In Pursuit of Development Simmering political tensions and civil war in Ethiopia — Kjetil Tronvoll
The focus of this final episode of season 1 is Ethiopia, where the ongoing conflict between the federal government in Addis and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front that controls the Tigray region, is making daily news headlines.
Ever since becoming the Prime Minister of Ethiopia in 2018, Abiy Ahmed has undertaken several bold reforms. He has also appointed women in key official positions and freed political prisoners. His efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation, and in particular his efforts to resolve the border conflict with neighboring Eritrea resulted in him being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019.
But there have also been critical voices within the country that have warned against an over-reliance on charisma and announcing major initiatives without adequate preparation and anticipation of potential consequences. Thus, despite the frenetic pace of change the country has witnessed since 2018, many Ethiopians have remained worried over growing income inequality, high levels of youth unemployment, and simmering tensions and factional battles within the ruling coalition.
Ethiopia has been one of Africa’s fastest growing economies for the past decade and a half and there has been considerable talk of the country’s rise as potentially the only true “developmental state” in Africa. In addition to rapid economic growth, signature development projects such as the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam have given rise to comparisons with East Asian successes such as South Korea and Taiwan. A country that typically made world headlines for abject poverty and sensational famines, is now considered to be one of the most promising economies on the continent. Ethiopia is also a major contributor to UN peacekeeping operations, which has strengthened its identity as an important security provider externally while at the same time guaranteeing peace and stability for international investors within the country.
But the country has also continued to face major obstacles such as its conflict with Egypt over water-sharing agreements, the viability of democratic reforms, and the future of its federal political setup.
And now there are widespread fears that a civil war will not only spread and exacerbate ethnic tensions within the country but also destabilise the Horn of Africa.
My guest on the show today is Kjetil Tronvoll, who is a well-known Ethiopia expert and is a professor of Peace and Conflict studies at Bjorknes University College in Norway.
He has undertaken long-term fieldwork in Eritrea, Ethiopia and Zanzibar, in addition to shorter field studies many countries on the African continent. In addition to publishing extensively on human rights, transitional justice, elections and peace, reconciliation and conflict, Kjetil has served as an advisor to political reconciliation processes and international peace meditating initiatives. He has also participated in election observer missions in several African countries.
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Resources:
- “In-depth analysis: Towards Tigray Statehood?”, Addis Standard (May 2020)
- “Abiy Ahmed Won the Nobel Peace Prize. Now He Needs to Earn It.”, New York Times, op.ed. (October 2019)
- “Putting Humpty Dumpty together again: the restoration of EPRDF”, Addis Standard (March 2019)
- “Ethiopian elite lost in electoral maze under Abiy’s gaze”, OpenDemocracy (February 2019)
- T. Østebo and K. Tronvoll (2020), “Interpreting contemporary Oromo in Ethiopia: an ethnographic approach”, Journal of Eastern African Studies, DOI: 10.1080/17531055.2020.1796255
- K. Tronvoll (2020) “'Brothers at Peace’: People-to-People Reconciliation in the Eritrean-Ethiopian Borderlands”, War and Society, 39:1, pp. 58-76, DOI: 10.1080/07292473.2019.1701618
Host
Dan Banik (@danbanik @GlobalDevPod)
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