Abiy Ahmed Ali (born 15 August 1976) is an Ethiopian politician and former military officer who is the current prime minister of Ethiopia since 2018. He is also 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 Pentecostal Christianity. 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, Amhara and Oromia regions. Politically motivated purges also became common and many journalists and activists were arrested by police for alleged breach of "constitutional laws".
Early life Abiy Ahmed was born in the small town of Beshasha, Ethiopia. His father, Ahmed Ali, was a respected Muslim Oromo elder who donated much of to land to build a mosque during the reign of Haile Selassie. While his mother, Tezeta Wolde, lived in a dilapidated house and sold traditional tej wine for a living. In a 2018 interview with The New York Times, Abiy stated that his mother "was Amhara and Orthodox Christian" and "converted to Islam when she married". However, in a 2021 Oromia Broadcasting Network interview redistributed on YouTube, Abiy asserted that his parents were both Oromo.
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.
Military and intelligence career At the age of 14, in early 1991, he joined the armed struggle against the Marxist–Leninist regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam after the death of his oldest brother. He was a child soldier, affiliated to the Oromo People's Democratic Organization (OPDO), which at that time was a tiny organization of only around 200 fighters part of the large coalition army of the EPRDF which had over 100,000 fighters that resulted in the regime's fall later that year. As there were only so few OPDO fighters in an army with its core of about 90,000 Tigrayans, Abiy quickly had to learn the Tigrinya language. As a speaker of Tigrinya in a security apparatus dominated by Tigrayans, he could move forward with his military career.
After the fall of the Derg, he took formal military training from Assefa Brigade in West Wollega 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 Pentecostal Christianity.
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.
INSA In 2006, Abiy was one of the co-founders of the Information Network Security Agency (INSA), where he worked in different positions. The Ethiopian government established INSA with support from the United States, modeling it after the American's National Security Agency (NSA). Initially the agency was tasked with intercepting and analyzing intelligence, particularly from neighboring Somalia at the time of the US backed 2006 invasion, but the agency gradually expanded its role into domestic surveillance. Through INSA, Abiy Ahmed ascended through the ranks of government and became influential politically. For two years, he was acting director of INSA due to the director's leave of absence. In this capacity, he was board member of several government agencies working on information and communications, like Ethio telecom and Ethiopian Television. He attained the rank of Lieutenant colonel before deciding in 2010 to leave the military and his post as deputy director of INSA to become a politician.
Political career
Member of Parliament
Abiy started his political career as a member of the Oromo Democratic Party (ODP). The ODP has been the ruling party in Oromia Region since 1991 and also one of four coalition parties of the ruling coalition in Ethiopia, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). He became a member of the central committee of ODP and congress member of the executive committee of the EPRDF in quick succession. In the 2010 national election, Abiy represented the district of Agaro and became an elected member of the House of Peoples' Representatives, the lower chamber of the Ethiopian Federal Parliamentary Assembly. Before and during his time of parliamentary service, there were several religious clashes among Muslims and Christians in Jimma Zone. Some of these confrontations turned violent and resulted in the loss of life and property. Abiy, as an elected member of parliament took a proactive role in working with several religious institutions and elders to bring about reconciliation in the zone. He helped set up a forum entitled "Religious Forum for Peace", an outcome of the need to devise a sustainable resolution mechanism to restore peaceful Muslim-Christian community interaction in the region.
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.
Rise to power
Starting from 2015, Abiy became one of the central figures in the violent fight against illegal land grabbing activities in Oromia Region and especially around Addis Ababa. Although the Addis Ababa Master Plan at the heart of the land-grabbing plans was stopped in 2016, the disputes continued for some time resulting in injuries and deaths. It was this fight against land-grabbing, that finally boosted Abiy Ahmed's political career, brought him into the spotlight and allowed him to climb the political ladder.
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 and Amhara 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.
EPRDF leadership election
Following three years of protest and unrest, on 15 February 2018 the Ethiopian Prime Minister, Hailemariam Desalegn, announced his resignation – which included his resignation from the post of EPRDF chairman. With the EPRDF's large majority in Parliament, its EPRDF chairman was all but assured of becoming the next Prime Minister. The EPRDF chairman, on the other hand, is one of the heads of the four parties that make up the ruling coalition: Oromo Democratic Party (ODP), Amhara Democratic Party (ADP), Southern Ethiopian People's Democratic Movement (SEPDM) and Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF).