On 30 April 2019 Ethiopia Insight argued that Abiy Ahmed’s honeymoon was over. Populism, appeasement, and disruption had worked as far as they could in a federal landscape full of unresolved grievances.
The essay contrasted Abiy’s breezy BBC claim that he was obviously the man to unite Ethiopia with a country that felt more divided after a year of released prisoners, elite bargains, and revived identity politics.
Insight’s critique refused both nostalgia for EPRDF discipline and cult praise for medemer theater. It treated speed itself as a governance risk when institutions lag behind speeches.
Reading it after Tigray and Amhara wars, the piece is early stocktaking, not prophecy. Abiy Ahmed’s regime kept moving fast. What broke were civilian lives and the fiction that charm alone is a constitution.
Sources: Ethiopia Insight
