The Abiy Opening: Medemer as Right Instinct, Wrong Execution

Thesis

Abiy Ahmed Ali’s assumption of the Ethiopian Prime Ministership on 2 April 2018, following the resignation of Hailemariam Desalegn and the EPRDF Council’s selection of Abiy as chairman, was the specific moment at which the identity-construction project this series has been arguing for received its first serious institutional articulation at the head-of-government level of any post-1974 Ethiopian regime. Abiy’s specific framework — set out in his 2019 book Medemer (“addition,” “synergy,” “coming together”) and elaborated across his speeches, policy documents, and the specific institutional moves of the 2018-2019 transition — explicitly identified the identity problem as the central Ethiopian question and offered specific mechanisms for its resolution. The specific moves of the 2018-2019 period included: release of approximately 13,000 political prisoners; lifting of the state of emergency; de-listing of the OLF, ONLF, and Ginbot 7 as terrorist organisations; rapprochement with Eritrea culminating in the 9 July 2018 Asmara declaration; the 25 October 2018 appointment of Sahle-Work Zewde as Ethiopia’s first female president; the 26 November 2018 appointment of Meaza Ashenafi as first female Chief Justice of the Federal Supreme Court; a gender-balanced cabinet (10 of 20 ministers women); the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Abiy for the Eritrean rapprochement; the December 2019 formation of the Prosperity Party as a unitary national-political framework replacing the EPRDF coalition. Each of these was, in its specific form, a move consistent with the pan-Ethiopian identity-construction project.¹

The article’s argument is that Abiy’s specific framework identified the correct problem and pursued substantially correct initial moves, but failed to execute the sustained integration of Conditions 1 through 5 that the successful Asian comparators executed. The specific failures — the 2020 election postponement (examined in “The Hollow Pillar” Article 20), the November 2020 outbreak of the Tigray war, the 2022 Pretoria Agreement’s incomplete implementation, the 2023 dissolution of the Amhara Special Forces that triggered the ongoing Fano insurgency, the 2020s failure to integrate identity work with the specific developmental infrastructure that had been constructed under the EPRDF — have produced, by mid-2026, three simultaneous armed conflicts within the Ethiopian federation (Amhara, Tigray, Oromia through the OLA), continuing deterioration of the Eritrean relationship, and the specific pattern of symbolic identity construction detached from operational institutional infrastructure. The specific outcome — right instinct badly executed — is the specific case study of what happens when Conditions 1 through 5 are pursued as separate elements rather than as one integrated project. Abiy’s specific failure has been the failure to integrate the identity work with the developmental work, the constitutional work, and the political-institutional work at the scale and duration the successful Asian comparators executed.

The Medemer framework

Abiy’s specific Medemer framework, as articulated in the 2019 book and in the surrounding speeches and policy documents, has several distinctive features:

Pan-Ethiopian identity as central commitment. Abiy explicitly framed pan-Ethiopian identity as the central Ethiopian political challenge. The specific rhetoric — “Ethiopia first” (Ityopia yeqidem), the specific invocations of the Aksumite-Solomonic-Amharic inheritance alongside Oromo, Somali, southern-nationality, and Muslim Ethiopian traditions — represented the first sustained attempt at pan-Ethiopian identity rhetoric at the head-of-government level since 1974.

Synthesis of Ethiopian traditions. The Medemer framework explicitly identified pan-Ethiopian identity as the synthesis of all Ethiopian traditions rather than as any single tradition’s extension. The specific formulation — pan-Ethiopian identity as the “coming together” of the diverse inheritances into one shared framework — represented the specific move from restoration to construction that Article 4 of this series argued was the correct frame.

Institutional consolidation. The specific formation of the Prosperity Party (December 2019) as unitary national-political framework replacing the EPRDF coalition represented one of the specific institutional moves of the framework. The Prosperity Party’s structure — pan-Ethiopian membership, non-ethnic organisational principle, national-programmatic content — was operationally different from the EPRDF’s ethnic-federal coalition structure.

Constitutional reform aspiration. The specific initial articulations included aspirations for constitutional reform that would address the pan-Ethiopian identity question. The specific proposals were not fully developed — and, as examined below, were not sustained across the subsequent political trajectory — but the initial articulation represented the first serious head-of-government articulation of constitutional-reform aspiration since 1995.

Green Legacy and physical construction of pan-Ethiopian identity. The specific Green Legacy reforestation initiative (from 2019) planted over 25 billion trees across Ethiopia by 2024 through mass participation programmes. The specific mechanism — national-scale mass mobilisation for shared environmental project — was one of the specific identity-construction mechanisms of the Abiy framework. The specific Sheger Park redevelopment of Addis Ababa (from 2020), the Dine for Generations programme (from 2022), and other specific projects served similar identity-construction functions.

International repositioning. The specific Eritrean rapprochement of July 2018, the improved relations with Egypt and Sudan (until the specific tensions over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and the Sudan-Ethiopia tensions), and the specific engagement with the Gulf states (UAE, Saudi Arabia) represented substantial international repositioning that produced significant external resources.

What the framework accomplished

The specific outputs of the Abiy framework across the 2018-2026 period:

Political-prisoner releases. The approximately 13,000 political prisoners released between April 2018 and July 2018 were one of the specific institutional acts of the framework. The specific effect — that pan-Ethiopian political discourse briefly opened in the 2018-2019 period — produced the specific window of possible reconstruction.

Nobel Peace Prize (2019). The specific Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Abiy for the Eritrean rapprochement was one of the specific international recognitions of the framework’s early achievements. The specific effect — that the Ethiopian political framework received substantial international legitimation in 2018-2019 — created the specific external environment for possible reconstruction.

Prosperity Party formation. The specific December 2019 formation of the Prosperity Party as unitary national-political framework was one of the specific institutional moves. The specific effect — that the EPRDF’s ethnic-federal coalition was replaced by a national-programmatic party — was structurally consistent with the pan-Ethiopian identity-construction project.

Green Legacy and public-participation programmes. The specific mass-participation programmes for reforestation, park development, and community engagement produced substantial engagement across Ethiopian populations. The specific effect — that pan-Ethiopian shared experience through national programmes was constructed at operational scale — represented one of the specific identity-construction accomplishments.

Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam completion (2025). The specific completion of the GERD in 2025, after nearly fifteen years of construction (initiated 2011), represented one of the specific national-infrastructure achievements. The specific effect — that Ethiopia had accomplished the specific developmental megaproject of the period — was analogous in symbolic function to Nasser’s Aswan High Dam or the Asian megaprojects of the developmental-authoritarian period.

Macroeconomic stabilisation from 2023. The specific reduction of inflation from peaks of approximately 34 percent in 2022 to 11.9 percent in 2025-2026, combined with the specific IMF-supported macroeconomic reform programme, represented substantial recovery of the specific macroeconomic instability the post-2020 period had produced.

What the framework did not accomplish

What the Abiy framework did not accomplish, measured against the five-condition template:

Constitutional reform. The specific constitutional-reform aspirations of the 2018-2019 initial articulations were not sustained. The 1995 Constitution’s ethnic-federal framework — Article 8 sovereignty in nationalities, Article 39 self-determination right, Article 47 ethnic-territorial regional structure — remained in place. The National Dialogue Commission established by Proclamation No. 1265/2014 E.C. (2021) has proceeded but has not produced constitutional-reform outputs. The specific institutional infrastructure that could have codified the Medemer framework in constitutional form has not been constructed.

Continued sub-national mobilisation. The specific dissolution of the Amhara Special Forces in April 2023 — announced as part of the broader security-sector centralisation programme — produced the specific Fano insurgency that has continued through 2026. The specific pattern — that the framework’s centralising move against regional security forces produced regional mobilisation against the framework — is one of the specific institutional-execution failures. The specific Oromo Liberation Army insurgency has continued in Oromia. The specific TPLF-federal government tensions have continued through 2026 despite the November 2022 Pretoria Agreement.

Failure to integrate identity work with developmental work. The specific symbolic identity construction — Medemer rhetoric, Green Legacy, Sheger Park — has not been integrated with the operational institutional infrastructure that would have produced sustained pan-Ethiopian identity. Ethiopian education continues to operate substantially on regional-language basis without pan-national curriculum coordination. Ethiopian civil service continues to operate under continuing political-affiliation influence. Ethiopian media continues to operate on regional-language basis without pan-national coordinating infrastructure. The specific gap between rhetoric and operational infrastructure has been the specific failure of Condition 5 execution.

Continued political-institutional weakness. The specific 2021 election, 2026 election, and continuing political-institutional weakness have produced substantially less-competitive electoral politics than the 2018 transition had promised. The specific opposition parties operate under continuing legal and administrative pressures. The specific press restrictions have continued and in some respects intensified since 2020. The specific institutional infrastructure that would sustain constitutional democracy has not been strengthened.

Failure to sustain the Eritrean rapprochement. The specific 2018 Eritrean rapprochement — the operational recognition of Eritrean legitimacy within a framework of improved bilateral relations — did not sustain across the 2020s. The specific Eritrean role in the Tigray war (from November 2020), the specific continued occupation of Tigrayan territory after the Pretoria Agreement, the 2023 Assab framing that produced substantial Eritrean tensions, and the specific 2025-2026 deterioration to near-conflict conditions represent the specific failure of the 2018 rapprochement to sustain. The specific identity-construction opportunity the rapprochement had opened — that pan-Horn regional identity could have been progressively constructed on the base of Ethiopian-Eritrean reconciliation — has been substantially foreclosed.

The Tigray war and the framework’s crisis

The specific Tigray war (November 2020 to November 2022, with continuing tensions through 2026) has been examined at length in “The Hollow Pillar” Article 21. For the present argument, the specific point is that the war represents the specific failure of the Abiy framework to integrate the identity-construction aspiration with the operational political-institutional infrastructure.

The specific counterfactual — what a fully integrated Abiy framework would have done in the 2018-2020 period — would have included:

Comprehensive constitutional dialogue. The specific opportunity of 2018-2019, with the political-prisoner releases and the initial political opening, would have permitted comprehensive constitutional dialogue on the ethnic-federal framework’s future. The specific participants — federal government, TPLF, OLF, OFC, Amhara-nationalist formations, southern-nationality organisations, civil society — could have engaged in the specific dialogue that the 2020 election postponement subsequently made impossible. The specific outcome — a negotiated constitutional-reform framework agreed across the principal political actors — would have made the subsequent Tigray war unnecessary.

Sustained institutional strengthening. The specific institutional weaknesses of the EPRDF period — the House of Federation’s political composition, the National Electoral Board’s operational limitations, the judicial framework’s continuing political permeability — required the specific institutional-strengthening work that was not undertaken. The specific insulation of technocratic institutions from political direction, the specific construction of independent constitutional review mechanism, the specific development of independent electoral commission — none of these were substantially accomplished in the 2018-2020 window.

Integration of identity work with developmental work. The specific Medemer framework required the operational infrastructure that would have made its identity content operative. Pan-Ethiopian curriculum, pan-Ethiopian media infrastructure, pan-Ethiopian civil-service reforms, pan-Ethiopian economic integration — these were the operational moves that would have integrated the identity work with the developmental work. The specific detachment of Medemer as symbolic project from operational infrastructure was the specific failure.

Sustained managed political opening. The specific 2018 opening required the specific institutional-strengthening and constitutional-dialogue work to sustain across time. The specific pattern of subsequent constriction — from the 2020 election postponement forward — represents the specific failure to sustain the opening.

What comes next

Article 24 examines what Ethiopia would have had to do at each of its historical turns — Haile Selassie between 1952 and 1974, the Derg 1975-1991, the EPRDF 1991-2018, Abiy 2018-2026 — to produce the developmental and identity outcomes the framework this series has been developing would predict. Part VII then synthesises and prescribes: what Ethiopian identity construction would look like operationally, what the Singapore-style institutional infrastructure would look like in Ethiopian implementation, what the political-economy preconditions would be, and what the chance may still exist for the construction.

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References

Footnotes

1. On Abiy Ahmed’s Medemer framework, see Abiy Ahmed Ali, Medemer (Los Angeles: Tsehai Publishers, 2019); Rene Lefort, “Abiy Ahmed’s Prosperity Party: A True Ambition,” Ethiopia Insight, 2019; various post-2019 analyses in Ethiopia Insight, Addis Standard, and academic sources. ↩