When Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed spoke on September 8 about domestic arms plants and unmanned aircraft as tools of peace, the speech landed on a map that Amhara communities already know by heart. Conflict trackers at ACLED say federal forces have carried out 102 drone strikes in the Amhara region since the Fano war intensified in April 2023, and that running total is not a single week’s barrage. It is the air campaign that villages have lived under while Addis Ababa markets deterrence and self-reliance.
An AFP investigation published the same day through France 24 reported that Ethiopia has run two drone factories since 2025. SkyWin Aeronautics Industries in Addis Ababa was inaugurated in March 2025 and described by state media as building unmanned aerial vehicles designed by Ethiopian professionals for both civilian and military use. A second plant, Aeroabay, opened later in 2025 and, according to drone specialist Wim Zwijnenburg of the conflict-resolution group PAX, produces thousands of small weaponised first-person-view drones that cost only a few thousand dollars each. Some of those systems use fibre-optic control lines that are harder to jam. Analysts told AFP that the federal fleet also still includes Turkish Akinci and Bayraktar TB2 aircraft, Chinese Wing Loong models, and Iranian Mohajer-6 systems, so the “homegrown” story sits beside a long import trail.
Abiy Ahmed’s Regime framed the factories as prevention rather than fuel for war. State-aligned coverage of the September 8 “Day of Resilience” remarks cast UAV production, armored vehicles, and ammunition plants as proof that Ethiopia can defend itself with its own knowledge. SIPRI researcher Pieter Wezeman told AFP that a showroom hall with shiny drones does not prove full local production, and that a substantial share of key parts may still be imported. Jeremy Binnie of Janes said the SkyWin model displayed at inauguration closely resembled a commercially available Chinese design. Those caveats matter for procurement debates. They do not erase what the finished systems are already doing over Amhara ground.
International Crisis Group’s Magnus Taylor has said drones have been blamed for civilian deaths on various occasions, and he has also noted that unopposed air power lets Abiy Ahmed fight a war of attrition without paying the political cost of a large ground campaign. That analysis fits the Amhara record that diaspora monitors keep when international desks look elsewhere. Zegabi’s English write-up of the factory showcase put ACLED’s 102-strike Amhara tally beside the palace message and reminded readers that Fano chairman Zemene Kassie has accused the Ethiopian government of indiscriminate attacks on civilians and religious sites. Those accusations remain contested in the usual fog of a closed war. ACLED’s aggregate is harder for the authorities in Addis Ababa to dismiss as rumor alone.
The Amhara Association of America has kept documenting strikes into mid and late summer, including Raya-Alamata and South Wollo, and its September 7 to 13 weekly still logged drone activity closer to the New Year period. AAA says regime drones struck Dehna-Mariam Kebele in Bahir-Dar-Zuriya on September 10 and 11, with the second strike leaving five civilian farmers injured and damaging public facilities, according to preliminary accounts. On September 7 in Dera Woreda of South Gonder, AAA reports coordinated strikes on primary schools in Sana and Mecho during student registration, with significant civilian harm whose exact death toll stayed unconfirmed in the weekly. Mereja has already reported those school and Merawi church details from the same AAA file. They belong here again because they are the civilian face of the same air war that the factories are built to sustain.
Tigray is not quiet either, and that matters for anyone who hopes Pretoria still holds. France 24, citing ACLED, reported at least 14 drone strikes in Tigray in 2026, including seven in August alone, as tensions around recruitment and logistics hardened. Crisis Group’s Taylor said Abiy Ahmed does not appear to want a costly ground war in Tigray right now and can keep an attrition fight going longer because drones fly essentially unopposed. For Amhara readers, the parallel is already lived experience: more than a hundred recorded strikes since 2023, and a federal narrative that still calls the Amhara campaign a security cleanup.
On September 9, a group of 41 countries at the UN Human Rights Council said they were concerned about developments in Oromia and especially Amhara, and they urged all parties to end human rights violations and abuses, protect civilians and humanitarian workers, and ensure accountability. OHCHR’s global update to the same Council session said civilians were bearing the brunt of attacks in Amhara and Oromia and of renewed tensions in Tigray. Those statements do not by themselves change sortie schedules. They do put the Ethiopian federal government’s drone expansion under a public rights frame that Addis Ababa would rather keep as a technical story about industrial capacity.
None of this requires pretending every partisan battlefield claim is proven. It requires holding two facts in the same paragraph. Abiy Ahmed’s Prosperity Party government is building and displaying drone plants as national strength. Amhara has already absorbed more than a hundred recorded federal drone strikes in a war that still spans multiple zones, hits schools and farms when monitors can document it, and rarely receives the English coverage the scale of the fighting deserves. Outlets such as Zegabi and the @zegabimedia feed keep carrying Amhara tallies that most wires still skip. Until independent reporters can move freely under those flight paths, factory ribbon-cuttings and “deterrence” speeches will keep arriving without the civilian count that belongs beside them.
Sources:
France 24 / AFP Zegabi @zegabimedia on X Amhara Association of America (Sept 7 to 13 war update) OHCHR Global Update to HRC63 41-nation HRC63 joint statement on Ethiopia ACLED media citation of France 24 drone tally