Abiy and the Prosperity Party: Constitutional Re-foundation Without Constitutional Process

Thesis

The formation of the Prosperity Party on 1 December 2019, and the broader political project Abiy Ahmed has pursued since 2018, constitute the most significant attempt at constitutional re-foundation in Ethiopian history that has occurred without constitutional process. The Prosperity Party was created by merging the three EPRDF constituent parties that supported the merger (the Amhara National Democratic Movement, the Oromo Democratic Party, and the Southern Ethiopian People’s Democratic Movement) with the five regional affiliate parties that had been subordinate to but not part of the EPRDF (the Afar National Democratic Party, the Benishangul-Gumuz People’s Democratic Party, the Ethiopian Somali People’s Democratic Party, the Gambella People’s Democratic Movement, and the Harari National League). The TPLF refused to join. The new party, formally a single national political organisation, replaced the EPRDF coalition with a unitary structure under Abiy’s leadership.¹

The article’s argument is that the Prosperity Party project amounts to a constitutional re-foundation in substance even though no constitutional amendment has been undertaken. The 1995 Constitution presupposed an EPRDF-style coalition: ethnic federalism organised politically through ethnically based regional parties coordinated under a coalition framework, with the constitution’s federal structure operating through the political mechanism of coalition negotiation. The Prosperity Party replaces this with a unitary national party organised around the Medemer philosophy of pan-Ethiopian unity, with regional affiliates that are subordinate to the national leadership rather than constituent participants in coalition decisions. The constitutional framework remains; the political organisation that gave the framework operational meaning does not. The result is a constitutional order in which the formal structures (federal regions, House of Federation, ethnic-territorial boundaries, Article 39’s secession provisions) are increasingly disconnected from the operational political organisation, producing the constitutional incoherence that the 2020 election postponement, the Tigray war, and the current crises have exhibited.

The political project

Abiy Ahmed came to the premiership on 2 April 2018 with a political base in the Oromo Democratic Party (formerly the Oromo People’s Democratic Organisation) and broad popular support derived from the 2014–2018 protest mobilisations. His early reforms — the release of approximately 13,000 political prisoners by July 2018, the lifting of the state of emergency, the de-listing of OLF/ONLF/Ginbot 7 as terrorist organisations, the formal rapprochement with Eritrea, the appointment of Birtukan Mideksa to chair the NEBE, the appointment of a gender-balanced cabinet, the appointment of Sahle-Work Zewde as Ethiopia’s first female president on 25 October 2018 — were broadly welcomed and produced the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize for Abiy’s diplomatic work with Eritrea.²

The intellectual framework Abiy articulated was Medemer, an Amharic concept loosely translated as “synergy” or “addition.” The framework, set out in Abiy’s 2019 book Medemer, emphasised national unity over ethnic division, the addition of strengths across Ethiopian communities, and the construction of a shared Ethiopian identity that would transcend the EPRDF’s ethnic-federalist categories.³ The framework was, in significant ways, a substantive response to the post-1991 settlement: it argued that the ethnic-federal framework had produced division rather than accommodation, and that the path forward was the construction of a pan-Ethiopian political community.

The political mechanism for implementing Medemer was the Prosperity Party. The EPRDF Council voted to dissolve the coalition and form the new party in November 2019; the Prosperity Party was formally established on 1 December 2019.⁴ The TPLF, which had been the dominant constituent party of the EPRDF for nearly three decades, refused to join. Its leadership returned to Mekelle and operated thereafter as the regional government of Tigray, formally still part of Ethiopia but politically estranged from the federal leadership. The break between Addis Ababa and Mekelle, which would culminate in the November 2020 war, was operational from late 2019.

The constitutional implications

The Prosperity Party project has constitutional implications that no single act of formal constitutional amendment has produced.

First, the political organisation of the federation has changed. The 1995 Constitution presupposes a federation organised politically through regional parties that participate in federal governance through coalition. The federal-regional relationship operates through political negotiation between coalition partners, each of whom has a constituency in a regional state and a voice in federal decisions through coalition deliberation. The Prosperity Party model replaces this with a unitary national party with regional affiliates. The regional affiliates do not have the standing within the national party that the EPRDF constituent parties had within the EPRDF; they are subordinate units of a national organisation rather than constituent participants in a coalition. The federal-regional relationship is now mediated by intra-party hierarchy rather than by inter-party negotiation.

This is not a small change. The political-organisational structure was what gave the constitutional federalism its operational meaning. The constitutional articles on federal-state relations (Articles 50–52, 61–68) presuppose a political mechanism through which the federal and state governments negotiate their interests. The Prosperity Party reduces the negotiation to intra-party administration. The constitutional federalism continues to exist in text; its operational meaning has been substantially altered.

Second, the House of Federation’s political composition has shifted. The House of Federation is composed of representatives of nations/nationalities/peoples elected by regional councils. Before 2019, the regional councils were dominated by the EPRDF constituent parties and the affiliate parties; each constituent party operated with some autonomy within its regional state. After 2019, the regional councils are dominated by the regional affiliates of the Prosperity Party, which are subordinate to the national party leadership. The House of Federation’s political character has therefore moved from coalition-of-coalitions to subordinated-affiliates-of-national-party. The body’s capacity to function as a check on the federal executive — never significant, but theoretically possible under coalition dynamics — has been further reduced.

Third, the political base for constitutional defence has changed. Under the EPRDF, the TPLF leadership had been one of the principal defenders of the 1995 Constitution as drafted, particularly its ethnic-federal architecture and Article 39. The TPLF had institutional and ideological reasons to defend the constitution against modification. Under the Prosperity Party, the TPLF is no longer in the federal coalition; the federal government has political reasons to consider modifications that the TPLF had previously blocked. The constitutional reform discussion that emerged in 2024–2026 — including Abiy’s May 2026 address to the National Dialogue Commission proposing PM term limits and broader reform — is constitutionally possible because the political configuration that had blocked it no longer exists.⁵

Fourth, the federation’s regional structures have been altered through House of Federation processes that the new political configuration has enabled. The Sidama Region was created in 2020 (referendum November 2019, formal establishment 18 June 2020); the Southwest Ethiopia Peoples Region was created in 2021 (referendum 30 September 2021); the South Ethiopia Region and Central Ethiopia Region were created in 2023 (referendum 6 February 2023, House of Federation approval 5 July 2023, regional formation August 2023).⁶ The dissolution of the SNNPR into four successor regions is the most dramatic territorial restructuring of the federation since 1995. The process was constitutionally compliant — each region was created through the constitutional procedures in Articles 47 and 50, with referendum and House of Federation approval — but the political conditions for the simultaneous restructuring would not have existed under the EPRDF framework.

Fifth, the federation’s territorial boundaries have been altered by other means in ways that bypass the constitutional procedures. The February 2026 House of Federation decision to remove five constituencies from Tigrayan electoral oversight — Humera, Adi Remets, Tselemti, Korem Ofla, and Raya Alamata — was a federal administrative action that, in operational terms, redrew Tigray’s effective boundaries. The constitutional question of whether this was within the federal government’s authority or constituted unconstitutional alteration of regional state territory has not been adjudicated by any independent body. The Federal High Court briefly suspended the decision on 26 February 2026 following a petition by Getachew Reda’s party, but the suspension did not produce reversal.⁷

The 2021 and 2026 elections

The Prosperity Party’s electoral performance has confirmed the operational consolidation. The 2021 general election (originally scheduled for 2020 but postponed) was held on 21 June 2021 in most of the country, with delayed elections in some Sidama, Somali, and Harari constituencies in September 2021. Voting did not occur in Tigray. The Prosperity Party won 410 of 436 contested parliamentary seats, with most opposition parties either boycotting, being unable to operate effectively, or being newly formed and untested. The election produced an effective single-party legislature under conditions that opposition parties widely contested.⁸

The 2026 general election was held on 1 June 2026. Voting did not occur in approximately 8 of Amhara’s 138 constituencies due to the active conflict with Fano; voting was suspended in Tigray; opposition parties faced restrictions on campaigning in multiple regions. The election produced what CSIS described as a “supermajority” mandate for the Prosperity Party, with 48 parties accredited to participate but the operational result being further consolidation of Prosperity Party dominance.⁹ The post-2026 government has been understood by various analysts as having reduced political friction within the legislature to a degree that would facilitate constitutional amendment if Abiy were to pursue it.

The trajectory across the 2021 and 2026 elections is one of declining electoral competition. The 2018 opening had promised competitive elections; the 2020 postponement and the constitutional interpretation that extended the EPRDF mandates had broken the promise; the 2021 election was held in non-competitive conditions; the 2026 election was held in still less competitive conditions. The constitutional electoral mechanism, after a brief reactivation in 2018, has been emptied of meaning again.

The Eritrean rapprochement and its reversal

The 2018 rapprochement with Eritrea was Abiy’s principal early diplomatic achievement and the basis of his Nobel Peace Prize. The opening produced the formal end of the 1998–2000 war state, the resumption of diplomatic relations, the reopening of border crossings, and a brief period (2018–2020) of strategic alignment between Addis Ababa and Asmara.¹⁰

The rapprochement collapsed during the Tigray war. Eritrean forces entered Tigray in support of Ethiopian federal operations in November 2020; their conduct, including documented atrocities against civilians, became a major international issue. The Pretoria Agreement of November 2022, signed between the Ethiopian federal government and the TPLF, did not include Eritrea as a party, and Eritrean forces remained in occupation of significant Tigrayan territory after the agreement.¹¹ Tensions between Addis Ababa and Asmara escalated through 2023–2025 over the Eritrean occupation, the Assab port question, and the alleged Eritrean support for the Fano insurgency in Amhara and for the TPLF after April 2026. By mid-2026, the rapprochement had been fully reversed, and the Critical Threats Project assessed the two countries as approaching potential renewed conflict.¹²

The constitutional significance of the Eritrean reversal is that the most successful diplomatic act of the Abiy government has been substantially undone. The rapprochement had been celebrated as a constitutional opening — a moment when the post-1991 settlement’s external dimension could be partially repaired. The reversal closes that opening and adds the Eritrean question back into the inventory of unresolved constitutional and political issues.

The Medemer framework’s limits

The Medemer philosophy has produced rhetorical and symbolic results that the Prosperity Party has emphasised. The Green Legacy reforestation initiative, the Sheger Park redevelopment of Addis Ababa, the Dine for Generations programme, the various large infrastructure projects — these are real outputs that the framework has produced. The administration has been competent in many domains: macroeconomic management (inflation reduction from peaks to 11.9 percent in 2025/2026), some agricultural transformation, the completion of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam in 2025.¹³

What the framework has not produced is constitutional accommodation of the political demands that the 2014–2018 protests had articulated. The Oromo nationalist constituencies that had been central to Abiy’s political base have, by 2026, substantially disengaged: the OLA insurgency continues in Oromia, OFC operates under continuing restrictions, and significant Oromo political opinion regards Abiy as having abandoned the Oromo political project that brought him to power. The Amhara constituencies that had been Abiy’s principal allies during the Tigray war have substantially defected to Fano: the Amhara state of emergency from August 2023, the dissolution of the Amhara Special Forces that triggered the Fano insurgency, and the ongoing military operations in Amhara through mid-2026 have produced a near-complete breakdown of the federal government’s political relationship with much of the Amhara population. The Tigrayan political community is, as discussed in the next article, in active confrontation with the federal government. The Sidama and southern nationality constituencies are mixed in their assessment.¹⁴

The Medemer framework was supposed to produce pan-Ethiopian unity. It has, in 2026, produced active armed opposition in Amhara, active armed opposition in Oromia (OLA), suspended cooperation in Tigray, and continuing tension in the southern regions. The political constituencies the framework was supposed to unite have, in significant part, mobilised against it.

Steelman of the Prosperity Party project

The strongest defence of the Prosperity Party project, in 2026, is twofold.

The first is that the project is necessary to overcome the constitutional pathologies of ethnic federalism. The pre-2018 framework had produced ethnic political competition, repeated inter-regional violence, and the consolidation of nationality-based political organisations whose logic was centrifugal. The Prosperity Party project replaces this with a national political organisation oriented toward pan-Ethiopian identity and unitary policymaking. Whatever its current difficulties, the project addresses real problems that ethnic federalism had created.¹⁵

The second is that the current crises (Amhara, Tigray, Oromia) are not produced by the Prosperity Party project but are inherited from the 1995 settlement and from the regional political organisations that have refused to accept the new framework. Fano represents Amhara nationalism that pre-dates the Prosperity Party. The TPLF represents Tigrayan nationalism that has refused to accept its loss of federal dominance. The OLA represents Oromo nationalism that has rejected Abiy’s pan-Ethiopian framing. The Prosperity Party is managing inherited problems, not creating them.¹⁶

Both arguments have weight. The reply, this series argues, is that the Prosperity Party project has not addressed the constitutional architecture that produces the problems. The unitary political organisation has not been accompanied by constitutional reform that would address the federation’s structural issues. The result is constitutional incoherence — federal forms operating with unitary political logic, federal structures contested by movements that operate within the federal framework against the unitary direction. The constitutional question cannot be answered by changing the political organisation alone. The architecture itself needs to be addressed.

Multi-causal accounting

The Prosperity Party’s emergence and trajectory reflect (a) Abiy’s personal political vision and his Medemer framework; (b) the political dynamics of intra-EPRDF rupture, particularly between the OPDO/ANDM and TPLF; (c) the demographic and economic structures of post-2018 Ethiopia, including the growing urban middle class and the persistent rural poverty; (d) the regional security environment, including the Eritrean question and the Sudan-Ethiopia tensions over the GERD and other matters; and (e) the international donor environment, which has continued to support Ethiopian developmental performance. The constitutional dimension is one factor among many. Its specific weight is in the disconnection between the new political organisation and the inherited constitutional framework.

What the article establishes

The Prosperity Party project is the most significant attempt at constitutional re-foundation in Ethiopian history that has occurred without formal constitutional process. The constitutional framework remains; the political organisation that gave the framework operational meaning does not. The resulting constitutional incoherence — federal forms with unitary political organisation — has produced the operational crises that the next three articles examine: the 2020 election postponement, the Tigray war, and the continuing Amhara/Oromia/Sidama crises that, as of mid-2026, have made Ethiopia a country with three active armed conflicts within its federal structure.

The next article takes up the constitutional moment at which the Prosperity Party project most explicitly demonstrated its operating logic: the June 2020 House of Federation decision to extend the legislative terms by constitutional interpretation that the constitution did not, on its face, authorise.

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References

Footnotes

1. On the Prosperity Party formation, see “Abiy Ahmed’s Hegemonistic Prosperity Party,” Borkena, June 2026, https://borkena.com/2026/06/24/abiy-ahmeds-hegemonistic-prosperity-party-a-liability-for-ethiopia/; Reuters coverage November–December 2019. ↩

2. On the early Abiy reforms, see “Eight Years of Reform,” Fana, April 2026. ↩

3. Abiy Ahmed, Medemer (Amharic, 2019); English-language summaries in various sources. ↩

4. EPRDF Council vote, November 2019; Prosperity Party formal establishment, 1 December 2019. ↩

5. On Abiy’s May 2026 address proposing PM term limits, see “Should Ethiopia limit how long its prime minister can serve?”, The Conversation, May 2026, https://theconversation.com/should-ethiopia-limit-how-long-its-prime-minister-can-serve-why-this-wont-fix-a-deeper-democracy-problem-283405. ↩

6. On the SNNPR breakup, see “Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples’ Region,” Wikipedia; “2023 South Ethiopia Region referendum,” Wikipedia; “Ethiopia’s two new regional states formed,” Borkena, August 2023; Rift Valley Institute briefing on the South Ethiopia referendum. ↩

7. On the February 2026 House of Federation decision and Federal High Court suspension, see “Ethiopia’s Abiy is using the Pretoria accord to strip Tigrayans of their rights,” The Africa Report, April 2026, https://www.theafricareport.com/414003/ethiopia-the-pretoria-agreement-as-a-weapon-of-war-against-tigray/. ↩

8. On the 2021 election, see Freedom House Ethiopia 2022 and 2025 reports. ↩

9. On the 2026 election, see “After the Supermajority: Ethiopia’s Trajectory Following the 2026 Election,” CSIS, June 2026, https://www.csis.org/analysis/after-supermajority-ethiopias-trajectory-following-2026-election. ↩

10. On the Eritrean rapprochement, see various 2018–2019 press coverage; Martin Plaut analyses. ↩

11. Pretoria Agreement, 2 November 2022; on Eritrean conduct, see various atrocity-documentation reports. ↩

12. On the Eritrea-Ethiopia tensions 2025–2026, see “Military Buildup In Northern Ethiopia,” Africa File, February 12, 2026; “The growing threat of conflict in the Horn of Africa,” The New Humanitarian, March 2026. ↩

13. On macroeconomic performance, see IMF Article IV consultations 2023–2025; “Ethiopia’s 2025 Ascent,” ENA English, January 2026, https://www.ena.et/web/eng/w/eng_8037955. ↩

14. On the constituency disengagement, see “Abiy Ahmed’s Hegemonistic Prosperity Party,” Borkena, June 2026; various Ethiopia Insight pieces 2024–2026. ↩

15. This is broadly the official Prosperity Party position; see various Abiy speeches and Government Communication Service statements. ↩

16. This argument has been made in various forms by pro-government commentators and in Fana, ENA, and Government Communication Service publications. ↩