By Mefkereseb G. Hailu (PhD)

SYNOPSIS

This first instalment of MGH’s four‑part series argues that the Abraham Accords are not merely a diplomatic normalisation project but a transactional security platform through which the United States and Israel are restructuring the strategic order of the Gulf–Red Sea–Horn arc.

The article opens by revisiting Ethiopia’s internal vulnerabilities youth demographics, legitimacy crises, and the strategic weight of GERD emphasising that sovereignty is an “actively maintained condition” requiring institutional strength and national unity. As the author notes, “sovereignty is not merely a legal status but an actively maintained condition” (p.1).

MGH then reframes the Abraham Accords as the institutional scaffolding of Trump‑era transactional geopolitics, designed to align Gulf states behind Israeli strategic primacy while isolating Iran. The article highlights how the Accords evolved into a multi‑layered security, intelligence, and economic network one that has already extended into the Red Sea–Horn corridor through Israel’s recognition of Somaliland and the emerging Israel–UAE–India–Ethiopia axis.

A central argument is that Operation Epic Fury (Feb 2026) the devastating US‑Israeli strike on Iran served as the kinetic validation of the Accords’ logic. By rendering Iran “friendless” and strategically incapacitated, the operation reshaped Gulf calculations and increased the pressure on Saudi Arabia to formally join the Accords.

The article also explores the post‑Iran strategic dividend, including the potential for Saudi–Israeli technological, agricultural, and energy integration. The author warns that an overland Saudi–Israel pipeline could dramatically reduce Egypt’s Suez Canal revenues, creating a two‑front strategic squeeze when combined with GERD’s upstream leverage. As the text notes, such a pipeline would “compress Egyptian revenues… and reduce its geopolitical leverage as a maritime gatekeeper” (p.7).

For Ethiopia, the question is whether this shifting architecture can be leveraged to secure development, stability, and sovereign maritime access—or whether it risks creating new dependencies. The author signals that Parts II–IV will examine these implications in depth.

Readers are encouraged to follow the link below to read the full article and engage with the unfolding series.

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By Professor Girma Berhanu

Editorial Foreword

On Dehumanisation, Imagery, and the Long Shadow of Scientific Racism

The Editors  •  Ethiopian Tribune  •  April 2026

There are moments when an act of casual cruelty illuminates, with terrible clarity, the architecture of a deeper malice. When the sitting president of the United States shares an image depicting a Black former president and his wife as primates, the instinct of many is to reach for the vocabulary of aberration: reckless, impulsive, beyond the pale. The Ethiopian Tribune does not share that comfort. What such an act reveals is not an anomaly but a continuity the latest expression of a visual and rhetorical tradition whose roots run through the slave ships, the colonial exhibitions, and the pseudoscientific lecture halls of the 19th century.

It is in that spirit that we publish this essay by Professor Girma Berhanu, a scholar whose career has been devoted to the intersection of education, identity, and political violence. Writing from Sweden, where a social services department recently deployed imagery of apes in hijabs as a pedagogical tool for marginalised youth, Professor Berhanu asks the question that polite discourse prefers to skirt: not merely that such representations are offensive, but why the ape, and why it retains its power to wound across centuries and continents.

The answer, as Professor Berhanu traces with care and rigour, lies in the particular violence done to Darwin’s theory of evolution by those who required a scientific patina for their politics of hierarchy. Evolution taught that humans and apes share common ancestry; Social Darwinism translated that into a ladder, with some peoples assigned rungs closer to the animal kingdom than others. The insult, in this reading, is not merely abusive, it is a claim about ontological status, about who belongs fully within the category of the human.

For readers of this publication, the stakes are not abstract. Ethiopia and the broader Horn of Africa have endured their own encounters with the racialising gaze of empire, their own experience of being rendered primitive and pre-modern in the visual and textual archives of colonialism. The dehumanising logic that Professor Berhanu analyses is the same logic that framed African sovereignty as inconceivable and African suffering as natural. To understand it is to understand something essential about how power legitimises itself.

Professor Berhanu closes with a challenge that is also an obligation: legal remedy is insufficient. What is required is a transformed pedagogy, one that equips young people, and particularly those most targeted by such imagery, to read the visual world critically. The Ethiopian Tribune endorses that challenge unreservedly. Journalism, at its most purposeful, is itself a form of that literacy: naming the structure behind the slur, refusing to let cruelty pass as comedy.

“The insult carries no scientific weight. Its power lies elsewhere: in centuries of conditioning, in the grammar of empire, in the persistent human will to construct a hierarchy of the human.”

— The Editors, Ethiopian Tribune • April 2026

Synopsis

Pictures, Pejorative Discourse, and the “Ape” Insult

Girma Berhanu  •  9 April 2026

This essay examines the historical and cultural origins of the “ape” insult as applied to racialised groups, tracing a line from the misappropriation of Darwinian evolutionary theory through 19th-century scientific racism to the visual propaganda of the present day. The author’s inquiry is prompted by three concurrent incidents: a social media post by the US president deploying primate imagery against a Black former head of state and his wife; a legal complaint in Sweden over educational material depicting marginalised youth as apes; and the persistent reality of monkey chants directed at Black footballers in European stadiums.

Berhanu situates these incidents within a broader argument about visual culture and power. Drawing on bell hooks, Jason Stanley’s How Fascism Works, and Stephen Jay Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man, he argues that the biological falsity of the insult is precisely the point: its force derives not from science but from centuries of cultural conditioning that deliberately confused the shared common ancestry of humans and apes with a racial hierarchy in which some peoples were placed “closer to the animal.”

The essay addresses the Swedish school curriculum’s emphasis on visual literacy, argues that images are neither neutral nor trivial particularly when directed at already marginalised communities and calls for an educational and institutional response that goes beyond legal prohibition. Berhanu’s conclusion is that dismantling the cultural infrastructure of dehumanising representation requires historical awareness, critical visual literacy, and a deepened public commitment to human dignity.

Approx. 1,050 words  •  Academic essay / Op-ed  •  Author: Prof. Girma Berhanu, University of Gothenburg  •  Cleared for publication

Essay

Pictures, Pejorative Discourse, and the “Ape” Insult

Girma Berhanu  •  9 April 2026

A few weeks ago, two boys who are enthusiastic about football asked me a difficult question: why are Black footballers insulted in stadiums with monkey chants, images of apes, or even by fans throwing bananas? Why apes of all animals? At the time, I struggled to respond. I tried to explain, in my own way, the role of history, human hierarchies, the theory of evolution, and scientific racism. Yet I felt inarticulate, as if I had not fully captured the depth and cruelty of the issue.

Since then, I have reflected more deeply. One recent incident involved a social media post by the president of the United States, who shared an image depicting a former president and his wife as apes or monkeys. After pressure from members of his own party, the post was deleted. But what was the intended message? That they look like apes, think like apes, or are somehow less evolved?

Public reaction followed a familiar pattern: initial shock, followed by quick dismissal. Many people brushed it aside as a childish or impulsive act, ignoring the deeper structural, institutional, and historical precedents behind such imagery. Yet we know that presidential communication is rarely accidental; it is often carefully crafted within inner political circles.

Around the same time, I revisited How Fascism Works by Jason Stanley, which examines how authoritarian politics divide societies into “us” and “them.” While I cannot explore his full argument here, his framework helps us understand how dehumanising language and imagery function politically.

A third incident occurred closer to home, Sweden. The newspaper Göteborgs-Posten reported that Lars Arrhenius was pursuing a legal case concerning educational material used by a social services department in north-east Gothenburg. The material, titled Angry Apes, was intended as a pedagogical tool for young people facing social challenges. It included images such as an ape wearing a hijab and other apes in a sweater labelled “Orten” (the neighbourhood).

The material was widely criticised and later withdrawn. A complainant argued that it “clearly contains racist and discriminatory images” and risks creating an exclusionary environment for children and youth. It is difficult to understand how associating already marginalised young people with apes could be considered educational. My purpose here is not to enter the legal debate, but to examine the cultural message embedded in such representations. Where does this deeply pejorative association between certain groups and apes originate?

We live in a visual culture. Images shape how we perceive the world, others, and ourselves. Yet many people lack the tools to critically interpret visual representations. As bell hooks observed, it is troubling that mass media increasingly uses powerful imagery for specific effects, whilst simultaneously encouraging us to believe that these images are insignificant.

Even the Swedish curriculum (Lgr 2011) emphasises that images play a crucial role in how people think, learn, and understand the world. Visual literacy is essential for democratic participation. Whilst powerful images can serve as effective pedagogical tools, degrading representations — particularly those targeting marginalised groups such as ethnic minorities, women, disabled individuals, and LGBTQ+ communities — can reinforce harmful stereotypes and produce lasting damage.

To understand the enduring power of the “ape” insult, we must turn to history. Many of us learned about racism and colonialism in school, often alongside the ideas of Charles Darwin. Although Darwin’s work in On the Origin of Species and The Descent of Man revolutionised biology, his ideas were widely misunderstood and misused.

Evolution does not claim that humans descended from modern apes. Rather, it posits that humans and apes share a common ancestor. However, this nuance was lost in public discourse. The simplified claim that “humans came from apes” made it easier to weaponise the comparison. Calling someone an “ape” came to imply that they are primitive, less intelligent, or less civilised.

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, these distortions merged with scientific racism and Social Darwinism. Thinkers misused evolutionary ideas to construct racial hierarchies, falsely claiming that some groups were “closer to apes” than others. As The Mismeasure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould demonstrates, such pseudoscientific claims were used to justify colonialism, slavery, segregation, and the dehumanisation of non-European peoples.

This history helps explain why the “ape” insult persists today. Biologically, humans are primates; the insult has no scientific basis. Its power lies instead in centuries of cultural conditioning, visual propaganda, and racial hierarchy. The question, then, is not only why the insult exists, but how we confront it. How can we protect new generations — especially Black, Indigenous, and other racialised communities — from such deeply dehumanising representations? What role should schools play? What responsibilities do media and political institutions carry?

Legal measures alone are not enough. What is required is a broader transformative agenda: one that promotes historical awareness, critical visual literacy, and a deeper understanding of human dignity. Only then can we begin to dismantle the cultural foundations that allow such insults to persist.

Girma Berhanu is Professor of Special Education at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

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How Ponzi schemes have evolved from Wall Street to Addis Ababa and why Ethiopia is their latest frontier.

By E Frashie Ethiopian Tribune columnist

It always begins with a promise. The details vary electric vehicles in Addis Ababa, cryptocurrency tokens in Dubai, certificates of deposit in the Caribbean but the underlying architecture is identical. You give someone your money. They give it, quietly, to the person before you. They pay you from someone else’s deposit. And for a while, sometimes a long while, everyone appears to be getting rich.

This is the Ponzi scheme: the most durable financial fraud in human history, named after Charles Ponzi, a Boston-based Italian immigrant who in 1920 raised $15 million in eight months by promising 50 per cent returns in 45 days. The promise was impossible. The returns were paid entirely from incoming investors’ capital. When the flow of new money slowed, the structure collapsed overnight, ruining thousands. Ponzi went to prison. His name entered the dictionary.

More than a century later, the fraud he popularised, though did not invent, continues to devastate ordinary people on every continent. Its latest Ethiopian incarnation, the case of Fintech Investment PLC and its chief executive Daniel Yohannes, who now faces 19 counts before the Federal High Court’s Lideta Branch, is in many respects a textbook example. The vehicle, the promise, and the medium have been modernised. The logic has not changed at all.

WHAT A PONZI SCHEME ACTUALLY IS

The mechanics deserve plain statement, because they are simpler than the marketing around them. A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud in which existing investors are paid using funds collected from new investors, rather than from genuine business profit or productive activity. There are no trades, no returns, no underlying assets generating value. There is only the movement of money from later investors to earlier ones, with the operator extracting a portion at each stage.

Four structural elements are required for the scheme to function. First, a credible promise: returns attractive enough to recruit but not so fantastic as to immediately trigger suspicion. Second, early payouts: a critical phase in which the first cohort genuinely receives money, generating word-of-mouth and social proof. Third, a legitimacy facade: branding, documentation, offices, media presence, and endorsements that simulate the appearance of a functioning enterprise. Fourth, a recruitment engine: the scheme must continuously attract new capital to service existing obligations, whether through social networks, community groups, professional associations, or digital platforms.

The outcome is always the same. When recruitment slows, through market saturation, regulatory pressure, or loss of confidence incoming funds can no longer cover outgoing obligations. The operator withdraws what capital remains. The most recent investors lose everything. This conclusion is not a risk; it is a mathematical certainty. The only variable is timing.

“There is no investment that can sustainably pay more than it earns. When someone tells you otherwise, the only question is who will pay for your credulity and how long before they run out of new people to ask.”

What makes Ponzi schemes so persistent is not their sophistication but their adaptability. Every era of financial innovation and every new communications technology has produced a fresh variant. The digital age, and the age of cryptocurrency in particular, has not eliminated this form of fraud. It has industrialised it.

THE GLOBAL RECORD

The modern history of large-scale Ponzi fraud begins, definitionally, with Bernie Madoff. For nearly four decades, Madoff operated what investigators concluded was a $20 billion scheme concealed behind the respectable façade of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC on Wall Street. He fabricated every trade, every statement, and every declared return. He was arrested in December 2008 when the financial crisis triggered redemption requests he could not honour. Sentenced to 150 years in prison, he died incarcerated in 2021. His case established the template: the longer a scheme runs without detection, the larger the losses at collapse, because the pyramid of obligation grows with every passing month.

Allen Stanford operated a Caribbean variant that devastated ordinary investors across Latin America. Stanford International Bank, based in Antigua, raised $7 billion from more than 30,000 investors, many of them in Venezuela, Mexico, Ecuador, and Colombia, through fraudulent certificates of deposit bearing implausibly high interest rates. The offshore setting lent the scheme an air of sophistication. Stanford was sentenced to 110 years in federal prison in 2012.

MMM Global, the Russian pyramid scheme revived by Sergei Mavrodi and relaunched internationally in 2011, proved devastatingly effective across sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Crucially, Mavrodi did not call it an investment. He rebranded it as a mutual aid network, telling participants they were simply helping each other a framing that disarmed financial scepticism by appealing instead to community solidarity. In Nigeria alone, more than three million subscribers registered. When the scheme froze accounts in December 2016, losses were estimated at $50 million in that country alone. Similar collapses followed in Ghana, Kenya, Zimbabwe, South Africa, India, and China. The human cost extended beyond money: some investors, confronted with frozen accounts and demands for additional deposits before release of funds, took their own lives. The collapse did not deter imitation; it accelerated it. Loom, Twinkas, and MBA Forex followed in rapid succession.

OneCoin, founded by the Bulgarian national Ruja Ignatova, is the most geographically dispersed cryptocurrency fraud in history. Marketed across 175 countries as a superior alternative to Bitcoin the so-called “Cryptoqueen” promoted it with the slogan “Bitcoin Killer” OneCoin raised an estimated $5.8 billion between 2014 and 2019. There was no blockchain. Every coin sold was worthless. Ignatova disappeared before prosecution, was placed on both the Europol and FBI most-wanted lists with a €5 million reward, and has not been found. Her co-founder Sebastian Greenwood was sentenced to 20 years in a United States federal prison in 2023.

Bitconnect demonstrated that a Ponzi scheme need not have a fixed headquarters or a traceable founder. Entirely digital, it operated through an international network of YouTube promoters, WhatsApp groups, and social media communities stretching from the United States to India, Brazil, and sub-Saharan Africa. It promised monthly returns of 40 per cent. At its peak its market capitalisation reached $2.6 billion. When it collapsed in early 2018, the token fell from $500 to effectively zero within days.

Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX, the defining financial fraud of the current decade, operated not as a marginal platform but as the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency exchange, a fixture of congressional testimony and mainstream financial media. Prosecutors established that Bankman-Fried had diverted customer funds from FTX to Alameda Research, his private hedge fund, to finance speculative trades, political donations, and luxury properties. The exchange presented itself publicly as a model of responsible crypto management. When confidence broke in November 2022, the entire structure collapsed in under a week. Bankman-Fried was convicted on all seven counts and sentenced in March 2024 to 25 years in prison, with a forfeiture of $11 billion. He was, as one prosecutor put it, running “a house of cards on a foundation of deceit.”

The pattern across all these cases is striking in its consistency: an implausible but not outrageous promise; early payouts that generated credibility through genuine recipients; a coordinated legitimacy campaign through media and professional endorsements; and the systematic weaponisation of trust networks, whether family groups, religious communities, or social media followings, to sustain recruitment.

ETHIOPIA’S EXPANDING VULNERABILITY AND THE FINTECH INVESTMENT CASE

Ethiopia is not an isolated case, but the specific conditions of this moment make it a particularly hospitable environment for this type of fraud. Rapid digital adoption, ambitious government-backed financial inclusion programmes, a young and aspirational urban population, limited public financial literacy, and a regulatory framework that has not kept pace with the speed of fintech expansion these are precisely the conditions that Ponzi operators seek. They did not create these conditions; they exploit them.

On 27 March 2026, federal prosecutors charged Daniel Yohannes, manager of Fintech Investment PLC, with 19 counts before the Federal High Court’s Lideta Branch. The charges include fraud, conspiracy, and violations of Ethiopia’s computer crime laws. The alleged scheme drew more than 600 million birr from investors through promises to supply electric vehicles that were, in the main, never delivered.

The framing was astute. Electric vehicles are a genuine policy priority in Ethiopia, and presenting the investment as participation in the modernisation of the country’s transport sector conferred an air of national purpose. Investors were told they could acquire vehicles on favourable credit terms, with the company claiming partnerships with international manufacturers and local insurers. The entry cost was substantial: a 50 per cent deposit on vehicles priced at approximately 1.9 million birr, plus tax and licensing charges, bringing the total per-participant commitment to over 1.36 million birr.

To sustain credibility during the recruitment phase, prosecutors allege that the defendants circulated images and videos of vehicle handovers at prominent locations across Addis Ababa, and claimed that hundreds of cars had already been delivered with further shipments imminent. Investigators found that approximately 100 vehicles were in fact distributed the majority to individuals connected to the scheme itself. This is a standard technique: a small number of genuine deliveries generates the testimonial evidence that powers the next wave of recruitment.

The current operation was not Fintech Investment PLC’s first venture of this kind. Prosecutors draw a direct line to Hello Taxi and Hello Car, an earlier programme launched in 2021 that similarly promised vehicles on credit. More than 5,000 people registered. Significant funds were collected. Almost no vehicles were delivered before the programme ceased operations.

“More than 5,000 families registered with Hello Taxi. Many were teachers, civil servants, small traders people who committed years of careful savings to a promise that was never going to be kept.”

What distinguishes this case from older-generation Ethiopian fraud is its digital architecture. The prosecution has described the operation as a form of organised white-collar crime adapted to digital platforms, one that made systematic use of computer systems to disseminate misleading information and conceal the identities of its operators. The recruitment engine relied heavily on social media promotion and, critically, on endorsements by public figures. PR companies, influencers, and individuals in or near public office have all been drawn into the investigation.

This is not accidental. The professionalisation of the legitimacy-building phase the period in which a scheme must persuade potential investors that the opportunity is real before the weight of recruitment tips the structure into collapse, is one of the most significant evolutions in Ponzi design over the past decade. In an earlier era this required printed prospectuses and in-person seminars. Digital platforms have reduced the cost of manufactured credibility to near zero. A series of well-produced testimonial videos, a social media account with substantial follower counts, and an endorsement from a recognisable face can unlock access to populations that would have been unreachable a generation ago. The investors who watched footage of a car being handed over at a prominent Addis Ababa location and concluded that something real was happening were not naive; they were deceived by a deliberately constructed fiction.

Public figures who endorse financial products bear a particular responsibility, whether or not they are legally complicit in what follows. Regulatory bodies in Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa have begun issuing formal guidance on influencer liability in financial promotions. Ethiopia’s relevant authorities should move in the same direction, and without delay.

WHAT MUST FOLLOW

The arrest and charging of Daniel Yohannes is a necessary step. It is emphatically not a sufficient one. For this prosecution to serve as genuine deterrence, rather than a singular event in an unbroken pattern of impunity, several things must follow.

The charge sheet references accomplices, coordinated networks, and individuals previously implicated in fraud. All participants in the scheme, lawyers, accountants, marketing professionals, influencers, and any regulatory contacts who may have facilitated or ignored warning signs must face commensurate scrutiny. Ponzi schemes do not operate in isolation. Prosecuting only their public face leaves the infrastructure intact for the next iteration.

More than 5,000 families registered under the Hello Taxi and Hello Car programmes alone. Their claims must be assessed systematically and restitution pursued wherever assets can be traced and recovered. Ethiopia’s financial regulators must also develop enforceable frameworks for digital investment platforms: mandatory registration, disclosure requirements, and clear liability provisions for promoters and endorsers. The present environment allows fraudsters to exploit the gap between the pace of fintech innovation and the pace of regulatory response — a gap that will widen unless deliberate action is taken to close it.

And finally: public financial education. The most durable protection against this class of fraud is an investing public that can recognise its warning signs guaranteed high returns, opaque business models, heavy reliance on recruitment, and a reluctance to provide clear documentation. That education cannot arrive after the schemes do. It must be embedded in schools, in community institutions, and in the public discourse now.

Charles Ponzi died in poverty in Brazil in 1949, deported and forgotten. Bernie Madoff died in a federal prison medical centre in 2021. Allen Stanford is serving 110 years. Sam Bankman-Fried is serving 25. The perpetrators of these schemes, when caught, tend to be caught thoroughly.

The problem has never been that the fraudsters escape indefinitely. The problem is the interval, the months or years during which ordinary people hand over ordinary savings in exchange for extraordinary promises, and the machinery of false credibility keeps turning. The problem is the 5,000 families who registered with Hello Taxi. The problem is the three million Nigerians who trusted MMM. The problem is every investor who watched a social media video and reasonably concluded that something real was being delivered.

The Ethiopian Tribune will continue to report on the Fintech Investment case as it proceeds through the Federal High Court. We will cover the evidence presented, the witnesses called, the defendants still at large, and the regulatory response or lack of one. The public interest in this case extends far beyond any single courtroom.

The promise of effortless returns is as old as money itself. What changes is the medium. What never changes is the mathematics.

The trial of Daniel Yohannes and associated defendants is ongoing before the Federal High Court, Lideta Branch, Addis Ababa. The Ethiopian Tribune will publish continuing coverage as proceedings develop.

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By Professor Girma Berhanu, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

EDITORS’ FOREWORD

A Warning Ethiopia Cannot Afford to Ignore

There are moments in a nation’s life when silence becomes complicity. Ethiopia stands at such a moment. The Ethiopian Tribune has long held that the duty of independent journalism is not merely to inform but to name what is happening with clarity, courage, and moral seriousness even, and especially, when what must be named is deeply uncomfortable.

The article we present in this edition “Fascism at Work: Propaganda, Conspiracy, Lies, Hatred, and Incompetence in Ethiopia” is one of the most consequential pieces of political analysis we have published. Its author, Professor Girma Berhanu of the University of Gothenburg, brings to bear rigorous comparative political theory alongside meticulous documentation of on-the-ground realities. The result is a work that demands not merely reading, but reckoning.

Professor Berhanu builds his analysis on Jason Stanley’s framework in How Fascism Works, applying it with unflinching precision to Ethiopia under Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. He identifies, one by one, the hallmarks of fascist political practice: the fabrication of mythic history, the systematic destruction of truth, the vilification of intellectuals, the weaponization of identity, and the hollowing out of democratic institutions. His conclusion is not offered tentatively: these are not tendencies that might emerge; they are already defining features of the Ethiopian political order.

We recognise that strong analysis provokes strong responses. We welcome rigorous engagement, challenge, and debate. What we will not accept is the erasure of the evidence or the silencing of those who speak it. The Tribune publishes this work in the conviction that Ethiopia’s future depends on honest diagnosis of its present however painful that diagnosis may be.

We urge every Ethiopian at home and in the diaspora every diplomat, every human rights advocate, every African Union official, and every international observer to read this article in full. The moment for polite understatement has passed.

The Editors

The Ethiopian Tribune Editorial Board

SYNOPSIS

Fascism at Work: Propaganda, Conspiracy, Lies, Hatred, and Incompetence in Ethiopia

By Professor Girma Berhanu, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

Overview

This paper offers a comprehensive and urgent analysis of Ethiopia’s contemporary political crisis through the analytical lens of Jason Stanley’s landmark work How Fascism Works. Professor Berhanu argues, without equivocation, that the tactics Stanley identifies as the hallmarks of fascist political practice are not theoretical abstractions in Ethiopia, they are operational realities, increasingly defining the political order under Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and the ideology of Oromummaa.

Key Arguments

The paper identifies nine structural features of fascist politics all of which the author argues are present in contemporary Ethiopia. These are: the fabrication of a glorified mythic past to legitimize present domination; pervasive and unapologetic propaganda that actively replaces truth with politically convenient falsehood; the structural suppression of intellectuals and critical voices; the cultivation of conspiracy thinking and manufactured paranoia to justify repression; the normalization of ethnic hierarchy and “natural order”; the weaponization of a victimhood narrative by dominant groups; the deployment of law-and-order politics as a mechanism of control; the exclusionary redefinition of national identity; and the systematic erosion of democratic institutions, leaving only a hollowed-out façade.

The Finfinnee Reclamation Framework

A central focus of the paper is the so-called “Finfinnee Reclamation Framework” a discussion draft circulating within the government that the author describes as a blueprint for ethnic domination. The document proposes transferring political authority, economic power, and land rights in Addis Ababa to Oromo stakeholders, invoking international models from Dubai’s “Sovereign Host” approach to Malaysia’s Bumiputera policy as templates for an “Oromo First” agenda. Professor Berhanu argues that this represents a direct assault on Ethiopia’s multi-ethnic federal capital and a flagrant attack on civic equality and shared citizenship. Evidence from the economic decline of Hawassa under the Sidama regional model and the effective “Bantustan-ization” of Harar are presented as real-world warnings of what such policies produce.

Oromummaa, Ethnic Federalism, and Comparative Politics

The paper provides a rigorous examination of Oromummaa as both a cultural framework and a state ideology. While acknowledging that proponents present it as a project of cultural revitalization and emancipation, Professor Berhanu argues that in its operative form under the current government, it exhibits structural features comparable to fascist and ethnonationalist movements: the primacy of a singular collective identity, the construction of existential “enemies,” nostalgic myth-making, the erosion of pluralism, and the subordination of individual and minority rights to ideological cohesion. Drawing on Carl Schmitt’s friend-enemy distinction and Hannah Arendt’s analysis of totalitarianism, the paper situates Oromummaa within a broader comparative political theory framework while carefully noting important historical and contextual differences from European fascism.

Ethiopia’s system of ethnic federalism, introduced under the TPLF in the early 1990s, receives extensive critical analysis. The author characterizes it as structurally analogous to the Bantustan model of apartheid-era South Africa a system that has transformed identity into the primary currency of power, normalized inter-ethnic suspicion and rivalry, and created fertile ground for racialized political mobilization, including the construction of a “Cushitic versus Semitic” dichotomy with dangerous ideological resonances.

The Amhara Crisis and Three Tiers of Victimhood

Professor Berhanu advances a three-tiered analytical framework to account for the full scope of the crisis facing Ethiopia’s Amhara population. First-tier victimhood refers to the direct and documented experience of mass killings, displacement, and the destruction of cultural and religious heritage. Second-tier victimhood refers to the manipulation of narrative the construction by ethnonationalist actors of a counter-victimhood discourse that obscures and denies Amhara suffering while reframing perpetrators as victims. Third-tier or “psychic” victimhood refers to the compounding effect of international invisibility: the failure of global media, diaspora networks, and international institutions to adequately recognize, document, and respond to the scale of atrocity. The campaign described by critics as “Amharafrei” an explicit parallel drawn to the Nazi concept of Judenfrei is presented as a deliberate strategy of cultural erasure encompassing historicide, ethnocide, and linguicide.

Significance and Urgency

This paper is not academic exercise. It is, as its author explicitly states, motivated by moral anger and by the conviction that accurate diagnosis of political pathology is a precondition for meaningful response. Its arguments carry direct implications for Ethiopian citizens, the diaspora, opposition figures, civil society, and the international community alike. The convergence of fascist-style political tactics, ethnic federalism’s structural fragmentation, the ideological entrenchment of Oromummaa, and the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Amhara regions constitutes, in Professor Berhanu’s assessment, a coherent and escalating political crisis not an isolated series of events.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

The synopsis above conveys the structure and stakes of Professor Berhanu’s analysis, but it cannot substitute for the article itself. The full text develops each argument with scholarly depth, primary documentation, comparative historical evidence, and the kind of analytical precision that the gravity of the subject demands. We urge all readers to access and read the complete article at the link below:-

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Sovereignty, Development, and Democratic Unity in the Age of Transactional Geopolitics

By Mefkereseb G. Hailu (PhD)

March 23, 2026

EDITOR’S FORWARD

In moments when a nation stands at the hinge of history, clarity becomes a civic duty. Dr. Mefkereseb G. Hailu’s sweeping and meticulously argued essay, “The Spirit of Adwa Must Carry Ethiopia Through: GERD and the Red Sea,” arrives precisely at such a moment when Ethiopia’s sovereignty, developmental trajectory, and democratic future are being tested simultaneously at home and abroad.

From its opening pages, the article insists on a truth too often neglected in elite political discourse: Ethiopia’s future belongs to its young. As the author writes, “listen to the younger generation the nation is theirs to inherit.” With nearly 65% of Ethiopians under thirty, this is not a rhetorical flourish but a demographic fact that demands institutional response. Dr. Hailu’s insistence that Gen‑Z and Gen‑α must not merely be consulted but empowered is one of the most consequential interventions in contemporary Ethiopian political thought.

Yet this work is not a generational manifesto alone. It is a panoramic examination of the forces shaping Ethiopia’s sovereignty from the self-financed triumph of GERD, described as “a national narrative converted into steel and megawatts,” to the long arc of geopolitical engineering that rendered Ethiopia landlocked in 1993. The author does not shy away from naming the historical actors involved, nor from articulating Ethiopia’s legitimate and peaceful claim to restored Red Sea access.

Crucially, the article refuses the false binary that has long distorted Ethiopia’s public sphere: that one must choose between defending national sovereignty and demanding democratic accountability. Dr. Hailu argues instead that sovereignty without democracy is brittle, and democracy without sovereignty is hollow. As he notes, “The conclusion… is democratic accountability through democratic institutions… not the fragmentation of Ethiopia’s sovereign position.”

This is a work of scholarship, but also of civic courage. It confronts the country’s internal fractures ethnic violence, contested territories, democratic regression without surrendering to fatalism or cynicism. It situates Ethiopia’s challenges within global patterns of coercive mediation, transactional geopolitics, and great‑power opportunism. And it offers a strategic doctrine rooted in Adwa: principled resistance, coalition-building, technological ambition, and the disciplined use of national power.

Above all, this article is a call to responsibility directed at leaders, institutions, and especially the young Ethiopians who will live longest with the consequences of today’s decisions. As Dr. Hailu writes in one of the essay’s most resonant lines, “Stand with Ethiopia on GERD. Stand with Ethiopia on the Red Sea… and ensure that it is the youngest Ethiopians who hold the pen—because it is their story, and it always was.”

The Ethiopian Tribune is proud to present this work. It is not merely an article; it is an invitation to think, to argue, to build and to imagine Ethiopia not as a nation trapped by its past, but as one propelled by its youth, its ingenuity, and its unbroken sovereign will.

The Editorial Board
The Ethiopian Tribune

Readers are encouraged to access and study the full PDF of the article at the following link.

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ትንታኔ፦ የኢትዮጵያ ትሪቢዩን የፖለቲካ እና የኢኮኖሚ ጉዳዮች ክፍል

መጋቢት 16 ቀን 2018 ዓ.ም (ማርች 25፣ 2026)

በዓለም አቀፍ የቴክኖሎጂ ዘርፍ ከፍተኛ ድንጋጤን በፈጠረ ውሳኔ፣ በሎስ አንጀለስ የሚገኝ የዳኞች ቡድን በቴክኖሎጂ ግዙፎቹ ሜታ (Meta) እና ጎግል (Google) ላይ ከዚህ ቀደም ታይቶ የማይታወቅ የሽንፈት ውሳኔ አስተላልፏል። ይህ ብይን የማህበራዊ ሚዲያ ኩባንያዎች “ሆን ተብሎ ለተቀነባበረ የዲጂታል ሱሰኝነት” በሕግ ተጠያቂ የተደረጉበት የመጀመሪያው አጋጣሚ ነው። የሕግ ባለሙያዎች እንደሚሉት ከሆነ፣ ይህ ውሳኔ እንደ ኢትዮጵያ ባሉ በማደግ ላይ ባሉ አገራት የሚገኙ በሚሊዮን የሚቆጠሩ ወጣት ተጠቃሚዎችን ጨምሮ፣ መላውን የዲጂታል ዓለም ገጽታ መሠረታዊ በሆነ መልኩ ሊቀይረው ይችላል።

የፍርዱ ይዘት

ሳምንታት ለፈጀው ከፍተኛ የምስክርነት ቃል መስማት ሂደት በኋላ፣ የዳኞች ቡድኑ ሜታ (የኢንስታግራም፣ ፌስቡክ እና ዋትስአፕ እናት ኩባንያ) እና ጎግል (የዩቲዩብ ባለቤት) ሆን ብለው ተጠቃሚን ሱሰኛ የሚያደርጉ የመገናኛ መድረኮችን ቀርፀዋል የሚል መደምደሚያ ላይ ደርሷል። ዳኞቹ እነዚህ የዲጂታል መድረኮች አወቃቀር በሕግ ሰነዶች ላይ ‘ኬሊ’ ተብላ በተጠቀሰችው የ20 ዓመት ወጣት የአእምሮ ጤና ላይ ቀጥተኛ ጉዳት ማድረሳቸውን አረጋግጠዋል።

የከሳሿ የሕግ ባለሙያዎች እንደ “infinite scrolling” (ገደብ የለሽ የመረጃ ፍሰት) እና የፍላጎት ስልተ-ቀመሮች (algorithms) በአጋጣሚ የተፈጠሩ ሳይሆኑ፣ የሕፃናትን ደህንነት መሥዋዕት በማድረግ ተጠቃሚዎችን ለረጅም ሰዓት ለማቆየት ታስበው የተሰሩ መሆናቸውን በማስረጃ አቅርበው ተከራክረዋል።

የኩባንያዎቹ መከላከያ ውድቅ መደረግ

የሜታ ጠበቆች ጉዳዩን እንደ ግል ችግር በመፈረጅ ኩባንያውን ከተጠያቂነት ለማዳን ጥረት አድርገው ነበር። ኬሊ በግል ሕይወቷ መከራ ቢደርስባትም፣ ኢንስታግራምን መጠቀምዋ ለሥነ-ልቦና ቀውሷ መንስኤ እንዳልሆነ ወይም “ጉልህ አስተዋጽኦ” እንዳልነበረው ተከራክረዋል።

ሆኖም ዳኞቹ በዚህ መከላከያ አልተረቱም። ይልቁንም ኩባንያዎቹ ራሳቸው ያደረጓቸውን የውስጥ ጥናቶች ጨምሮ፣ እነዚህ መድረኮች ልክ እንደ ቁማር የአንጎልን የደስታ ስሜት (dopamine) ቀስቃሽ በሆነ መልኩ መገንባታቸውን የሚያሳዩ ማስረጃዎችን በመጥቀስ ውሳኔያቸውን አጽንተዋል።

በዛሬው ዕለት በዓለም አቀፍ የቴክኖሎጂ ኢንደስትሪ ላይ እንደ መብረቅ የተሰማው የሎስ አንጀለስ ፍርድ ቤት ውሳኔ፣ ሜታ እና ጎግልን ብቻ ሳይሆን እንደ ቲክቶክ (TikTok) ያሉ ሌሎች ግዙፍ መድረኮችንም ስጋት ላይ ጥሏል። የ20 ዓመቷን ኬሊን የካሳ ጥያቄ መሠረት በማድረግ የተሰጠው ይህ “ታሪካዊ” ብይን፣ የቴክኖሎጂ ኩባንያዎች ለተጠቃሚዎቻቸው የአእምሮ ጤና ያላቸውን የሕግ ተጠያቂነት አዲስ ምዕራፍ ከፍቷል።

የብይኑ መሠረት እና የቲክቶክ ስጋት
ምንም እንኳን የዚህኛው ክስ ትኩረት በሜታ (ኢንስታግራም) እና ጎግል (ዩቲዩብ) ላይ ቢሆንም፣ የፍርዱ መሠረታዊ ምክንያት ግን እንደ ቲክቶክ ያሉ መድረኮችን በቀጥታ የሚነካ ነው። ዳኞቹ ኩባንያዎቹን ጥፋተኛ ያደረጓቸው በሚከተሉት ነጥቦች ነው፦

የአልጎሪዝም አወቃቀር፦ ተጠቃሚው ሳያስበው ለሰዓታት እንዲቆይ የሚያደርጉ “ሱስ አስያዥ” ስልተ-ቀመሮች።ሆን ተብሎ የተሰሩ ዲዛይኖች፦ ልክ እንደ ቲክቶክ “For You Page” ሁሉ፣ ወጣቶችን ከእውነታው ዓለም የሚነጥሉ ማራኪ ግን ጎጂ ይዘቶችን የሚያስቀድሙ አሰራሮች።
የሕግ ባለሙያዎች እንደሚሉት፣ ቲክቶክ በአሁኑ ወቅት በአሜሪካ እና በአውሮፓ መሰል ክሶች እየቀረቡበት በመሆኑ፣ ይህ የሜታ እና ጎግል መሸነፍ ለቲክቶክም “የመጨረሻው ማስጠንቀቂያ” ተደርጎ ተወስዷል።

“የዲጂታል መድኃኒት” ተጠያቂነት

“ይህ ውሳኔ በኢትዮጵያ ያሉ ወላጆች እና ተቆጣጣሪ አካላት የማህበራዊ ሚዲያ አጠቃቀምን እንደ ቀላል መዝናኛ ብቻ ሳይሆን፣ ከፍተኛ ጥንቃቄ እንደሚሻ ‘ምርት’ እንዲመለከቱት ያደርጋል።”

የሜታ ጠበቆች “ኢንስታግራም ለኬሊ ችግር መንስኤ አይደለም” ብለው ቢከራከሩም፣ የሎስ አንጀለሱ ውሳኔ ግን የቴክኖሎጂው ዲዛይን ራሱ “መርዝ” ሊሆን እንደሚችል አረጋግጧል።

ቀጣዩ እርምጃ ምን ሊሆን ይችላል?
ይህ ብይን በመቶዎች ለሚቆጠሩ ተመሳሳይ ክሶች መንገድ ከፋች በመሆኑ፣ ወደፊት ኩባንያዎቹ የሚከተሉትን ለውጦች እንዲያደርጉ ሊገደዱ ይችላሉ፦

• ለታዳጊዎች የሚቀርቡ “ሱስ አስያዥ” ባህሪያትን መቀነስ።
• በየቀኑ የሚፈቀደውን የሰዓት ገደብ ማጥበቅ።
• ለደረሱ ጉዳቶች በቢሊዮን የሚቆጠር ዶላር ካሳ መክፈል።

በሎስ አንጀለስ ፍርድ ቤት በሜታ እና ጎግል ላይ የተሰጠው ውሳኔ ለኢትዮጵያ ትልቅ ደወል ነው። ሆኖም ለኢትዮጵያ ጉዳዩ ይበልጥ ውስብስብ የሚሆነው፣ እነዚህ “ሱስ አስያዥ” የተባሉ ቴክኖሎጂዎች በራሱ በመንግሥት እና በከፍተኛ አመራሮች ዘንድ እንደ ዋነኛ የሥራ እና የፕሮፓጋንዳ መሣሪያ በመወሰዳቸው ነው።

የመንግሥት “ዲጂታል አባዜ” እና የተጋላጭነት ስጋት

ጠቅላይ ሚኒስትር ዐቢይ አሕመድን ጨምሮ ከፍተኛ የመንግሥት ባለሥልጣናት አዳዲስ የቴክኖሎጂ ውጤቶችን (እንደ ቲክቶክ፣ ኤክስ እና ፌስቡክ) በከፍተኛ ሁኔታ መጠቀማቸው ይታወቃል። መንግሥት “ዲጂታል ኢትዮጵያ 2025” በሚል መሪ ቃል ዜጎች ወደ ቴክኖሎጂው እንዲገቡ እያበረታታ ባለበት በዚህ ወቅት፣ የቴክኖሎጂው “አዳኝ” (Predatory) ባህሪ ግን ችላ ተብሏል።

ተባባሪነት ወይስ አጠቃቀም?

መንግሥት እነዚህን መድረኮች ለፖለቲካዊ መልዕክት ማስተላለፊያነት ሲጠቀም፣ ሳያውቀው ወጣቱ ትውልድ በእነዚህ “ሱስ አስያዥ” ስልተ-ቀመሮች (Algorithms) ውስጥ እንዲዘፈቅ በር ይከፍታል። ይህም መንግሥትን የቴክኖሎጂ ኩባንያዎቹ “ያልተፈረመ ስምምነት” ተባባሪ ያደርገዋል።

የፖለቲካ ጉዳት፦ “የአልጎሪዝም ፖለቲካ” እና አለመረጋጋት
በአሜሪካ የተሰጠው ብይን እንደሚያሳየው፣ እነዚህ መድረኮች የተሰሩት ሰውን ስሜታዊ በማድረግ ረጅም ሰዓት እንዲቆይ ነው። በኢትዮጵያ ፖለቲካ ውስጥ ይህ ትልቅ አደጋ አለው፦

የሐሰት መረጃ መስፋፋት፦ ስልተ-ቀመሮቹ (Algorithms) ይበልጥ አነጋጋሪ እና ስሜት ቀስቃሽ የሆኑ የጥላቻ ንግግሮችን እና የሐሰት ወሬዎችን ለተጠቃሚው በማቅረብ ሱስ ያስይዛሉ። ይህ ደግሞ በኅብረተሰቡ ውስጥ ዋልታ ረገጥ ፖለቲካ እንዲነግሥ እና ብሔራዊ መግባባት እንዲጠፋ ያደርጋል።

የወጣቱ ትውልድ መደንዘዝ፦ ወጣቱ በቲክቶክ እና በፌስቡክ ሱስ ውስጥ ሲወድቅ፣ ለፖለቲካዊ ተሳትፎ እና ለሀገራዊ ጉዳዮች ያለው ንቁ ተሳትፎ እየቀነሰ ይሄዳል (Digital Narcissism)።

የኢኮኖሚ ጉዳት፦ ምርታማነት እና የውጭ ምንዛሬ ፍሰት
ከኢኮኖሚ አንጻር የማህበራዊ ሚዲያ ሱስ ለኢትዮጵያ ከፍተኛ ኪሳራ እያመጣ ነው፦

የምርታማነት መቀነስ፦ በሚሊዮን የሚቆጠሩ ወጣቶች እና የመንግሥት ሠራተኞች በሥራ ሰዓት በእነዚህ መድረኮች ላይ የሚያሳልፉት ሰዓት ለሀገር ውስጥ ምርት (GDP) እድገት ትልቅ እንቅፋት ነው።

የውጭ ምንዛሬ ፍሰት፦ ኢትዮጵያውያን በእነዚህ መድረኮች ላይ ማስታወቂያ ሲያወጡ ወይም የቲክቶክ “ስጦታዎችን” (Gifts) ሲለዋወጡ፣ በድብቅም ይሁን በግልጽ ከፍተኛ መጠን ያለው የውጭ ምንዛሬ ከሀገር ይወጣል። ኩባንያዎቹ (ሜታ፣ ጎግል፣ ቲክቶክ) በኢትዮጵያ ተጠቃሚዎች ቢከብሩም፣ ለሀገሪቱ የሚከፍሉት ግብር ወይም የሚያበረክቱት የኢኮኖሚ ድርሻ አነስተኛ ነው።

የሕግ ክፍተት፦ ተኩላው በበግ ለምድ
ኢትዮጵያ የ”ኮምፒውተር ወንጀል አዋጅ” እና የ”መገናኛ ብዙኃን አዋጅ” ቢኖራትም፣ እነዚህ ሕጎች በዋናነት የሚያተኩሩት ይዘት (Content) ላይ እንጂ በቴክኖሎጂ ኩባንያዎቹ “ሱስ አስያዥ ዲዛይን” ላይ አይደለም። መንግሥት የቴክኖሎጂዎቹ አድናቂ በመሆኑ፣ ኩባንያዎቹን በሕግ ከመጠየቅ ይልቅ “ለዲጂታል ዲፕሎማሲ” ቅድሚያ ይሰጣል።

የሎስ አንጀለሱ ብይን ለኢትዮጵያ የሚሰጠው ትምህርት ግልጽ ነው፤ ቴክኖሎጂን ማድነቅ እና መጠቀም አንድ ነገር ሲሆን፣ የቴክኖሎጂ ኩባንያዎች ዜጎችን (በተለይም ታዳጊዎችን) ለትርፍ ሲሉ ለሱስ እንዳይዳርጉ የመቆጣጠር ኃላፊነት ደግሞ ሌላ ነው። መንግሥት የቴክኖሎጂ አፍቃሪነቱን እና የቁጥጥር ኃላፊነቱን ማመጣጠን ካልቻለ፣ ውጤቱ “ዲጂታል ሱስ የተጠናወተው እና በፖለቲካ የተከፋፈለ” ትውልድ መፍጠር ይሆናል።

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One hundred and twenty years on, we mourn a man twice over, first to death, then to the rather more deliberate vandalism of political convenience.

BY THOMAS ARAYA 

SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT, ETHIOPIAN TRIBUNE

“When the telegrapher delivered the news, he got it wrong;

It is not Makonnen who has died, but the poor.”

ETHIOPIAN VERSE, COMPOSED IN MOURNING, 1906

These lines were not written by a courtier angling for a pension, nor by a priest reciting the obligatory liturgy of grief. They were written because an entire country felt the floor give way beneath its feet. One hundred and twenty years ago today, on Megabit 13, 1898 by the Ethiopian calendar, or the 22nd of March, 1906 to those of us consulting a rather more internationally recognised diary, His Highness Ras Makonnen Wolde Mikael departed this world at the age of fifty-four. He left behind him a city that wept, an emperor who was inconsolable, and a legacy that has since been subjected to indignities that would make a lesser ghost very cross indeed.

But this is not merely an occasion for the sort of anniversary column that pats the subject on the head and moves swiftly on. The year 2026 demands more than archival reverence. It demands we look, with clear and slightly uncomfortable eyes, at what has been done or more precisely, what has been not done to the memory of the man his people called the General of the Poor.

The Final Journey: From the Burqa to the Tomb

History records Ras Makonnen’s last days with a poignancy that no dramatist could improve upon. In early 1902 (1894 by the Ethiopian reckoning), the great Ras fell gravely ill. His physicians in Harar, a city he had governed with the quiet authority of a man who understood both swords and diplomacy recommended the superior medical facilities of the young capital, Addis Ababa. And so, on the 12th of January, he set out.

It proved, as these journeys so often do, to be more pilgrimage than medical mission. By the 17th, his caravan had reached the Burqa River, where he paused to observe the Feast of the Epiphany, Timkat amidst the holy waters. There, with the ceremonies swirling around him and his condition worsening with rather poor timing, the Ras made the decision that only a man who knows himself can make: he turned back. Not to Harar, exactly, but to the hills of Kulubi, and to the Church he had served all his life. It was there, on the 22nd of March, 1906, that he drew his last breath.

The mourning that followed was, by any measure, extraordinary. Emperor Menelik II, his cousin, his comrade, and the man with whom he had stood at Adwa a decade earlier, decreed that the forty-day memorial be observed in the capital. On Monday the 30th of April, the air above Addis Ababa was thick with incense and the chanting of thousands of priests drawn from every monastery and cathedral in the central highlands. The following day, St. George’s Day, a vast encampment of tents rose at Se’i Meda. His ceremonial robes were paraded. His golden crown. The medals he wore with that particular quiet dignity of men who have actually earned their decorations. His horses and mules, draped in gold-leafed trappings, walked riderless through the crowds, a sight, one imagines, that reduced grown soldiers to silence.

The Modern Paradox: A Legacy in Fragments

We arrive now at the present day, and the atmosphere changes considerably. We are in the era of “Medemer” a philosophy championed by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed that presents itself as the great weaving-together of Ethiopia’s disparate historical threads into something coherent and proud. Under this administration, “Great Man” history has enjoyed something of a renaissance. The Adwa Victory Memorial stands in the heart of the capital, gleaming and enormous. Unity Park occupies the meticulously restored Grand Palace. The rhetoric regarding the “restoration of the military institution” to its former glory flows freely and often.

One might observe, with only the gentlest of ironies, that restoring an institution’s image is considerably easier than restoring the actual bronze images of the men who built it.

And yet. There exists, in Harar, in the very city that Ras Makonnen built, governed, and made the most cosmopolitan corner of the empire a vacant pedestal. In June 2020, amidst the violent unrest that followed the appalling assassination of the beloved musician Hachalu Hundessa, a mob toppled and smashed the bronze statue of Ras Makonnen. It was not an accident. It was not collateral damage. It was a targeted act a symbolic execution of a man who had already been dead for one hundred and fourteen years and might therefore have reasonably expected to be left in peace.

The state’s response to this act of cultural desecration? A silence so complete it had its own echo.

The Selective Memory of the State

PM Abiy Ahmed has, on numerous occasions, positioned himself as the custodian of Ethiopian military tradition the heir to the generals who routed the Italians at Adwa. He invokes their names. He commissions their memorials. He speaks of continuity. It is stirring stuff, and would be considerably more stirring were it applied with any consistency.

Ras Makonnen was not merely one of the generals of Adwa. He was arguably its most consequential diplomat and strategist the man who had spent years in European capitals learning precisely how the continent worked, and deploying that knowledge in service of an empire that most Europeans had blithely assumed would simply capitulate. To honour Adwa without honouring Makonnen is rather like celebrating a Test match whilst quietly pretending that one of the opening batsmen didn’t exist.

Critics and there are many, though they tend to express themselves carefully suggest that the Prime Minister is performing a delicate, perhaps rather cynical, balancing act. The imagery of the imperial military provides historical legitimacy to the current state. But rebuilding the statue of Ras Makonnen in Harar risks irritating the more nationalist elements of his ethnic Oromo constituency, some of whom have chosen to see Makonnen through the reductive lens of “imperial expansionist” rather than as the vastly more complicated figure he actually was.

And here, here is where the irony becomes almost physically painful. Ras Makonnen was himself of Oromo descent. He hailed from the Wollo Oromo lineage. He spoke multiple languages. He embodied, in his own person, precisely the kind of multi-ethnic, integrated Ethiopian identity that the current administration endlessly claims to champion. The man who is being implicitly erased as a symbol of “imperial oppression” was, in his own right, a son of the very people in whose name the erasure is being conducted.

One is tempted to suggest that whoever is advising the government on the history of its own country might benefit from a library card.

The Cost of Silence

The “selective restoration” we observe across Ethiopia today, where certain statues receive fresh gilding whilst others remain broken in storage or simply absent from their plinths, reveals something uncomfortable about how history is being deployed. It is not being used as a foundation for national identity. It is being used as a political utility: polished when convenient, discarded when inconvenient, and never, under any circumstances, allowed to complicate the preferred narrative of the day.

When the government spends millions on the Adwa Memorial in Addis Ababa whilst “forgetting” the broken bronze in Harar, the message is plain enough: the past is welcome at the table only when it behaves itself. History, in this reading, is not a discipline. It is a decoration.

The mourners of 1906 understood something rather more profound. They understood that Ras Makonnen’s claim on the collective grief of Ethiopia was not bureaucratic or tribal. It transcended ethnicity, rank, and geography. He was a protector of the common person, the one the poet called simply “the poor”, in the fullest and most generous sense of that word.

A continuity with large gaps in it is not, strictly speaking, continuity. It is, at best, a very long ellipsis.

A CALL FOR CONSISTENCY

As we mark this one hundred and twentieth anniversary, the Ethiopian Tribune calls for a rejection of this selective amnesia and calls for it without apology. A military institution is not built on new hardware or sharp uniforms. It is built on the unshakeable honour accorded to the men who came before. To leave Ras Makonnen’s statue in pieces is to hand the mob a permanent veto over national history a rather alarming precedent for any government that claims to represent all Ethiopians to set.

If the Prime Minister genuinely wishes to be seen as a restorer of Ethiopian greatness, he must look beyond the capital’s vanity projects and attend to the wounds in his regional cities. Harar is not a footnote. It is where the empire’s most capable mind governed, built, and is now 120 years after his death dishonoured by a silence that speaks volumes.

The poet, writing in the grief of 1906, was correct: when Makonnen died, the poor lost a father. But if we permit his memory to be quietly partitioned away sacrificed to the expediencies of modern ethnic politics then it is not only the poor who have suffered a loss. It is the soul of the Ethiopian nation itself, which has proved, rather too obligingly, that some of its generals can be erased simply by leaving a pedestal empty long enough for everyone to stop noticing.

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By Yonas Biru, PhD

Editor’s Forward

Ethiopia on the Brink: The Politics of Abundance in an Economy of Scarcity

(A Summary of the full 30‑page article by Yonas Biru, PhD)

Ethiopia today stands at a crossroads where political ambition collides with economic reality. In this sweeping and meticulously argued essay, Dr. Yonas Biru dissects the country’s current trajectory with a clarity and urgency rarely found in contemporary analyses of Ethiopia’s political economy. His central thesis is stark: Ethiopia is governed by a philosophy of abundance a belief that vision, ambition, and positive thinking can override the hard constraints of economics while the nation itself is trapped in an economy of scarcity.

The result, he argues, is a widening gap between rhetoric and reality, between the spectacle of megaprojects and the erosion of the productive foundations that sustain real development. This forward distills the core arguments of the full article, which readers can access in full via the provided PDF link.

A Nation of Contradictions

Dr. Biru opens with a parable: Ethiopia’s economy resembles the elephant touched by blind men each observer perceives a different truth. The glittering skyline of Addis Ababa suggests progress to some, while for others it is a monument to property confiscation and displacement. Government speeches promise a “Digital Ethiopia 2030,” yet 92% of high school students fail the national university entrance exam. The data tell a sobering story: manufacturing has declined, education spending has collapsed, poverty has risen, and foreign direct investment has dried up.

The author’s diagnosis is not merely that Ethiopia is struggling, but that its struggles are structural, self‑inflicted, and accelerating.

The Philosophy of Abundance vs. the Economics of Scarcity

At the heart of the critique is the Prime Minister’s governing philosophy one that treats scarcity as a psychological barrier rather than a structural constraint. Dr. Biru contrasts this with the development paths of China, Vietnam, South Korea, and India, all of which embraced disciplined sequencing, prioritization, and institutional strengthening.

Ethiopia, by contrast, pursues simultaneous megaprojects, prioritizes showpiece construction over productive investment, and attempts to leapfrog into a digital economy without the educational or industrial foundations required to sustain it.

The result is a eucalyptus‑style growth pattern: fast‑growing, shallow‑rooted, and dangerously fragile.

The Shrinking Middle Class: A Nation Consuming Its Future

One of the most compelling sections of the article examines the erosion of Ethiopia’s middle class. In every successful late‑industrializing economy, the middle class expands before construction booms and technological leaps. In Ethiopia, the opposite is happening.

Doctors earn $70–$100 per month. Professors and teachers struggle to afford food and rent. Inflation erodes wages faster than they can be adjusted. Meanwhile, billions are poured into palaces, corridors, and vanity projects.

Dr. Biru’s conclusion is blunt:
No country has ever developed while shrinking its middle class. Ethiopia will not be the first.

Diaspora Investment: From Catalyst to Casualty

Where China and India mobilized their diasporas to build factories, technology hubs, and export industries, Ethiopia has channeled diaspora capital into speculative real estate. Currency devaluation, punitive taxes, and arbitrary property seizures have turned diaspora investment into a trap rather than a catalyst.

The article provides a striking example: a diaspora investor who bought a condominium for 2 million birr in 2019 would lose nearly 40% of their dollar investment if they sold today. The nominal birr gains are illusions; the real returns are negative.

This is not misfortune, the author argues, it is policy failure.

Institutional Decay: Property Rights, Corruption, and the Rise of Political Entrepreneurship

The essay devotes significant attention to the erosion of property rights and the rise of political entrepreneurship. Land is leased to multiple parties. Legally binding contracts are unilaterally rewritten. Properties are seized for corridor projects without compensation. Corruption investigations are launched with fanfare, only to be quietly buried when they implicate senior officials.

In such an environment, productive entrepreneurs are crowded out by politically connected actors. Investment flows not to the most efficient, but to the most favored.

This is not merely an economic problem it is a political one. Weak property rights fuel rent‑seeking, which fuels competition for state power, which fuels instability. Conflict becomes endogenous to the system.

Macroeconomic Fragility: Debt, Foreign Exchange, and the Illusion of Growth

Dr. Biru dismantles the government’s narrative of self‑reliance and rapid growth. Ethiopia is not borrowing less because it needs less; it is borrowing less because no one will lend. All three major rating agencies have downgraded Ethiopia to junk or default territory. The IMF and World Bank classify the country as being in debt distress.

Meanwhile, the government projects 10.2% GDP growth far above the estimates of the World Bank (7.2%) and the UN (5.8%). The author asks a simple question: Where is this growth coming from?

Not tourism, which remains constrained by security and infrastructure.
Not agriculture, which still imports wheat and leaves millions food‑insecure.
Not manufacturing, which has declined to 4.4% of GDP.
Not exports, which remain stagnant.

The only sector expanding is construction an import‑dependent, debt‑driven, speculative bubble.

The Counterfactual: What Ethiopia Should Have Built

Perhaps the most powerful contribution of the article is its counterfactual analysis. What if Ethiopia had invested in:

• electric transmission lines
• large‑scale irrigation
• electrified pumping systems
• agricultural modernization

instead of urban corridors and palatial complexes?

The data are unequivocal:

• Electrified irrigation increases farm profitability by 58–98%.
• Ethiopia spends $4–5 billion annually on fuel imports—three to four times its coffee export earnings.
• Irrigation could raise national agricultural output by 15–30%.
• Ethiopia has over 1 million hectares of viable irrigation potential.

These investments would have strengthened agriculture, boosted exports, reduced fuel imports, and provided raw materials for manufacturing.

Instead, Ethiopia built corridors.

The Coming Crisis: How Structural Fault Lines Interact

The author warns that Ethiopia’s vulnerabilities are not isolated they are interconnected. A foreign‑exchange shock can stall construction, which can trigger a real‑estate crash, which can destabilize banks, which can collapse tax revenues, which can force inflationary financing, which can erode confidence, which can accelerate capital flight.

This is how systemic crises begin.

A Path Forward: Institutional, Fiscal, and Structural Reform

The article concludes with a sequenced set of recommendations:

• Restore constitutional governance and legislative oversight.
• Rebuild credible property rights and rule‑based administration.
• Replace cadre‑driven policymaking with expert‑led institutions.
• Confront systemic corruption with independent enforcement.
• Rebuild trust with the diaspora through a joint commission.
• Rebalance public spending toward productive sectors.
• Address the foreign‑exchange constraint by expanding exports.
• Reinstate fiscal discipline and transparency.
• Reinvest in human capital especially education.
• Institutionalize technocratic policymaking beyond any single leader.

These are not incremental adjustments they are foundational reforms.

A Final Word

Dr. Biru’s essay is not a lament. It is a warning and a roadmap. It argues that Ethiopia’s crisis is not inevitable; it is the result of choices. And because it is the result of choices, it can be reversed by different choices.

But the window is narrowing.

This forward captures the essence of the full 30‑page analysis. For readers who wish to explore the complete argument, data, and case studies, the full PDF is available here.

[Download the full article: Ethiopia on the Brink – The Politics of Abundance in an Economy of Scarcity]

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By Sewasew Teklemariam Ethiopian Tribune Columnist

The Federal Republic of Megala Finfiney has, over the years, quietly normalised the extraordinary. Coups rebranded as “administrative reshuffles.” Budget speeches delivered entirely in metaphor. Ministers who vanish for months and resurface claiming to have been conducting “field research in remote spiritual zones” a phrase that, in any other country, would trigger a welfare check but in Megala Finfiney earns a ministerial commendation. The republic has absorbed all of it with the weary grace of a people who have simply seen too much.

But nothing, not the coups, not the metaphors, not the spiritual zones prepared anyone for what happened on Thursday 19th of March 2026 morning in Megala Finfiney, when the National Assembly failed to convene because the ruling party’s MPs were sulking.

Not a power cut. Not a security scare. Not a plague of locusts or an act of God, though God, at this point, could hardly be blamed for looking away. The Property Advancement Coalition a party that has governed Megala with the navigational confidence of a goat on a glass staircase, had published its candidate list for the upcoming elections. More than half its sitting MPs discovered they had been dropped. Not reassigned. Not “strategically repositioned for maximum national impact.” Dropped. Like a cracked clay pot from a great height, with no ceremony and no apology.

And so, in a collective act of professional abdication that would embarrass a toddler denied a biscuit, they simply did not come to work. The Speaker waited. The chamber sat empty. The microphones, accustomed to being slapped, were not even granted that dignity. The session collapsed, and the country inflation-battered, corruption-exhausted, perpetually patient, finally lost its sense of humour. Then found it again, sharper and meaner than before.

In the sprawling Merkato of Megala Finfiney, where the price of onions has risen 340% in two years and cooking oil now requires something approaching a mortgage, the reactions arrived fast and without mercy. “They didn’t come to Parliament?” said Almaz, a mother of four. “Good. They haven’t come to our lives either.” Bekele, a taxi driver with the political acuity of a man who has spent two decades stuck in traffic listening to everything, offered his own analysis: “Let them join the TikTok army. At least those boys show up.” University students nearby immediately began workshopping hashtags — #PACChallenge, #SulkingMPs with the creative energy of people who have nothing left to lose and an excellent data plan.

The Federal Bureau of Statistics, an institution that has survived three purges, two fires, and one “accidental” data wipe, had recently published figures that framed the sulk in its full, magnificent context. Inflation at 47%. Youth unemployment at 41%. The cost of a basic food basket up 137%. Corruption complaints doubled. PAC parliamentary attendance already down 36% before the MPs decided to make it a personal statement. The country was struggling. The economy was struggling. The people were struggling. The MPs were struggling with their feelings.

The government, rising to the occasion with characteristic flair, released a statement attributing the absence to “transportation challenges.” The public responded with the kind of sarcasm that deserves its own wing in a national museum. “What transportation challenges?” demanded a shopkeeper. “They have cars, drivers, fuel cards. The rest of us walk.” Another offered an alternative theory: “Maybe their cars refused to start out of shame.” This remains the most plausible explanation anyone has produced.

At the visa-processing queues where thousands of young Megala Finfiney Citizens wait in long, quiet lines for the chance to leave the mood was less comedic and more surgical. “They should go to the Gulf like the rest of us,” said Sami. “Housemaids, drivers, cleaners.” A woman nearby shook her head with the authority of someone who has considered this thoroughly. “They won’t survive. They’re too soft.” A man at the back added that asylum was always an option, before remembering that asylum seekers are no longer welcome anywhere on Earth, and quite possibly not on Mars either.

The opposition leader, MistreAbiyot Yachenfal of the Megala People’s Reform Coalition Party (MPRP), arrived at this catastrophe like a man who had been quietly preparing for it for years. Standing outside his crumbling headquarters with the composure of someone trying very hard not to skip, he delivered a statement of such cheerful devastation that it instantly achieved the status of national comedy. “These MPs were not working even when they were present,” he said. “Their absence is a public service.” He then proposed replacing them with miniature statues specifically, the same statues PAC has been installing throughout its corridor development projects, those grand national vanity exercises named, with escalating abstraction, the Corridor of National Unity, the Corridor of Corridor Planning, and the Corridor of Corridor Maintenance. “Statues don’t demand salaries,” MistreAbiyot Yachenifal explained. “Statues don’t sulk. Statues don’t flee to Dubai.” He paused for effect. “It will be the first time the chamber looks dignified.”

From Brussels, Gifty Ararssa of the Oronana Global Council took a more conspiratorial view. “It is impossible,” she said, with the measured certainty of someone who has been watching this republic for a long time, “for over 200 MPs to sulk simultaneously without coordination. This is organised. This is deliberate. This is…” she leaned forward, “Dubai.” She elaborated. The Prime Minister, she theorised, had taken them for special treatment, consistent with the national tradition of Megalan Finfiney officials disappearing to the Gulf for rest, reflection, and retail. The internet immediately obliged with memes: MPs receiving spa treatments, MPs riding camels, MPs attending a conference entitled “Healing Retreats for Disappointingly Dropped Politicians.” Her closing line entered the canon instantly: “A government that cannot face its people will always face the luxury boutiques of Dubai.”

Architecture students at Megala Polytechnic, inspired by MistreAbiyot’s proposal, submitted a formal academic paper titled “A More Reliable Parliament: Replacing MPs with Sculptural Installations.” Their suggested exhibits included The Honourable Member Who Never Arrived, The Representative of Eternal Absence, and The MP Who Voted Present in Spirit Only. They argued, with footnotes, that statues would improve attendance, reduce corruption, lower salary expenditure, and provide more honesty than the current arrangement. The Speaker has not responded, though observers note he appears to be thinking about it quite seriously.

At a tea stall near the Assembly, a group of pensioners debated the proposal with the gravity of constitutional scholars. “Statues won’t run away,” said one. “Statues don’t need per diem,” said another. “Statues don’t go to Dubai,” confirmed a third. The tea stall owner, who has been serving politicians and their critics for thirty years, offered the summation the moment required: “These MPs turned Parliament into a corridor. If the Prime Minister replaces them with corridor statues, at least the corridors will finally have purpose.”

Weeks earlier, the Prime Minister had declared that the next Parliament “would not look the same.” He was correct. It did not look the same. It did not look at all. Because it did not show up. In Megala, apparently, even prophecy has learned to manage its expectations.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

———————//——————

This text is a work of satire created solely for fictional, humorous, and literary purposes. All names, characters, political parties, institutions, and events are entirely invented. Any resemblance to real persons or entities is purely coincidental. This work is not affiliated with or endorsed by Ethiopian Tribune, and no factual claims are made about any real political situation.

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