Ayana Ayantu unpackages recent events in Ethiopia and explores the history and prospects for Ethiopia under PM Abiy Ahmed. She discusses the history of internal colonisation in Ethiopia that continues to be worked out to this day.
Ethiopia’s delicate transition is under severe strain. A ferocious burst of communal violence in July, sparked by the murder of a popular Oromo singer, and which claimed more than 200 lives, underscores the grave conflict risks this populous Horn of Africa nation faces.
The Elephant in conversation with Abdullahi Boru Halakhe, a Washington DC-based security analyst from the Horn of Africa. Abdullahi unpacks recent events in Ethiopia and the prospects of superstar Prime Minister Abiy.
Successive Ethiopian governments have tried to erase the history and culture of the Oromo people, but a recent conference held in Addis Ababa finally gave this marginalised community an opportunity to be heard.
The Horn is at strategic crossroads. There is immense hope but also great fear. How Ethiopia and Sudan manage their fraught transitions and the prospects for success and reversal remain unknown. What is not in doubt is that a botched transition in both nations will crush the dreams of millions and their quest for liberty and a better quality of life. It will also embolden autocratic regimes and vindicate their ideology of stability.
Does a country create a people, or do a people create a country? KALUNDI SERUMAGA responds to Mahmood Mamdani’s recent analysis on the political situation in Ethiopia.
A political miracle is currently underway in Ethiopia. Political prisoners have been freed; parties, once deemed ‘terrorist’ have been unbanned; opposition media, gagged for 25 years, can now freely operate. But it was last weekend’s historic embrace in Addis Ababa, between Eritrea’s Isias Afwerki and PM Abiy Ahmed, marking the end of a bitter 20-year war, that demonstrates the breathtaking speed and extent of Ethiopia’s perestroika - even as East Africa rushes headlong in the opposite direction. By MIRIAM ABRAHAM
The arrival of reformist Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed Ali, may have only given the ruling EPRDF a stay of execution. At the heart of the political crisis is an old problem: a command economy reluctant to liberalise. State-led infrastructure expansion fuelled a decade of miraculous growth, producing five times more electricity than the country requires. The returns on this investment are not forthcoming. Exports are falling, the Birr has been devalued; a severe forex shortage is underway. Is Ethiopia’s future as Africa’s premier power exporter viable? By DAVID NDII.
The tectonic diplomatic, economic and political shifts that have been embarked upon in Ethiopia will reverberate throughout the region as one of its giants embarks on an opening up of its society that is without precedent. This is not a time to be sceptical about Ethiopia argues L. MUTHONI WANYEKI
Listen to audio or download I had arrived late to Ethiopia, when I first visited it in 2012, barely managing to see the vestiges of the early 20th century nation of lattice work balconies, of Lada taxis, family pizzerias and piazzas; also the Ethiopia of Red Terror squares and state surveillance carried out on such a […]