-
Thankful to @mwineedgar for sharing this article on our WhatsApp Platform earlier this morning. I just finished reading through and I can’t help but reflect on the role of leadership in the ongoing conflict in the Horn of Africa.
I remember @williambabigumira and Bright Anthony spending considerable time facilitating discussions on political consciousness and its attendant issues like compromise and appropriate decision making. Angelo also led on the need for African Unity as a vehicle for the continent’s economic transformation. Ethiopia disintegrating into ethnic based political groupings and Abiy’s failed push for a united country reflects on the many challenges we still face as a continent.
Why I post here is to really ask, with the benefit of hindsight, what could Abiy Ahmed have done different?
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ethiopia/2021-11-05/can-ethiopia-survive
2 Comments-
![Profile picture of Edgar Mwine]()
President Abiy should have avoided the errors of the past. His rise to power was through a consensus that he could help unite a “divided but not broken” Ethiopia. We can’t wish away the long standing ethnic divisions that still play out considerably in the political federation, but President Abiy had a lot of good will. He has since lost favour among a considerable portion of Ethiopians and his legitimacy is questionable. His reading of the political situation was wrong and thus, his actions
Thank you @karanetuhirirwe for the post. If the Guns in Africa are to fall silent, then courageous and bold leadership is needed to take firm steps towards addressing old political grievances and replacing them with a new national and pan-African outlook to matters of self-determination.
In the last seminar, we discussed African nationalism and how self-determination can be used to overcome the forces of ethnic fragmentation. Off course, this also means that we should think deeply about how nationalism (ethno-nationalism) can be misused as a tool for self-determination. This is precisely what Prime Minister Abiy is grappling with; how to roll back entrenched ethno-nationalism and replace it with a feasible truly national polity. This is a very complex endeavor and cannot be underestimated. Ethiopia has over 80 ethnic groups, all of which enjoy the right to self-determination (including secession) entrenched in the Ethiopian constitution (ratified 1994). The war is in many ways a crisis fomented by a constitutional dilemma and a flawed political organizational framework. The problems with apportioning the right to self-determination based on ethic quotas are legion. Ethnic boundaries are a terrible idea, in a world with a fast-growing population, urbanization and increasing geographical porosity. In my view, this method is the exact anti-thesis of Pan-Africanism and is to be avoided.
I encourage all the fellows to read widely on Ethiopia, its history, and to learn how ethno-nationalism fails and will fail as a method of political organization. Sadly, the crisis in Ethiopia may continue to unfold for a while, with no clear end in sight. The AU is hamstrung to intervene in such a complex situation. Hopefully, dialogue will prevail and not settling political scores with guns and war.