Page 108 - Volume 2_CHANGES_merged_with links

Ethiopia

Uncomfortable Truths

Abiy Ahmed, the 42-year-old prime minister of Ethiopia, has dazzled Africa with a volley of
political reforms since his appointment in April. Mr Abiy ended the 20-year border war with

Eritrea, released political prisoners, removed bans on dissident groups and allowed their
members to return from exile, declared press freedom and granted diverse political groups the
freedom to mobilize and organize.

Mr Abiy has been celebrated as a reformer, but his transformative politics has come up against
ethnic federalism enshrined in Ethiopia's Constitution. The resulting clash threatens to

exacerbate competitive ethnic politics further and push the country toward an interethnic
conflict.
The 1994 Constitution, introduced by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and the Ethiopian People's

Revolutionary Democratic Front governing coalition, recast the country from a centrally unified
republic to a federation of nine regional ethnic states and two federally administered city-

states. It bases key rights — to land, government jobs, representation in local and federal
bodies — not on Ethiopian citizenship but on being considered ethnically indigenous in

constituent ethnic states.
The system of ethnic federalism was troubled with internal inconsistencies because ethnic
groups do not live only in a discrete "homeland" territory but are also dispersed across the

country. Nonnative ethnic minorities live within every ethnic homeland.
Ethiopia's census lists more than 90 ethnic groups, but there are only nine ethnically defined

regional assemblies with rights for the officially designated majority ethnic group. The
nonnative minorities are given special districts and rights of self-administration. But no matter

the number of minority regions, the fiction of an ethnic homeland creates endless minorities.
Ethnic mobilization comes from multiple groups, including Ethiopians without an ethnic
homeland, and those disenfranchised as minorities in the region of their residence, even if their

ethnic group has a homeland in another state.
Ethnic federalism also unleashed a struggle for supremacy among the Big Three: the Tigray,

the Amhara and the Oromo. Although the ruling E.P.R.D.F. is a coalition of four parties, the
Tigray People's Liberation Front representing the Tigray minority has been in the driving seat
since the 1991 revolution. The Amhara, dominant before 1991, and the Oromo, the largest

ethnic group in the country, complained they were being treated as subordinate minorities.
When the government announced plans to expand Addis Ababa, the federally run city-state,

into bordering Oromo lands, protests erupted in 2015. The Amhara joined and both groups
continued to demand land reform, equal political representation and an end to rights abuses. “
The Trouble With Ethiopia's Ethnic Federalism" 124
Mamdani, Mahmood,. "Opinion", The New York Times, (January 2019)