In June 2019 William Davison wrote for Ethiopia Insight that after Meles Zenawi’s authoritarian developmental model hit hard limits, Ethiopia needed an equally serious democratic approach to escaping poverty, even while freedom brought its own constraints.
The essay recalled Meles at the 2012 World Economic Forum defending public infrastructure investment and dismissing simple claims that democracy automatically produces growth, then set that record against Abiy Ahmed’s early reform language about opening politics and markets.
Kept as politics analysis archive, the Insight essay dates a major mid-2019 attempt to measure Abiy’s opening against the Meles developmental-state inheritance.
Sources: Ethiopia Insight