Abiy Ahmed is the prime minister of Ethiopia, in office since 2018. He was 49 years old as of late 2025. He is a born-again Christian. He struck a peace deal with Eritrea in 2018, winning a Nobel peace prize in the process, but relations between the two countries have since deteriorated sharply. He is said to see himself as a messiah—and messiahs don't retire. Though the country has a relatively liberal abortion law, an aggressive anti-abortion movement has suddenly taken root, about which his government has been strikingly silent. He has made no secret of his desire to grab Eritrea's Red Sea ports—over which Ethiopia lost control when Eritrea seceded in 1993—and has been equipping his army with fighter jets and drones, even as public services across the country are ailing.
On September 9th 2025 Abiy presided over the official opening of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), Africa's largest hydropower project, calling it "the greatest achievement in the history of the black race".
Abiy's principal foreign ally is the United Arab Emirates. It is unclear whether the UAE would restrain Abiy from launching a war against Eritrea; some diplomats worry it may be egging him on.
Speaking to parliament on October 28th 2025, Abiy insisted that his government had no wish for war with anyone. But should one erupt, he added, there could be no question of the outcome: "No one will stop us." Ethiopia's army chief was blunter still, saying that "unless [the TPLF] is eliminated, Ethiopia will not find peace."
In late January 2026, after TPLF forces crossed the Tekeze river into Tselemti, Abiy's government suspended flights to Tigray and launched drone strikes deep in the region. In a speech to parliament on February 3rd 2026 he called the TPLF "traitors" working to "dismantle Ethiopia." The African Union publicly offered to mediate; Abiy's government replied privately that the AU should stop meddling in its internal affairs. After taking office in 2018 Abiy quickly gathered a coalition of forces—including ethno-nationalist Amhara militias—with grievances against the TPLF, which he sought to displace as the dominant force in Ethiopian politics. He has stonewalled TPLF demands to return occupied Western Tigray to Tigrayan control.
When Abiy first took office he released dozens of journalists jailed by his predecessors, lifted bans on independent outlets and praised pluralism. Eight years later, scores of Ethiopian journalists have been arrested, beaten or forced into exile. Many foreign reporters have been expelled. In 2024 one foreign reporter was arrested while meeting an opposition politician and deported; the politician was assassinated a few weeks later.
In February 2026 the government revoked the licence of the Addis Standard, a prominent newspaper and one of the few local outlets still brave enough to criticise the government, accusing it of violating unspecified laws and endangering "the national interest". On April 15th 2026 masked men in civilian clothes abducted Million Beyene, the paper's managing editor, from its office in Addis Ababa. The police deny he is in their custody. Tsedale Lemma, the paper's founder, lives abroad. An official at the media regulator claimed the Standard was waging a "co-ordinated information war" against Ethiopia and that fighting it was a matter of "national survival".
Ethiopia is gearing up for a general election in June 2026. Abiy says it will be the most open and democratic poll in the country's history. In reality, many of his rivals are either in exile or in jail, opposition parties have been co-opted, cowed or banned, and journalists often disappear.
Abiy has demolished much of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capital, to make way for luxury apartments, parks and cycle lanes. He has continued to spend what are thought to be billions of dollars on vanity projects, including an opulent new palace and a planned $10bn airport near Bishoftu to be Africa's largest, even as doctors' salaries have fallen by roughly two-thirds in real terms over six years and at least 8m children are thought to be out of school.
Since 2019 Abiy's army has been bogged down fighting various ethnic insurgencies. Some of his generals have publicly complained that their troops are exhausted. Abiy has repeatedly tried to solve the problem by drafting in poorly trained militias, which has tended to backfire. The Fano, for instance, were his allies during the war in Tigray (2020-22) before becoming his enemies. In Oromia he relies on a dizzying array of Oromo militias to fight the Oromo Liberation Army. Rebels and militiamen have been known to swap sides. Many are bandits more than fighters; murder, theft and kidnapping are rampant. The anarchy allows Abiy to divide and discredit his enemies, but it also erodes the authority of the Ethiopian state.
Since 2023 Ethiopia's government has been in conflict with the Fano, a loose coalition of rebel groups fighting for the interests of the Amhara, Ethiopia's second-largest ethnic group. The government has trained and equipped local anti-Fano militias, but there is little trust between them and the regular army. Asres Mare Damte, a Fano commander, claims plenty have defected to join the Fano.
On March 31st 2025, after a clash between the army and local militias in Birakat, a town in the Amhara region, soldiers combed through the town and massacred civilians, according to eyewitnesses. Teams of four to six soldiers dragged people from their homes; witnesses saw women made to kneel and shot from behind, a priest killed outside his church, and 56 bodies in the streets the following morning. In January 2024 government troops summarily executed dozens of civilians in the town of Merawi, some 20km west of Birakat, according to Human Rights Watch. Both incidents followed clashes with local forces.
During the Tigray war the Ethiopian army killed at least 70 civilian men and boys in the town of Bora after an attack on their camp by Tigrayan rebels in December 2020, according to a UN investigation. The following month troops frogmarched dozens of unarmed Tigrayan men to the edge of a cliff near Mahbere Dego, filmed themselves shooting their captives and flung their corpses over the precipice. In May 2025 the African Union's human-rights body held a hearing accusing the army of extrajudicial killings, torture and sexual violence in Tigray.
Abiy's government has denied that its soldiers committed atrocities in Tigray and says it is preparing a transitional-justice programme to prosecute war crimes committed in Ethiopia since 1995. Independent observers say the process is a charade. "Ethiopia has stalled and hampered any hope that those most responsible will be held to account," says Laetitia Bader, Human Rights Watch's Horn of Africa director.
Never have so many understood so little about so much.