevent people from voting. The violence itself the aerial strikes, the displacement, the killings was not his subject. The vote was his subject. Amhara suffering, in this framing, was relevant only insofar as it furnished evidence of the opposition’s illegitimacy, and irrelevant insofar as it might have furnished evidence of the government’s.

This is a form of rhetorical erasure so efficient that it barely registers as such. The dead are not denied; they are simply not mentioned. The conversation moves on. The presenter, to her credit, noted that ‘all parties involved have been accused of various atrocities.’ But this is the standard diplomatic hedge of professional broadcast journalism the gesture toward balance that preserves the impression of impartiality while declining to pursue the specificity that would make the accusation land.

Then came the panel. And here the structural problem identified by Professor Berhanu the systematic exclusion of Amhara voices from the expert circuits that feed international journalism was displayed with a clarity that no amount of editorial analysis can improve upon. Of the three panellists assembled to represent ‘opposition’ perspectives on the Ethiopian election, two were Tigrayan and one was the founder of a publication whose coverage has repeatedly been criticised, including by contributors to this newspaper, for insufficient engagement with the specific character of anti-Amhara and anti-Orthodox violence in Oromia.

The Amhara Association of America’s Robel Alemu, speaking from Toronto, was the exception and the exception proved the rule. In the space of approximately ninety seconds, he delivered the most substantive account of the humanitarian catastrophe in Ethiopia offered by any participant across the entire twenty-nine minute broadcast. He named the Lemkin Institute’s active genocide alert for the Amhara people. He cited the Amhara Association’s own documentation of more than 370 aerial strikes by state forces against civilian infrastructure health centres, schools, places of worship. He referenced a BBC report documenting mass rape in the Amhara region, with the majority of cases implicating government forces. He noted UNICEF’s figure of nine million children out of school nationally, with half drawn from Amhara. And then and this is the sentence that this essay has been building toward he stated directly that on election day itself, an active massacre was taking place in the Arsi area, implicating local militants, with attacks continuing against ethnic Amhara and Orthodox Christian communities.

Arsi. Named. On international television. On the day of the Ethiopian election.

Robel Alemu named Arsi on international television. Within seconds, the presenter moved to Maza on Eritrea. Neither of his fellow panellists ever returned to a single word he had said.

The presenter thanked him and pivoted immediately to Maza Gidei Gebremedhin on the subject of a potential Ethiopia-Eritrea war. The question of Arsi the massacres, the aerial strikes, the genocide alert, the nine million children was not returned to. Not by the presenter. Not by Maza, whose response routed the conversation firmly through the prism of Tigrayan victimhood under a prospective Ethiopia-Eritrea conflict, emphasising that any future war would be fought ‘on the lines of Tigray, on the bodies of Tigrayan women, on the bodies of Tigrayan men.’ Not by Tsedale Lemma, who offered a fluent and well-informed analysis of the geopolitical dangers of Abiy Ahmed’s Red Sea ambitions important analysis, accurately framed but who did not once, across the entirety of her contributions, acknowledge the existence of the Arsi massacre, the Lemkin genocide alert, the documented rape campaign in Amhara, or the aerial strikes on civilian targets.

It is important to state clearly what this observation is not. It is not a claim that Tigrayan suffering is less important than Amhara suffering, or that Tsedale Lemma’s analysis was without merit, or that the TRT programme was uniquely or exceptionally deficient. The suffering in Tigray was real, massive, and is still unresolved. The analysis offered by Maza and Tsedale was, in its own terms, coherent and informed.

The observation is more precise and more structural than a comparison of suffering. It is this: a programme that assembled three ‘opposition’ analysts to comment on an Ethiopian election in which Amhara communities were among the most severely affected by state violence managed to produce, through the composition of its panel and the direction of its questioning, a broadcast in which the one representative of those communities stated his case once and was not heard from again on those specific terms. The panel did not engage with what he said. The presenter did not return to what he raised. The broadcast closed without any panellist having responded to the genocide alert, the aerial strikes, the rape figures, or the election-day massacre in Arsi.

This is the mechanism Professor Berhanu describes operating in plain sight. It does not require bad faith from any individual participant. Maza Gidei Gebremedhin was not lying when she spoke of Tigrayan vulnerability; she was speaking her genuine concern. Tsedale Lemma was not performing indifference when she analysed the Red Sea question; she was doing the work she knows how to do. The presenter was not malicious in her pivots; she was managing a panel format under time pressure. And yet the aggregate effect of all these individually defensible decisions was the production of a broadcast in which the systematic killing of Orthodox Christians in Arsi named on air by a panellist with direct organisational knowledge disappeared from the conversation within thirty seconds and was never retrieved.

This is what institutional erasure looks like when it operates not through censorship but through the ordinary mechanics of editorial selection, panel composition, and the distribution of follow-up questions. It is, in many ways, more difficult to challenge than censorship, because no single decision can be identified as the act of suppression. The suppression is the sum of the decisions; and the sum, in this case, was the burial, on international television, of an active massacre.

The TRT programme, in other words, did not merely illustrate the argument of this essay. It enacted it.

This essay draws on reporting by DNE Africa, Borkena, the International Christian Concern, the Global Human Rights Defence, the Rift Valley Institute, and the Crown Council of Ethiopia. The TRT World programme ‘Ethiopia’s Abiy Ahmed seeks re-election amid fears of renewed civil war’ (The Newsmakers, June 2026) is cited by transcript. This essay was developed in dialogue with the arguments advanced by Professor Girma Berhanu in his Tribune essay of 3 June 2026, ‘The Erasure of Amhara Voices in International Coverage of Ethiopia.’

ETHIOPIAN TRIBUNE | ethiopiantribune.com

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The Erasure of Amhara Voices in International Coverage of Ethiopia

Ethiopian Tribune editor — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 21:13:53 +0000

Read Time:2 Minute, 41 Second

By Girma Berhanu (Professor)

Watching recent international coverage of Ethiopia’s election, I’ve been left with a question that grows harder to ignore: why are Amhara voices — and Amhara suffering — so consistently absent from the global media narrative?

A recent Al Jazeera segment brought this concern into sharp focus. The panel featured Martin Plaut and other commentators, but included no Amhara representative. More troubling than who was present, however, was what went unsaid.

There was no substantive discussion of the ongoing conflict in the Amhara region. No mention of civilians killed or displaced. No acknowledgment of the humanitarian toll borne by Amhara communities during the Tigray war — or of the violence that has continued since. The panelists referenced security problems in Oromia and Amhara as background factors affecting the election, but never confronted the specific, devastating reality of war in Amhara itself.

This was not an isolated omission.

Months earlier, journalist Mehdi Hasan interviewed Getachew Reda. The Ethiopian voices invited to respond, again, included no Amhara representative. Amhara concerns, again, went largely unspoken.

Across major international outlets — including the BBC and CNN — a painful pattern has emerged: when Ethiopia is discussed, Amhara perspectives are frequently minimized, generalized, or excluded. Coverage may acknowledge instability, conflict, and political crisis, yet routinely fails to examine how Amhara communities are specifically affected, or to include Amhara voices in conversations about the country’s future.

This pattern deserves serious attention.

This is not a call to shield any actor from scrutiny, nor a claim that one community’s suffering outweighs another’s. Ethiopia’s conflicts have brought devastating loss to many communities, and all civilian suffering demands recognition. But equal recognition matters. Representation matters. Accuracy matters.

When international media repeatedly discuss Ethiopia without meaningful Amhara participation—or without directly addressing violence against Amhara civilians—it shapes public understanding in ways that carry real consequences. It influences diplomatic conversations, humanitarian priorities, and historical memory.

I would like to seize this opportunity to commend the American photojournalist Jemal Countess and the Canadian author and journalist Jeff Pearce, who has long been known as a friend of Ethiopia in the face of foreign misinformation campaigns and the continued marginalization of the Amhara population. These are men of courage, sensitivity, remarkable honesty, and genuine journalistic integrity. They remain committed to truth, professional ethics, and conscience despite facing a barrage of attacks for who they are and for the principles they uphold.

The central question is straightforward: who gets to tell Ethiopia’s story?

When one of the country’s largest communities finds itself spoken about but rarely heard from, concern about media imbalance is not merely reasonable — it is necessary.

This is why independent research into international reporting on Ethiopia is urgently needed: to examine whose voices are amplified, whose suffering is documented, and whose experiences remain invisible.

Silence can become part of the story. Selective attention can become a form of erasure. And when that occurs in coverage of conflict and political violence, the consequences extend far beyond any headline.

GIRMA BERHANU
Professor

GOTHENBURG UNIVERSITY
Department of Education and Special Education
Västra Hamngatan 25, A-hus room 168
Mail address: Box 300, 405 30 Göteborg
office: +46-(0)31-786 2325
mobile: +46 704731818
girma.berhanu@ped.gu.se
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Observers Commend Ethiopia’s Electoral Conduct While Flagging Gaps in Inclusion and Coverage

Ethiopian Tribune editor — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 11:52:53 +0000

Read Time:15 Minute, 58 Second

IGAD and AU missions praise institutional innovation and public commitment; cite suspended constituencies, underrepresentation of women, and uneven access as areas requiring urgent remedy.

Joint IGAD-AU election observation press conference, Addis Ababa, 3 June 2026

By the Tribune Editorial Staff · Addis Ababa · 3 June 2026

Two continental observation bodies the Intergovernmental Authority on Development and the African Union delivered broadly affirmative preliminary assessments of Ethiopia’s Seventh General Election on Tuesday, praising the organisation of poll day proceedings, the patience and resolve of the electorate, and a suite of technological innovations that modernised the country’s electoral administration. Yet both missions, in the measured register of multilateral diplomacy, embedded within their endorsements a series of concerns that cut to the structural legitimacy of the exercise: forty-six constituencies where no vote was held, a ruling party with agents omnipresent while rivals were barely visible, persistent underrepresentation of women at every level of process, and a polling-station threshold that strained both staff and secrecy.

The joint press conference, broadcast on Fana Television and attended by diplomatic representatives and members of the press corps, was led for IGAD by the former Vice President of Uganda and for the AU by its head of mission, supported by the former Nigerian Foreign Minister Geoffrey Onyeama. The tone from both was warm uncommonly warm, in the institutional vocabulary of election observation. The IGAD envoy departed from script to observe that, in many countries she had monitored, polling stations offered voters nothing; in Ethiopia, she encountered coffee, chairs, and in some precincts, kolo.

“I have observed in many countries and I have not seen this: people arrived before 5 a.m. for a 6 a.m. opening.”
— IGAD Head of Mission, former Vice President of Uganda

That warmth, however genuine, should be read with care. Election observation missions operate under institutional constraints that reward constructive language. The substance of both preliminary statements, stripped of its diplomatic upholstery, reveals a picture more complicated than celebration warrants.

Administration and Scale

NEBE registered 54,057,861 voters approximately 5.3 million through the new Mirichai digital platform and 45.1 million through legacy manual processes. Of those registered, women accounted for 46 per cent and men 54 per cent, a gap the AU mission characterised as reflecting ongoing marginalisation of women in civic registration. Elections proceeded across 501 of 547 constituencies, with approximately 52,000 polling stations staffed by more than 195,000 recruited officials. Forty-two parties, including coalition formations, fielded over 10,000 candidates.

Both missions recorded orderly opening, sufficient materials, and smooth processing at the polling stations they visited. The AU noted a high level of compliance with core procedures ballot box sealing, voter identification, ink marking as evidence of NEBE’s investment in operational preparation. The IGAD mission visited 28 urban and peri-urban stations across seven regions and reported no incidents during the voting period.

Polling stations were set to close at 6 p.m. but NEBE extended hours by six hours when substantial queues remained. The IGAD mission flagged that this extension was implemented inconsistently, with information flowing unevenly from the central board to local stations in the regions a reminder that technological ambition at the centre does not automatically translate into uniform execution at the periphery.

Election in Numbers

Registered voters	54,057,861
Digital registrations (Mirichai)	5.3 million
Manual registrations	45.1 million
Women registered	46%
Constituencies voting	501 of 547
Suspended constituencies	46 (8 Amhara, 38 Tigray)
Polling stations	~52,000
Election officials deployed	195,000+
Parties contesting	42
Candidates	10,000+
GIS-mapped stations	7,000+
CSOs accredited (voter education)	169
Max voters per station	1,500

Technological Innovations

The Seventh General Election marked a substantive reform in electoral administration. NEBE launched the locally developed Mirichai (“my choice”) digital voter registration system, enabling over five million citizens to self-register online using national ID documents a first in Ethiopian electoral history. Candidates and political parties registered digitally for the first time. More than 7,000 polling stations were mapped using geographic information system technology. A hybrid registration system combined manual and digital processes, and special polling frameworks were established for internally displaced persons and members of the Ethiopian National Defence Forces.

Both missions commended these innovations. The IGAD statement was particularly emphatic, noting that the reforms contributed to modernisation, accessibility, inclusivity, and efficiency in electoral administration. The AU observed that digital registration had plausibly contributed to higher registration rates, particularly among young voters accustomed to digital platforms.

Areas of Concern

Suspended constituencies: Elections were not held in 46 of 547 constituencies — 38 in Tigray and 8 in the Amhara region, owing to prevailing security conditions. The AU mission acknowledged NEBE’s commitment to proceed in these areas “once the environment becomes conducive.” Neither mission quantified the population denied participation.

Women’s representation: Women remained underrepresented as candidates, as polling station managers (averaging two of five or six officials per station), and in voter registration relative to their demographic share. The IGAD envoy called for legally mandated affirmative action, stating directly that absent such legislation, men would not voluntarily relinquish political space.

Party agent presence: The Prosperity Party fielded agents at every polling station observed. Agents from other parties were present only in some stations across some regions. The AU mission recommended that all contesting parties strengthen deployment of trained agents to enhance transparency and competitiveness.

Polling station capacity: Both missions identified the 1,500-voter-per-station threshold as too high. The AU called it “undoubtedly” excessive. IGAD recommended reducing to 1,000, noting that even this figure exceeds international best practice.

Voting hour extension: NEBE’s decision to extend polling by six hours was praised for enfranchising voters still queuing at the original closing time. However, the implementation was inconsistent: the extension reached some regions and local stations unevenly, exposing gaps in NEBE’s command-and-control infrastructure.

The AU final report on the Seventh General Election will be released within 30 days of the declaration of official results. This report was produced before counting was complete.

The Coffee Was Good. The Coverage Was Not.

When continental observers admire the refreshments and gently note that forty-six constituencies went unserved, the calibration of praise deserves scrutiny.

By E. Frashie · Editor & Columnist · 3 June 2026

There is a particular art to the positive observation mission statement, and Today’s joint IGAD-AU press conference demonstrated it at something close to its finest. The former Vice President of Uganda, speaking for IGAD, told the assembled media that she had never, in many years of monitoring elections across the continent, witnessed an electorate that turned out before five in the morning and was served coffee while waiting. The applause this earned was genuine and merited. The Ethiopian voter deserves every commendation that could be offered.

But let us stay, for a moment, with what else was said in the same breath: that elections were not held in 46 constituencies. That the Prosperity Party was present in every polling station observed, while opposition agents appeared only intermittently. That women despite constituting the demographic majority were underregistered, underrepresented as candidates, barely present as polling station managers, and require affirmative legislative action before they will receive what the IGAD envoy called, with refreshing directness, “their right to be at the table.”

These are not footnotes. They are, if read together, the structural anatomy of an election that proceeded with considerable competence and genuine civic energy within a framework that was always going to produce a particular outcome. The IGAD and AU missions know this. Their statements, translated from the institutional register, say precisely this. One need only read slowly.

“If you don’t do affirmative action for women, you men are not ready to give up the power space.”
— IGAD Head of Mission, departing from prepared text

The AU head of mission concluded with a call for Ethiopia to become “the beacon of hope for our entire continent” a nation that leads Africa toward genuine democratic independence through “dialogue and compromise and not war.” One appreciates the sentiment. One notices that the country whose leaders he addressed has, since 2020, navigated a civil war in Tigray, an ongoing insurgency in Amhara, and a humanitarian situation affecting millions and that 46 of its constituencies remain suspended from democratic participation on the grounds of security. This is not a small asterisk to add to a commendation. It is a condition that defines the nature of the election itself.

The technology deserves its praise and received it unreservedly. The Mirichai digital registration system is a genuine achievement for a national electoral body operating in a country of Ethiopia’s complexity and scale. GIS-based station mapping, hybrid registration, IDP special provisions these are not cosmetic innovations. They represent institutional investment that, properly sustained and expanded, could genuinely deepen participation over successive election cycles. The IGAD mission was right to commend them.

It was also right to note quietly, in its recommendations that cybersecurity must be built into this infrastructure from the outset, not retrofitted after a mishap. Digital systems concentrate risk as well as efficiency. An electoral board that has moved boldly into digital administration must now move equally boldly into digital security.

What lingers, however, is the image the IGAD envoy offered of polling stations where, on average, only two of the five or six officials were women. This in a country where women were 46 per cent of registered voters. This in a country where women’s organisations, to their credit, deployed observers, operated situation rooms, and were present as watchers, not as decision-makers in most stations visited. The Ethiopian Women’s Federation, the Ethiopian Women Lawyers Association, Timran: organisations mobilising and scrutinising while the formal structures of the process remain demographically male. The observation missions noticed. They said so. Whether those being observed will act is a different question.

The AU’s call for inclusive and sustained political dialogue is, similarly, both correct and insufficient as a response to the conditions it describes. Dialogue, in the Ethiopian context of 2026, requires interlocutors who are not imprisoned, movements that are not criminalised, and media that are not suppressed. The observers were not positioned to address those preconditions. But readers should hold both truths simultaneously: that Tuesday’s election was conducted with genuine civic seriousness by an electorate that rose before dawn to exercise a right they value, and that the architecture surrounding that exercise was not, and has not been, genuinely level.

The coffee was good. The country deserves more than coffee.

Five Fault Lines Beneath the Surface: What the Observers Observed — and What They Did Not
A thematic reading of the IGAD and AU preliminary statements across gender equity, disability and minority access, technological transformation, structural efficiency, and electoral competitiveness.

Ethiopian Tribune Analytical Desk · 3 June 2026

The preliminary statements issued by the IGAD and AU election observation missions following Ethiopia’s Seventh General Election on Monday are, by the standards of continental electoral diplomacy, unusually candid. Both missions commended the conduct of poll day with genuine enthusiasm. Both also identified, with varying degrees of explicitness, structural deficiencies that deserve close reading. What follows is a thematic analysis of their findings across six dimensions that the Ethiopian Tribune considers central to any honest assessment of electoral integrity.

I. Gender: Presence Without Power

Women constituted 46 per cent of registered voters a figure the AU mission described as reflecting marginalisation, not equity, given their demographic majority. As candidates, they remain underrepresented. As polling station managers, barely visible: of the five or six officials per station typically observed, only two on average were women. As observers and monitors, women’s organisations were active and professional the Ethiopian Women Lawyers Association, Timran (“she leads”), the Ethiopian Women’s Federation but in surveillance rather than governance roles.

The IGAD envoy made the bluntest statement of the afternoon: without legally mandated affirmative action, the existing power distribution will not change voluntarily. Addressing the press conference directly, he said: “If you don’t do affirmative action for women, you men are not ready to give up the power space. So this has to be made in the law.” Neither mission offered data on female candidacy rates or regional variation in women’s participation. That gap in reporting is itself diagnostic of how systematically the question has been treated as peripheral.

II. Disability and Marginalised Access

Both missions noted the prioritisation of elderly voters and persons with disabilities at the front of queues a visible and commendable practice. NEBE accredited 169 civil society organisations for voter education, explicitly targeting persons with disabilities among vulnerable groups, with 114 receiving financial support. Special voting provisions were established for internally displaced persons a significant commitment given the scale of displacement in post-war Ethiopia and for members of the Ethiopian National Defence Forces.

The AU noted, however, that polling station size and layout in some cases compromised smooth voter movement with implications for mobility-impaired voters not explicitly named but logically present in that finding. What neither mission quantified was the actual participation rate among persons with disabilities, the accessibility rating of polling stations across regions, or the geographic distribution of stations with adapted infrastructure. Commendable intentions and measurable outcomes are not the same thing, and the gap between them is precisely what future reporting should close.

III. Technology: Genuine Innovation, Uneven Reach

The Mirichai self-registration system, GIS-based station mapping, digital candidate registration, and hybrid registration architecture represent a substantive leap in Ethiopian electoral administration. The AU mission credited digital registration with driving growth in the registered voter pool, particularly among youth. The IGAD mission offered explicit commendation, noting contributions to modernisation, accessibility, and efficiency.

Yet of 54 million registered voters, only 5.3 million under ten per cent registered digitally. The remaining 45 million used legacy manual processes. This ratio reflects infrastructure inequity rather than voter preference: digital registration requires connectivity, device access, and digital literacy that is not evenly distributed across Ethiopian territory. The IGAD mission’s cybersecurity recommendation was pointed and timely: as digital electoral infrastructure scales, so does its attack surface. An electoral board that builds boldly must also protect boldly.

The extension-of-hours miscommunication where NEBE’s six-hour polling extension reached some regions and local stations inconsistently illustrated a specific and important gap: the digital capability at the centre did not translate into coherent operational command at the periphery. Until that integration is achieved, technological ambition will periodically produce administrative inconsistency.

IV. Efficiency: The 1,500-Voter Question

Both missions independently identified the 1,500-registered-voter-per-polling-station threshold as a structural inefficiency. The AU called it “undoubtedly too high.” IGAD recommended reducing the cap to 1,000, while acknowledging financial constraints, and noted that even that figure exceeds international best practice.

The arithmetic is illuminating. At 1,500 voters per station, with five or six officials two of whom are women and a polling day that stretched from before 6 a.m. to after midnight in many locations, the burden on staff, space, and voter patience was considerable. The AU also noted that processing pace slowed when officials paused to guide voters through unfamiliar procedures a direct consequence of uneven voter education. These are not separate problems. The voter education gap and the station-capacity gap are connected: in stations where voters understood the procedure, queues moved; where they did not, they became tutorials at scale. The solution to both lies in the same investment: sustained, geographically equitable civic education before election day, not on it.

V. Competitiveness: One Party Everywhere, Others Scattered

The most structurally significant observation in either statement was delivered almost as an aside. The IGAD mission noted that Prosperity Party agents were present at every single polling station it observed. Agents from other parties were present “in some polling stations in the different regions.” The AU’s recommendation that parties strengthen deployment of trained agents acknowledged the imbalance without naming it as what it is: the visual signature of a dominant-party system in which incumbency is expressed through institutional ubiquity.

Domestic civil society observation was broader the Coalition of Ethiopian Civil Society Organisations for Election operated a nationwide situation room, and the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission deployed observers across multiple regions. But civil society and political opposition are not interchangeable functions in electoral oversight. The AU’s call for “a more competitive electoral environment” is diplomatically modest language for what the agent-presence data describes.

VI. The Absent Forty-Six

No analysis of this election is complete without confronting what could not be observed because it did not occur. Of Ethiopia’s 547 constituencies, 46 held no election: 38 in Tigray and 8 in the Amhara region. These are not marginal territories. Tigray’s exclusion reflects a post-war political stasis that the Pretoria Agreement has not resolved into civic normalcy. Amhara’s partial exclusion reflects ongoing armed conflict between federal forces and the Fano insurgency.

NEBE’s commitment to proceed “once the environment becomes conducive” is a formulation familiar to students of protracted exclusion open-ended, hostage to conditions that are themselves politically determined. Both missions acknowledged the suspension; neither quantified the population denied participation, nor assessed whether the insecurity precondition could be indefinitely renewed. The figure of 501 constituencies voting, presented in both reports as near-total national participation, quietly contains its own refutation.

What the Missions Did Not Address

Both preliminary statements confined themselves to the electoral process as directly observable: logistics, conduct, procedures, turnout. Neither addressed the pre-election environment the status of imprisoned opposition figures, restrictions on independent media, the legal framework governing party registration and suspension which had already shaped the competitive landscape long before the first ballot was cast. This is not a criticism of the missions themselves, whose mandates are defined by what they can observe and verify. It is a caution against reading their commendations as assessments of the broader democratic conditions in which the election was embedded.

The IGAD mission’s recommendation to political parties to “respect election outcomes and utilise established legal and institutional mechanisms to address disputes” is sound advice in an environment of genuine institutional independence. Its weight depends entirely on the credibility of those mechanisms a question neither mission was positioned to assess, and one this publication will continue to pursue.

A Final Note on What Was Said Plainly

In the language of continental election observation, departures from prepared text are worth noting. The IGAD envoy said, directly and without diplomatic hedging, that affirmative action for women in candidacy must be legislated that men do not voluntarily relinquish power space. The AU envoy called, in personal rather than institutional register, for Ethiopia to become the beacon its history warrants, through dialogue rather than war. Both statements reflected, beneath their ceremonial function, a genuine investment in Ethiopian democratic progress and a clear-eyed understanding of the distance still to travel.

Preliminary statements will be followed by final reports. The AU final report is expected within thirty days of the declaration of official results. Those reports will carry greater analytical weight. This publication will attend to them with the same scrutiny it has applied here.

The Ethiopian Tribune · Est. 2012 · Addis Ababa · Horn of Africa · Democratic Accountability · Human Rights

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Seven Times Lucky? Ethiopia’s Seventh General Election and the Art of Democratic Choreography

Ethiopian Tribune editor — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 19:12:09 +0000

Read Time:12 Minute, 11 Second

On a continent where elections are frequently described as historic milestones before a single ballot is cast, Ethiopia’s seventh national poll has managed to be simultaneously predictable and remarkable predictably stage-managed, and remarkably revealing about the condition of the state.

By E. Frashie | Addis Ababa Correspondent

1 June 2026

ADDIS ABABA — By half past six on Monday morning, the queues outside polling stations across Addis Ababa had already assumed that particular character of Ethiopian civic patience: long, unhurried, and quietly dignified. For a government anxious about legitimacy, the photographs of citizens lining up before dawn were worth more than any campaign poster. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed understood this perfectly. His first act of the day was not to vote, that came later, but to appear before a carefully curated selection of domestic media outlets for an address that, in its confident sweep and selective omissions, told the electorate precisely what it was and was not supposed to think.

The speech was, by any measure, a performance. Ethiopia, Abiy declared, had foiled the machinations of ‘historical enemies’ who had hired internal proxies to spread propaganda and convince the public that democracy was impossible. The voters, in their wisdom, had rejected this counsel and turned out in their numbers. So far, so standard. But listen more carefully to the subtext and a more pointed message emerges: those who question this election, whether they be opposition politicians, international human rights bodies, or foreign journalists, are enemies or their instruments. The word he chose :- Banda, the Amharic for traitor or colonial lackey, carries particular historical freight in a country whose founding myth is built on resisting foreign interference. It is a word deployed with precision. It is also a word designed to foreclose argument rather than invite it.

“The word Banda carries particular historical freight. It is deployed with precision designed to foreclose argument rather than invite it.“

Set against the morning’s operational reality, the rhetorical architecture of the speech becomes still more instructive. While the Prime Minister spoke of the Ethiopian people’s heroic civic spirit, the National Election Board of Ethiopia was simultaneously informing journalists at the Skylight Hotel, the nerve centre of the day’s monitoring operations, and, it should be noted, also the base of the African Union observer mission, that no fewer than 143 polling stations in Amhara and Oromia had failed to open at all, on grounds of security. An undisclosed further number had been forced to close early. Voting in Kersa, Kutaber, Gilolopa, and Gosache had been interrupted. How many voters were thereby disenfranchised, NEBE Chairperson Melatwork Hailu did not say. The number remains, as of this writing, undisclosed.

This is not a trivial omission. Ethiopia is a country of some 135 million people, roughly half of whom are under eighteen. The registered voter roll stands at just over 50 million a figure that critics have already disputed, arguing that large swaths of the country affected by ongoing conflicts in Amhara, Oromia, Gambella, and Tigray were effectively excluded from meaningful participation before the day began. Prior to polling day, NEBE had already announced that elections would not be held in 38 districts of Tigray and eight constituencies in Amhara. The figure of 143 closed stations on the day itself adds a further layer of practical exclusion that the official narrative of orderly, nationwide voting rather conspicuously declines to accommodate.

THE NUMBERS GAME

The scale of the exercise is not in dispute. Over 52,000 polling stations. Nearly 200,000 election workers. Forty-seven registered political parties. More than 10,900 candidates. These are impressive figures, and NEBE cited them with justifiable pride. Less prominently featured was the analytical context supplied by Chatham House’s Ahmed Soliman and Abel Abate Demissie, who assessed the contest as likely to be among the least competitive of the seven national elections held since multiparty democracy was nominally introduced in 1991. The Prosperity Party won 96 per cent of parliamentary seats in 2021. It is running unopposed in several dozen constituencies in 2026. The opposition fragmented across more than forty parties, starved of funds, and in several documented cases denied permits to hold rallies comparable to those the ruling party staged at Meskel Square enters this election not as a credible alternative government in waiting, but as democratic scenery.

WION’s correspondents on the ground noted a heavy military presence alongside the familiar picture of enthusiastic queues. That combination visible participation alongside visible security force deployment captures something essential about the texture of this election. Citizens are voting. Whether they are doing so in conditions that meet any recognised standard of free and fair is an altogether different question, and one that the official choreography of the day is not designed to answer.

“The opposition enters this election not as a credible alternative government in waiting, but as democratic scenery.“

There is also the matter of what was happening to journalism whilst all of this was unfolding. Reporters Without Borders placed Ethiopia 145th out of 180 countries in its 2025 Press Freedom Index company it shares, in that neighbourhood of the rankings, with Eritrea, North Korea, and Iran. Addis Standard, the country’s most consequential independent digital outlet, had its operating licence withdrawn ahead of the election. The Reporter, the largest-circulation newspaper, had been warned to align its editorial output with government narratives. The irony of an election designed to demonstrate democratic vitality being observed by a press corps operating under these conditions is one that the Prime Minister’s morning address did not find time to address.

UHURU’S CAREFUL ARITHMETIC

Into this environment arrived former Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, leading the African Union Election Observation Mission of 73 short-term observers drawn from 37 African countries. The mathematics of oversight are, at minimum, thought-provoking: 73 observers for a country of 135 million people voting across 52,000 polling stations represents a coverage ratio that would tax even the most optimistic statistician. The AUEOM deployed at the formal invitation of the Government of Ethiopia a detail the AU’s own arrival statement saw fit to mention in its opening sentence, which is a choice.

Kenyatta, speaking to state media approximately three hours before this dispatch was filed, delivered himself of the following assessment: from the polling stations visited, and from reports received from observers elsewhere in the country, voting ‘seems to be going on smoothly.’ Stations had opened ‘on time.’ NEBE staff ‘seem to know what they’re doing,’ and ‘everything seems orderly.’ He expressed hope that ‘the people of Ethiopia will be able to do their civic duty.’

That is three uses of the word ‘seems’ in under forty seconds, from a man who met NEBE Chairperson Melatwork Hailu the previous day and commands a continent-wide observation network. It is the diplomatic equivalent of a restaurant critic writing that the food ‘appeared to be cooked.’ The phrasing is not accidental. Kenyatta is an experienced political operator who knows exactly what his words will be used for by state media, and exactly what weight they can and cannot bear. He has preserved his position for the preliminary statement scheduled for 3 June, when the mission will say something more considered. But the government clip of him saying ‘seems orderly’ will be on Ethiopian state television long before that.

The Intergovernmental Authority on Development has also deployed its own 26-member observer team, led by former Ugandan Vice President Speciosa Wandira-Kazibwe. Their preliminary statement is likewise due on 3 June. Both missions are based, with a symmetry too neat to be entirely coincidental, at the Skylight Hotel the same venue where NEBE staged its official monitoring operations.

WHAT THE CIVIL SOCIETY OBSERVERS FOUND

Rather more pointed in its same-day assessment was the Coalition of Ethiopian Civil Society Organisations for Elections, which deployed 3,149 observers 2,258 stationary and 891 mobile across the country. Their midday report, released whilst voting was still under way, documented a catalogue of procedural concerns that the government’s smooth-running narrative does not easily absorb.

The most significant finding concerned ballot box handling. At 26 stations monitored by CECOE roughly one per cent of those covered observers were unable to verify that boxes had been demonstrated to be empty before being sealed and opened for voting. This is not a bureaucratic footnote. An unsealed or unverified ballot box is the most elementary mechanism for the pre-stuffing of ballots, and the failure to perform the emptiness demonstration in public is a procedural violation that election law exists precisely to prevent. Beyond this, CECOE documented polling stations established in prohibited locations, unauthorised individuals assisting voters, restrictions on observer access, the distribution of unstamped ballot papers, the exchange of materials between stations, and the presence of individuals inside voting centres who had no business being there. Access was denied to CECOE observers at seventeen stations altogether.

“An unsealed ballot box is not a bureaucratic footnote. It is the most elementary mechanism for pre-stuffing and the failure to demonstrate its emptiness is a violation election law exists to prevent.“

CECOE was careful to note that the vast majority of stations proceeded without incident, and that overall the day was peaceful. This is accurate and ought to be said. It is also the kind of qualification that the government will amplify and the irregularities will be footnoted. The Tribune notes, for the record, that peace and procedural integrity are related but distinct concepts. A peaceful election conducted with systematic procedural violations is not the same thing as a credible one.

THE PROCLAMATION AND THE QUEUE

By evening, a further data point had arrived. NEBE announced, citing Proclamation No. 1162/2019, Article 49, Sub-Article 4, that voting hours would be extended until every voter already standing in line by 6pm had cast their ballot. The legal basis is sound and the decision, on its face, is admirable, no citizen who made the effort to queue should be turned away. But the extension also tells a secondary story about the reliability of the digital voter registration system, which NEBE itself acknowledged had caused delays and longer queues throughout the day. When an e-registration platform deployed across a country of 135 million people generates queues long enough to require a legal extension of polling hours, questions about the system’s fitness for purpose are not unreasonable.

The Prime Minister, in his morning address, had spoken of Ethiopia’s aspiration to become a nation that breeds tech unicorns and meets most of its demands through domestic production. The voter registration app developed by NEBE, reportedly downloaded by over 5.5 million citizens experienced sufficient difficulties on election day to contribute to nationwide delays. The distance between the aspiration and the operational reality is a recurring theme in Abiy’s Ethiopia, and it surfaced again, quietly, in the queues outside polling stations across the country.

THE VISION AND THE VOID

It would be uncharitable and analytically incomplete to dismiss Abiy’s morning address as mere propaganda. Parts of it were more substantive than that. His call to elected officials to serve with ‘clean hands and clean hearts’ rather than focussing on the ‘ego of winning’ was, at minimum, an acknowledgement that the gap between electoral victory and effective governance is real. His framing of the next five years as demanding ‘more effort, deeper thinking, and greater unity than ever before’ suggested a man who understands, or at least affects to understand, that governing Ethiopia in 2026 is an enterprise of considerable complexity.

His promise that the Prosperity Party would ‘gracefully accept whatever election results emerge’ was received with the scepticism it merits, given that the party is running unopposed in multiple constituencies and won 96 per cent of seats at the last election. Accepting results one has pre-arranged is not, strictly speaking, a test of democratic grace. But the rhetorical commitment is on record, and the Tribune will hold it there.

The international media picture assembled around this election is less equivocal than the official one. Al Jazeera, Reuters, CNN, Africanews, and WION all reported the contest within a framework of expected Prosperity Party dominance, significant regional exclusions, fragmented opposition, and meaningful questions about process integrity. The FIDH and the World Organisation Against Torture expressed serious concern at the civic environment in which the election was conducted, citing active armed conflict in Amhara and Oromia as backdrop. Human rights observers noted that the government’s tolerance manifest in pardons issued and exiles welcomed back had been interpreted by some armed groups as weakness, a framing Abiy himself deployed, though he drew different conclusions from it.

One further detail from the day’s events deserves to be recorded, and not only in passing. An election facilitator, unnamed in the NEBE briefing, lost his life in a motorcycle accident in Enamorena Enayer, Gurage Zone, whilst carrying out his duties. He will not feature in the preliminary statements due on 3 June, nor in the Prosperity Party’s victory address when it comes. The Ethiopian Tribune records his name as unknown and his loss as real.

The AU observer mission will speak on Wednesday. The results, NEBE has indicated, are expected within ten days. Abiy Ahmed will almost certainly be returned to office with a majority that renders the word ‘landslide’ barely adequate. The procedural irregularities documented by CECOE will be assessed, weighed, and in all probability found insufficient to alter the outcome. The 143 stations that never opened will remain a footnote. The voters of Kersa and Kutaber and Gilolopa and Gosache will be asked, in due course, to wait for a re-run.

Ethiopia’s seventh general election is, by the metrics its government prefers, a success. The stations opened. The queues formed. The ballots were cast. Uhuru Kenyatta said it seemed orderly. On a continent where elections have been far worse, this is not nothing.

Whether it is enough is a question that the Ethiopian people not the Prosperity Party, not the African Union, not the international wire services will be left to answer for themselves. They have, as Abiy noted with evident satisfaction, been doing so since early morning. The Tribune will be watching when the answers come.

E. Frashie is a correspondent and analytical writer for The Ethiopian Tribune.

The Tribune’s editorial policy requires attribution of all factual claims. Sources consulted for this dispatch include NEBE official briefings, translated transcripts of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s election-day address and AU observer Uhuru Kenyatta’s statement to state media, reports by Al Jazeera, Reuters, CNN, Africanews, WION, CECOE midday observer release, FIDH, Chatham House, and Reporters Without Borders.

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The Ritual Before the Storm: Ethiopia’s 2026 Election and the Impossible Choice

Ethiopian Tribune editor — Fri, 29 May 2026 22:05:05 +0000

Read Time:17 Minute, 51 Second

By The Editorial Team, The Ethiopian Tribune

June 1st, 2026 the date every observer of Ethiopian politics has circled on their calendar, approaches with the inevitability of a ceremony whose outcome has already been inscribed. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s ruling Prosperity Party will retain power. The question everyone is asking is not whether this will happen, but whether it matters.

The Election Nobody Really Believes In

There is a peculiar consensus forming across the analytical landscape of Ethiopia’s 2026 general election, one that cuts across ideological lines and institutional affiliations. From Professor Merera Gudina, the long-time opposition leader and chairman of the Oromo Federalist Congress, to Kjetil Tronvoll, the peace and conflict researcher at Oslo New University College, to Martin Plaut, the political analyst who has tracked Ethiopian politics for decades: the diagnosis is consistent. This election is what one might charitably call a “formal affair” and what one might more accurately describe as electoral theatre masquerading as democracy.

The numbers on the surface look respectable enough. The National Election Board of Ethiopia has registered 47 political parties and received nearly 11,000 candidates. Millions of Ethiopians are entitled to vote. These figures, published and circulated by the regime, are designed to impress international observers and satisfy donors weary of investing in states that cannot at least pretend to democratic procedure. They tell a story of competition, of choice, of civic participation.

But then comes the asterisk. The ruling Prosperity Party holds 457 of 547 parliamentary seats. Political analysts are predicting that when the votes are tallied on June 1st, Abiy will secure a majority of over 90 per cent a landslide that bears the fingerprints not of democratic debate but of structural predetermination. What the election offers, in other words, is not genuine political competition but the theatre of competition: all the ritual without any of the uncertainty.

This distinction matters precisely because the regime needs the election to look like a contest in order for it to function as legitimacy. The ballot box is not an instrument of democratic choice; it is an instrument of democratic presentation. It tells Ethiopians, and more crucially, tells the international community, that the state consults its citizens, that power is subject to their ratification, that the system has not abandoned the forms of democratic governance even if it has abandoned their substance.

The Three Structural Obstacles: Why This Election Cannot Succeed Even on Its Own Terms

If one accepts the regime’s implicit framing that the goal is to hold an election that appears credible, inclusive, and national then the enterprise fails before it begins. Three interlocking structural problems ensure this failure.

1. The Representation Gap: When Democracy Becomes Mathematically Impossible

The DW reporting on the 2026 election identifies something that should be more prominent in the international commentary: millions of Ethiopians will remain unrepresented. This is not new. The 2021 elections suffered from the same affliction. Several regions face structural issues that leave parliamentary seats vacant, raising concerns, amply justified, that these representation gaps will repeat.

What does this mean in practical terms? It means that the parliament elected on June 1st will not, in fact, represent the entire nation. It will be structurally unrepresentative from the moment the speaker takes the gavel. The chamber itself will contain absences literal empty seats that correspond to regions deemed too unstable, too contested, or too hostile to the regime for elections to occur.

This is not a marginal issue. It is a fundamental delegitimisation of the electoral enterprise. A parliament cannot claim to be the embodiment of national will if entire regions are absent from its deliberations. Yet the regime has calculated that maintaining power in a partially representative chamber is preferable to either allowing genuine competition or expanding the franchise to include populations that might vote differently.

The acceptance of this outcome reveals something important about regime priorities: governing consent matters less than governing control. A fully representative parliament might challenge the executive’s authority. A partially representative one cannot.

2. The Security Collapse: 46 Districts and the Physical Impossibility of a National Election

Days before the June 1st vote, the National Election Board made an announcement that should have commanded far more international attention than it did. Elections would not take place in 46 electoral districts across the conflict-affected Amhara and Tigray regions. Eight districts in northwestern Amhara would be suspended due to clashes between militia groups and the army. Thirty-eight districts in Tigray would see no voting due to tensions between the federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front.

Let that sink in. Nearly a tenth of the country’s electoral districts will not hold elections. This is not a minor logistical problem; it is an admission that the federal state does not control its own territory. The National Election Board is not merely postponing voting in these areas, it is acknowledging that the state cannot project sufficient authority to conduct even a basic democratic procedure.

This is particularly acute in Tigray, where the war between 2020 and 2022 claimed at least 600,000 lives. A peace agreement was signed in 2022, but the underlying tensions remain volatile. The TPLF, the dominant party in Tigray, was banned as a political party in 2025 following the war. Yet the party’s old guard has reinstituted the regional parliament and elected TPLF leader Debretsion Gebremichael as its speaker—a power play that directly threatens the very peace agreement the regime claims to be administering.

In Amhara, Fano militias are engaged in active conflict with the Ethiopian National Defense Forces. These are not hypothetical threats; they control key cities and roads. The state’s inability to secure these territories means voting simply cannot occur. Some militia groups have issued explicit statements opposing the elections, and analysts assess that they may attempt to disrupt the electoral process in areas where they maintain control.

What emerges from this landscape is stark: Ethiopia does not have a unified national territory within which a genuinely national election can occur. The state is fragmenting in real time, and the June 1st election is occurring within the shell of state authority rather than as an expression of it.

3. The Political Competition Deficit: Fragmentation by Design

The third structural obstacle is perhaps the most deliberate. Opposition parties are either highly fragmented or systematically sidelined. Voters have very few real alternatives, and the parties themselves are trapped in what might be called an “electoral authoritarianism bind.”

Consider the situation of the Oromo Federalist Congress, one of the primary opposition parties. As Professor Merera Gudina explained in his recent interview with Addis Standard, the OFC is participating in the 2026 election with a grand total of six candidates. This is not a strategic choice born of optimism about electoral prospects. It is a capitulation to legal constraint: Ethiopian law prevents a party from boycotting two consecutive elections without facing deregistration.

The OFC thus faces an impossible choice: participate nominally (and thereby lend legitimacy to an election designed to exclude them) or boycott (and thereby lose their legal status). They have chosen the former, accepting that participation with six candidates amounts to little more than a fig leaf. They get to say they contested the election; the regime gets to say it welcomed their participation. The outcome is predetermined either way.

The Coalition for the Unity of Ethiopia, an alliance of several opposition parties, has taken a different tack. Rather than accept the participation-or-deregistration binary, they have conditioned their participation on structural changes: an end to the war, the release of political prisoners, greater political freedom, and talks with the genuine opposition. These are, of course, precisely the conditions the regime will not meet. The CEU is thus engaged in conditional participation—appearing to contest the election while knowing their conditions will not be satisfied.

What this fragmentation means is that voters are presented with either the ruling Prosperity Party or a collection of opposition parties that range from nominally present (OFC with six candidates) to conditionally participating (CEU, hedging their bets) to effectively sidelined. There is no genuine alternative power centre, no competing vision of governance that could challenge the ruling party’s monopoly.

This is not accidental. It is the product of deliberate regime strategy. Over the past six years, the Prosperity Party has tightened its control over the electoral space through a combination of legal restrictions (the deregistration threat), security pressure (harassment of opposition figures), and control of state institutions (the National Election Board, which the regime effectively dominates).

The Regional Fragmentation: Where Guns Trump Ballots

But electoral obstacles, representation gaps, and political fragmentation tell only part of the story. Beneath and beyond the formal electoral structure lies a deeper reality: Ethiopia is fragmenting along regional and factional lines that the June 1st election cannot address and will likely exacerbate.

Tigray: A Banned Party Governing a Region

The TPLF situation encapsulates the paradox. The party is banned from running candidates in the national election. Yet it exercises de facto control over the Tigray region, having reinstated its regional parliament and reasserted its authority after the 2022 peace agreement nominally sidelined it.

This is not a stable equilibrium. The federal government refuses to recognise the TPLF’s re-assertion of regional authority, viewing it as a violation of the peace agreement. The TPLF views its restitution as the democratic restoration of its authority—after all, it is the dominant political force in Tigray. The tension between these two positions remains unresolved, and analysts assess that TPLF efforts to regain full control of the region could trigger renewed war with the federal government.

The June 1st election will not resolve this tension. Indeed, it will likely harden it. Voting will not occur in 38 districts in Tigray. The TPLF will be absent from parliament. The federal government will interpret the election as a mandate to marginalise the TPLF further. And in Tigray itself, the population will have been excluded from both the regional and national elections, deepening the sense that the state does not regard them as fully part of the political community.

This is not a local problem. Tigray is a region of over 5 million people. The unresolved relationship between the TPLF and the federal government remains one of the most volatile fault lines in Ethiopian politics.

Amhara: Militia Control and the Erosion of State Authority

In Amhara, the situation is somewhat different but equally alarming. Fano militias control key cities and roads. They are engaged in active combat with the Ethiopian National Defense Forces. Some have issued explicit statements opposing the elections.

Unlike in Tigray, where the issue is a banned party reasserting control, in Amhara the issue is non-state armed groups operating outside any legal or electoral framework at all. They do not seek parliamentary representation (or have sought it and been excluded). They exist in a state of open conflict with the federal authority.

The eight electoral districts suspended in Amhara are suspended precisely because they are in areas where Fano controls territory. The state cannot project sufficient authority to conduct voting, let alone govern once the votes are cast. This represents not merely a failure of the electoral system but a failure of the state’s monopoly on legitimate force.

Oromia: The OLA Dimension

Similarly, the Oromo Liberation Army remains active in Oromia, engaged in conflict with the ENDF. While the OLA is not mentioned as prominently in the DW reporting as Fano or the TPLF, their presence underscores the broader picture: across multiple regions, armed groups operate outside the framework of the June 1st election. The ballot box is irrelevant to them because they do not recognise the state’s legitimacy or authority.

The Economic Subtext: Why the Election Happens Even Though It Cannot Work

All of this—the structural obstacles, the regional fragmentation, the opposition’s bind—occurs within a context of severe economic crisis. High inflation persists. Currency collapse is ongoing. Youth unemployment is driving mass emigration. The promised dividend of Abiy’s early reforms—economic growth that would bring stability and development—has failed to materialise.

This context is crucial because it explains why the regime insists on holding an election it cannot lose. The election is not designed to solve economic problems or to gather genuine input on policy. It is designed to generate a mandate—a 90 per cent majority that the regime can cite when imposing unpopular economic measures, when requesting continued military expenditure, when fending off donor pressure, when justifying continued restrictions on opposition activity.

The election, in other words, is a response to economic crisis, not a solution to it. It is a way of converting dissatisfaction into legitimacy, of transforming grievance into mandated governance.

Ordinary Ethiopians are acutely aware of this disconnect. A 26-year-old voter cited in the DW reporting captured it succinctly: “Elections are always good,” he said, but “too little attention is being paid to the problems of people struggling with inflation.” The young man expressed deep concern about the exodus of Ethiopians to other countries due to lack of jobs—a hemorrhaging of human capital that no electoral outcome on June 1st will reverse.

The regime’s response to economic crisis is thus not policy reform but democratic theatre. The ballot box becomes a way of managing dissent, of channelling grievance into an orderly process that produces predetermined outcomes.

The Four Futures: Where Does Ethiopia Go From Here?

Professor Merera Gudina, in his Addis Standard interview, outlined four possible futures for Ethiopia, each plausible within the current political and security context.

The first is continued crisis: shrinking political space, rising cost of living, youth unemployment, and chronic instability. This is perhaps the most likely scenario if nothing changes structurally. The June 1st election would do nothing to address these underlying drivers.

The second is national and international pressure the scenario in which the ruling party comes to its senses and sits down for genuine, all-inclusive political dialogue to build national consensus. This requires a fundamental shift in regime strategy, a willingness to share power in something more than the rhetorical sense. It seems unlikely, though not impossible.

The third is uncoordinated insurgency: various disjointed armed factions simultaneously push into the capital, creating a chaotic breakdown similar to Syria. The proliferation of armed groups operating outside state control, Fano in Amhara, OLA in Oromia, a potentially re-mobilised TPLF in Tigray, makes this scenario less hypothetical than it might appear.

The fourth is total disintegration: if the state tries to maintain unity purely through military force without political compromise, the country risks fracturing completely, as the Soviet Union did. This is the nightmare scenario, but it becomes more plausible as regional authority erodes and the state’s capacity to project power diminishes.

Which scenario is most likely? That depends partly on decisions the regime has not yet made, and partly on the behaviour of actors outside the regime’s control. But the June 1st election does not fundamentally alter the probability of any of these outcomes. If anything, by foreclosing the possibility of negotiated settlement and legitimising a 90 per cent majority for continued exclusion, the election may accelerate the timeline toward one of the less benign scenarios.

The International Dimension: Legitimacy for Whom?

It is worth noting that the regime’s insistence on holding the election, despite its manifest inability to meet the basic standards of democratic procedure, reflects partly its need for international legitimacy. The election is being conducted partly for the international audience for donors, for the United Nations, for regional partners.

The United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia’s strongest ally in the Gulf, has been a particularly important source of support. Yet the UAE itself has been accused by UN experts and international observers of covertly supplying weapons, drones, and money to the paramilitary RSF militia in Sudan, which is engaged in a devastating conflict. This creates a troubling dynamic: Ethiopia is seeking legitimacy from an external power that is itself fuelling regional destabilisation.

The broader regional context growing tensions between Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Sudan, all shadowed by proxy dynamics and external intervention means that the June 1st election occurs not in isolation but within a destabilising regional matrix. Abiy’s ability to consolidate power domestically is partly dependent on maintaining external validation, even as external actors pursue their own regional agendas that may not align with Ethiopian stability.

What Credibility Requires, and Why This Election Cannot Achieve It

The DW video reporting on the 2026 election posed a straightforward question: can this election be considered credible, inclusive, and truly national?

The answer, based on the evidence, is no. Not because of administrative incompetence or marginal failures, but because the structural conditions for a credible, inclusive, and national election do not exist.

A credible election requires genuine political competition. This election offers only the semblance of competition, with opposition parties either reducing their participation to symbolic gesture (OFC, six candidates) or hedging their bets with conditions they know will not be met (CEU). The 90 per cent majority is predictable precisely because alternatives are foreclosed.

An inclusive election requires that all regions participate and that all populations have representation. This election will exclude 46 districts and leave entire regions with vacant parliamentary seats. Millions of Ethiopians will have no say in who governs them.

A national election requires that the state exercise sufficient authority to conduct voting across its territory. Ethiopia does not currently exercise this authority. Armed groups operating outside the electoral framework control significant territory. The state is fragmenting, not consolidating.

To be balanced: one can understand the regime’s logic in proceeding with the election despite these obstacles. They argue that it is better to hold an election, however imperfect, than to abandon the democratic form entirely. They point to the formal procedures, the registered parties, the electoral board’s independence (which, to be fair, operates with some degree of autonomy even if the regime dominates its appointment). They note that voters are participating, that interest is evident.

But procedural legitimacy is not the same as democratic legitimacy. An election can follow proper procedures while still representing a diminishment of democratic practice. And an election can be formally held while fundamental conditions for democratic choice remain absent.

After June 1st: The Ritual Ends, the Real Contestation Begins

Perhaps the most important thing to understand about the June 1st election is that it does not settle anything. It postpones. It ritualises. It generates a mandate that the regime can cite for the next five years. But it does not address the underlying drivers of contestation: regional fragmentation, economic crisis, the presence of armed groups operating outside state control, the unresolved status of the TPLF, the delegitimisation of opposition parties.

When the votes are tallied and Abiy claims his 90 per cent majority, the real contestation will resume. Fano will continue operating in Amhara. The TPLF will continue reasserting authority in Tigray. The OLA will remain active in Oromia. Economic conditions will continue to deteriorate. Young Ethiopians will continue emigrating. The regime will cite the election as a mandate to continue present policies, and opposition voices will grow more marginalised.

The election is not the beginning of a new political cycle. It is the culmination of one cycle and the prelude to another one in which elections matter even less and in which the real contestation occurs in the spaces where the ballot box has no relevance.

Conclusion: The Impossibility of Democratic Ritual in a Fragmenting State

Ethiopia is attempting something that has become increasingly difficult to sustain: the maintenance of electoral rituals in a state that is fragmenting along regional and factional lines. The June 1st election will proceed. The Prosperity Party will win. Abiy will be re-elected with a supermajority. And none of this will resolve the fundamental challenges facing the state.

The election is not a failure of democracy. It is the operation of electoral authoritarianism: the use of elections not as a mechanism for democratic choice but as a mechanism for democratic presentation. It is credible to international audiences that do not look too closely. It is inclusive of the parties the regime deems acceptable. It is national in symbolic scope, even if practical execution falls far short.

But a state that relies on electoral ritual rather than democratic substance is building on unstable ground. The ballot box cannot generate legitimacy where the underlying conditions for democratic governance do not exist. And in Ethiopia’s case, those conditions. genuine political competition, territorial control by the state, a unified national community willing to accept the outcomes of democratic processes are increasingly absent.

The real question is not whether the 2026 election will change Ethiopia’s trajectory. It will not. The real question is whether the election, by foreclosing legitimate channels of political contestation and legitimising continued exclusion, will accelerate the movement toward one of Professor Merera’s less benign futures. On the evidence available, one cannot rule that out.

The ritual before the storm, in other words, may be hastening the storm’s arrival.

The Ethiopian Tribune is an independent publication focused on Horn of Africa geopolitics, democratic accountability, and human rights. This analysis draws on interviews conducted by Addis Standard (Professor Merera Gudina), reporting by Deutsche Welle (Martina Schwikowski), and assessments by international analysts including Kjetil Tronvoll and Martin Plaut.

About Post Author

Ethiopian Tribune editor

editor@ethiopiantribune.com

https://ethiopiantribune.com

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ባለው አስከፊ ሁኔታ ስለምርጫ ማሰብ አይቻልም

Ethiopian Tribune editor — Fri, 29 May 2026 09:53:26 +0000

Read Time:2 Minute, 49 Second

በቀለ ገሠሠ (ዶ/ር)

፩ኛ/ መንደርደሪያ፣

ብዙ ዓለማት ዞረን ዐይተናል። እግዚአብሔር አምላካችን ኢትዮጵያን የፈጠራት ሁሉን ነገር አሟልቶ ነው። የምድሯን ስፋትና ለምነት፣ የወንዞችና ሃይቆችዋን ብዛት፣ ንጹህ አየር፣ ደጋግ ህዝብ፣ ወዘተ ስንመለከት እጅግ በጣም ሃብታም አገር መሆን ነበረባት።

አልታደለችምና ዛሬ የምትገኝበትን የባሰ ሁኔታ ስንመለከት እጅግ በጣም እናዝናለን።

ጎሣን ከጎሳ ያጋጫሉ። የአማራ ህዝብ የትግሬ፣ የኦሮሞና የማንም ጎሣ ጠላት ሆኖ አያውቅም። ደጋግና እንግዳ ተቀባይ ህዝብ ነው። በማንኛውም ሥርዓት ሥር ጥሮ ግሮ ከመኖር በስተቀር ያገኘው አንዳችም ልዩ ጥቅም አልነበረም። ዛሬ ግን በገዛ ቀዬው እንኳን እንዳይኖር፣ አርሶ ነግዶ ልጆቹን እንዳያሳድግ ዘመቻ ሲካሄድበት ይታያል። ትምህርት ቤቶች ይዘጋሉ፣ የእምነት ቦታዎች ይደፈራሉ።

እነዚህን ከባድ ችግሮች እንደመቅረፍ ፈንታ ስለውሸት ምርጫ ሲወራ መስማት በጣም ያሳዝናል፣ ያሳፍራል።

፪ኛ/ የነፃ ምርጫ አስፈላጊነት፣

የኢትዮጵያ ህዝብ ነፃ አገራዊ ምርጫን ሲጠማ ነው የኖረው።

የዲሞክራሲ ሥርዓት ምሶሶ ነፃ ምርጫ እንደሆነ ግልፅ ነው። ነፃ ምርጫ ከሌለ አምባገነንነት ይንሰራፋል፣ በውድ አገራችን ሲፈጸሙ የቆዮት አረመኔያዊ ጭፍጨፋዎች፣ ማፈናቀሎችና ዝርፊያዎች በዲሞክራሲ ሥርዓት እጦት ምክንያት ነው።

፫ኛ/ የነፃ ምርጫ ቅድመ ሁኔታዎች፣

እውነተኛ ምርጫ ለማካሄድ፣

ሰላም ምስፈን አለበት፣
ነፃ የምርጫ ቦርድ መቋቋም አለበት፣
በየምርጫው ኬላ ላይ ገለልተኞች የሆኑ አገራዊና የውጪ ታዛቢዎች መገኘት አለባቸው።

፬ኛ/ አሁን ምን መደረግ አለበት?

መጀመሪያ ሁሉ-አቀፍ የሽግግር መንግሥት መቋቋም አለበት። ከፋፋዩ ሕገመንግሥ መለወጥ አለበት።
ወንጀለኞች ለፍርድ መቅረብ አለባቸው።

ከዚያ በኃላ ነፃና ፍትሐዊ ምርጫ ማካሄድ፣
ሰላም ማውረድና
እድገት ላይ ማተኮር ይኖርብናል።
እግዚአብሔር ይርዳን፣ ይታረቀን።

Given the Dire Situation, Thinking About Elections is Impossible

By Bekele Gessesse (PhD)

1. Introduction

We have travelled and seen much of the world. Almighty God created Ethiopia with everything she could possibly need. When looking at the vastness and fertility of her land, the abundance of her rivers and lakes, her clean air, and her generous people, she should have been an incredibly wealthy nation.

Unfortunately, she has been unlucky, and it is deeply saddening to witness the worsening conditions she finds herself in today.

They pit one ethnic group against another. The Amhara people have never been enemies of the Tigrayan, Oromo, or any other ethnic community. They are a kind and hospitable people. Under any regime, they have never received any special privileges, asking for nothing more than to live by working hard and honestly. Today, however, we see a campaign being waged against them, preventing them from even living in their own localities, or farming and trading to raise their children. Schools are being closed, and places of worship are being desecrated.

Instead of resolving these severe crises, it is deeply disheartening and shameful to hear talk of a sham election.

2. The Necessity of Free Elections

The people of Ethiopia have long thirsted for a free national election.

It is clear that free elections are the cornerstone of a democratic system. In the absence of free elections, tyranny flourishes. The barbaric massacres, displacements, and plundering that have been carried out in our beloved country are the direct result of a lack of a democratic system.

3. Preconditions for Free Elections

To conduct a genuine election:

Peace must be established across the country.

An independent electoral board must be set up.

Neutral national and international observers must be present at every polling station.

4. What Must Be Done Now?

First and foremost, an all-inclusive transitional government must be established. The divisive constitution must be amended, and criminals must be brought to justice.

Only after these steps are taken can we: Conduct a free and fair election, Restore peace, and Focus on development.

May God help us and grant us His reconciliation.

About Post Author

Ethiopian Tribune editor

editor@ethiopiantribune.com

https://ethiopiantribune.com

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The Geography of Delusion: Why Abiy Ahmed’s Imperial Vision Threatens Ethiopia, Not Saves It

Ethiopian Tribune editor — Fri, 29 May 2026 09:30:51 +0000

Read Time:9 Minute, 8 Second

By Sewasew Teklemariam

When The Economist warns that a prime minister’s “ambitions threaten both his country and the Horn of Africa,” it is customary to pause. The weekly publication does not deal in exaggeration. Yet what strikes one most acutely is not the warning itself, but the speed with which international analysis has converged on a verdict: Abiy Ahmed’s imperial gambit is not merely dangerous, it is economically irrational, strategically indefensible, and increasingly divorced from the operational realities of statecraft in a region where power remains deeply constrained by geography, law, and the interests of very capable neighbours.

The Prime Minister has, for nearly two years now, positioned Red Sea access as an “existential matter,” declaring Ethiopia “a million per cent certain” it would not remain landlocked. In his February address to Parliament, he spoke of an organic, natural separation between Ethiopia and the Red Sea that must be corrected. The rhetoric has escalated: a senior military official suggested that a population of 130 million simply grants Ethiopia the right to take what it needs from neighbours possessing far smaller populations. War, in the coded language of Addis Ababa, has become diplomatic negotiation.

But beneath the grandiose framing lies a more elementary problem. Abiy is gambling with the legitimacy of his regime and the future of his country on a strategic premise that does not survive basic economic or geopolitical scrutiny.

The Economic Absurdity

Start with the basics. Ethiopia’s economy is in freefall. The currency has collapsed. The Eurobond market is closed. Foreign exchange reserves are depleted. The government faces mounting pressure to defend the Ethiopian birr, placate an electorate experiencing currency devaluation as a daily assault on purchasing power, and fund security operations across multiple fronts. In such circumstances, a rational leadership pursues diplomatic breakthroughs that deliver measurable economic gains at manageable political cost.

A population of 150 million cannot live in a geographic prison. Therefore, we must spend military resources we do not possess to seize territory from our neighbours.
The logic of Abiy Ahmed’s Red Sea strategy, simplified

Instead, Abiy has chosen the inverse. He has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Somaliland a breakaway region whose independence violates African Union doctrine and infuriates Somalia, a theoretically important partner. In exchange for diplomatic recognition of Somaliland (fundamentally destabilising to East African state order), Ethiopia would receive a 20-kilometre strip of coastline on a fifty-year lease. This is not a port; it is a liability. The arrangement is so transparently against Somalia’s interests that it has triggered a profound regional crisis, with Kenya and Djibouti now forced to choose between their relationship with Addis Ababa and their relationship with Mogadishu.

The Somaliland gambit has collapsed in real time. Somalia, far from capitulating, has moved closer to Kenya, Egypt, and Eritrea precisely the coalition Abiy’s strategy was ostensibly designed to prevent. And why would it succeed? A breakaway region with no international recognition cannot offer what Ethiopia truly needs: stable, affordable, permanent access to a major port through a framework of law and interstate comity. Yet the Somaliland episode cost Abiy his diplomatic equilibrium in the Horn and poisoned relationships he had spent years cultivating.

The mathematics of Red Sea access are unforgiving. Djibouti handles roughly 70 per cent of Ethiopia’s trade. Kenya’s port of Mombasa could absorb substantially more. Port fees have fallen as competition has intensified. The notion that Ethiopia faces an existential constraint on maritime access, absent war, is not merely overstated—it is false.

The Strategic Trap

But the economic irrationality pales beside the strategic one. Abiy appears to believe that the combination of Ethiopia’s population, military capability, and geographic position grants him the prerogative to forcibly alter borders in the Horn of Africa. This is precisely the doctrine that empowered Putin in Crimea and Netanyahu in Gaza: that the strong may reshape the map at the expense of the weak, provided the international order is sufficiently distracted to avert its gaze.

The problem is that the Horn of Africa is not a nullity. It is a region of considerable strategic consequence a crossing point between Asia and Africa, a chokehold on global maritime commerce, and a theatre where multiple great powers have invested heavily. When Abiy declared in October 2025 that “no one would come to Eritrea’s aid if war breaks out,” he was making an assumption not a statement of fact. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States all have profound interests in Red Sea stability. None of them wishes to witness a destabilising war fought over a territorial claim framed in language that evokes historical claims that, if generalised, would blow apart the entire state system of Africa.

Abiy is increasingly sounding and acting like another world leader whose imperial ambitions and aggression have already caused immense pain and suffering: Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
Tafi Mhaka, Al Jazeera

Eritrea’s response has been swift and confident. Yemane Gebre Meskel, the Information Minister, dismissed Abiy’s threats as “incessant saber-rattling” from a leader pursuing not peace but “duplication of verbal gymnastics.” The language is pointed: Eritrea, having fought a brutal war for independence, is not a territory to be picked at leisure. Its defensive posture is formidable. Its relationships with regional powers particularly Egypt and Saudi Arabia are solid. And crucially, Eritrea can rely on international law in ways that Ethiopia cannot. The 2002 Eritrea–Ethiopia Boundary Commission ruling is binding. Eritrea’s territorial waters are internationally recognised. The jurisprudence is against Abiy.

The Prime Minister has begun warning, in closed-door meetings with his Prosperity Party, that Ethiopia might need to take “severe measures” against Eritrea if diplomatic means fail. He has referenced Gaza as a potential model for resolving contested territory. This is the language of a leader who has increasingly internalised a doctrine of force not as a last resort, but as a legitimate instrument of state policy. It is a language that alarms every regional actor capable of constraining Ethiopian behaviour.

The Domestic Contradiction

There is a further contradiction, perhaps more ominous than the others. Abiy has framed the Red Sea quest as a matter of national unification. In practice, it has become a vehicle for centralisation of power without accountability. The security apparatus has expanded. Ethnic tensions, which the rapprochement with Eritrea initially seemed to ameliorate, have been revived and instrumentalised. The upcoming election is being overseen by a “task force” reporting directly to the Prime Minister, not to constitutional authorities. The federal government’s spending on state subsidies has dropped from 60 per cent of the budget in 2018 to 20 per cent in 2026 a radical reconfiguration of federalism that concentrates resources and authority in Addis Ababa.

Abiy has cultivated the perception that sea access is the key to Ethiopia’s prosperity and greatness. In reality, it has become a smokescreen. The people of Ethiopia face currency collapse, fuel shortages, unemployment, and a security environment corrupted by emergency governance. The regime has instrumentalised nationalist sentiment the idea that sea access is Ethiopia’s “natural right” to justify the accumulation of power without the constraints of federalism, competitive elections, or institutional checks.

A senior analyst of Horn of Africa politics observed recently that “states facing internal division rarely succeed in aggressive foreign policies; the domestic centre must hold for any peripheral expansion to be credible.” Ethiopia’s centre, by contrast, is fragmenting. The Tigray conflict left perhaps 600,000 dead. The Oromo Liberation Front remains in the field. The Benishangul-Gumuz region faces systematic insecurity. Regional governments have been stripped of fiscal autonomy. In such conditions, the prospect of a major war with Eritrea would not vindicate Ethiopian greatness—it would expose profound weakness.

The Voices from Beyond

What are the international commentators saying? The verdict has been remarkably consistent. The Economist frames Abiy’s vision as autocratic centralisation masquerading as national renewal. Al Jazeera has compared his rhetoric and methods to those of other aggressively expansionist leaders. Democracy in Africa has warned that Ethiopia’s “imperial ambitions are making the Horn of Africa chronically dangerous.” The observer research community has flagged a pattern: Abiy voices his commitment to peaceful resolution, whilst military media outlets and senior generals speak the language of inevitable war.

Egypt’s response has been characteristically ambiguous. In February 2026, Cairo reportedly offered to mediate Ethiopian access to Red Sea ports in exchange for concessions on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Within days, Egyptian officials denied the offer entirely. The gesture, even in its denial, conveyed a message: the international community recognises the strategic reality: Ethiopia cannot force its way to the sea, but it can access ports through negotiation. The supposed “existential” constraint is a political fiction.

Regional analysts have been equally damning. Dr Suleiman Walhad observed that “history has shown repeatedly that states facing internal division rarely succeed in aggressive foreign policies.” The Red Sea strategy, he argued, is “stillborn” destined to fail because Ethiopia lacks the domestic cohesion necessary for a credible imperial project. Ethiopia is not the Ottoman Empire or the Austro-Hungarian imperium. It is a multinational, deeply federalised state with a history of ethnic tensions, weak institutions, and an economy in distress.

The Reckoning Ahead

What, then, is driving Abiy’s increasingly reckless positioning? Part of it is personal: the Prime Minister is seeking to build a legacy. He entered office as a reformer, declared “Never again” about ethnic conflict, and received the Nobel Peace Prize a prize that now sits uncomfortably beside a record of internal repression and regional aggression. The Red Sea gambit offers a chance to reframe himself as a great power builder, a leader who restored Ethiopia to its rightful place on the world stage.

Part of it is structural: the Ethiopian regime depends on cultivating a sense of perpetual nationalist grievance. The idea that Ethiopia is “imprisoned” geographically, that it has been cheated of its natural inheritance, that only a strong leader can correct historical injustices this narrative justifies emergency governance and defers accountability for economic failure.

And part of it is psychological: Abiy appears to have come to believe his own mythology. He has surrounded himself with military officials and party loyalists who tell him what he wishes to hear. Contradiction between his public commitment to peaceful resolution and military preparations for war, between his anti-authoritarian reputation and his centralisation of power, between his claims of economic visionary leadership and the currency collapse happening in real time, no longer registers as a problem to be resolved. It is simply the price of greatness.

But greatness purchased through the destabilisation of the Horn of Africa, the alienation of neighbouring states, and the further concentration of power at home is not greatness at all. It is a familiar tragedy: a leader of initial promise succumbing to the delusions of power, wagering his country’s future on a strategic fantasy, and discovering—too late—that geography and law are more durable than rhetoric and will.

The international community is watching. So, increasingly, are Ethiopians.

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The New Addis: How Vanity Meets Vulnerability

Ethiopian Tribune editor — Tue, 26 May 2026 11:10:13 +0000

Read Time:11 Minute, 41 Second

Abiy Ahmed’s corridor megaprojects seduce the global influencer class while 43 per cent of Ethiopians sink below the poverty line—a politics of aesthetic modernisation masquerading as development

By E. Frashie

On a sweltering May afternoon in Addis Ababa, American streaming sensation Darren Watkins Jr. known to millions as iShowSpeed, walked barefoot through the newly paved Merkato district, livestreaming his gratitude to Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed for the city’s “incredible transformation.” In January, global influencer Dylan Page arrived to similar fanfare, greeting Arsenal supporters and narrating the elegance of renovated riverside promenades to his international audience. Neither mentioned the 3,250 households displaced by a single corridor project. Neither addressed the fact that 43 per cent of Ethiopians now live below the poverty line.

The contrast is not incidental. It is the very architecture of the Prosperity Party’s political strategy what we might call the aesthetics of austerity: the deliberate cultivation of a modernised, globally legible urban facade, deployed to obscure the material deterioration of the nation itself.

The Narrative of Transformation

By any measure of infrastructure ambition, Addis Ababa’s corridor development project is formidable. Since 2019, the city administration has overseen the transformation of 88 kilometres of urban space, constructing walking paths, cycling lanes, playgrounds, museums, and riverside parks. The Economist recently observed that Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s re-election in June 2026 is certain, but noted with considerable ambivalence that Ethiopia’s future is less so. This tension political inevitability coupled with systemic uncertainty sits at the heart of the urban modernisation project.

The government frames these corridors as more than infrastructure. They are, in the official lexicon, symbols of national dignity and pan-African aspiration. In August 2025, the Prime Minister described the completed Addis International Convention Centre–Goro–VIP Airport corridor as evidence of “a different vision and a renewed work culture” shaping Ethiopia’s urban transformation. The rhetoric is intoxicating: pedestrian walkways as democracy, green spaces as equity, modern boulevards as the infrastructure of freedom.

But the statistics are stark. A single corridor, the Piassa-Mexico-Sarbet-Gotera-Wollo Sefer stretch, cost the city $325 million to construct, displacing 3,250 households and 14,000 residents. The project required an expenditure of approximately €11.5 million per kilometre for 48 kilometres of street upgrade. For perspective: that same investment could have funded over 1,100 kilometres of federal road projects. Yet only five out of one hundred woredas in Addis Ababa enjoy continuous water supply.

The Influencer Machine

The arrival of international influencers represents a calculated element of the regime’s image management. In May 2026, the government hosted the inaugural African Social Media Influencers Summit in Addis Ababa, attracting 61 digital creators from 30 countries with a combined following of 321 million. An additional 120 Ethiopian content creators brought another 150 million followers into the equation, a total reach exceeding 470 million users.

The strategic logic is transparent: deploy the informal authority of the global creator economy to narrate Addis Ababa as Africa’s premier destination for top-tier international digital creators. In the language of the summit organisers, these influencers would serve as cultural ambassadors, reshaping global narratives about the continent. Data presented at the summit claimed that skewed global narratives cost Africa up to $4.2 billion annually, framing the influencer campaign not merely as tourism promotion but as continental economic necessity.

What was remarkable about the summit was what it omitted. The government provided these influencers with 24/7 VIP security during their stays, granted them curated access to gleaming new infrastructure, and ensured their livestreams and social media posts featured polished urban vistas. No creator was invited to the neighbourhoods of Kasanchiz, where residents are still seeking compensation for forced evictions. None were brought to Arat Kilo or Piassa, where the demolition of historic buildings erased cultural heritage for the sake of commercial corridors and glass towers.

The regime is, in essence, outsourcing legitimacy. By facilitating content creation from prestigious global creators, the government transforms the city’s modernised districts into a form of soft power a visual argument that this is what development looks like. The influencers, most of whom lack depth of knowledge about Ethiopia’s political economy or displacement crises, become unwitting validators of a gentrification project sold as continental pride.

Gentrification for the Global Elite

The second audience for Addis Ababa’s transformation is less visible but far more economically significant: wealthy expatriates, diplomats, and—increasingly, Middle Eastern capital seeking refuge from regional instability.

Marketing materials for Addis Ababa’s luxury real estate market are explicit about this segmentation. Bole, traditionally the expatriate district, now features mid-luxury and high-end developments explicitly marketed to high-net-worth individuals, expatriates, and businesses. Three-bedroom luxury apartments command rents of $1,000 to $3,000 monthly, with prices per square metre reaching 240,000 to 420,000 Ethiopian Birr at a time when the World Bank estimates the monthly minimum for subsistence living at 1,500 to 3,000 Birr.

The corridor projects have been instrumental in creating this market. By displacing low-income residents from historically mixed neighbourhoods and replacing them with commercial centres, glass towers, and upscale amenities, the government has effectively engineered demographic change. It is gentrification by state decree—not the organic process of market forces, but deliberate policy. One former urban planning official, speaking on condition of anonymity, described it bluntly: “You destroy one’s house in anticipation of better houses for someone else. It’s portrayed as development, as improvement. You take someone’s property and give it as an economic opportunity for the other one. What happened to the displaced person? Nothing, a very small amount of money.”

Critics on the ground have deployed a pointed neologism: Gazanchis the wholesale removal of a people in the name of cosmetic progress. The term draws a parallel to Gaza, evoking the forced displacement of a population to make way for elite luxury. In this rendering, Addis Ababa’s transformation is not merely urban development but spatial and economic ethnic cleansing, effected through planning rather than military force, but with outcomes equally devastating for the displaced.

The Poverty Crisis: The Suppressed Narrative

What makes the influencer campaign and the gentrification project particularly troubling is the catastrophic context against which they unfold.

Ethiopia’s poverty rate has surged from 33 per cent in 2016 to 39 per cent in 2021, and is projected to reach 43 per cent by the end of this year—a reversal of two decades of progress. The World Bank attributes this deterioration to internal and external challenges: the Tigray war, persistent droughts, pandemic aftershocks, and the macroeconomic reform shock that followed the government’s decision to float the Ethiopian Birr in late 2024.

The Birr’s devaluation has been catastrophic for ordinary households. The currency fell by approximately 90 per cent in the weeks following its float, introducing runaway inflation. Food prices have surged far beyond the purchasing power of static wages. Basic commodities coffee, sugar, meat, have become luxury items for much of the urban working class. A recent analysis noted that the cost of living has evolved from a chronic strain into an existential threat. Inflation officially moderated to 9.7 per cent by February 2026, but by April it had returned to double digits at 11.7 per cent. Food inflation climbed to 13.5 per cent—a figure that bears almost no relationship to the lived experience of families making impossible choices between paying rent, buying food, and medicating illness.

This economic devastation has been accompanied by an aggressive fiscal consolidation demanded by international creditors. The government has expanded tax bases, tightened enforcement, and reduced tax deductions precisely when ordinary citizens were experiencing income contraction. The effect is perverse: for a population spending the vast majority of disposable income on food, aggressive tax policies function as a form of penalty on survival.

Meanwhile, the government allocates hundreds of millions of dollars to corridor projects, $10 billion to a palace complex, and enormous sums to hosting international summits for influencers—events explicitly designed to showcase a city that most Ethiopians cannot afford to live in.

The Government’s Defence: Order and Progress

To be fair, the government’s position merits articulation. Officials argue that the corridor projects represent necessary modernisation, that they create employment, improve public health through better urban mobility, and position Ethiopia as a continent-leading force in urban transformation. They point to improved road infrastructure, reduced travel times, and the creation of public spaces that strengthen social cohesion. The government contends that the corridor model is being emulated across 75 cities nationwide, suggesting genuine demand for this approach to urban development.

Defenders note that private investment in luxury real estate generates tax revenue, creates construction jobs, and enhances the city’s global standing. They argue that attracting diaspora investment and wealthy expatriates is not merely symbols but substance, it brings foreign currency, technical expertise, and international connections that benefit the broader economy. The international influencer summit, from this perspective, is not vanity but smart branding: in an age of social media, image-shaping is consequential economics.

On the matter of displacement, officials acknowledge that relocation has been necessary but argue that affected residents receive compensation and that resettlement housing will ultimately benefit them through improved neighbourhoods. They further contend that growth will create jobs and trickle-down benefits that today’s gentrification is tomorrow’s shared prosperity.

Why This Argument Fails

These defences contain an element of truth but mistake correlation for causation and confuse elite dynamism with shared development.

First, the timing is ruinous. Launching a $325 million corridor project and a billion-dollar palace renovation at the moment when poverty is approaching 43 per cent and food inflation is double-digit is not bold governance; it is tone-deafness elevated to policy.

Second, the comparative opportunity cost is devastating. €11.5 million per kilometre of city beautification, whilst five out of every hundred urban neighbourhoods lack basic water supply, is not a resource allocation choice made in good faith toward development. It is a choice that prioritises the visibility of modernity over its substance.

Third, the research on gentrification in the Global South is clear: when middle-income and low-income residents are displaced and replaced by wealth that does not derive from within the local economy, the aggregate effect is not job creation but labour-market bifurcation. Newly constructed luxury apartments employ security guards, housekeepers, and service workers at minimal wages. The commercial spaces are franchised to international corporations. The benefits flow upward and outward, not to the displaced.

Finally, on the matter of compensation and resettlement: Amnesty International’s investigation in April 2025 documented that the government has forcibly evicted at least 872 people in Bole and Lemi Kura alone, without prior consultation, compensation, or provision of alternative housing. The government’s assertion that affected residents will ultimately benefit rings hollow when families are displaced with weeks’ notice, provided minimal compensation, and offered no genuine pathway back into the transformed neighbourhoods.

The Political Utility of Facades

The deepest critique of the corridor project is not economic but political. Gleaming infrastructure and international influencer endorsement serve a political function: they allow the regime to claim dynamism, modernity, and visionary leadership at precisely the moment when institutional legitimacy is eroding.

As The Economist noted, Abiy Ahmed’s re-election is certain, yet his re-election lacks democratic substance. Opposition boycotts, the exclusion of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, restrictions on campaign space, and the arrest of journalists mean that the June 2026 election will, like 2021, be a landslide victory composed largely of uncontested seats. The regime faces no genuine electoral threat.

But political certainty is not the same as legitimacy. It is achieved through institutional engineering, not consent. The corridor projects therefore serve a compensatory function: they provide the appearance of effective governance and national progress at a moment when actual governance has failed to deliver security, justice, or shared prosperity. They tell a story to international investors, to diaspora Ethiopians, and to the regime’s own supporters that this is what we have built, even if what most Ethiopians experience is deteriorating livelihoods.

The influencer campaign is the most naked expression of this strategy. By turning the city into a stage for global digital creators, the regime ensures that the international narrative about Ethiopia is written not by journalists investigating poverty and displacement, but by paid or incentivised cultural entrepreneurs who have neither the knowledge nor the motivation to investigate the regime’s record. The message sent to the world is simple: Ethiopia is modern, dynamic, and open for business. The message suppressed is more complicated: millions of citizens cannot afford to eat.

Conclusion: Architecture as Deceit

There is nothing inherently wrong with urban modernisation. Cities require investment, infrastructure, and vision. But infrastructure investments carry moral weight. They represent choices about whose lives matter, whose security is prioritised, and whose displacement is acceptable.

The Addis Ababa corridor project, viewed through the lens of this moral calculus, represents a choice: the choice to invest billions in boulevards, parks, and commercial spaces for a minority of wealthy residents whilst 43 per cent of Ethiopians live in poverty. It is the choice to stage-manage the city for international influencers and diaspora investors whilst displaced residents live in emergency shelters. It is the choice to narrate modernity through architect’s renderings rather than through the substantive improvements in water, healthcare, education, and security that ordinary Ethiopians require.

Abiy Ahmed will be re-elected in June. His government will continue to promote Addis Ababa as Africa’s premier city. International influencers will continue to livestream from polished corridors, their 470 million followers watching in admiration. Meanwhile, the real story of Ethiopia:-one of deepening poverty, insecurity, and institutional dysfunction will continue to be written in displaced neighbourhoods, households choosing between medicine and food, and young people seeking any route out of the country.

The city’s gleaming new face is not a sign of progress. It is a mask. And it is masks, not substance, that sustain faltering regimes.

The Ethiopian Tribune | Analysis from the Horn of Africa

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Minister of Rhetoric: Berhanu Nega and the Collapse of Education Policy Into Bureaucratic Theater

Ethiopian Tribune editor — Fri, 22 May 2026 06:12:04 +0000

Read Time:9 Minute, 18 Second

Minister of Rhetoric: Berhanu Nega and the Collapse of Education Policy Into Bureaucratic Theater

Minister of Rhetoric:

Berhanu Nega and the Collapse of Education Policy Into Bureaucratic Theater

Ethiopian Tribune Editorial Analysis

Since Professor Berhanu Nega assumed the Ministry of Education in October 2021, Ethiopia has produced elegant policy documents at an accelerating pace. The World Bank-backed General Education Quality Improvement Programme for Equity (GEQIP-E) has been championed. The Ethiopia Education Transformation Programme (EETP) was launched. The 2021 curriculum was rolled out with considerable fanfare. Yet beneath this rhetoric of reform lies a cavernous gap between policy ambition and classroom reality. World Bank assessments and peer-reviewed research paint a sobering picture: under Nega’s stewardship, Ethiopia’s education system continues to hollow out at critical implementation nodes—from teacher capacity to curriculum deployment to learning outcome measurement. The distance is not merely wide; it has widened.

The Learning Crisis: What the Data Actually Shows

The World Bank’s learning poverty assessments provide the hardest metric. According to the Bank’s latest brief on Ethiopia, 90 per cent of children at primary-school age are not proficient in reading, adjusted for out-of-school children. This figure is 5 percentage points worse than the average for comparable sub-Saharan African nations—a comparative indictment of the stewardship of education policy under Nega’s tenure.

Between 2020 and 2023, enrolment fell by 24 per cent, with primary gross enrolment ratios declining by 29 percentage points. More alarming: completion rates collapsed. Between 2017 and 2024, the primary completion rate fell by 21 percentage points among girls and 25 percentage points among boys. These are not marginal shifts; they represent a systemic contraction of educational access and completion that has accelerated during Nega’s watch as minister.

The conflict-driven school closures and infrastructure destruction, particularly in Tigray, have accelerated these declines. Yet the baseline prior to recent insurgencies was already weak. This is not a sector recovering from temporary disruption; it is a sector struggling with chronic implementation failure beneath rhetorical reform—the signature of Nega’s ministerial approach.

Teacher Training: Quantity Over Competence Under Nega’s Programmes

The GEQIP-E programme, overseen by Nega’s ministry, has trained 102,117 teachers. These numbers appear impressive in isolation. But peer-reviewed research reveals the depth of the problem beneath the statistics. A 2024 study in the African Journal of Disability examined teacher education effectiveness for inclusive education and found critical gaps: “the Ethiopian teacher education system reveals a significant lack of provision of sufficient knowledge to empower teachers to understand inclusion.”

Teachers report inadequate exposure to practical, hands-on experiences. Across pedagogical reforms—from constructivist teaching to inclusive practices—the story repeats: training exists but competence lags. A study of teachers implementing the Constructivist Teaching and Learning Approach found that lack of commitment, resource scarcity, inadequate training, and misalignment between teacher and student preferences remained unaddressed despite Nega’s programme rollout.

The root issue is structural, and it has persisted and worsened under Nega’s leadership. Teacher training in Ethiopia lacks a dedicated independent commission to enforce standards and accountability. Quality assurance mechanisms remain weak. Regional education bureaus operate with different expectations than federal ministries. World Bank economists involved in programme design acknowledged this friction: “At the federal level we were using result-based financing, but the arrangement between the federal and regional education bureaus was more of activity financing.” In plain language: under Nega’s stewardship, the system measures activity, not results.

Curriculum Implementation: Nega’s Reforms Without Delivery

Ethiopia launched the 2021 curriculum, which Nega championed as a transformative overhaul. The Ethiopia Education Transformation Programme (EETP), rolled out in 2023 under his ministry, promised alignment with this curriculum alongside the World Bank’s new Ethiopia Education Transformation Operation for Learning (ETOL, 2025–29).

Yet implementation has stalled at multiple chokepoints—a hallmark of Nega’s tenure. A 2023 peer-reviewed analysis examining curriculum development against standards found that “Schwab’s signs of crisis in the curriculum field”—including theory-driven policy detached from practice, moribund implementation capacity, and failure to generate coherent societal outcomes—”were prevalent in the Ethiopian education system.” The researchers concluded: “The past and current systems remain unproductive in cultivating good citizenship and in revealing societal and cultural values for socioeconomic development.”

Technical and vocational education training, a critical pathway for employment, faces particularly severe implementation barriers under Nega’s watch. A 2024 Bahir Dar study found that TVET teacher preparation suffers from weak admission criteria, irrelevant curriculum, theory-focused rather than practice-oriented training, limited resources, ineffective quality assurance, poor leadership, and educator gaps in both practical skills and pedagogical knowledge. The system is producing certified teachers, not competent ones—a failure of design and oversight.

The Data Problem: Opacity as Policy Under Nega

The World Bank’s institutional evaluation highlighted a structural blind spot that has deepened under Nega’s ministry: “In Ethiopia and Kenya, data are dated or not accessible to the public.” Ethiopia participates in no international or regional learning assessments—no TIMSS, PIRLS, or SEA-PLM. National examinations are administered at grades 4, 8, 10, and 12, but the assessments remain inaccessible to independent researchers and policymakers—a governance failure for which Nega’s ministry bears responsibility.

This opacity is not accidental. Without independent, public learning data, programmes cannot be debugged in real time. Failures remain hidden or anecdotal. Reform happens in the abstract. One metric illustrates the governance problem sharply: in October 2022, only 3.3 per cent of grade 12 examination takers scored high enough to enter public university. This is not a teacher shortage; it is a system failure at scale that might warrant forensic investigation but instead is absorbed into the machinery of bureaucratic theater that Nega’s ministry oversees.

Conflict, Poverty, and the Structural Headwinds Nega Has Failed to Navigate

The World Bank’s latest poverty assessment adds a structural headwind that has worsened under Nega’s tenure: poverty is expected to climb to 43 per cent by 2025, reversing two decades of progress. Rural poverty is particularly severe. By 2021, 86 per cent of rural adults had not completed primary education. Nutrition deficits are endemic: nearly half of rural households had at least one stunted child.

The Tigray conflict destroyed 88 per cent of school infrastructure in affected zones. Enrolment halved. The average walking distance to school increased from 2.2 to 4.8 kilometres. With ongoing insurgencies from the Oromo Liberation Army and Amhara Fano militias, conflict has spilled into Ethiopia’s two most populous regional states. As of March 2024, the Education Cluster estimated 8.85 million out-of-school children due to emergencies—numbers that have not been meaningfully addressed by Nega’s reform agenda.

This is the context in which Nega has presided over education policy: deepening poverty, ongoing conflict, and systemic capacity gaps. Instead of confronting these structural dysfunctions, his ministry has produced rhetoric without results.

The Signature of Nega’s Leadership: Policy Theater Over Execution

The pattern is clear from international evidence. When the World Bank’s economist supervising GEQIP-E noted that federal result-based financing did not translate into regional result-based execution, they identified the precise fracture that has defined Nega’s tenure: the system measures outputs (teachers trained, schools equipped) whilst evading outcomes (learners proficient).

Implementation failure in education has characteristic signatures that Nega’s ministry exhibits across the board. Teachers are trained but unprepared for diverse classrooms. Curriculum is designed but not sequenced for classroom use. Assessments exist but remain hidden from public scrutiny. Programmes expand—the O-Class pre-primary initiative reached 2.3 million children under his watch—but learning outcomes remain flat or decline. This is the bureaucratic theater: motion without movement, investment without impact.

This is not failure of intent. It is failure of institutional capacity, accountability architecture, and execution discipline at regional and woreda levels. It is the failure of a minister who has presided over the gap between what federal policy designers promise and what schools on the ground can deliver—and has done little to narrow it.

Conclusion: Rhetoric Without Accountability

Under Berhanu Nega’s stewardship, Ethiopia has produced elegant education policy documents. The EETP, ETOL, the 2021 curriculum, and sector development programmes represent substantial intellectual effort and international coordination. Yet the translation from policy to classroom has collapsed—and the minister has presided over that collapse without meaningful course correction.

The question is not whether reform is ambitious. The question is whether the minister and the institutions under his control possess the will and capacity to enforce it. Current evidence suggests they do not. Teachers trained without competence benchmarks. Curricula designed without classroom fidelity checks. Programmes measured on activity, not learning. Data withheld from public scrutiny. A minister who speaks of transformation whilst presiding over decline.

Until Nega’s ministry establishes independent teacher service standards, public learning assessments, regional accountability mechanisms, and genuine result-based financing tied to learning outcomes rather than budget disbursement, his reform agenda will remain a bureaucratic ritual. Children in rural schools will continue to graduate without basic literacy. The 90 per cent learning poverty figure will persist as the defining failure of his tenure.

The Tribune’s charge is to ask uncomfortable questions. Here is ours: If after five years under Minister Berhanu Nega, 90 per cent of primary-age children are not proficient in reading, is the system genuinely broken, or is the minister genuinely negligent? The World Bank’s assessments suggest the latter. The distance between policy ambition and classroom reality has widened, not closed—on his watch. That gap is where Ethiopian children’s aspirations are being lost.

Sources: World Bank Learning Poverty Brief; World Bank Poverty and Equity Assessment for Ethiopia (2024); UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report (2026); World Bank RISE Ethiopia Impact Study; peer-reviewed research from African Journal of Disability, Bahir Dar Journal of Education, Cogent Education; UN Education Cluster assessments; Wikipedia biography of Berhanu Nega (ministerial tenure); published reporting on education policy outcomes.

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National Unity and Red Sea Sovereignty: Legislation as the Price of the Nation

Ethiopian Tribune editor — Wed, 20 May 2026 10:45:29 +0000

Read Time:2 Minute, 15 Second

By Professor Mefkereseb Goytom Hailu

EDITORIAL FOREWORD

The fortnight of 11–16 May reshuffled the diplomatic surface of the Ethiopian moment faster than any comparable interval since 2018. An IMF benediction on macroeconomic reform. A presidential visit from Paris bearing investment and geopolitical hedging. The specification by this publication of a reported five-point US-mediated rapprochement framework touching Eritrea, ports, borders, and mutual disengagement. All of it compressed into five days.

The warm lighting of this fortnight creates a risk that the Ethiopian polity executive, parliament, citizenry will mistake tactical diplomatic movement for the resolution of a strategic question. That mistake would be fatal. This essay argues why, and it does so in language that refuses the comforts of ambiguity.

Mefkereseb Goytom Hailu makes a single, uncompromising claim: Ethiopia, as a nation, does not exist without Unity and Red Sea Sovereignty. Not as policy objectives. Not as negotiating positions. As constitutive facts the foundations on which everything else depends. The argument runs deeper: that the four singular interests of Ethiopian strategy (Unity, Red Sea Sovereignty, broad-based democratic economic development, the GERD) are not separate items to be traded against one another, but a single architecture in three layers. Foundations → Means Engine. None is severable without collapsing the whole.

What the next House of People’s Representatives must do, therefore, is not to manage this architecture through diplomatic channels. It is to legislate it. To write it into the supreme law of the federation in language that no transient diplomatic arrangement, no change in external alignments, no shift in an incumbent’s calculus can erode. Not through a memorandum of understanding. Not through an executive agreement. Through standing constitutional mandate that anchors the four interests to the Ethiopian state itself, not to the particular leaders who happen to occupy office at any given moment.

The essay that follows sets out both the urgency of that work and the technical constitutional package required to accomplish it. It does so in the language of constitutional law, of federal architecture, of strategic analysis, and of something harder to translate: the register of someone who has spent his analysis on this question and has arrived, in this moment, at clarity about what matters.

This is the seventh and concluding piece in Mefkereseb’s series on Ethiopian strategy, geopolitics, and constitutional foundations. Readers are invited to engage with the full argument. The work is unfinished. The work is doable. The work cannot be subcontracted. And as the author makes clear the choice to begin it is closing quite rapidly.

The full essay, “National Unity and Red Sea Sovereignty: Ethiopia Must Pay the Price Now,” appears at the following address:

redSeaMandateLegislated_viaElection.pdf Download

The Editors
16 May 2026