1.1  Introduction

On June 21, 2021, Ethiopia hosted its first national general election since the departure of Prime Minister (PM) Hailemariam Desalegn in 2018 and the coming to power of PM Abiy Ahmed. The new PM billed the elections as Ethiopia’s "first attempt at free and fair elections," branding them as a shift away from Ethiopia’s authoritarian past under the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) and towards a more liberal future under his newly formed Prosperity Party (PP).[1] The Noble peace prize winning PM initiated a number of high-profile liberal reforms, such as a gender-balanced cabinet, curtailment of media censorship, the civil society proclamation, the release of political prisoners, the return of opposition figures from exile, and a peace deal with Eritrea. At the same time, however, significant tensions have risen in prominence under his leadership. Ethnic tensions have stoked significant intercommunal violence across Benishangul-Gumuz, Oromia, Amhara, and Somali regional states. These tensions have increasingly been accompanied by the reintroduction of media censorship, the arrest of opposition politicians, political purges across state institutions, the imposition of military control posts, and a civil war spilling from Tigray region that has embroiled the country in turmoil (see Figure 1).[2] As such, although the PP’s landslide victory (securing 410 out of 436 seats in the federal parliament) was billed as legitimising PM Abiy Ahmed’s current rule as well as a second term in office, such statements belie the major tensions currently at play in Ethiopia’s transition in governance model.[3] Although high-profile events such as the elections, episodes of ethnic violence, and developments in the Tigrayan conflict maintain a degree of salience in the reporting of the media and international analysts, the more nuanced developments occurring in the power struggle over the Ethiopian state go largely unreported.[4]

The dissolution of the EPRDF party by the Abiy administration has led to a strong, coherent, and authoritarian party-state system exercising top-down control until the lowest administrative levels (the kebele) are fundamentally altered. Although the absence of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) from the newly formed Prosperity Party (PP) may be a highly visible consequence of the transition, many other strong links tying the party, state apparatus, and a range of parastatal institutions together seem weakened. On the one hand, the weakening of the old party system has created space for (non)ethnically defined political actors to contest power in a political arena that was previously tightly controlled.[5] This has allowed long-standing questions regarding the future of the Ethiopian constitutional order, envisioned either in a pan-Ethiopian nationalist fashion or as an ethnically autonomous federal system, to rise to prominence.[6] On the other hand, for many Ethiopians, the transition may also have major consequences in terms of livelihoods, resources, and political finance in the short term. Therefore, control over the resources accessed through state institutions has since become a battleground across political levels, leading to corruption purges throughout parastatals, attacks on local businesses, and shifts in geo-political financing arrangements. Although the constitutional debate addresses several fundamental questions that may shape the future of the Ethiopian nation in the long term, the ongoing power struggles reflecting the realignment in the political settlement is likely to have far greater consequences in the lives of most Ethiopians in the near future.[7] As a result, this report aims to explore and map: (a) the changing organisational structure of the Ethiopian state; (b) how institutions and resources have become contested during Ethiopia’s political transition; and (c) its implications for the state’s political economy. The transition is thus understood as a shift in governing factions and the degree of realignment or continuity within the state and political settlement. Although constitutional reform or increasing popular representation may be desired elements for many, shifts from one governance system to another may well occur without meaningful reforms to popular representation. Hence, whenever the term “transition” is used throughout this report, it references the governance changes occurring within Ethiopia, not the constitutional debate.

Figure 1
Waxing and waning of protests and riots as inflation climbs during the transition[8]
Waxing and waning of protests and riots as inflation climbs during the transition

1.2  Research objective

Since PM Abiy Ahmed’s rise to power in 2018, a raft of larger and smaller changes have occurred in Ethiopian governance. These range from key appointments in the civil service, the redistribution of responsibilities across institutions, and changes in reporting and financing structures to the redistribution of assets across state-owned enterprises, the full or partial replacement of regional governments and party cadres, and the elimination of the previous regime’s officials. Cataloguing the full breadth and detail of such changes is an effort that is unlikely to be feasible for several years to come; however, a mapping and closer examination of the changes already apparent may be informative to clarify developments in Ethiopia’s ongoing transition. Although a range of changes may simply reflect the change in incumbency and an attempt to gain control over the state apparatus, other shifts may offer insights into broader policy shifts and the rebalancing of power following the TPLF’s departure from the center. As such, this report seeks to explore the political economic changes in Ethiopia’s transition. It does so by exploring how the organisational structure of the Ethiopian state is changing, and how this impacts the stability of governance. The changes in the organisational structure are approached by examining changes in high-level appointments, reporting lines, and financial flows across state institutions and other entities closely aligned to the state.

Through its scrutiny of apparent changes in the Ethiopian state structure, this report seeks to inform donor approaches towards Ethiopia. For decades, the Ethiopian government has been a key partner in development and stability efforts across the Horn region for most actors in Europe and the United States. The ongoing changes and instability within the Ethiopian state have raised major questions for many on how to interpret and approach Ethiopian actors. Three factors – the weak information position at which external actors find themselves, travel restrictions, and the substantial disinformation in the international debate – raise the risk for external actors of engaging with (sub-sections of) the Ethiopian state in a way that further aggravates instability.[9] The shifting political settlement coupled with the significant reorganisation of state structures has called into question many donors’ long-established entry points and partnerships. Meanwhile, the conflation of democratisation and transition narratives to interpret ongoing changes in analysts’ reporting obscures important developments signalling substantive policy and power shifts with longer-term idealized outcomes.[10] With ethnic violence rising sharply and a deteriorating economic situation, the changing political relations – and therefore changing access to state-controlled resources – of different constituencies is likely to have a major impact on the livelihoods of individuals within Ethiopia and potentially in the wider region.

This report seeks to provide an initial indexation of the changes occurring during the ongoing transition in Ethiopia. Chapter 2 sets out Ethiopia’s contemporary context and recent history, in order to trace some of the immediate drivers of the ongoing conflicts (including, but not limited to, the Tigrayan conflict) in recent developments. It also seeks to establish a conceptual distinction between the Ethiopian political leadership and state institutions, highlight a number of unique features of Ethiopian political developments, and separate ongoing developments from the longer-running democratisation ambitions. Chapters 3 and 4 map the main organisational changes that have taken place within Ethiopian statal and parastatal institutions, so as to better understand the inner working dynamics of the emerging post-transition Ethiopian state. In order to assess these changes structurally, these chapters focus on three main ways in which political actors have sought to exercise control over Ethiopia’s institutions, namely: appointing new officials in key positions; reorganizing reporting lines within and across institutions; and rearranging the allocation of financial resources. It tracks changes over time, analysing three different timeframes, namely: the late days of the EPRDF rule (between late 2017 and April 2018); the first phase of the transition, from Abiy’s nomination as PM (April 2018) to the outbreak of the Tigray war (November 2020); and the latest phase of the transition, marked by the conflict in Tigray (after November 2020). Chapter 5 builds upon the identified patterns of change and continuity, and discusses the underpinning motivations as well as their societal impact. Chapter 6 summarises the report’s findings and sets out several recommendations for more effective engagement during this period of transition within Ethiopia.

In order to map and interpret ongoing developments in Ethiopia, this report relies on a range of research methods including desk research, archival research, field work, and remote key informant interviews.[11] Nonetheless, it should be remembered that Ethiopia is highly diverse and that conditions across the country vary significantly.[12] As well, political contestation is rapidly changing in various ways across a range of locations. Consequently, dynamics described in this report cannot be expected to hold across Ethiopia, and extrapolations of such dynamics that do not take into account the local context may obscure important differences. From a sectoral perspective, this report focuses on the changes occurring within state and parastatal organisations, and does not do justice to the transition’s significant impact within the informal economy, nor to the lower levels of the security sector and the role of religious institutions.[13] Additional limitations are placed upon this research, given that an in-depth examination of the structural changes within the Ethiopian state is hampered by the sensitive nature of many changes and the poor documentation of various others as a consequence of rapid structural changes. Additionally, several respondents were hesitant or unwilling to fully express their views, while in other cases fieldwork sites were inaccessible due to ongoing tensions (limiting fieldwork largely to urban centers). Although data collection for this report attempted to account for such issues, no reporting on such sensitive and contested developments can claim to be exhaustive.

Al Arabiya. 2021. ‘Ethiopians vote in what PM Abiy Ahmed bills as first “free and fair elections” ‘, 21 June (accessed 26 January 2022).
Human Rights Watch. 2019. ‘Ethiopia: Abiy’s First Year as Prime Minister, Review of Conflict and Internally Displaced Persons’, 9 April, link (accessed 26 January 2022); Fick, M. 2021. ‘In Abiy's Ethiopia, press freedom flourished then fear returned’, Reuters, 28 May, link (accessed 26 January 2022).
Endeshaw, D. 2021. ‘Ethiopia PM Abiy's party wins landslide victory in election’, Reuters, 10 July, link (accessed 26 January 2022); Yared, T. 2021. ‘Ethiopia’s election was peaceful but not competitive’, Institute for Security Studies, 05 July, link (accessed 26 January 2022).
Note, however, that unreported does not mean under-researched. For an overview, see Bach, J. 2022. Routledge Handbook of the Horn of Africa. Oxon: Routledge.
Meester, J. and Ezzeddine, N. 2021. A transition at work? The ethnicization of Ethiopia’s informal sector, CRU report, The Hague: Clingendael.
Ezega News. 2019. ‘TPLF issues a strong statement criticizing Abiy Ahmed leadership’, 17 February, link (accessed 26 January 2022); Halakhe, A.B. 2020. ‘Abiy’s efforts to unify Ethiopia could lead to its disintegration’, Al Jazeera, 7 December, link (accessed 26 January 2022).
Gudina, M. 2003. ‘The elite and the quest for peace, democracy, and development in Ethiopia: Lessons to be learnt’, Northeast African Studies 10(2), 141-164.
Data drawn from Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), link and The Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia National Development Commission Central Statistical Agency monthly “Country and regional level consumer price indices (CPI)”.
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. 2020. ‘Provide unhindered access to whole of Tigray to protect civilians, Bachelet urges Ethiopia’, 22 December, link (accessed 26 January 2021); France 24. 2021. ‘Ethiopia's warring sides locked in disinformation battle’, 22 December, link (accessed 26 January 2021); Abbink, J. 2020. ‘History education in Ethiopia post-1991: rethinking the nation’s history in the context of ‘decolonization’ debates’, link (accessed 26 January 2022).
For more information on the methodology, see the Appendix.
See Panhurst, A. and Dom, C. (eds.), 2019, Rural Ethiopia in Transition: Selected discussion briefs, 2018, Addis Ababa.
For more details on the changes to the informal sector, see Meester, J. and Ezzeddine, N. 2021. A transition at work? The ethnicization of Ethiopia’s informal sector, CRU report, The Hague: Clingendael. For details on the changes regarding the role of religious institutions, see Haustein, J. and Feyissa, D. 2022. ‘The strains of ‘Pente’ Politics: Evangelicals and the Post-Orthodox State in Ethiopia’ in Bach, J. (ed.) Routledge Handbook of the Horn of Africa, Oxon: Routledge.