In April 2019, RTÉ and other outlets reported that Negasso Gidada, Ethiopia’s former president (1995–2001), had died at 75, closing a chapter on a figure who sat at the top of the federal republic’s early ceremonial office under EPRDF power realities.
Negasso later broke with the ruling coalition and spoke critically about democracy and contested histories, including Anole and other wounds that official narratives preferred to flatten.
Obituaries are not nostalgia. They are a chance to remember how Ethiopia’s presidency was designed as limited power while real command stayed in party and security hands, a structure Abiy Ahmed inherited and remade.
Kept as history reference, Negasso’s death marks a generation of transitional elites. The arguments he joined about federalism and memory did not die with him.
Sources: RTÉ
