How a Young Woman from EPRP is Rewriting Ethiopian Political Theatre and What the Ruling Party’s Silence on That Debate Stage Truly Revealed

By Sewasew Teklemariam the Ethiopian Tribune Columnist

There is a particular kind of silence that speaks louder than argument. It is the silence that descends upon a room when someone has said the unsayable with perfect precision, when an accusation is so well-documented, so calmly delivered, and so unanswerable that the only available response is the panicked shuffle of papers and the avoidance of eye contact. That silence fell upon the representatives of Ethiopia’s ruling Prosperity Party during the country’s first major televised multi-party debate of the 2026 election cycle. The person who produced it was not a veteran statesman, not a celebrated economist, not a familiar face from the long and exhausted gallery of Ethiopian opposition politics. She was a former television journalist in her early thirties, representing a coalition whose symbol is a thumbs-up, whose name is Mistresilasie Tamerat, and who, in one broadcast hour, did more damage to the government’s democratic pretensions than two decades of politely worded opposition press releases ever managed.

Ethiopia is preparing to hold its seventh national election in June 2026, with 24 national and 45 regional political parties contesting for power in what many analysts describe as a critical test of the country’s democratic evolution, a description that grows more ironic the more closely one examines the conditions under which that evolution is supposedly occurring. The scale is impressive on paper: 1,300 candidates nationwide, 936 for regional councils, a National Electoral Board with a mandate and a calendar. The substance is considerably less so. Political prisoners remain detained. Conflicts rage in the Amhara region and beyond. The media landscape is captive. International observation is uncertain. In this context, Mistresilasie Tamerat stood before the cameras and said, with the composure of someone who had been waiting for precisely this moment: we do not believe that the electoral process can be described as fair, democratic, or independent. She did not flinch. Neither did the camera.

Her background is essential to understanding the force of the moment. She trained as a journalist and worked as a reporter and political affairs analyst at Asham TV, a career that gave her something most Ethiopian opposition politicians conspicuously lack: the ability to communicate complex arguments clearly, quickly, and under the pressure of broadcast conditions. When she transitioned from journalism into active politics, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party one of the country’s oldest opposition formations, founded in the radical crucible of the 1970s student movement received her and, unusually for a party in a political culture dominated by elderly men, entrusted her with its most senior administrative post: secretary-general. The party also made her coalition secretary for the “Cooperation for Ethiopian Unity,” the five-party alliance that now stands before the Ethiopian electorate with its thumbs raised.

She has said as much herself. The political space, in her own precise formulation, is dominated by long-established figures, and penetrating its leadership structures requires persistence and resilience. Being both young and female in that environment means perpetual proof-of-concept, an exhausting requirement applied to no comparable male colleague of similar ability. What the debate demonstrated is that she has cleared that bar so comprehensively that the requirement itself begins to look absurd. She did not participate in the debate. She commanded it.

“Being both young and female often means having to prove oneself repeatedly in environments where experience is measured narrowly and leadership is traditionally defined.”

The four arguments she deployed were not improvised. They were the product of a politician who understands that in a televised debate, the purpose is not to persuade the other side but to expose it. Her first line of attack concerned political prisoners, specifically, the more than 300 ordinary citizens reported detained in the Amhara region alone, some in connection with the Fano armed movement, others for no apparent reason beyond identity. This was not rhetoric. It was documentation. The Prosperity Party has invested considerable effort in framing the Amhara conflict as a security matter: a necessary state response to armed rebellion, regrettable but inevitable. Mistresilasie relocated that framing to the electoral arena, where it becomes something else entirely evidence that the conditions for a free election do not exist, that citizens are being detained for who they are rather than what they have done, and that any government which presides over this whilst simultaneously claiming democratic legitimacy is engaged in a contradiction it cannot resolve in front of a camera.

Her second argument, that one cannot speak credibly of democratic competition while war continues, was delivered with similar precision. She went further than most opposition politicians dare, calling not merely for ceasefire but for genuine, inclusive negotiations that encompass armed groups currently excluded from peace processes. This is the argument that sustainable peace cannot be achieved through exclusion, and it is one that speaks directly to the lived reality of millions of Ethiopians whose relationship with the state has been defined by violence rather than representation. The Prosperity Party’s representatives had nothing to offer in response that would not have required them to publicly justify policies they had spent considerable energy trying not to discuss.

The arguments on media independence and international observers were, in some ways, the most devastating precisely because they were the least dramatic. They required no statistics, no documentation of specific abuses, no emotional appeal. They required only the observation that these are the minimum conditions for any democratic process worthy of the name conditions so basic that their absence does not require lengthy argument, merely acknowledgement. The government’s representatives could not acknowledge them without conceding the point. They could not deny them without appearing to endorse a system of managed elections. They were, in the language of debate, trapped. The silence that followed was the sound of that trap closing.

The Prosperity Party excels at spectacle. What it struggles with is the rough-and-tumble of genuine democratic accountability and on that stage, there was nowhere left to hide.

It would be too simple to attribute this merely to the personal failings of the individuals who represented the ruling party on that stage. The deeper truth is structural. A party that has governed with the concentrated authority of the Prosperity Party, that has systematically dismantled independent judicial oversight, suppressed critical media, and treated dissent as a category of disloyalty , cannot easily produce, on short notice, the kind of confident, substantive defenders that open democratic debate requires. The machinery of authoritarian governance is not designed to generate intellectual accountability. It is designed to suppress the need for it. When that suppression fails — when someone stands before the cameras and refuses to be managed, the system has no response prepared, because it had convinced itself the moment would never come.

The Ethiopian Citizens for Social Justice , EZEMA, occupies a different position in this story, and in some respects a more troubling one. EZEMA is, by most measures, the most institutionally coherent of the major opposition formations. It has a recognisable leadership, an urban electoral base, and a track record of participating in the formal processes of Ethiopian politics. It also has a track record, less frequently discussed, of accommodation. During the 2021 elections, EZEMA positioned itself against the formation of a transitional government at the precise moment when such a government represented the most credible alternative to the ruling party’s dominance. The practical effect of this position was to align EZEMA, at a critical juncture, with the preferences of the party it nominally opposed. In Addis Ababa in 2021, EZEMA and Balderas together received approximately 32 per cent of the capital’s vote and won zero seats in parliament a result that tells you everything you need to know about the electoral system, but also something important about the limits of a strategy built on institutional respectability rather than principled confrontation.

One of EZEMA’s own representatives captured this posture with an inadvertent candour before this year’s election. Despite the ongoing conditions the detentions, the lack of media freedom, the contested electoral environment the party acknowledged it had “no option but to participate in the election, if the government proceeds on its current track.” It is a sentence worth reading twice. It concedes the entire argument. It acknowledges that the conditions are inadequate. It then proceeds to participate anyway, not out of confidence but out of resignation. Compare this to Mistresilasie’s formulation: the process cannot be described as fair, democratic, or independent and here are the specific conditions that must change before it can be. One is a statement of principles with demands attached. The other is a statement of defeat dressed as pragmatism. The contrast, aired before a national television audience, was merciless.

The social media dimension of this story is not a footnote. Ethiopia is a country with a median age below 20. An overwhelming majority of its population has known no political dispensation other than the EPRP’s former enemies and, since 2018, the Prosperity Party. This is a generation whose relationship with politics has been defined by spectacle without accountability, by promises without delivery, and by the particular exhaustion that comes from watching one’s country torn apart by conflicts that feel simultaneously inevitable and entirely unnecessary. The appetite for a political figure who is young, female, articulate, and genuinely confrontational was not manufactured by social media. It was waiting. Mistresilasie gave it somewhere to go.

By contrast, the opening statements by ESDP and EZEMA, positioned at [00:04:53–00:08:15], produced what the analytics reveal as a characteristic “dip”: that moment, well known to anyone who has studied long-form political broadcast data, when casual viewers make their decision to stay or leave. ESDP’s pitch of gradual reform and EZEMA’s invocation of social justice are not unworthy positions. But they are positions that a viewer already fatigued by years of unfulfilled political promises will recognise and, the data suggests, will choose not to engage with further. The drop-off at this juncture is a verdict rendered not in ballot boxes but in closed browser tabs, and it is a verdict that the parties concerned would do well to examine. A political platform that cannot hold a free audience’s attention for eight minutes of prime-time debate is a platform with a communication problem that no amount of ideological refinement will resolve. The audience did not leave because the arguments were wrong. They left because the arguments felt familiar in the worst possible sense: competent, cautious, and utterly unexciting.

The TikTok virality, the comment threads declaring “she is who we wanted to become” these are not merely expressions of admiration for a single politician. They are an expression of political hunger: the demand of a generation for representation that actually looks like them, speaks like them, and is willing to say in public what they say to one another in private. That this hunger has found its focus in someone representing a coalition whose electoral history is modest and whose internal consolidation is incomplete is, simultaneously, the most interesting and the most precarious aspect of the current moment.

Because this column owes its readers scepticism as well as appreciation, certain questions must be put. Mistresilasie Tamerat has demonstrated, with considerable flair, the capacity to articulate what is wrong with Ethiopian politics and the electoral environment in which it currently operates. She has been notably less specific about what her coalition’s governance would look like in practice. Social democratic ideology and a commitment to equitable development are principles. They are not, in themselves, a programme for managing a country with rampant inflation, a currency under significant pressure, endemic unemployment, and a security situation that cannot be wished away with negotiations, however inclusive. The debate stage rewards the sharp identification of failures. Governing requires the harder discipline of proposing credible remedies.

The coalition’s internal cohesion presents a further question. Of the five parties that formed the Cooperation for Ethiopian Unity alliance, only three remain actively engaged in the electoral process. A coalition that cannot fully consolidate before the election begins is one whose ability to hold together under the pressures of governance or even the pressures of a contested result must be considered uncertain. And whilst the demand for minimum conditions before participation is principled, the coalition has not yet articulated the clear red line that would tell the public: if these conditions remain unmet, we will withdraw and say publicly why. Without that line, the demand for conditions risks becoming a rhetorical position rather than a constitutional one.

None of which should obscure the significance of what has already happened. In a debate that the ruling party entered expecting to perform its usual controlled dominance, a young woman representing a minority coalition with a thumbs-up symbol and a name that translates as the Secret of the Trinity walked onto the stage and turned the performance inside out. She exposed the Prosperity Party’s inability to defend its record under genuine scrutiny. She implicitly indicted EZEMA’s decades of dignified accommodation. She gave the youngest generation of Ethiopians a face to attach to the possibility of a different kind of politics. She did all of this calmly, precisely, and entirely on her own terms.

“In a political landscape where the bar for meaningful opposition is depressingly low, she cleared it with visible ease and the camera caught every moment.”

The numbers, as it happens, are not merely anecdotal. An analysis of the YouTube broadcast of the seventh general election’s first debate officially titled “የ7ኛው ጠቅላላ ምርጫ የመጀመሪያው የክርክር መድረክ” reveals a viewing pattern that tells its own story about where public attention truly resided during more than two hours of broadcast. The Coalition for Ethiopian Unity, known by its Amharic designation TIBIBIR, did not merely win the argument in the room. It won the audience at home, repeatedly, and at the moments that mattered most.

The broadcast’s viewership data identifies four distinct peaks where audience engagement spiked, and the pattern is instructive. The first came at [00:02:18], barely two minutes into proceedings, when inter-party friction first surfaced during the direct questioning phase the segment in which each party had two minutes to put questions directly to its opponents. YouTube’s retention analytics consistently show that confrontational exchange drives re-engagement: viewers who have wandered lean back in; those who had the broadcast running in the background pick it up. The second, and arguably most consequential, peak arrived at [02:05:12] the precise moment at which the TIBIBIR representative delivered her direct assessment of the Prosperity government’s economic record. The single word “failed” is, in broadcast terms, what analysts call a high-engagement unit: a declaration short enough to clip, sharp enough to share, and specific enough to be held accountable. The critique of the cost of living, the inability to pay rent, to afford daily meals, moved the debate from the abstractly political to the viscerally personal, producing the kind of resonance that generates not just initial views but re-watches, the metric that most accurately measures genuine impact. Within one minute, at [02:06:13], a second peak followed, driven by the explanation of the coalition’s campaign symbol, the raised thumb, and the closing appeal to voters. Audiences who skip to the end of long political broadcasts are not disengaged; they are specifically seeking the summary, the verdict, the moment of meaning. The fact that TIBIBIR’s symbol and final statement produced a measurable viewership spike at exactly this point suggests that the coalition had successfully generated sufficient curiosity earlier in the broadcast that viewers returned to hear how it concluded.

The coalition did not merely win the debate. According to the broadcast’s own viewership curve, it owned the moments the audience came back to watch twice.

There is a lesson here that extends well beyond the mechanics of YouTube analytics. Political communication in the digital age does not reward the measured and the moderate. It rewards the specific, the confrontational, and the emotionally resonant. Mistresilasie Tamerat did not go viral because she was young or because she was female, though both facts added to the novelty of the moment. She went viral because she said something true, in plain language, to a camera, without flinching. In a media environment flooded with managed statements and rehearsed equivocation, that quality, the quality of simply meaning what one says, is rarer and more powerful than any focus-grouped slogan. The viewership data confirms what the debate room already knew: when she spoke, people stopped scrolling.

The thumbs-up is, in the end, a simple gesture. It means: yes. Yes, there is something worth approving of here. Yes, this is possible. Yes, we see you. In the context of an Ethiopian election whose integrity remains in serious doubt, whose conditions remain deeply problematic, and whose outcome remains controlled by forces that have never willingly relinquished power, this small affirmative gesture is either a political act of considerable bravery or a symbol that will be crushed, like so many before it, beneath the weight of the system it challenges.

Which of these it turns out to be will be determined not in one debate, however memorable, but in the months that follow in whether the coalition holds, in whether the conditions are partially met or entirely ignored, in whether the international community chooses to observe or to avert its gaze, and in whether a generation of young Ethiopians can convert the emotional energy of a TikTok moment into the harder, slower, more dangerous work of political organisation. Mistresilasie Tamerat has earned the right to be taken seriously. Ethiopia has not yet earned the right to call what is happening a democracy. Between those two facts lies the entire story of this election.

The debate has begun. Whether it will be permitted to conclude on the people’s terms is the only question that matters.

The Ethiopian Tribune is an independent publication. This column reflects political analysis and does not constitute endorsement of any party or candidate.

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FORWARDING: Yekatit 12 – From Oblivion to Memory (Inaugural Newsletter)
This groundbreaking newsletter, created by descendants of Ethiopians imprisoned during the Italian Fascist occupation (1935-1941), chronicles the Yekatit 12 massacre of February 1937 and its aftermath. The publication represents a collective refusal to forget honouring those who suffered imprisonment, exile, and death while resisting colonial violence.

Future quarterly editions will feature prisoners stories, scholarly reflections, and testimonies that illuminate this suppressed history with honesty and depth.

Essential reading for anyone committed to historical truth and remembrance. We encourage you to read, reflect, and share this critical work of remembrance.

Download the PDF

Source: https://www.fromobliviontomemory.org/asinara/

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By E Frashie Ethiopian Tribune Columnist

Introduction: A Song, A Summit, and Structural Amnesia

In February 2026, at a state dinner in Addis Ababa during the Second Italy-Africa Summit, Ethiopian singers performed “Ma il cielo è sempre più blu” (But the sky is always bluer), a 1975 classic by Italian singer-songwriter Rino Gaetano. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy was captured on camera by the Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation smiling, humming along, and applauding the thoughtful musical tribute. The video, titled “Diplomacy in Melody! Meloni Amazed Addis Ababa,” circulated widely as an emblem of cultural exchange and warm bilateral relations.

Yet beneath this surface cordiality lies a profound historical asymmetry. The same Italian state that Meloni represents deployed mustard gas against Ethiopian civilians ninety years earlier, conducted systematic aerial bombardments of villages and infrastructure, and orchestrated the Yekatit 12 massacre in Addis Ababa—one of the most notorious acts of fascist colonial terror in Africa. Italy has never issued a comprehensive formal apology for these crimes, nor has it undertaken a systematic public reckoning with the legacy of its occupation of Ethiopia (1935–1941).

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

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

1.1 Airpower and Chemical Warfare as Strategic Terror

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

The effects were catastrophic:

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

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

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

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

1.2 Yekatit 12: The Massacre as Colonial Pedagogy

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

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

1.3 Anthropology as Administrative Weapon

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

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

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

2.1 Ethiopian Internal Conflict and Civilian Vulnerability

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

            ∙           Civilian casualties from aerial bombardments.

            ∙           Destruction of infrastructure, including hospitals and schools.

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

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

2.2 Sovereignty, Accountability, and the Limits of Developmentalism

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

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

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

3.1 The Corridor Development Project: Infrastructure or Exclusion?

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

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

3.2 Historical Echoes: Italian Urban Planning and Contemporary Spatial Violence

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

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

3.3 Displacement Without Compensation: The Human Cost

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

            ∙           Residents receive inadequate or no compensation for demolished homes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

            ∙           Partnership agreements with Ethiopian developers for luxury residential projects.

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

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

IV. Migration, Borders, and the Asymmetry of Movement

4.1 The Closure of Europe and the Securitisation of Displacement

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

            ∙           Maritime interceptions in the Mediterranean.

            ∙           Agreements with Libya and Tunisia to prevent irregular crossings.

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

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

4.2 Historical Irony and Moral Incoherence

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

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

4.3 Displacement at Home, Exclusion Abroad: The Double Bind

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

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

5.1 Cultural Diplomacy as Memory Management

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

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

5.2 The Silence of the Archive

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

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

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

5.3 The Gala as Spatial Performance

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

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

VI. Ethiopianism and the Politics of Dignity

6.1 Ethiopian Exceptionalism and the Burden of Resistance

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

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

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

6.2 The Abiy Dilemma: Modernisation, Conflict, and Legitimacy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

7.1 Beyond Symbolic Gestures

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

7.2 Ethiopian Accountability and Internal Governance

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

This requires:

            ∙           Independent investigations into civilian casualties from drone strikes.

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

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

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

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

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

7.3 Spatial Justice as Decolonial Practice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

References:

Harvey, D. (2008) ‘The right to the city’, New Left Review, 53, pp. 23–40.

Sassen, S. (2014) Expulsions: Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Smith, N. (1996) The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City. London: Routledge.

Soja, E. (2010) Seeking Spatial Justice. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Amnesty International (2022) Ethiopia: Civilian casualties from drone strikes. London: Amnesty International.

Baer, G. (1967) ‘Italian colonial policy in Ethiopia 1936–1941’, Journal of African History, 8(3), pp. 421–438.

Campbell, I. (2017) The Addis Ababa Massacre: Italy’s National Shame. London: Hurst.

Del Boca, A. (1969) The Ethiopian War 1935–1941. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Del Boca, A. (1991) ‘The use of poison gas in the Italian–Ethiopian war’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 1(2), pp. 187–203.

European Council (2023) EU Migration and Asylum Policy Update. Brussels: European Union.

Human Rights Watch (2023) World Report: Ethiopia. New York: HRW.

Italian Government (2024) The Mattei Plan for Africa. Rome: Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri.

Labanca, N. (2002) Oltremare: Storia dell’espansione coloniale italiana. Bologna: Il Mulino.

Mamdani, M. (1996) Citizen and Subject. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Mbembe, A. (2001) On the Postcolony. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Mockler, A. (2003) Haile Selassie’s War. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Quijano, A. (2000) ‘Coloniality of power and Eurocentrism in Latin America’, International Sociology, 15(2), pp. 215–232.

Sbacchi, A. (1985) ‘Italian colonialism in Ethiopia’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 23(4), pp. 563–585.

Singer, P. W. (2009) Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century. New York: Penguin.

Triandafyllidou, A. (2022) Migration and Europe’s Borders. London: Routledge.United Nations (2022) Humanitarian situation in Ethiopia: Situation Report. New York: UN OCHA

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On the curious disjunction between a capital that hosts the continent and a nation that cannot quite hold itself together

There is something peculiarly Ethiopian about the scene unfolding in Addis Ababa this February. The city presents itself with all the trappings of continental leadership summit halls filled with dignitaries, the hum of diplomatic motorcades, the unveiling of Africa’s first unmanned police station complete with biometric verification and artificial intelligence. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed tweets invitations to experience “a new era of African-led tourism development,” whilst the International Monetary Fund nods approvingly at Ethiopia’s fiscal discipline and structural reforms. On paper, at least, this is a nation ascending.

Yet step outside the carefully choreographed radius of official optimism and a rather different Ethiopia emerges, one that sits uneasily with the grand pronouncements. This is a country where peace agreements seem to function more as intervals between violence than as genuine settlements, where millions drift through displacement camps whilst their government courts foreign investors, where the language of modernisation coexists with the brutal arithmetic of malnutrition statistics. The dissonance is not merely awkward; it is fundamental, speaking to contradictions that run through the very sinews of the Ethiopian state.

Consider the timing. Whilst Addis hosts the thirty-ninth African Union Summit and welcomes Italian delegates for the Second Italy-Africa Summit, fresh clashes erupt between government forces and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front the same TPLF that signed a peace deal in Pretoria scarcely three years ago, ending a war that killed hundreds of thousands. In Amhara, irregular Fano militias who once fought alongside federal forces now turn their guns against them, engaging in nearly a hundred battles within seven weeks. The government speaks darkly of Eritrean meddling and TPLF conspiracies; Eritrea dismisses the accusations as fabrications. Meanwhile, satellite imagery suggests Ethiopia has been training thousands of fighters for Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces in a secret camp in Benishangul-Gumuz, drawing the country deeper into regional conflagrations it can ill afford.

This is the Ethiopia that doesn’t make it into the summit brochures—fractious, militarised, its peace provisional at best. The Pretoria agreement was meant to close a chapter; instead, it seems merely to have turned a page. Violence mutates rather than dissipates, shifting fronts and allegiances with a fluidity that defies easy resolution. What was once a war between federal forces and Tigrayan rebels now fragments into multiple insurgencies, ethnic mobilisations, and cross-border entanglements, each with its own logic and grievances.

The humanitarian toll of this unravelling is measured in the usual grim metrics. Displacement runs into the millions. In Afar, severe acute malnutrition cases rise year on year, exacerbated by drought and conflict. Children bear the heaviest burden—interrupted schooling, psychological trauma, the gnawing hunger that doesn’t respect political cycles or diplomatic calendars. For these Ethiopians, the smart police station in Addis, with its promise of reduced response times and automated reporting, exists in a different universe entirely. One suspects they would trade all the biometric verification in the world for a meal, a school, a home that hasn’t been burned.

What makes Ethiopia’s predicament particularly fascinating and tragic, is how it manifests in the competing narratives of the country’s intellectual class. Two retired scholars, one Oromo and a pairing of Amhara and Tigrayan observers, offer interpretations so divergent they might as well be describing different countries altogether.

The Oromo intellectual sees vindication, a long-deferred reckoning in which Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group finally claims its rightful place at the helm of national affairs. For him, the summits and economic reforms represent not vanity but strategic reassertion proof that Ethiopia is becoming, at last, a nation that belongs to all its peoples rather than a narrow elite. The friction and realignment are the inevitable costs of any genuine transition. When he speaks of Oromos “leading the country and changing it as they always dreamed,” there is both pride and warning in his voice, a suggestion that this shift is non-negotiable, that history is finally being corrected.

His Amhara and Tigrayan counterparts see something rather different: fragmentation masquerading as reform, ethnic mobilisation threatening to tear apart whatever tenuous cohesion remains. To them, the persistence of armed conflict across multiple fronts reveals the hollowness of official stability claims. Identity politics, when weaponised, doesn’t build nations; it dismantles them. The Tigrayan scholar, shaped by the trauma of recent war, argues that reconciliation remains unfinished, that peace agreements signed under international pressure cannot paper over wounds still fresh and grievances still festering. The renewed clashes in Tigray are not aberrations but symptoms of structural failures that no summit can address.

Both narratives contain truth; both are incomplete. This is the bind of contemporary Ethiopia a country where every political advance for one group registers as a setback for another, where federal restructuring amplifies centrifugal forces, where the very diversity that might be a source of strength becomes instead a fault line. The competing visions of these retired intellectuals matter because they shape policy and public discourse, but they also matter because they reveal how profoundly Ethiopians disagree about what their country is and what it ought to become.

And so we return to Addis Ababa, that curious capital where diplomacy and displacement coexist, where economic reform proceeds alongside humanitarian crisis, where smart police stations rise whilst millions go hungry. The government’s wager seems to be that international summits and IMF approvals will gradually translate into domestic stability, that economic growth will eventually trickle down, that the performance of statehood will somehow conjure its substance. It is not an unreasonable bet, nations have bluffed their way to legitimacy before, but it is a precarious one.

The risk is that the spectacle becomes an end in itself, that branding exercises mask rather than address the deeper fractures. When citizens encounter militarised checkpoints in ordinary neighbourhoods, when secret training camps for foreign fighters dot the countryside, when food insecurity spreads whilst officials tweet about tourism development, the gap between official narrative and lived experience becomes unbridgeable. Credibility, once lost, is devilishly hard to recover.

Ethiopia has always been a country of contradictions; ancient yet modern, unified yet fractured, proud yet vulnerable. What distinguishes the present moment is how these contradictions have sharpened, how the space for ambiguity has narrowed. The nation stands at an inflection point, though whether it tilts towards consolidation or fragmentation remains genuinely uncertain.

For all the summit diplomacy and economic indicators, Ethiopia’s true test lies not in Addis but in its peripheries in Tigray and Amhara and Afar, in displacement camps and drought-stricken villages, in the daily struggles of citizens for whom stability is not a diplomatic talking point but a matter of survival. Can a government project continental leadership whilst struggling to govern its own territory? Can economic reform proceed whilst conflict simmers and millions go hungry? Can diplomatic capital substitute for domestic legitimacy?

These are not rhetorical questions. They are the questions that will determine whether Ethiopia emerges from this crucible intact or whether the contradictions finally prove insurmountable. The smart police station gleams in Addis, delegates fill the summit halls, the IMF reviews proceed apace. But beyond the carefully managed spectacle, Ethiopia remains a country at war with itself, its future hanging in a balance that no amount of diplomatic theatre can resolve. Only genuine reconciliation, inclusive governance, and enduring peace can do that and those, alas, cannot be unveiled at press conferences or tweeted into existence.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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Ethiopia’s economic debate is increasingly shaped not by what appears in the national budget, but by what happens outside it. Across ministries, agencies and development bodies, a growing share of public revenue is now raised through so-called contributions, commissions and special charges that sit beyond the formal tax system. These collections are rarely debated in parliament, seldom time-limited and often weakly linked to measurable outcomes. What began as an emergency practice has, quietly, become a governing habit.

For ordinary Ethiopians, the effects are felt not in policy documents but in daily transactions. Traders speak of new charges appearing without warning. Salaried workers notice deductions they struggle to interpret. Small businesses recount inspections that end with payments rather than guidance. The frustration is not simply about money; it is about uncertainty. When obligations change frequently and explanations are thin, people stop planning for growth and start planning for survival.

Economists warn that uncertainty is among the most damaging forces in any economy. It discourages investment, compresses ambition and raises the cost of risk. In Ethiopia, where private enterprise is already navigating inflation, foreign exchange shortages and weak demand, unpredictable charges act as a further brake. The economy remains active, but its capacity to expand is steadily eroded.

Supporters of these off-budget collections usually advance a familiar defence. Ethiopia, they argue, is under exceptional strain. Debt servicing costs are high, security demands remain pressing and public expectations continue to rise. Formal tax reform is slow and politically sensitive. Contributions, commissions and special levies are therefore presented as pragmatic tools, necessary to keep institutions functioning in difficult times.

At first glance, this logic appears reasonable. Governments everywhere must balance ideals against constraints. Yet the defence begins to weaken when the practice becomes permanent rather than temporary. Emergency measures are meant to bridge gaps, not replace systems. When institutions rely on extraction instead of reform, necessity quietly turns into dependency.

The deeper problem is not revenue collection itself, but the absence of a clear link between payment and value. In public finance, legitimacy depends on reciprocity. Citizens accept taxation when they can see how it supports services, infrastructure and opportunity. When money is collected merely to sustain institutions, without visible improvement in performance, trust declines. Over time, compliance becomes grudging rather than voluntary.

This erosion of trust has tangible economic consequences. Businesses shorten their planning horizons. Entrepreneurs postpone expansion. Capital becomes cautious, then mobile. Skilled workers begin to consider exit options. None of this happens overnight. It unfolds gradually, often unnoticed by policymakers until the damage is well advanced.

Ethiopia is not the first country to face this dilemma. Around the world, states under fiscal pressure have experimented with parafiscal measures, especially during periods of crisis. The outcomes are remarkably consistent. Where extraction became routine, growth slowed, informality expanded and political resistance hardened. Where governments corrected course, recovery followed.

In parts of Latin America, repeated emergency levies introduced during debt crises fragmented tax systems and undermined compliance. Businesses faced overlapping obligations, many poorly defined and inconsistently enforced. Investment retreated, and capital flight accelerated. Fiscal stability returned only after governments simplified revenue systems, restored legislative oversight and rebuilt credibility.

Closer to home, several African economies have encountered similar tensions. Special charges introduced to shore up revenue initially generated income, but over time discouraged formalisation and weakened trust. Where reform-minded governments intervened, the solution was not harsher enforcement but rationalisation. Temporary measures were sunsetted, tax bases widened through growth, and administrative efficiency improved.

East Asia’s experience offers perhaps the clearest contrast. During their periods of rapid development, countries such as South Korea and Taiwan faced immense fiscal demands. Yet they resisted the temptation to extract indiscriminately. Instead, they prioritised productivity, industrial expansion and employment. Revenue followed growth, rather than preceding it. Taxes were transparent, predictable and legislated, even as the state played an active economic role.

The common thread across these cases is not ideology, but discipline. Successful governments maintained clear boundaries between taxation and fees. Anything compulsory passed through law. Institutions were required to justify their budgets through performance, not pressure. Citizens were treated as partners in development, not merely sources of revenue.

In Ethiopia, the expansion of off-budget contributions suggests those boundaries are weakening. Institutions increasingly ask where money can be collected, rather than how value can be created. This shift in mindset has long-term consequences. When survival depends on extraction, reform becomes optional. Inefficiency hardens. Accountability fades.

The human cost of this trajectory is often underestimated. Economic pressure does not need to be dramatic to be decisive. For skilled professionals and entrepreneurs, the calculation is incremental. Each additional charge, each new uncertainty, nudges the balance away from investment and towards exit. The result is a quiet but persistent loss of talent and capital.

None of this implies that Ethiopia lacks patriotism or resilience. On the contrary, citizens have repeatedly demonstrated willingness to endure hardship when it is clearly linked to collective progress. What undermines that willingness is not sacrifice itself, but the sense that sacrifice is being demanded without direction or return.

There is also a political dimension that cannot be ignored. When revenue collection escapes parliamentary scrutiny, democratic accountability weakens. Legislatures exist not merely to approve budgets, but to legitimise extraction by linking it to public purpose. Bypassing that process may seem efficient in the short term, but it carries long-term costs for governance.

Critics of reform often argue that Ethiopia cannot afford restraint. Yet the evidence suggests the opposite. Extraction without growth narrows the future tax base. Growth without extraction expands it. The choice is not between revenue and development, but between short-term relief and long-term viability.

Progressive democratic governments that have faced similar constraints have learned this lesson through experience. They have moved to simplify revenue systems, protect predictability and focus on enabling economic activity. They have accepted that sustainable finance depends on confidence as much as coercion.

For Ethiopia, the path forward does not require abandoning revenue mobilisation. It requires re-anchoring it. Contributions must be exceptional, clearly defined and time-limited. Institutions must be incentivised to improve performance rather than seek payments. Parliament must reclaim its role in legitimising compulsory collections.

Most importantly, economic policy must return to first principles. Wealth is created through productivity, innovation and work. Revenue is a by-product of that process. When the order is reversed, economies strain and societies lose faith.

The debate sparked by recent analysis is therefore not a technical quarrel about fees. It is a question about the kind of state Ethiopia wishes to be. A state that finances itself by expanding opportunity builds resilience. A state that finances itself by constant extraction exhausts it.

History offers ample warning, but also reassurance. Countries that recognise the limits of extraction early can correct course. Those that delay pay far more to recover. Ethiopia remains at a moment of choice.

Whether that choice is taken will shape not only fiscal outcomes, but the relationship between citizens and the state. In the end, no economy grows on pressure alone. Growth rests on trust, clarity and the shared belief that effort leads somewhere worth reaching.

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An investigation into how Jeffrey Epstein’s tentacles reached Ethiopia, and what it reveals about power, complicity, and the global reckoning with sexual predation

By E Frashie Ethiopian Tribune Columnist

In the grand tradition of British scandals involving the powerful and the predatory, the Jeffrey Epstein affair has proven to be the gift that keeps on giving—or rather, taking. As the US Department of Justice released millions of documents related to the convicted sex trafficker and financier, Britons watched with grim familiarity as two of their own, Lord Peter Mandelson and Prince Andrew, found themselves ensnared in the lengthening shadow of Epstein’s crimes. For Ethiopians and East Africans, however, the revelations have taken on a peculiar local dimension: their country appears in approximately 334 of the released documents, raising uncomfortable questions about who knew what, and when.

The British experience offers a cautionary tale. Lord Mandelson, the Labour grandee and former EU trade commissioner, has faced renewed scrutiny over his association with Epstein, leading to swift rejection of his potential appointment as US ambassador and intense public opprobrium. Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, has become a pariah within his own family, stripped of royal duties and forced to settle a civil sexual abuse case brought by Virginia Giuffre for a reported £12 million. Both men’s falls from grace illustrate a crucial shift in public tolerance: proximity to a convicted paedophile is no longer merely unfortunate it is damning.

For Ethiopia, a nation already grappling with internal conflicts, economic challenges, and questions of governance, the Epstein connection represents yet another unwelcome international embarrassment. But it also raises profound questions about how predators like Epstein exploited developing nations, and whether enough is being done to investigate his network in Africa.

Britain’s reckoning with the Epstein scandal has been particularly visceral, perhaps because it touches upon enduring anxieties about privilege, power, and paedophilia within the establishment. Lord Mandelson’s association with Epstein reportedly introduced through mutual connections in elite circles—has proven politically toxic. Despite his protestations that he had no knowledge of Epstein’s crimes during their acquaintance, the court of public opinion has rendered its verdict. His nomination as ambassador to Washington was effectively dead on arrival, with both Conservative and Labour figures expressing alarm.

The Mandelson affair echoes the Prince Andrew debacle but with notable differences. Whilst Andrew’s relationship with Epstein was documented through photographs, flight logs, and eventually legal testimony, Mandelson’s connection appears more tangential, dinners, social gatherings, the sort of networking that defines elite circles. Yet in the post-Epstein era, such distinctions matter less than they once might have. The question is no longer “Did you know?” but “Should you have known?” and increasingly, “Why didn’t you ask?”

Prince Andrew’s trajectory from the Queen’s favourite son to virtual exile illustrates the mechanism of social rejection in real time. The now-infamous BBC Newsnight interview in November 2019, in which he claimed he couldn’t have been at a nightclub with Virginia Giuffre because he was at Pizza Express in Woking and suffered from a medical condition preventing him from sweating, became a masterclass in self-immolation. Public revulsion was swift and comprehensive. Corporate sponsors fled. Charities distanced themselves. The military stripped him of honorary titles.

What united both men’s downfalls was their association with a man whose crimes were, by 2008, a matter of public record. Epstein’s initial conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor, a sweetheart plea deal that saw him serve just 13 months, should have ended his social acceptability. That it didn’t speaks to the power of wealth, influence, and the willingness of elites to overlook uncomfortable truths.

Epstein’s 2019 arrest on federal charges of sex trafficking minors and his subsequent death by apparent suicide in a Manhattan jail cell merely confirmed what investigators had long suspected: his earlier conviction represented only a fraction of his crimes. The subsequent releases of court documents, flight logs from his private jet (dubbed the “Lolita Express”), and now the DOJ files have painted a portrait of industrial-scale sexual exploitation involving girls as young as 14.

Yet the released documents reveal something far more disturbing than the already horrific sex trafficking operation. Buried within thousands of pages are references to Epstein’s fascination with eugenics, transhumanism, and what can only be described as a God complex that would make Lucifer himself envious. Witnesses and associates described Epstein’s interest in using his New Mexico ranch to seed the human race with his DNA, impregnating multiple women to create a “superior” bloodline a scheme that echoes the darkest chapters of 20th-century pseudoscience.

The files contain disturbing allegations that extend beyond sexual abuse into territory that seems almost mediaeval in its barbarity. Court testimonies reference Epstein’s circle discussing practices that blur the line between scientific experimentation and occult ritual. One particularly harrowing account describes conversations about cellular regeneration theories and the procurement of biological materials from young victims allegations that, whilst unproven in court, paint a portrait of a man whose depravity knew no bounds.

Whether these represent literal truths or the exaggerations of traumatised witnesses struggling to articulate unspeakable experiences, they underscore a crucial point: Jeffrey Epstein was not merely a sex offender but a man who believed himself above natural and moral law. His interest in cutting-edge science, from artificial intelligence to genetics, was inseparable from his conviction that wealth and intellect entitled him to treat human beings, particularly young girls, as experimental subjects. This, then, was the “Lucifer” that Professor Berhanu Nega might have unwittingly invoked.

The revelation that Berhanu Nega, now Ethiopia’s Minister of Education, received scholarship funding from Jeffrey Epstein takes on an almost prophetic irony given the professor’s own public statements. During his years in opposition to the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) government, Nega famously declared that he would “work with Lucifer himself” if it meant overthrowing the regime he despised.

It was not mere rhetoric. Nega’s political journey has been one of scorched-earth pragmatism. Having left the United States, where he held academic positions, he took the extraordinary step of accepting Eritrean citizenship to wage an armed insurgency against the Ethiopian government. His organisation, Ginbot 7, launched attacks from Eritrean territory, making common cause with one of Africa’s most repressive regimes a government that has held no elections since independence in 1993 and operates what human rights organisations have described as an open-air prison.

The insurgency failed militarily but succeeded in keeping Nega relevant. When Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came to power in 2018, Nega was among the formerly exiled opposition figures welcomed back to Addis Ababa. His transformation from armed rebel to Minister of Education was swift and, to many observers, bewildering. That he now oversees the education of Ethiopia’s children whilst having received funding from a convicted paedophile strikes many Ethiopians as a cosmic joke in exceptionally poor taste.

Nega has maintained that he had no knowledge of Epstein’s crimes when he received the scholarship funding in the early 2000s. This is plausible, Epstein’s 2008 conviction came later, and his ability to maintain a veneer of respectability amongst academics was well-documented. Yet the symbolic resonance remains inescapable: a man who vowed to work with Lucifer did, in fact, accept money from perhaps the closest thing to a living embodiment of evil that modern America has produced.

The question now confronting Nega and the Ethiopian government is whether historical ignorance absolves present responsibility. Should a Minister of Education, responsible for safeguarding children, remain in post whilst associated, however tangentially, with the world’s most notorious child sex trafficker?

The Epstein connection to Ethiopia becomes more disturbing when examined alongside recent developments in the country’s digital infrastructure. According to documents circulating amongst civil liberties advocates and technology researchers, the Ethiopian government has harvested DNA and biometric data from approximately five million children as part of a digital identity programme. The initiative, ostensibly designed to improve access to education and health services, has raised alarm bells amongst data protection experts.

What transforms this from a concerning privacy issue into a potential Epstein connection is the funding architecture. Investigative journalists have identified links between the biometric programme and funding arrangements involving entities connected to Epstein’s network of technology investments. Moreover, contracts with United Arab Emirates-based businesses, some of which appear in the periphery of the Epstein files, suggest a complex web of financial relationships that demand scrutiny.

The UAE connection is particularly troubling. Epstein maintained extensive business relationships in the Gulf states, where privacy laws and less stringent regulatory oversight provided convenient cover for questionable transactions. That Ethiopian government contracts for biometric data collection involving children might flow through similar channels raises urgent questions.

To be clear: there is no evidence of direct Epstein involvement in Ethiopia’s digital ID programme, which postdates his death. But the pattern is familiar developing nations desperate for technological advancement and foreign investment, complex funding arrangements involving offshore entities, and programmes that collect sensitive biological data from vulnerable populations. These are precisely the conditions that predators like Epstein exploited.

The collection of children’s DNA in particular evokes Epstein’s documented fascination with genetics and eugenics. His stated desire to “seed the human race” with his genetic material, his funding of research into human longevity and enhancement, and his connections to the transhumanist movement all suggest a man obsessed with biological manipulation on a grand scale.

For five million Ethiopian children to have their genetic information collected and stored in databases accessible to foreign contractors recalls the darkest elements of the Epstein files. What safeguards exist to prevent this data being sold, shared, or exploited? Who has access? What purposes, beyond the stated administrative ones, might it serve?

These questions acquire particular urgency given Ethiopia’s political instability and history of surveillance. The EPRDF government, which Nega spent years fighting, was notorious for its extensive security apparatus. The current government under Abiy Ahmed has shown little inclination toward greater transparency or respect for privacy rights. The Tigray conflict demonstrated the willingness to use technology, including telecommunications shutdowns, as weapons of war.

The majority of Ethiopian references in the released documents relate to market intelligence reports that Epstein commissioned from consultants, suggesting he had, or was considering, investments in the country. One confirmed investment was iCog Labs, an artificial intelligence research laboratory co-founded by Ben Goertzel, a prominent AI researcher, and Getnet Aseffa. The emails reveal Goertzel’s energetic cultivation of Epstein as a funder, with repeated assurances that “the guys” in Ethiopia were doing “amazing things”, the sort of vague enthusiasm that signals either genuine excitement or, more cynically, the massaging of a wealthy patron’s ego.

The iCog Labs connection is particularly relevant because it illustrates Epstein’s modus operandi in respectable society. By positioning himself as a patron of cutting-edge scientific research, he also funded Harvard University’s Programme for Evolutionary Dynamics and MIT’s Media Lab, Epstein purchased legitimacy. Scientists and academics who accepted his funding found themselves in an impossible position after his crimes became undeniable: return the money and acknowledge poor judgment, or keep it and face accusations of complicity.

Given Epstein’s documented interest in artificial intelligence, genetics, and human enhancement, his funding of an AI laboratory in Ethiopia takes on sinister overtones. Was this genuine philanthropic interest in African technological development, or was Ethiopia, with its limited regulatory oversight and desperate need for investment, an attractive location for research that might face ethical objections elsewhere?

More colourful, if less consequential, are the emails from Shaher Abdulhak, a Yemeni billionaire who died in 2020 and who addressed Epstein as “cousin brother” a term of endearment that sounds rather less charming in English than presumably intended. Abdulhak’s pitches to Epstein included the gloriously ill-conceived idea of creating an energy drink from khat (a stimulant plant chewed across the Horn of Africa and Yemen) mixed with lemon juice to compete with Red Bull.

More seriously, Abdulhak sought a $20 million loan for National Tobacco Enterprise Ethiopia, claiming his Sheba Investment Company owned 60% of it. Whether Epstein provided the funds remains unclear, though the brazen nature of the request speaks to the casual corruption that characterised elite interactions with the financier.

Buried in the correspondence is one email that transforms the Ethiopian connection from merely embarrassing to potentially sinister. In a message apparently sent to Abdulhak, Epstein mentioned that a “good friend who runs a modelling agency” believed there were “interesting girls” in Ethiopia.

In isolation, this phrase might be innocuous. In context, an email from a convicted sex offender who trafficked underage girls internationally, it becomes chilling. The term “interesting girls” echoes the euphemistic language Epstein and his associates used to discuss recruitment of victims. Modelling agencies, legitimate and otherwise, have long been identified as potential vectors for exploitation, offering young women from impoverished backgrounds promises of international careers whilst potentially exposing them to abuse.

Court documents from Epstein’s trials reveal a recruitment pattern that was both systematic and global. Victims were often approached through seemingly legitimate channels, modelling scouts, educational programmes, employment opportunities, before being groomed and trafficked. The operation relied on local recruiters who understood cultural contexts and could identify vulnerable targets.

Ethiopia, with its poverty, limited opportunities for young women, and a culture where deference to wealthy foreigners remains common, would have been an ideal hunting ground. That Epstein’s private jet received permission to land in Ethiopia, and that he mentioned visiting the country in correspondence with Steve Bannon, confirms he had physical presence there.

There is no direct evidence in the released documents that Epstein trafficked Ethiopian girls or engaged in criminal conduct within Ethiopia. But the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, particularly when so much of Epstein’s operation was deliberately hidden. Victims have described being trafficked to numerous countries, being flown on his private jets to locations where their passports were confiscated and they were kept in conditions resembling sexual slavery.

For Ethiopian law enforcement and civil society, these revelations demand investigation. If Epstein visited Ethiopia, whom did he meet? Were any young Ethiopian women recruited through his network? Did any of his associates, the modelling agency friend, for instance, operate in the country?

The reaction amongst Ethiopians and East Africans to the Epstein revelations has been complex, reflecting broader ambivalences about corruption, foreign influence, and accountability. On social media and in diaspora communities, there is genuine anger, not merely at Epstein, but at the Ethiopian individuals and institutions that enabled his presence.

The revelation about Berhanu Nega has proven particularly divisive. His supporters argue that accepting scholarship funding from Epstein over two decades ago, before the full extent of his crimes was publicly known, represents an unfortunate association rather than complicity. His critics counter that a man who vowed to work with Lucifer cannot now claim shock at having done precisely that.

The controversy has reignited broader questions about Nega’s judgment and principles. His acceptance of Eritrean citizenship to fight Ethiopia, making common cause with a regime at least as repressive as the EPRDF he opposed, already raised eyebrows. His seamless transition from armed insurgent to government minister suggested a pragmatism that borders on opportunism. The Epstein connection adds another troubling layer.

Yet there is also a strain of fatalism in East African responses, a sense that corruption and exploitation by wealthy foreigners is simply business as usual. Ethiopia has long experience with foreign actors from colonial powers to modern corporations and NGOs extracting value whilst leaving minimal benefit. In this reading, Epstein is merely the latest in a long line of predators, and focusing on him distracts from structural problems.

This cynicism, whilst understandable, is dangerous. It normalises exploitation and discourages the accountability mechanisms necessary to prevent future abuses. The global reckoning with Epstein’s crimes has demonstrated that exposure and prosecution are possible, albeit belatedly.

The convergence of Epstein’s eugenic obsessions with Ethiopia’s biometric data collection programme represents a thoroughly modern nightmare. Epstein’s interest in “improving” the human race through selective breeding was, at least in his expressed ambitions, constrained by biology how many women could he impregnate? But contemporary genetic databases and artificial intelligence offer possibilities that would have seemed like science fiction even a decade ago.

The five million Ethiopian children whose DNA has been harvested now exist as data points in systems whose full capabilities and access protocols remain opaque. In the wrong hands, such databases could enable precisely the sort of genetic manipulation and selection that Epstein fantasised about. Even in benign hands, the data represents extraordinary value pharmaceutical companies pay enormous sums for genetic information from diverse populations.

That contracts related to this programme involve UAE-based entities with peripheral connections to Epstein’s network may be coincidental. But given the pattern of Epstein’s investments, artificial intelligence in Ethiopia, genetic research globally, transhumanist projects, the possibility of intentional targeting cannot be dismissed.

The Ethiopian government’s response to questions about data security has been, at best, inadequate. Officials tout the benefits of digital identity whilst providing few details about encryption, access controls, or international data-sharing agreements. For a government that has demonstrated willingness to use technology repressively, and which employs a Minister of Education who received funding from a paedophile eugenicist, assurances ring hollow.

What the Epstein files ultimately reveal, whether the references are to Britain, Ethiopia, or the dozens of other jurisdictions touched by his crimes, is the banality of elite evil. Epstein was not a Bond villain operating from a secret lair. He was a fixture of respectable society, funding university departments, advising the wealthy, socialising with princes and presidents.

His crimes were enabled not by exotic conspiracy but by the mundane mechanisms of wealth and power: the assumption that rich men deserve privacy, the reluctance to ask awkward questions of generous donors, the willingness to overlook earlier convictions in exchange for access and funding.

For Ethiopia, the lessons are particularly stark. When Professor Berhanu Nega vowed to work with Lucifer himself to achieve his political aims, he articulated a principle, that ends justify means, which is fundamentally corrupting. Whether he knowingly accepted money from a monster is less important than his demonstrated willingness to do so. That such a man now oversees the education of Ethiopia’s children, whilst his government harvests their genetic data through murky international contracts, should alarm anyone concerned with child welfare.

The parallels with Britain’s experience are instructive. Lord Mandelson and Prince Andrew discovered that wealth, title, and power provide no immunity from public judgment when the crimes are sufficiently heinous and the association sufficiently close. Both have been effectively exiled from polite society, their legacies permanently tarnished.

Ethiopian figures connected to Epstein deserve similar scrutiny. The fact that Ethiopia is poorer than Britain, that its media infrastructure is weaker, that competing crises demand attention none of these absolve the moral responsibility to investigate and, where appropriate, demand accountability.

As more files are released and investigations continue, the full extent of Epstein’s Ethiopian connections may become clearer. For now, Ethiopians are left with uncomfortable questions, partial answers, and the knowledge that their country appeared on the radar of one of history’s most prolific sexual predators a man whose interests in genetics, artificial intelligence, and young girls may have found fertile ground in a nation desperate for investment and incapable of effective oversight.

If Berhanu Nega truly made a Faustian bargain, working with his Lucifer to achieve power, the devil has certainly had his due. The question now is whether Ethiopia’s children will pay the price for their elders’ moral compromises. With five million of them reduced to data points in databases connected, however tenuously, to a dead paedophile’s trans humanist fantasies, the answer may already be written in code we’ve yet to fully decrypt.

The Ethiopian Tribune continues to investigate the Epstein files and welcomes information from readers regarding any connections between Epstein’s network and activities in the Horn of Africa. We particularly seek information about the biometric data collection programme, its funding sources, and its international partnerships.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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By E Frashie Ethiopian Tribune Columnist

The spectacle unfolded with predictable diplomatic grace. Ahmed Shide, flanked by technocrats bearing reform credentials, presented Ethiopia’s latest infrastructural dream to Christopher Landau: a New International Airport that would, we are told, cement our nation’s place as the aviation crossroads of Africa. The pitch was delivered with the earnest confidence of a government that believes it has finally learned to speak the language of international finance. One wonders whether Washington was listening, or merely being polite.

Let us be clear: the airport itself is no fantasy. Ethiopian Airlines has become our most undeniable success story, a rare state enterprise that operates not as a patronage vehicle but as a genuine commercial force. Bole International Airport, conceived in a different era, now strains under passenger volumes that have tripled in barely more than a decade. The airline’s ambitions, continental dominance, global connectivity, cannot be realised from an infrastructure choking on its own success. A new airport is not governmental grandstanding; it is commercial logic.

But logic and timing are not always companions. The government presents this proposal at a moment when our macroeconomic foundations resemble less a platform for launch than quicksand requiring constant attention. Inflation persists in double digits despite official assurances of moderation. Our foreign reserves hover perilously around two months of import cover a figure that would alarm any serious economist. The birr continues its choreographed decline, and our Chinese creditors loom large in the fiscal shadows, their patience neither infinite nor unconditional.

So when Minister Ahmed speaks of American finance and engineering expertise, we must recognise this for what it truly is: an attempt to escape a creditor relationship that has grown uncomfortably singular. For two decades, Chinese state enterprises have reshaped our physical landscape, railways, roads, industrial parks, often on terms whose opacity matched their generosity. Now, with Beijing reassessing its global commitments and Ethiopia nursing debt obligations that constrain every budget negotiation, Addis Ababa seeks new partners. The turn to Washington is less conversion than diversification.

The Americans, credit to them, have responded with the diplomatic equivalent of “show us the money.” Landau’s acknowledgment of our reform progress came wrapped in the careful language of private-sector engagement—code for demanding the very things Chinese lenders rarely insisted upon: transparency, enforceable contracts, predictable regulation, political stability. These are not unreasonable requirements. They are, however, uncomfortable ones for a government whose recent history includes civil conflict, internet blackouts, and human rights controversies that have tested Western patience.

The reform narrative our ministers presented is familiar to anyone who has followed multilateral lending discussions: fiscal consolidation, monetary discipline, private-sector-led growth. These phrases roll easily off official tongues, honed through countless meetings with IMF delegations and World Bank missions. But rhetoric and reality maintain an uneasy relationship in Ethiopian political economy. We have announced reforms before. Implementation has proven the harder discipline.

Consider the government’s infrastructure record. The Addis-Djibouti Railway operates, yes, but profitability remains elusive and maintenance costs mount. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam stands as both national achievement and cautionary tale years behind schedule, billions over budget, diplomatically toxic. These projects reflect a pattern: ambition announced with fanfare, execution plagued by complications the initial projections somehow failed to anticipate. Why should the airport escape this trajectory?

Yet dismissing the airport as mere governmental overreach would be equally mistaken. Aviation represents one sector where Ethiopia possesses genuine competitive advantage. Ethiopian Airlines contributes approximately three percent of GDP and supports employment networks extending far beyond its direct payroll. The hub-and-spoke model upon which this success depends absolutely requires infrastructure capable of sustaining growth. Without the airport, we risk strangling our most successful enterprise in the cradle of its own expansion.

The question, then, is not whether Ethiopia needs this airport but whether Ethiopia can deliver it. The government has offered no detailed cost projections, no financing structure, no clarity on whether this will be public-private partnership, sovereign loan, or some multilateral arrangement. This absence of specificity is not encouraging. Large infrastructure projects require not only vision but mathematical precision, risk assessment, and honest accounting of what we can afford versus what we aspire to build.

The government’s simultaneous push for banking sector liberalisation and telecommunications reform suggests awareness that credibility requires more than promises. Foreign investors particularly American firms unaccustomed to the patient opacity of Chinese state capitalism will demand evidence of regulatory consistency and judicial independence. They will scrutinise land rights frameworks, labour relations, currency policy, and a dozen other factors that determine whether contracts mean what they claim to mean.

This is where the airport proposal transcends infrastructure and becomes geopolitical theatre. Washington views the Horn of Africa as strategically significant, a region where Chinese influence has grown uncomfortably dominant from the American perspective. Supporting Ethiopian infrastructure allows the United States to deepen economic engagement while promoting its preferred development model: private capital, governance standards, environmental commitments. But American engagement will be conditional, calibrated by risk assessments that weigh Ethiopia’s potential against its instabilities.

For Addis Ababa, the calculation is equally complex. We need Western goodwill for ongoing IMF negotiations and access to concessional finance. We need to demonstrate we are not simply a Chinese client state. But we also need to maintain domestic political control and manage nationalist sensitivities about foreign influence. The airport becomes the stage upon which these contradictions must somehow be reconciled.

The Ethiopian public, meanwhile, observes with practiced scepticism. We have heard grand infrastructure promises before. We have watched costs balloon and timelines extend while benefits concentrate in familiar hands. The government must therefore communicate not merely the vision but the mechanics: Who will build? Who will profit? Who will bear the costs if projections prove optimistic? Transparency is not simply a Western imposition; it is the foundation of public trust in expensive national commitments.

What unfolds here is larger than an airport. It is Ethiopia attempting to rewrite its economic model while managing the geopolitical consequences of past choices. It is a government seeking legitimacy through reform rhetoric while grappling with implementation challenges that rhetoric cannot solve. It is a nation at the intersection of aspiration and constraint, hoping American capital can bridge the gap.

The airport may eventually rise concrete and steel testament to Ethiopian ambition and American partnership. Or it may join the lengthening list of projects whose promise exceeded our capacity for delivery. The difference will be determined not by ministerial presentations in Washington but by the unglamorous work of building institutions, honouring commitments, and managing the distance between what we announce and what we achieve.

For now, the proposal stands as exactly that: a proposal, polished and presented, awaiting the cold arithmetic of feasibility studies and risk assessments. Whether it becomes monument or mirage depends on questions the government has yet to answer publicly. One hopes the enthusiasm for American finance is matched by appetite for American scrutiny.

The challenge, as always, is ours to meet.

 The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of the Ethiopian Tribune

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By Ethiopian Tribune columnist E. Frashie

On 17th January, the announcement of the Amhara Fano National Movement (AFNM) did more than consolidate disparate militias under a single command structure. In the movement’s own triumphalist language, it has taken “a historic decision that will close the valley through which the Prosperity Party group…draws its breath.” Stripped of revolutionary bombast, this means something simpler but no less significant: it called the bluff of Ethiopia’s political establishment. For 22 months, the government of Abiy Ahmed has refused to negotiate with Fano on the grounds that the movement was too fragmented to engage meaningfully. That excuse, threadbare even when first deployed, has now been comprehensively demolished. The movement now operates under “one leader, one organization” precisely what the government claimed was necessary for dialogue. The question is whether Addis Ababa, and its intellectual enablers, will acknowledge this reality or continue retreating into ever more baroque conspiracy theories about foreign manipulation.

The unification deserves serious analysis, not reflexive dismissal. Yet the response from government-aligned commentators, exemplified by Dr Dagnachew Assefa’s recent Andafta interview, reveals an intellectual poverty that augurs poorly for Ethiopia’s prospects. When a political movement you’ve spent nearly two years fighting suddenly presents you with the interlocutor you claimed to want, the appropriate response is not to insist they must be puppets of Eritrea, Egypt, and the TPLF. Such arguments insult the intelligence of observers and, more seriously, foreclose any possibility of the political settlement Ethiopia desperately needs.

The Mechanics of Unification: More Sophisticated Than Acknowledged

The Reyot Media discussion of 26th January provides crucial context absent from government narratives. The merger addresses three specific operational deficiencies that had plagued Fano since the conflict’s inception in April 2023:

First, the propaganda disadvantage. As Reyot’s journalist and his guest note, the fragmentation between entities like the Amhara Fano National Force (AFNF) and Amhara Fano Popular Organisation (AFPO), colloquially referred to as “AFAD” and “AFAB” respectively, allowed the Prosperity Party to portray the movement as disorganised rabble incapable of coherent political thought. This wasn’t merely rhetorical. It provided justification for refusing dialogue whilst pursuing military solutions, and it deterred international engagement.

Second, the diplomatic impasse. Without a single leadership structure or unified political programme, external actors, whether potential mediators or sympathetic diaspora communities, faced a coordination nightmare. Whom does one negotiate with when four regional commands operate independently? Which political document represents Fano’s actual demands? The new structure, with its 13-member central command, resolves this ambiguity.

Third, operational inefficiency. Logistics in insurgencies are difficult enough without duplicated efforts and competing resource claims. The Reyot discussion highlights how support networks were “confused” about where to direct assistance, leading to waste whilst fighters in the field faced shortages.

The leadership structure itself reflects careful balancing:

• Chairman: Zemene Kassie (Gojjam faction)
• First Vice-Chairman: Meketaw Mamo (Gondar faction)
• Vice-Chairman for Military Affairs: Habte Wolde (field commander)
• Vice-Chairman for Political Affairs: Henok Addis (political strategist)
• Military Commander: Brigadier General Tefera Mamo (professional military background)
• Public Relations: Asres Mare (communications strategy)
• Foreign Affairs: Brook Shileshi (international engagement)

Notably, the organization has assigned Eskinder Nega to the “Policy & Strategy Directorate” rather than a top-tier position a placement we shall examine shortly.

This is not, pace Dr Dagnachew, the product of “totalisation” imposed by foreign patrons. It is a deliberate institutional design meant to represent major factional interests whilst establishing clear lines of authority. The inclusion of both military commanders (Habte, Tefera) and political figures (Henok, Brook) suggests an organisation preparing for both continued armed struggle and eventual negotiation.

More revealing is the ideological framework the movement has adopted. In its 17th January statement, AFNM explicitly declares “Amhara nationalism” as its guiding worldview: “the ideological framework through which we will struggle, beginning with winning the current existential struggle and, in the long term, by securing the survival and identity of our people and safeguarding their rights and interests.” This framing of an “existential threat” requiring a “new Amhara revolution” positions the movement not as insurgents pursuing tactical objectives but as a people engaged in survival struggle.

The statement’s rhetoric is uncompromising: “Indeed, the Amhara are a people facing annihilation…we now find ourselves stripped of our country, made stateless, and placed under the dire threat of destruction amid a state-led genocide.” Whether one accepts this characterisation or not, it signals that AFNM sees itself fighting not for policy concessions but for collective survival a maximalist framing that complicates potential negotiations whilst explaining the movement’s resilience.

The Eskinder Nega Puzzle: Strategic Placement, Not Rejection

The case of Eskinder Nega, veteran journalist, political prisoner under the EPRDF, and prominent Fano political figure illuminates the movement’s internal dynamics more than any external analysis could.

The AFNM statement assigns Eskinder to the “Policy & Strategy Directorate” rather than one of the four top positions (Chairman, First Deputy, Military Affairs Deputy, Political Affairs Deputy). The Reyot Media discussion reported he had declined a specific politburo position, generating speculation about exhaustion or temperamental incompatibility with committee structures.

Yet the official statement’s acknowledgement that “entrenched divisive tendencies, interference by opportunistic interest groups, and the poisonous hands of the enemy constituted the principal challenges” in achieving unity suggests a different interpretation. The “repeated efforts” to establish “a single Fano organization” faced internal obstacles likely including Eskinder’s own political base and ideological positions. His placement in Policy & Strategy, rather than a rejection, may represent a calculated compromise: leveraging his intellectual contributions whilst avoiding the power-sharing complications a top-tier position would create.

The Reyot discussion offers two interpretations, neither of which involves foreign manipulation:

The exhaustion hypothesis: After nearly two years in the field, including periods of intense combat, Eskinder may simply lack the physical stamina for the grinding administrative work a politburo position entails. Armed struggle is not romantic; it involves disease, malnutrition, constant displacement, and the psychological toll of sustained violence. That a 56-year-old intellectual might choose to contribute without accepting formal leadership responsibilities is entirely comprehensible.

The temperamental hypothesis: Eskinder’s political career has been characterised by uncompromising principle and individualistic style. He spent years in Kaliti Prison rather than moderate his criticisms of the EPRDF. Such figures often struggle within committee structures that require consensus-building and tactical compromise. As Reyot’s analysts observe, his “uncompromising” nature may make rigid organisational hierarchies uncomfortable, even when he supports the broader cause.

Critically, Eskinder did not bolt to form a rival organisation, the predictable move for someone prioritising personal ambition over collective goals. The statement’s gratitude to “all leaders of the two organizations: especially for the leadership and determination you demonstrated during this unity process” implicitly acknowledges that achieving merger required mutual concessions. Eskinder’s acceptance of a directorate position, contributing without demanding a top seat, actually demonstrates the unification’s strength. It suggests that factional leaders recognise the movement’s survival depends on unity, even when this requires personal sacrifice.

Yet Dr Dagnachew’s narrative has no room for such nuance. In his telling, any organisational changes within Fano must reflect external manipulation rather than internal political processes. This analytical framework cannot explain Eskinder’s decision except through conspiracy a methodology that substitutes innuendo for evidence.

What Unification Actually Changes: The Strategic Landscape

The operational implications of AFNM’s formation are substantial and deserve acknowledgement even from critics:

Military coordination: For the first time, operations across Gojjam, Gondar, Wollo, and Shewa can be synchronised under unified command. This isn’t merely administrative tidiness; it fundamentally alters battlefield dynamics. Where previously government forces could exploit gaps between factional territories, they now face an adversary capable of coordinated multi-front operations.

AFNM claims significant military success under the previous decentralised structure: “The victories achieved through the determined sacrifice of life of our forces under a decentralized organisational structure dismantled the regime’s defense forces, the main source of its power, and reduced the regime to a mere insurgent confined to Arat Kilo [the Presidential Palace].” The statement continues: “We have turned the regime’s generals, forgetting their military command, into mere cadres left only with their tongues.”

This is revolutionary rhetoric, not sober military assessment. Yet even accounting for triumphalism, the September 2025 operations around Woldiya, Mekane Selam, and Gashena whether fully successful or partially exaggerated demonstrate capacity for significant operations after 22 months of government military pressure. The AFNM’s confidence that “with the first phase of the struggle concluding in victory and the regime’s army disintegrating, it became necessary for Fano to grow into a successor force” suggests they believe they’ve achieved strategic parity, if not superiority, in the Amhara region.

Narrative control: The proliferation of Fano-affiliated media channels (Anchor, Roha TV, Ethio 360, Amhara Fano TV) has created messaging chaos, with different outlets promoting different commanders and occasionally contradictory political lines. A single public relations structure under Asres Mare allows coherent messaging that can counter government propaganda more effectively. This matters in modern conflicts where information warfare runs parallel to kinetic operations.

AFNM’s Expansive Vision: From Amhara Survival to Pan-Ethiopian Liberation

The movement’s 17th January statement reveals ambitions extending far beyond Amhara regional concerns. In a passage that should alarm anyone hoping for quick negotiated settlement, AFNM frames its struggle as the salvation of all Ethiopians:

“Given the current reality facing our country, we do not believe there is any Ethiopian community that has not been subjected, openly or implicitly, to genocidal violence or an existential threat. Every people’s survival is at risk. Ethiopia stands on the edge of a cliff. Accordingly, the Fano struggle represents a decisive political solution not only for the survival of the Amhara people but also for the political salvation of other Ethiopian peoples. An Amhara victory is a victory for the Gurage, the Tigrayan, the Oromo, the Gumuz, the Afar, the Somali, the Wolayta, the Sidama, the Gamo, and other peoples as well.”

This is either magnificent delusion or sophisticated political positioning perhaps both. It reframes Fano from ethnic militia to pan-Ethiopian liberation movement, claiming to fight not just for Amhara but for all Ethiopia’s peoples. The statement explicitly calls on “all political groups and elites” to “stand together and struggle for a shared destiny, as remaining a bystander leads to sequential attacks and destruction.”

More provocatively, AFNM extends its solidarity regionally: “Abiy is the sharp horn of the Horn of Africa, piercing everyone, drawing blood from all, and trampling the homes of the region’s peoples with both hands and feet. For this reason, removing the genocidal Abiy Ahmed regime requires cooperation not only among Ethiopians but also among regional forces. All collaborations aimed at removing this regime and stabilising the region are fully legitimate.”

Read carefully, this passage pre-emptively legitimises precisely the external cooperation Dr Dagnachew accuses them of pursuing. “All collaborations” for regime removal are “fully legitimate” including, presumably, with Eritrea, Egypt, or any regional actor sharing the objective. Whether this reflects existing arrangements or creates political cover for future ones, it demonstrates political sophistication belying the “foreign puppet” narrative.

The message to the international community is equally telling. AFNM calls for ending “support to the anti-people and anti-peace Prosperity regime” whilst applying “necessary pressure to deprive the regime of its destructive capacity.” They request support for “cooperation among Fano and other anti-regime struggle forces” and humanitarian access.

This is the language of a political movement positioning itself as government-in-waiting, not an insurgent group seeking negotiated settlement. The statement nowhere offers compromise, nowhere acknowledges government legitimacy, nowhere proposes power-sharing. The objective, stated plainly, is regime removal.

Governance potential: If the movement genuinely controls substantial territory, their claim of 75% of the Amhara region is unverified but not implausible given government forces’ concentration in urban centres, it requires administrative structures beyond military command. A politburo with designated portfolios provides the institutional foundation for nascent governance, however rudimentary.

These are not trivial developments. They represent the maturation of what began as spontaneous local defence militias into something approaching a conventional armed movement with political structures. That this occurred through Ethiopian agency, drawing on Ethiopia’s own historical examples (the Reyot discussion explicitly references the Quara Covenant’s symbolism, invoking Emperor Tewodros II’s unification struggles), should command respect rather than dismissal.

Deconstructing Dr Dagnachew’s Conspiracy Theory

Dr Dagnachew Assefa’s 26th January Andafta interview represents a genre increasingly common in Ethiopian political discourse: the unfalsifiable conspiracy theory dressed in academic credentials. His central claim, that Zemene Kassie’s prominence results from coordination between Eritrea, Egypt, and the TPLF warrants detailed examination.

The evidentiary vacuum:

Dr. Dagnachew offers zero documentation for this grand conspiracy he’s busy stitching together. No intercepted calls, no shadowy bank transfers, no trembling witnesses, not even a misplaced diplomatic Post-it note. Instead, he serves us a buffet of “must be,” “had to,” and “surely”the academic equivalent of seasoning thin soup with wishful thinking.

According to him, Fano “had to” rely on Shabiya for logistics, Egypt “must be” wiring the cash, and TPLF somehow “benefits from” Fano’s actions. These aren’t facts; they’re hypotheses dressed up in borrowed authority, strutting around like they own the place.

And then, because every weak argument needs a celebrity cameo, he starts dropping names like the former deputy PM, all while clacking his bargain-bin denture like a metronome of insecurity. You can practically hear the click-click as he rushes to reinvent and redraft his flimsy narrative, popping that denture back into place every time it threatens to escape mid-sentence. The poor thing is working harder than his evidence.

The logical incoherence: Why would the TPLF, which lost territory and political dominance partly due to Amhara mobilisation during the Tigray war, now support an armed Amhara movement? Dr Dagnachew’s answer that TPLF seeks to destabilise the federal government, ignores that TPLF has returned to participation in federal politics, holding ministerial positions and pursuing its interests through constitutional channels. Supporting Fano would undermine this strategy whilst risking renewed conflict on TPLF’s southern border.

Similarly, whilst Eritrea has historical grievances with Ethiopia and Egypt has Nile disputes, the notion that these states would coordinate with TPLF Eritrea’s bitter enemy during the Tigray war strains credulity. Dr Dagnachew asks us to believe that three actors with fundamentally opposed interests have formed an alliance whose sole purpose is elevating Zemene Kassie. This is not geopolitical analysis; it is fantasy.

The denial of agency: Most pernicious is the framework’s complete denial of Ethiopian, specifically Amhara, agency. In Dr Dagnachew’s narrative, Amhara cannot organise politically except through foreign manipulation. They cannot unite except through external pressure. They cannot resist government policies except as proxies. This Orientalist perspective presenting Ethiopians as passive objects of external forces rather than subjects of their own history, is intellectually bankrupt.

The “just war” sophistry: Dr Dagnachew invokes just war theory to argue Fano’s struggle has become illegitimate because it now pursues “regime change” rather than self-defence. This argument would carry more weight if the Ethiopian government had not spent 22 months:

• Conducting drone strikes on civilian gatherings (East Gojjam, 17th April 2025: 100+ killed at a primary school)
• Massacring civilians during house-to-house searches (Merawi, 30th January 2024: 89 dead; Birakat, 31st March 2025: 40+ dead)
• Implementing mass arrests based on ethnicity (thousands detained in Addis Ababa)
• Maintaining telecommunications blackouts preventing documentation of abuses
• Refusing all dialogue whilst insisting Fano is too fragmented to negotiate

When a government conducts systematic atrocities against an ethnic population whilst refusing political engagement, what precisely is the “just” response? Continued submission? Dr Dagnachew’s just war framework holds insurgents to standards he conspicuously avoids applying to state forces.

The Welkait canard: His claim that attributing Welkait’s capture to Fano “plays into TPLF narratives” is particularly revealing. Welkait, administratively part of Tigray but demographically mixed and historically contested, was indeed taken from TPLF control during the Tigray war but by whom? Federal forces certainly participated, but so did Amhara regional forces and local militias. Dr Dagnachew’s insistence that only federal and regional special forces deserve credit erases the role of irregular forces, essentially demanding that Fano write themselves out of their own history to avoid offending TPLF sensibilities. Why should Amhara fighters who participated in Welkait’s capture deny their role to accommodate TPLF propaganda? The absurdity is self-evident.

The Territorial Expansion Question: Real Grievances, Cynical Exploitation

The Consortium of Ethiopian Civil Associations’ (CECA) March 2025 statement about Oromo territorial expansion, particularly following the February OLF-OFC Elilly Hotel meeting, touches genuine issues whilst drawing questionable conclusions.

The OLF-OFC joint statement did indeed demand recognition of Addis Ababa (Finfinnee) as Oromia’s capital and claimed territories including Wollo, Metekel, Dire Dawa, Moyale, and Harar. These demands rest on contested historical narratives about pre-existing Oromo settlement patterns versus administrative boundaries imposed under previous regimes.

The legitimate concern: When such demands are articulated whilst Amhara civilians face documented atrocities, the timing appears deliberately provocative. Whether intended or not, it reinforces Amhara perceptions of coordinated assault military operations by government forces combined with territorial claims by Oromo political organisations. CECA’s alarm is comprehensible.

The dishonest framing: CECA characterises this as a “Prosperity Party-led Oromummaa project” involving “hatred, separation, and expansion,” suggesting government orchestration. Yet the evidence for government initiation is thin. The OLF and OFC are opposition parties; their maximalist territorial claims likely reflect internal political positioning rather than government coordination. Indeed, such demands complicate rather than assist government strategy by inflaming ethnic tensions.

Moreover, CECA’s invocation of “Orthodox Christian unity” (የተዋሕዶ) alongside territorial integrity reveals its own ethnic-religious particularism. Why should Orthodox Christianity be relevant to territorial disputes in a constitutionally secular state? This framing excludes Ethiopia’s Muslims (approximately 34% of the population), Protestants, and traditional religionists from the imagined political community CECA claims to represent.

The deeper problem: Ethiopia’s ethnic federal system has structurally incentivised zero-sum territorial competition. When political power, resource allocation, and cultural recognition all flow through ethnically-defined regional states, boundary disputes become existential rather than administrative. The constitution provides no clear mechanism for resolving these disputes beyond potentially violent referenda.

Both Oromo maximalist claims (Addis Ababa as Oromia’s capital) and Amhara maximalist claims (Welkait as eternally Amhara) rest on selective historical narratives that ignore centuries of population mixing, administrative changes, and demographic shifts. There is no neutral historical baseline to which Ethiopia can “return” only competing visions of which historical moment should be privileged.

This doesn’t mean all territorial claims are equally valid or that violence is inevitable. It means the constitutional framework itself requires fundamental reform precisely what CECA gestures towards in demanding a “new democratic constitutional order.” Yet CECA undermines this potentially productive call by framing it through explicitly Amhara-Orthodox particularism rather than genuinely pluralist principles.

What the Government Should Do (But Won’t)

The AFNM unification creates a genuine opportunity for political settlement, if the government possessed the wisdom to seize it:

Immediate confidence-building measures:

• Declare a unilateral 30-day ceasefire
• Release political prisoners, particularly high-profile detainees like Christian Tadele and Yohannes Buayalew.
• Restore telecommunications in conflict zones to allow documentation and communication
• Permit international humanitarian access to assess civilian conditions
• Establish an independent commission to investigate atrocities by all parties

Structured dialogue framework:

• Acknowledge AFNM as a legitimate interlocutor for negotiations
• Establish a neutral mediation structure, potentially involving African Union facilitation
• Develop a clear negotiating agenda addressing security sector reform, regional autonomy, constitutional amendments, and transitional justice
• Set realistic timelines with measurable milestones

Constitutional reform process:

• Initiate broad national dialogue on ethnic federalism’s future
• Consider models from other multi-ethnic federations (Switzerland, Belgium, Canada) that don’t rely on strict territorial ethnic separation
• Develop mechanisms for resolving boundary disputes without violence
• Strengthen federal institutions to provide arenas for interethnic cooperation

None of this will happen. The government’s response will likely follow predictable patterns: dismiss AFNM’s legitimacy using conspiracy theories about foreign manipulation; continue military operations whilst claiming to seek peace; make tactical concessions without strategic shifts; and hope that internal AFNM divisions will eventually re-emerge, allowing a return to the “too fragmented to negotiate” excuse.

This approach has two problems: it’s not working militarily, and it’s destroying the country politically.

The Military Stalemate Nobody Acknowledges

After 22 months of conflict, the military situation has reached equilibrium though AFNM insists the conflict has actually lasted “30 months” (counting from April 2023), suggesting their timeline includes earlier confrontations before the April 2023 state of emergency. Neither side admits stalemate:

Government forces control major urban centres, main highways, and critical infrastructure. They possess overwhelming advantages in heavy weaponry, air power, and logistics. Yet they cannot pacify the countryside, cannot prevent AFNM operations, and cannot restore civilian administration outside fortified positions. The September 2025 operations around Woldiya, Mekane Selam, and Gashena whether fully successful or partially exaggerated demonstrate that AFNM can still mount significant operations despite sustained government military pressure.

AFNM forces apparently control substantial rural territory (their claim that the regime is “reduced to a mere insurgent confined to Arat Kilo” is hyperbolic, but government territorial control is clearly limited), can operate across multiple zones, and maintain popular support sufficient to sustain operations. Their appeal to “uniformed forces and militias” reveals strategic thinking: “It is no secret to you that the regime’s source of power is not the people, but the blood of uniformed forces. Nor is it hidden from you that, for as long as the regime prolongs its grip on power, it has no regard for your lives…Understanding that your death is not for your country but for a regime that cannot be satisfied without human blood; we call on you to join the Fano struggle.”

This is sophisticated psychological warfare targeting the Ethiopian National Defence Force’s (ENDF) morale suggesting AFNM recognises it cannot defeat the ENDF militarily but might undermine it politically. Yet AFNM has not captured major cities, cannot hold territory against determined government assaults, and shows no capacity to march on Addis Ababa. Their strategy appears to be creating ungovernable space whilst waiting for political opportunities, a classic insurgent approach but one that implies protracted conflict rather than imminent victory.

This is the definition of stalemate. Neither side can achieve decisive military victory, yet both continue pursuing military solutions. The result is accumulating civilian suffering without strategic progress:

• Documented civilian deaths: Hundreds in specific incidents (Merawi 89, East Gojjam 100+, Birakat 40+), likely thousands overall
• Displacement: Tens of thousands from conflict zones
• Economic disruption: Agricultural production disrupted, markets closed, investment fled
• Humanitarian crisis: Limited access for aid organisations, potential famine conditions
• Generational trauma: Children witnessing atrocities, families fractured, communities destroyed

Dr Dagnachew’s just war question about proportionality should be directed not only at Fano but at the government prosecuting this unwinnable conflict. What political objective justifies drone-striking a primary school? What strategic necessity requires massacring civilians in house-to-house searches? What national interest is served by maintaining a stalemate that bleeds the country whilst foreclosing political solutions?

The International Dimension: Rhetoric versus Reality

Both AFNM statements and government-aligned narratives invoke international actors, though with opposite valuations:

AFNM’s claims: The movement accuses the government of coordinating with the UAE for drone strikes and receiving support from regional actors opposed to Amhara interests. The UAE connection is plausible, the country has sold military drones to Ethiopia and maintains significant economic investments. Whether this constitutes active “coordination” for anti-Amhara operations or simply arms sales to a recognised government is debatable.

Government claims: As articulated by Dr Dagnachew and others, Fano is supposedly coordinated with Eritrea, Egypt, and TPLF. We’ve addressed the evidentiary and logical problems with this narrative. Eritrea and Egypt certainly have interests in Ethiopian instability, Eritrea due to border disputes and authoritarianism’s fear of Ethiopian democratisation; Egypt due to Nile water concerns. Whether these interests translate into active Fano support is unproven.

The actual international position: External actors the African Union, United States, European Union, neighbouring states have shown limited engagement with Ethiopia’s internal conflicts post-Tigray war. The November 2022 Pretoria Agreement ending the Tigray conflict consumed enormous diplomatic capital; international appetite for mediating another Ethiopian civil war appears limited.

Interestingly, AFNM’s unity process itself involved external observers, though Ethiopian rather than international. The statement thanks “the observers’ team, comprising seven members, including Ambassador Birhane Meskel Nega and Major Dawit Wolde-Giyorgis, led by His Highness Asfawossen Asrate Kassa, for following the process impartially and for providing solutions whenever requested by the technical committee.”

The inclusion of Asfawossen Asrate Kassa first cousin of Emperor Haile Selassie and claimant to the defunct imperial throne, is symbolically loaded. It signals AFNM’s conscious connection to pre-revolutionary Ethiopian state traditions, positioning the movement within a narrative of historical continuity rather than revolutionary rupture. Whether this reflects genuine monarchist sympathies or tactical use of traditional legitimacy symbols, it demonstrates political sophistication in deploying cultural capital.

The 2026 elections present a potential inflection point, but early indications suggest international observers will be restricted (per CECA’s warnings about new civil society legislation) and legitimacy will be contested regardless of results.

Dr. Dagnachew, who now parades around calling himself Fitawrari as though he’s auditioning for a historical drama no one asked for, treats geopolitics like a village gossip session conducted under a flickering lightbulb. He invokes President Trump’s description of Ethiopia’s premier as a “strong man,” blissfully unaware that in American political snob-speak this is a polite way of saying “dictator” without having to commit to the word. But nuance has never been Dr. Dagnachew’s strong suit; he handles nuance the way a toddler handles a crystal vase.

He then drags the Trump administration’s past rhetoric on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam into his argument, as if name-dropping global powers will magically inflate the credibility of his claims. Trump’s off‑the‑cuff remark that Egypt might “blow up” the dam caused widespread alarm, even though his administration’s actual policies were far less dramatic. But in Dr. Dagnachew’s retelling, this becomes a prophetic omen, a coded message, a geopolitical horoscope anything except what it actually was: Trump being Trump.

He goes on to warn that a second Trump administration, sworn in on 20 January 2025, could pressure Ethiopia over the Nile, perhaps leaning toward Egyptian interests. Fair enough; that’s within the realm of diplomatic possibility. But then he leaps from “could apply diplomatic or economic pressure” to “might be secretly arming insurgencies,” as though international relations operate on the same logic as his YouTube comment section.

This is where the idiocracy reaches its peak. Dr. Dagnachew treats speculation as scripture, inference as evidence, and his own imagination as a classified intelligence briefing. He delivers these pronouncements with the solemnity of a man convinced he’s unveiling state secrets, even as his arguments wobble like his self-proclaimed title and his sense of historical proportion.

In the end, his analysis isn’t analysis at all, it’s cosplay. A man playing Fitawrari with cardboard epaulettes, waving around geopolitical hypotheticals like plastic swords, hoping no one notices that the emperor of evidence has no clothes.

The reality: International actors are unlikely to resolve Ethiopia’s conflicts. The solutions, if they come, will be Ethiopian. This makes the domestic political stalemate, where government refuses dialogue and opposition pursues maximalist demands more dangerous. Without external pressure for compromise, internal dynamics tend toward escalation.

Conclusion: Unification as Ultimatum, Not Invitation

The formation of the AFNM should force a reckoning in Ethiopian political discourse. For 22 months, the government has hidden behind Fano’s fragmentation to avoid negotiations. That excuse is gone. Yet the movement’s 17th January statement reveals why the government might hesitate to engage: AFNM isn’t offering negotiation, it’s demanding capitulation.

The statement’s message to national struggle forces makes this explicit: the necessity is “shifting from resisting a genocidal war to strategic offensive action, in order to remove the regime.” Not reform the regime, not negotiate with the regime, not power-share with the regime remove the regime. The strategic objective is stated plainly throughout: “eliminating this peoples, national, and regional danger” by deposing Abiy Ahmed’s government.

This maximalism creates a paradox. AFNM has structured itself precisely as the unified interlocutor the government claimed to want. It has designated foreign affairs leadership (Brook Shileshi), established clear command hierarchy, and articulated political objectives beyond military operations. Yet those political objectives include regime change making genuine negotiation nearly impossible under standard frameworks where governments don’t negotiate their own dissolution.

Dr Dagnachew’s conspiracy theories represent one dishonest response to this reality: denying AFNM’s legitimacy through unfalsifiable claims of foreign manipulation. But the government’s likely alternative continuing military operations whilst claiming to seek peace is equally dishonest. Both approaches foreclose the difficult political work Ethiopia actually needs.

What that work entails: Acknowledging that AFNM represents genuine Amhara grievances whilst recognising that regime removal via armed struggle will likely fail militarily but succeed in destroying what remains of the Ethiopian state. The Ethiopian National Defence Force, despite losses, retains superiority in conventional capabilities; AFNM cannot march on Addis Ababa and hold it. Yet the government cannot pacify the Amhara countryside or restore functional administration. The result is indefinite low-intensity warfare, precisely the outcome both sides claim to oppose.

The path not taken would require:

For AFNM: Moderating from regime removal to genuine power-sharing demands. Articulating specific constitutional reforms, security sector arrangements, and accountability mechanisms that would address Amhara grievances without requiring government dissolution. Acknowledging that pan-Ethiopian liberation rhetoric, whilst politically useful, overstates their actual support base beyond Amhara areas.

For the government: Acknowledging AFNM as a legitimate political actor representing genuine grievances rather than dismissing them as foreign puppets. Opening negotiations without demanding prior disarmament. Accepting that ethnic federal arrangements have failed Amhara (and others) and require fundamental reform rather than military enforcement. Most critically, accepting accountability for documented atrocities the drone strikes, massacres, and mass arrests that transformed localised resistance into sustained insurgency.

For both sides: Recognising that their maximalist positions, regime removal versus insurgent destruction, cannot be achieved militarily and that continued pursuit guarantees accumulating civilian suffering without strategic progress.

None of this will happen. AFNM’s statement reveals a movement convinced of impending victory, appealing to uniformed forces to defect and calling international actors to abandon the government. The government, for its part, shows no inclination toward political compromise, having spent 22 months pursuing military solutions that demonstrably haven’t worked.

The Reyot Media discussion, whatever its own biases, at least treats Fano as a genuine political phenomenon worthy of analysis rather than a foreign puppet show. It examines internal dynamics, strategic calculations, and leadership decisions as products of Ethiopian political processes. This is the minimum standard for productive discourse.

Yet even Reyot’s enthusiastic coverage missed the implications of AFNM’s maximalist framing. The movement hasn’t created an interlocutor for negotiations; it has created a more efficient vehicle for prosecuting regime removal. Whether one applauds or deplores this depends on one’s assessment of the Abiy Ahmed government’s legitimacy. What should be undeniable is that this makes political settlement of the power-sharing, constitutional reform, transitional justice variety far more difficult.

Ethiopia cannot afford continued intellectual dishonesty from either side. The country faces genuine challenges: ethnic federal contradictions, territorial disputes, security sector reform, economic crisis, and regional instability. None of these can be addressed whilst government supporters deny AFNM legitimacy through conspiracy theories and AFNM pursues regime change through military means.

The AFNM exists. It has structure, leadership, popular support, and military capacity. It also has maximalist political objectives that cannot be achieved through armed struggle alone. Whether the government engages with this reality or continues fantasies about Eritrea, Egypt, and TPLF pulling strings will determine whether Ethiopia stumbles toward eventual political settlement or slides further into state collapse.

The choice should be obvious. That it apparently isn’t, that both sides prefer their respective myths to the difficult work of compromise, tells you everything about Ethiopia’s current political bankruptcy. AFNM’s unification hasn’t opened a pathway to peace. It has consolidated the forces prosecuting war more effectively. Until both sides recognise this, congratulations are premature.

E. Frashie is a columnist for the Ethiopian Tribune specialising in conflict analysis and political economy. The views expressed are his own.

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Ethiopian Tribune editor

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A Dialogue Between Two Minds

By Ms Leeshan Kuratey, Ethiopian Tribune Columnist

In an Ethiopian coffee house just off Bole Road, the air carries the familiar rich scent of roasted beans, mixed with the faint diesel fumes from the traffic outside. The jebena has been refilled twice already this morning. Two old men sit across from one another, not as adversaries in conflict, at least not today, but as companions in a long intellectual journey.

They are Dr Bira Hodu and Professor Akalu Merew. Though both are septuagenarians, their conversations are lively, sometimes acerbic, always thoughtful. What they share today is not just coffee but a deeper attempt to understand Ethiopia’s evolving strategic position a nation with growing aerial capabilities, deep internal fissures, and an enduring aspiration to regain access to the sea.

I. Two Men and a Question of Power

Dr Bira Hodu, an Oromo activist in his early seventies, has been an ardent voice in diasporic Oromummaa circles. In earlier conferences across Europe and North America, he argued passionately for the dismantling of the Ethiopian state in order to invent an independent Oromia. These days, he is a devoted supporter of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. His social media accounts are awash with government videos, patriotic manifestos, and paeans to Ethiopia’s rising military capabilities.

Professor Akalu Merew , Amhara by ethnicity but cosmopolitan in outlook, is a retired economist. He served as a consultant to the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the United Nations over several decades. He supports a modern, democratic Ethiopia where all ethnic groups, including Amharas, are treated as full citizens, not villains in a teleological narrative of oppression.

Today, their conversation part dialogue, part intellectual sparring revolves around a set of strategic questions:

What does it mean for Ethiopia to pursue air dominance? How do external powers exploit states that hold such dominance without internal consensus? And crucially, what happens when a landlocked nation aspires to reach the sea?

II. Deterrence, Hegemony, and the Sky Above

Bira stirs his coffee, eyes gleaming with the certainty that has characterised his recent writings.

“Look at us now,” he says with unrestrained pride. “Ethiopia controls its airspace. Drones, satellites, advanced aircraft, we are no longer begging. No longer passive. We are powerful.”

Professor Akalu leans back, hands folded. There is a moment’s pause a pause born not of disagreement but of depth of thought.

“Air dominance,” Akalu begins gently, “is not, in itself, a guarantee of stability. It is a capability. What transforms it into strategy is how it is embedded in politics and consensus.”

Bira’s response is immediate, confident: “Deterrence. Simple as that. No one will dare attack us.”

But Akalu’s point is more nuanced. “Deterrence assumes symmetry,” he replies. “It assumes there is a rival with enough capability to pose a threat. Yet, look around our region. Eritrea, fractured; Somalia, fragile; Sudan, fractured; Kenya, cautious. When one state dominates the skies across a region without peer competitors, others stop asking, ‘Will you strike us?’ and start asking, ‘What will you permit?’”

In other words, air dominance has the potential to become not merely deterrence but hegemony, a structural condition where Ethiopia becomes the default reference point for regional security calculations.

Bira, in characteristic fashion, counters that this is precisely the point: a strong Ethiopia that imposes no mischief but commands respect. But Akalu sees what Bira does not yet concede: strength in the sky does not automatically translate to political coherence on the ground. The key difference lies between vertical power (force from above) and horizontal consensus (consent from within).

III. Power Before Unity: The Fragile Architecture

The conversation deepens as the jebena is refilled yet again. Akalu gently presses his point.

“Vertical power, air dominance, is seductive,” he says. “It feels decisive, clean, controlled. But political legitimacy grows sideways through shared consent, mutual recognition, social contracts. When you build dominance in the air before you build unity across your society, you create a fragile structure: powerful externally but brittle internally.”

He goes on, without rancour, to expand the idea: “A state that expands its aerial capabilities without settling its internal political differences creates not deterrence, but suspended conflict. It freezes contestation without resolving it.”

Bira listens, and for the first time in their discussion, his expression softens rather than defends. “You speak as if strength is the problem.”

“No,” Akalu replies, looking into the dark coffee. “Strength without restraint is the problem and restraint is not technical, it is political.”

The distinction matters. Ethiopia’s pursuit of drones, satellites, and advanced aircraft could place it on par with mid-tier global powers in terms of technology. But technology does not reconcile narratives; it does not mend historical grievances. It does not solve issues of identity, memory, or legitimacy. In fact, without political consensus, these technologies can magnify grievances rather than diminish them.

IV. The Sea Aspiration: Renewal or Risk?

Bira brightens. The subject shifts to Ethiopia’s enduring aspiration to regain access to the sea an aspiration older than either man.

“All this talk is academic,” he says, leaning forward. “The real issue is the sea. Ethiopia must regain access. It is not just economic it is historical and existential. We were a maritime civilisation once. Why should we be landlocked forever?”

Akalu nods. “I agree on the importance of sea access. But I disagree on the timing.”

This is where their conversation becomes especially rich and complex.

Bira sees urgency in sea access as a strategic imperative: to reduce dependence on neighbours’ ports; to lower trade costs; to assert Ethiopia’s rightful place in East African commerce. The logic sounds compelling: a strong Ethiopian state should control its destiny, including access to the sea.

Akalu, however, warns of a geopolitical and strategic paradox: urgency is the most exploitable weakness in international relations.

V. Urgency as Leverage: A Quiet Mechanism of Power

“Ethiopia’s need for sea access,” Akalu explains carefully, “is well understood internationally. But international actors do not care about Ethiopia’s urgency in the same way Ethiopia does. When a state signals it cannot wait, it invites mediation, brokerage, and, ultimately, leverage.”

Here he outlines a pattern that has recurred throughout history: states that exhibit urgency in securing strategic goals whether territorial, economic, or military often do so at the cost of sovereignty over the terms of those goals.

In diplomatic terms, Akalu says, this is called asymmetric need. The Ethiopian state needs sea access more than any external power needs Ethiopia to have it. This asymmetry creates leverage for the latter. Rather than imposing terms directly, external powers offer facilitated access with conditions attached. These conditions can range from port management arrangements to security guarantees and intelligence-sharing frameworks.

“It is not that others are hostile,” Akalu continues. “They are not. But they are not neutral either. Every facilitator expects something in return.”

Bira’s initial discomfort at this observation gives way to contemplation. He had assumed that Ethiopia’s growing aerial capabilities would strengthen its negotiating position for maritime access. Akalu suggests the opposite: air dominance raises regional anxiety, and anxiety invites external management.

Suddenly, the sea once a symbol of sovereign aspiration feels more like a diplomatic minefield.

VI. Maritime Access: Pathways and Their Consequences

Akalu outlines three general pathways Ethiopia might pursue to gain maritime access, and the strategic implications of each:

1. Multilateral, Regional, Rules‑Based Access

In this pathway, Ethiopia negotiates access through regional agreements that are open, inclusive, and governed by treaty. The purpose is to avoid exclusive deals with any single power, and to emphasise cooperation among neighbours.

Advantages:

Preserves greater autonomy Encourages shared ownership of outcomes Reduces the risk of dependency on a single external actor

Challenges:

Requires time and deep political negotiation Depends on internal consolidation before external engagement May delay tangible access but strengthens sovereignty

2. Facilitated Access via a Great‑Power Broker

This involves negotiating a port lease or security arrangement with the assistance of a major power for example, the United States, China, or a coalition thereof. The facilitator acts as a guarantor of stability and may provide military backing.

Advantages:

Faster access Security backing Large investment potential

Risks:

Access becomes tied to the strategic interests of the broker Sovereignty over port usage may be compromised Ethiopia’s foreign policy flexibility could be constrained

3. Coercive or Quasi‑Coercive Drift

Here, Ethiopia’s urgency, combined with regional competition, leads to a situation where neighbours and external powers impose solutions that suit their own interests and Ethiopia is left with minimal say in the terms.

Outcomes:

Loss of strategic autonomy Port access under foreign control or heavy influence Erosion of sovereignty over time

Akalu stresses that urgency is the trigger that moves a situation from voluntary cooperation (Pathway 1) to managed or mediated access (Pathways 2 and 3). The more Ethiopia signals that it must have access immediately, the more external parties believe they can and should shape the terms.

VII. The Interaction of Air Power and Maritime Ambition

What makes this particularly complex and consequential is the interaction between Ethiopia’s aerial ambitions and its maritime aspirations.

Air dominance gives a state the illusion of freedom of action. The skies, whether through drones, satellites, or advanced fighters, feel like a domain that belongs to the state itself. It is sovereign space.

But control of airspace does not insulate a landlocked state from strategic dependencies. The sea and access to it, is governed by different physics: geography, logistics, and regional dynamics. These domains cannot be conquered; they must be negotiated.

Akalu puts it simply:

“Air power scares neighbours. Maritime dependence invites management.”

It is one thing to deter a hypothetical military threat from above. It is another to walk a diplomatic tightrope between neighbours, external powers, and economic imperatives to secure a port that functions on Ethiopia’s terms.

Moreover, urgency exacerbates this tension: while air power can be showcased and argued as deterrent or stabilising, the need for the sea is tangible, measurable, and time‑sensitive. External actors capitalise on that urgency.

VIII. Internal Consensus as a Pillar of Sovereignty

Bira listens intently as Akalu moves into what feels like the core of his argument: internal political consensus is the anchor on which all external negotiating power ultimately rests.

“The greatest vulnerability in Ethiopian strategy,” Akalu asserts, “is not air dominance, nor landlocked geography. It is political incompleteness.”

By this he means:

Deep unresolved divisions between ethnic groups Narratives that reduce complex histories into simple culprits and victims Weak mutual trust among communities Centralised governance that has yet to build robust democratic legitimacy

Without such consensus, external powers do not see a unified partner; they see a set of interests that can be balanced against each other.

“In diplomacy,” Akalu explains, “others do not negotiate with potential. They negotiate with certainty. They do not trust a state they believe cannot trust itself.”

For Bira, who has spent much of his life critiquing the Ethiopian state as oppressive and illiberal, especially towards Oromo communities,this is a challenging idea. His journey from advocating state dismantlement to supporting the current government is personal as well as ideological. But Akalu’s argument is structural, not tribal: a state that lacks internal consensus is vulnerable to external influence, regardless of its ethnic composition.

Importantly, Akalu also rejects narratives that vilify any one ethnic group as the singular source of oppression. He insists that Ethiopia’s future depends on integrating identities, not extracting blame. This idea resonates less forcefully with Bira at first, but over the course of their conversation, it becomes harder for him to dismiss.

IX. Ethiopia at the Crossroads: Sovereignty, Access, and Patience

Akalu’s final point, the most sobering , is that sovereignty cannot be rushed. It must be earned, not demanded. This is not a call to delay progress indefinitely, but rather to sequence strategy intelligently.

He offers a final framing:

Consolidate internal political consensus Build trust across regions and identities Strengthen democratic institutions Clarify how power is shared and defended Build economic alternatives Enhance land‑based trade corridors Strengthen internal infrastructure Reduce reliance on single routes Negotiate maritime access from confidence, not desperation Avoid signalling urgency Use internal resilience as leverage Engage neighbours in transparent frameworks

This sequence, Akalu argues, transforms Ethiopia into a state that is prepared, not pressured. Prepared states shape terms. Pressured states accept them.

Bira, for all his habitual confidence, admits this challenges his assumptions. There is a moment of real reflection, not defensiveness, as he considers the possibility that Ethiopia’s strength is not simply a matter of technology or symbolic assertion, but of patience and strategic timing.

X. The Silence After Words

The jebena is empty for the final time. Outside, Addis Ababa continues its restless rhythm, indifferent to the high ideas discussed within the coffee house.

Bira and Akalu rise from their seats. They have debated aerial dominance, maritime aspiration, urgency as leverage, and the necessity of internal consensus without rancour, without simplification.

As they depart in opposite directions into the bustle of the city, their conversation lingers in the air like the last wisp of coffee smoke: Ethiopia stands between the sky and the sea, and its future belongs not to those who shout the loudest, but to those who understand time, patience, and the art of negotiation.

Epilogue: Strategy Before Sovereignty

In Ethiopian politics and, indeed, in the politics of most states with complex internal identities the rush to assert power too quickly often precedes the very thing it seeks to secure.

The central insight of this dialogue is not pessimistic; it is structural:

Power without consent is brittle; urgency without resilience invites leverage.

Air power can deter external foes.

Maritime access can transform economies.

But internal consensus a shared sense of belonging, legitimate governance, and mutual trust is the only foundation on which true sovereignty can be built.

Ms Leeshan Kuratey, is Investigative Journalist, Writer, and Poet. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, Ms. Leeshan Kuratey, and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any publication, organisation, or institution. This piece is a work of political commentary, intended to provoke thought and dialogue regarding contemporary Ethiopian politics and diplomacy. 

About Post Author

Ethiopian Tribune editor

editor@ethiopiantribune.com

https://ethiopiantribune.com

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