Product Code Database
Abiy Ahmed Ali (; ; born 15 August 1976) is an Ethiopian politician who is the current Prime Minister of Ethiopia since 2018 and the leader of the Prosperity Party since 2019.
Abiy joined the rebel forces fighting against the regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam in his teens and after the collapse of the Derg in 1991, became a Lieutenant Colonel in the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF). He served as a military radio operator during the Badme War against Eritrea from 1998 to 2000 and soon after converted to Pentecostalism. He later rose through the ranks of government via the Information Network Security Agency (INSA), which was established in 2006. In the 2010 national election, Abiy became an elected member of the Ethiopian parliament, representing the district of Agaro. He was then elected Prime Minister by the House of Peoples’ Representatives in 2018, following the dissolution of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) which had governed Ethiopia for 28 years.
Abiy initially embarked on sweeping political reforms, releasing thousands of political prisoners and unbanning opposition groups. He was awarded the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize "for his efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation, and in particular for his decisive initiative to resolve the border conflict with neighbouring Eritrea". As part of his economic reforms, Abiy pursued large-scale privatisation of state-owned enterprises and liberalised several key sectors, including the Ethiopian Airlines. In 2019, he disbanded the EPRDF and formed his own party, the Prosperity Party.
Following rising ethnic and political tensions in 2020, the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) attacked the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) Northern Command, starting the 2-year Tigray war between the combined forces of the ENDF and the Eritrean army against forces loyal to the TPLF and the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA). The war resulted in severe humanitarian crises, widespread displacement, and thousands of deaths. After the Pretoria Agreement ended the Tigray War, Abiy began an effort in 2023 to consolidate all remaining regional militias into the ENDF. Fano rebuffed requests to disarm and integrate into federal forces, instead attacking the ENDF and beginning the War in Amhara.
Since 2019, Ethiopia has undergone democratic backsliding under Abiy's premiership, marked by severe human rights violations, media censorship, internet shutdown, civil conflicts, systematic persecution and ethnic violence in the Tigray Region, Amhara Region and Oromia Region regions. Politically motivated purges also became common and many journalists and activists were arrested by police for alleged breach of "constitutional laws".
Abiy is the 13th child of his father and the sixth and youngest child of his mother, the fourth of his father's four wives. His childhood name was Abiyot (English: "Revolution"). The name was sometimes given to children in the aftermath of the Ethiopian Revolution in the mid-1970s. As a child, Abiy was sent to Agaro to attend the local primary school and later continued his studies at local secondary school in Agaro town. According to several personal reports, Abiy seems to have earned a reputation as a troublemaker with a poor record in school. He later dropped out in the seventh grade and then moved to Addis Ababa.
After the fall of the Derg, he took formal military training from Assefa Brigade in Welega Province and was stationed there. Later on in 1993 he became a soldier in the now Ethiopian National Defense Force and worked mostly in the intelligence and communications departments. In 1995, after the Rwandan genocide, he was deployed as a member of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) in the country's capital, Kigali.
In the Eritrean–Ethiopian War that occurred between 1998 and 2000, he led an intelligence team to discover positions of the Eritrean Defence Forces. During the final days of the war in June 2000, he narrowly escaped an Eritrean artillery attack which had killed most his unit. Abiy later recounted to fellow churchmen that it had been the moment he had a revelation and decided to convert to Pentecostalism.
Later on, Abiy was posted back to his home town of Beshasha, where he – as an officer of the Defense Forces – had to address a critical situation of inter-religious clashes between Muslims and Christians with a number of deaths. He brought calm and peace in a situation of communal tensions accompanying the clashes. In later years, following his election as an MP, he continued these efforts to bring about reconciliation between the religions through the creation of the Religious Forum for Peace.
In 2014, during his time in parliament, Abiy became the director-general of a new and in 2011 founded Government Research Institute called Science and Technology Information Center (STIC). The following year, Abiy became an executive member of ODP. The same year he was elected to the House of Peoples' Representatives for a second term, this time for his home woreda of Gomma.
In October 2015, Abiy became the Ethiopian Minister of Science and Technology (MoST), a post which he left after only 12 months. From October 2016 on, Abiy served as Deputy President of Oromia Region as part of the team of Oromia Region's president Lemma Megersa while staying a member of the Ethiopian Federal House of Peoples' Representatives. Abiy Ahmed also became the head of the Oromia Urban Development and Planning Office. In this role, Abiy was expected to be the major driving force behind Oromia Economic Revolution, Oromia Land and Investment reform, youth employment as well as resistance to widespread land grabbing in Oromia region. As one of his duties in office, he took care of the one million displaced Oromo people displaced from the Somali Region from the 2017 unrest.
As head of the ODP Secretariat from October 2017, Abiy facilitated the formation of a new alliance between the Oromo people and Amhara people groups, which together constitute two-thirds of the Ethiopian population.
In early 2018, many political observers considered Abiy and Lemma Megersa as the most popular politicians within the Oromo community, as well as other Ethiopian communities. This came after several years of unrest in Ethiopia. But despite this favourable rating for Abiy Ahmed and Lemma Megersa, young people from the Oromia region called for immediate action without delays to bring fundamental change and freedom to Oromia Region and Ethiopia – otherwise more unrest was to be expected. According to Abiy himself, people are asking for a different rhetoric, with an open and respectful discussion in the political space to allow political progress and to win people for democracy instead of pushing them.
Until early 2018, Abiy continued to serve as head of the ODP secretariat and of the Oromia Housing and Urban Development Office and as Deputy President of Oromia Region. He left all these posts after his election as the leader of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front.
Hailemariam's resignation triggered the first ever contested leadership election among EPRDF coalition members to replace him. A lot of political observers made Lemma Megersa (the ODP chairman) and Abiy Ahmed the front-runners to become the Leader of the ruling coalition and eventually Prime Minister of Ethiopia. Despite being the clear favorite for the general public, Lemma Megersa was not a member of the national parliament, a requirement to become Prime Minister as required by the Ethiopian constitution. Therefore, Lemma Megersa was excluded from the leadership race. On 22 February 2018, Lemma Megersa's party, ODP, called for an emergency executive committee meeting and replaced him as Chairman of ODP with Abiy Ahmed, who was a member of parliament. Some observers saw that as a strategic move by the ODP to retain its leadership role within the coalition and to promote Abiy Ahmed to become prime minister.
On 1 March 2018, the 180 EPRDF executive committee members started their meeting to elect the leader of the party. Each of the four parties sent in 45 members. The contest for the leadership was among Abiy Ahmed of ODP, Demeke Mekonnen, the Deputy Prime Minister and ADP leader, Shiferaw Shigute as Chairman of SEPDM and Debretsion Gebremichael as the Leader of TPLF. Despite being the overwhelming favorite by the majority of Ethiopians, Abiy Ahmed faced major opposition from TPLF and SEPDM members during the leadership discussions.
On 27 March 2018, a few hours before the beginning of the leadership elections, Demeke Mekonnen, who had been seen as the major opponent to Abiy Ahmed, dropped out of the race. Many observers saw this as an endorsement of Abiy Ahmed. Demeke was then approved as deputy prime minister for another term. Following Demeke's exit, Abiy Ahmed received a presumably unanimous vote from both the ADP and ODP executive members, with 18 additional votes in a secret ballot coming from elsewhere. By midnight, Abiy Ahmed was declared chairman of the ruling coalition in Ethiopia, the EPRDF, and was considered as the Prime Minister Designate of Ethiopia by receiving 108 votes while Shiferaw Shigute received 58 and Debretsion Gebremichael received 2 votes. On 2 April 2018, Abiy Ahmed was elected as Prime Minister of Ethiopia by the House of Representatives and sworn in.
That same day, charges were dropped against Andargachew's colleague Berhanu Nega and the Oromo dissident and public intellectual Jawar Mohammed, as well as their respectively affiliated US-based ESAT and OMN satellite television networks. Shortly thereafter, Abiy took the "unprecedented and previously unimaginable" step of meeting Andargachew, who twenty-four hours previously had been on death row, at his office; a move even critics of the ruling party termed "bold and remarkable". Abiy had previously met former Oromo Liberation Front leaders including founder Lencho Letta, who had committed to peaceful participation in the political process, upon their arrival at Bole International Airport.
On 30 May 2018, it was announced the ruling party would amend the country's "draconian" anti-terrorism law, widely perceived as a tool of political repression. On 1 June 2018, Abiy announced the government would seek to end the state of emergency two months in advance of the expiration its six-month tenure, citing an improved domestic situation. On 4 June 2018, Parliament approved the necessary legislation, ending the state of emergency. In his first briefing to the House of Peoples' Representatives in June 2018, Abiy countered criticism of his government's release of convicted "terrorists" which according to the opposition is just a name the EPRDF gives you if you are a part or even meet the "opposition". He argued that policies that sanctioned arbitrary detention and torture themselves constituted extra-constitutional acts of terror aimed at suppressing opposition. This followed the additional pardon of 304 prisoners (289 of which had been sentenced on terrorism-related charges) on 15 June. The pace of reforms has revealed fissures within the ruling coalition, with hardliners in the military and the hitherto dominant TPLF said to be "seething" at the end of the state of emergency and the release of political prisoners.
An editorial on the previously pro-government website Tigrai Online arguing for the maintenance of the state of emergency gave voice to this sentiment, saying that Abiy was "doing too much too fast". Another article critical of the release of political prisoners suggested that Ethiopia's criminal justice system had become a revolving door and that Abiy's administration had quite inexplicably been rushing to pardon and release thousands of prisoners, among them many deadly criminals and dangerous arsonists. On 13 June 2018, the TPLF executive committee denounced the decisions to hand over Badme and privatize SOEs as "fundamentally flawed", saying that the ruling coalition suffered from a fundamental leadership deficit.
According to the NGOs Human Rights Watch, Committee to Protect Journalists and Amnesty International, Abiy's government has since mid 2019 been arresting Ethiopian journalists and closing media outlets (except for ESAT-TV). From the international media outlets, his government has suspended the press license of Reuters's correspondent, and issued a warning letter to the correspondents of both BBC and Deutsche Welle for what the government described as "violation of the rules of media broadcasting". As of June 2022, 18 journalists were arrested on allegation of "inciting violence" while reporting for independent media outlets or YouTube channels.
State monopolies in the telecommunications, aviation, electricity, and logistics sectors are to be ended and those industries opened up to private sector competition. Shares in the state-owned firms in those sectors, including Ethiopian Airlines, Africa's largest and most profitable, are to be offered for purchase to both domestic and foreign investors, although the government will continue to hold a majority share in these firms, thereby retaining control of the commanding heights of the economy. State-owned enterprises in sectors deemed less critical, including railway operators, sugar, industrial parks, hotels and various manufacturing firms, may be fully privatised.
Aside from representing an ideological shift with respect to views on the degree of government control over the economy, the move was seen as a pragmatic measure aimed at improving the country's dwindling foreign-exchange reserves, which by the end of the 2017 fiscal year were equal in value to less than two months worth of imports, as well as easing its growing sovereign debt load.
In June 2018, Abiy announced the government's intention to establish an Ethiopian stock exchange in tandem with the privatization of state-owned enterprises. As of 2015, Ethiopia was the largest country in the world, in terms of both population and gross domestic product, without a stock exchange.
In June 2018, he met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Cairo and, separately, brokered a meeting in Addis Ababa between the South Sudanese president Salva Kiir and rebel leader Riek Machar in an attempt to encourage peace talks.
In December 2022, he attended the United States–Africa Leaders Summit 2022 in Washington, D.C., and met with US President Joe Biden.
In February 2023, French President Emmanuel Macron welcomed Abiy Ahmed in Paris. In April 2023, Abiy met with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in Addis Ababa. In early May 2023, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz met with Abiy Ahmed in Addis Ababa to normalize relations between Germany and Ethiopia that had been strained by the Tigray War.
In July 2023, Abiy attended the 2023 Russia–Africa Summit in Saint Petersburg and met with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Two days later a similar agreement was signed with the Sudanese government granting Ethiopia an ownership stake in the Port Sudan. The Ethio-Djibouti agreement grants the Djiboutian government the option of taking stakes in state-owned Ethiopian firms in return, such as the Ethiopian Airlines and Ethio Telecom. This in turn was followed shortly thereafter by an announcement that Abiy and Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta had reached an agreement for the construction of an Ethiopian logistics facility at Lamu Port as part of the Lamu Port and Lamu-Southern Sudan-Ethiopia Transport Corridor (LAPSSET) project. The potential normalization of Ethiopia-Eritrea relations likewise opens the possibility for Ethiopia to resume using the Ports of Massawa and Asseb, which, prior to the Ethio-Eritrean conflict, were its main ports, which would be of particular benefit to the northern region of Tigray Region. All these developments would reduce Ethiopian reliance on Djibouti's port which, since 1998, has handled almost all of Ethiopia's maritime traffic.
During the national celebration on 20 June 2018, the president of Eritrea, Isaias Afwerki, accepted the peace initiative put forward by Abiy and suggested that he would send a delegation to Addis Ababa. On 26 June 2018, Eritrean Foreign Minister Osman Saleh Mohammed visited Addis Ababa in the first Eritrean high-level delegation to Ethiopia in over two decades. In Asmara, on 8 July 2018, Abiy became the first Ethiopian leader to meet with an Eritrean counterpart in over two decades, in the 2018 Eritrea–Ethiopia summit. The very next day, the two signed a "Joint Declaration of Peace and Friendship" declaring an end to tensions and agreeing, amongst other matters, to re-establish diplomatic relations; reopen direct telecommunication, road, and aviation links; and facilitate Ethiopian use of the ports of Massawa and Asseb. Abiy was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for his efforts in ending the war.
In practice, the agreement has been described as "largely unimplemented". Critics say not much has changed between the two nations. Among the Eritrean diaspora, many voiced disapproval for the Nobel Peace Prize focusing on the agreement with Eritrea when so little had changed in practice. In July 2020, Eritrea's Ministry of Information said: "Two years after the signing of the Peace Agreement, Ethiopian troops continue to be present in our sovereign territories, Trade and economic ties of both countries have not resumed to the desired extent or scale."
In October 2023, Abiy said that the secession of Eritrea from Ethiopia in 1993 was a historical mistake that threatens the existence of landlocked Ethiopia, saying that "In 2030 we are projected to have a population of 150 million. 150 million people can't live in a geographic prison." He said Ethiopia has "natural rights" to direct access to the Red Sea and if denied, "there will be no fairness and justice and if there is no fairness and justice, it's a matter of time, we will fight".
A person on a petition organization called Change.org launched a campaign to gather 35,000 signatures for revoking his Peace Prize; as of September 2021, nearly 30,000 have been obtained.
After the murder of activist, singer and political icon Hachalu Hundessa ignited violence across Addis Ababa and other Ethiopian cities, Abiy hinted, without obvious suspects or clear motives for the killing, that Hundessa may have been murdered by Egyptian security agents acting on orders from Cairo to stir up trouble. An Egyptian diplomat responded by saying that Egypt "has nothing to do with current tensions in Ethiopia". Ian Bremmer wrote in a Time magazine article that Prime Minister Abiy "may just be looking for a scapegoat that can unite Ethiopians against a perceived common enemy".
On 7 June 2018, Abiy carried out a wide-ranging reshuffle of top security officials, replacing ENDF Chief of Staff Samora Yunis with Lieutenant General Se'are Mekonnen, National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) director Getachew Assefa with Lieutenant General Adem Mohammed, National Security Advisor and former army chief Abadula Gemeda, and Sebhat Nega, one of the founders of the TPLF and director-general of the Foreign Relations Strategic Research Institute Sebhat's retirements had been previously announced that May.
Abiy's government was accused of authoritarianism and restricting freedom of the press, especially since the start of the Tigray War. Numerous watchdogs and human rights groups accused Abiy's government of "increasingly intimidating" the media as well as harassing opponents to propel unrest. In 2019 World Press Freedom Index, Ethiopia improved the rank by jumping forty positions from 150 to 110 out of 180 countries. In 2021, 46 journalists were detained, making Ethiopia the worst jailer in Africa. Journalist Gobeze Sisay was arrested by unknown plainclothes officers in his home on 1 May. On 3 May, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) released statement about Gobez Sisay's whereabout. Similarly, the founder of Terara Network was arrested in Addis Ababa on 10 December 2021 in allegation of "disseminating misinformation", which was transferred to Sabata Daliti police station in Oromia Special Zone. He was released on 5 April 2022 with bail of 50,000 Ethiopian birr.
Abiy holds a Master of Arts in transformational leadership earned from the business school at Greenwich University, London, in collaboration with the International Leadership Institute, Addis Ababa, in 2011. He also holds a Master of Business Administration from the Leadstar College of Management and Leadership in Addis Ababa in partnership with Ashland University in 2013.
Abiy, who had started his Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) work as a regular student, submitted his PhD thesis in 2016, and defended it in 2017 at the Institute for Peace and Security Studies, Addis Ababa University. He did his PhD work on the Agaro constituency with the PhD thesis entitled "Social Capital and its Role in Traditional Conflict Resolution in Ethiopia: The Case of Inter-Religious Conflict In Jimma Zone State", supervised by Amr Abdallah). In 2022, Alex de Waal described Abiy's PhD thesis as constituting an anecdote on an event in which an individual friendship between people of opposite sides augmented social capital and inspired the resolution of a local violent conflict in Jimma Zone. De Waal saw the thesis as "perhaps enough for an undergraduate paper", but not deep enough to cover social capital, background literature on armed conflict and resolution, or literature on "identity, nationalism and conflict". In 2023, de Waal and colleagues recommended that Addis Ababa University re-examine Abiy's PhD thesis for plagiarism, based on their claim of the presence of plagiarism on every page of Chapter 2 of the thesis.
Abiy published a related short research article on de-escalation strategies in the Horn of Africa in a special journal issue dedicated to countering violent extremism.
| + !# !Award !Awarding institution !Date | |||
| 1 | Most Excellent Order of the Pearl of Africa: Grand Master | Uganda | 9 June 2018 |
| 2 | Order of the Zayed Medal | UAE Crown Prince | 24 July 2018 |
| 3 | High Rank Peace Award | Ethiopian Orthodox Church | 9 September 2018 |
| 4 | Order of King Abdulaziz | Saudi Arabia | |
| 5 | Nominee for Tipperary International Peace Award alongside Mary Robinson (the eventual winner); Aya Chebbi; humanitarian worker in South Sudan Orla Treacy; the President of Eritrea, Isaias Afwerki; Swedish student and climate change activist Greta Thunberg Cherinet Hariffo Education Advocate From Ethiopia and Nigerian humanitarian activist Zannah Mustapha | Tipperary Peace Convention | November 2018 |
| 6 | 100 Most Influential Africans of 2018 | New African magazine | 1 December 2018 |
| 7 | African of the year | The African leadership magazine | 15 December 2018 |
| 8 | The 5th Africa Humanitarian and Peacemakers Award (AHPA) | African Artists for Peace Initiative | 2018 |
| 9 | 100 Most Influential People 2018 | Time magazine | 1 January 2019 |
| 10 | 100 Global Thinkers of 2019 | Foreign Policy magazine | 1 January 2019 |
| 11 | Personality of the Year | AfricaNews.com | 1 January 2019 |
| 12 | African Excellence Award for Gender | African Union | 11 February 2019 |
| 13 | Humanitarian and Peace Maker Award | African Artists Peace Initiative | 9 March 2019 |
| 14 | Laureate of the 2019 edition of the Félix Houphouët-Boigny – UNESCO Peace Prize | UNESCO | 2 May 2019 |
| 15 | Peace Award for Contribution of Unity to Ethiopian Muslims | Ethiopian Muslim Community | 25 May 2019 |
| 16 | Chatham House Prize 2019 Nominee | Chatham House | July 2019 |
| 17 | World Tourism Award 2019 | World Tourism Forum | August 2019 |
| 18 | Hessian Peace Prize | Hesse | August 2019 |
| 19 | African Association of Political Consultants Award | APCAfrica | September 2019 |
| 20 | Nobel Peace Prize | Nobel Foundation | 11 October 2019 |
| 21 | GIFA Laureate 2022 - Global Islamic Finance Award | Global Islamic Finance Awards | 14 September 2022 |
| 22 | Outstanding African Leadership Award Award for Green Legacy Initiative | American Academy of Achievement and Global Hope Coalition | 13 December 2022 |
| 23 | FAO Agricola Medal | 28 January 2024 |
|-
|-
|-
|-
|-
|
|
