Northeast African Studies

In Memoriam

James DeLorenzi — Thu, 13 Jul 2023 00:00:00 -0400

Race, Gender, and Pageantry: The Ups and Downs of an African American Woman in Imperial Ethiopia

Fikru Negash Gebrekidan — Thu, 13 Jul 2023 00:00:00 -0400

Dorothy Pauline Hadley was born in Evanston, Illinois, in 1906. Her Pan-African sojourn began at Howard University, where she met and married Malaku E. Bayen of Ethiopia. In 1935 the Bayens moved to East Africa, where the Illinoisan learned to write and speak in Amharic and tried to immerse herself in the local social landscape. When forced out of the country by the Italian invasion, a sense of patriotic duty and the detest for fascism drew Dorothy, along with Malaku, into the thick of the pro-Ethiopian mobilization. In Harlem, the couple brought together disparate grassroots groups under the umbrella of the Ethiopian World Federation, EWF; raised funds to help war refugees; and published the weekly Voice of Ethiopia. While Malaku’s contributions are relatively well known and documented, secondary sources are deafeningly silent on the role of his wife. This essay helps fill that gap. However, Dorothy’s writings constitute more than a gendered perspective. At a time when East Africa loomed both distant and mythic in racial imaginations, her overseas letters of correspondence offer a firsthand glimpse into a distinct era of black transglobalism, richly nuanced by the interplay of class, level of education, and notions of respectability.

Foreword

Richard Reid — Thu, 13 Jul 2023 00:00:00 -0400

Foreword

Introduction

Etana Dinka — Thu, 13 Jul 2023 00:00:00 -0400

N/A

Falling from Grace

Kjetil Tronvoll — Thu, 13 Jul 2023 00:00:00 -0400

The Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), the government party in Ethiopia from 1991-2019, was Africa’s biggest party in terms of membership base and considered to be the most powerful incumbent on the continent. The factors behind its rapid fall from grace and eventual collapse in 2019, will be put under scrutiny in this article. Comparative political research has pointed to both endogamous and exogamous factors contributing to party instability. Party specific concerns as differences in local constituencies, variations in ethno-political identities, differences of ideological outlook and policy preferences, are all factors which may lead to a withering of party consensus. Furthermore, the governance structure of the country may also impinge on party stability, as federal models may be more divisive in nature than unitary states. The argument pursued in this article will thus be to investigate how the origin of EPRDF’s component parties and their ethno-political base under the federal system were made relevant in the internal power struggle to claim control of the coalition and hence the government of the land. The article concludes by identifying four key factors contributing to the internal power struggle which led to the demise of the EPRDF: disagreements over ideology; disputes over party by-laws, procedures, and practices; contestation over the federal state model; and finally, the surge of ethno-nationalism with intrinsic territorial ambitions.

Ethiopia’s Experiment of Multinational Federalism

Asebe Regassa — Thu, 13 Jul 2023 00:00:00 -0400

With the coming to power of Abiy Ahmed in April 2018 following a popular movement that was initially sparked in Oromia and then spread to other regions, a short period of euphoria mounted over the country’s political landscape. Democratic transition constituting the opening up of political and media spaces, fair and free election, consolidation of multinational federal system, strengthening of autonomy of regional states, peace and stability, equitable resource distribution and equal socio-economic opportunities for citizens were among expectations that most thought to be the ultimate results of the political transition. Nevertheless, Abiy and his entourages shifted the narrative to the restoration of imperial system. The return to imperial imaginations is both discursively and practically evident in Ethiopia’s political discourses particularly since 2018. As a result, the country’s experiment of multinational federalism for the last three decades has now faced a serious challenge of reversal. Since then, polarized political views between supporters and detractors of multinational federalism have not only created a tense political environment but also partly contributed to the war in Tigray. As the thesis and anti-thesis of multinational federalism have become salient forces shaping the country’s political order, it is essential to critically analyze the historical and ideological basis of these contending perspectives on the nature of state structure. This paper seeks to contribute to the body of knowledge on debates around multinational federalism, particularly contextualizing the discussion within decolonial literatures. It argues that Abiy Ahmed’s discursive denigration of the multinational federal system is part of the broader counter-revolutionary movements against the quest for self-determination of nations and nationalities in Ethiopia.

State Building and Development in Ethiopia

Gutu Wayessa — Thu, 13 Jul 2023 00:00:00 -0400

State building and development are mutually reinforcing phenomena. The sustainability of development depends on the stability of state’s political-structural foundation and the prospect of peace, which is influenced by the origin and evolution of the state. Every regime in Ethiopia has portrayed its advent as a new dawn for the country’s development. In recent history, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) introduced a “developmental state” model and registered a notable economic growth on aggregate but failed on accounts of equitable distribution. The EPRDF regime used the “developmental state” model to enhance the centralization of state power and circumvent regional autonomy. Since 2018, the Prosperity Party (PP) has introduced a “prosperity” model. From the EPRDF to the PP, there are signals of a radical shift of approach in state building and development. This paper analyzes the premises and promises of multinational federation and the “developmental state” model under the EPRDF regime, and the unitarist orientation and the “prosperity” paradigm under the PP. I argue that the radical shift of direction from the multinational federalism towards a unitary state is unrealistic and fundamentally shatters the prospect of development.

The Quest for Self-determination and the State in Ethiopia

Etana Dinka — Thu, 13 Jul 2023 00:00:00 -0400

This article seeks to place the Oromo popular uprising of 2014-17 into a deeper historical context. It traces the origins of the uprising through various landmarks in the Oromo national struggle for self-determination and turning points in the history of Ethiopia’s state-making projects. In understanding the relationship between attempts at state construction and the determined opposition it encountered, the article emphasises the dramatic changes that unfolded between the close of the nineteenth century and the political transition that was triggered in 2018. While recognising Ethiopia’s long-ranging political intricacies, this article argues that the Oromo popular uprising of 2014-17 demonstrates the peak of decades of struggles for inclusion, recognition, self-rule and equality that have mainly resulted from the Ethiopian state’s cyclical violence and rejection of demands for reform.

National Integration through Political Marginalization

Ezekiel Gebissa — Thu, 13 Jul 2023 00:00:00 -0400

In Ethiopia, the nationalities question has been the most contentious political issue shaping politics, engendering conflicts, and obstructing national integration. In this paper, I provide a historical analysis of the emergence and of two dominant positions, in the 1960s, that coalesced into competing political visions of the character of the Ethiopian state. I posit that advocates of the two positions wrested power and tried to shape the state, writing constitutions and introducing political systems for governing Ethiopia. I discuss the transformation of political positions and realignments as those in power maneuvered to deny Oromo nationalists access to political power, rejecting the very idea of self-determination. I conclude that the competing nationalisms have failed and that the only way to create a stable Ethiopian state remains the position that Oromo nationalism has enunciated for half a century.

Oromo protests, repression, and political change in Ethiopia, 2014-2020

Mebratu Kelecha — Thu, 13 Jul 2023 00:00:00 -0400

This article provides a chronological analysis of the Oromo social movements that have contributed to the recent major political changes in Ethiopia. It draws on theories of nonviolent social movements, political defiance, and the transition approach of democratization in analysing the chain of events that led to political change in early 2018. This helps put the protests in perspective in terms of Ethiopia’s political trajectory, explaining how youth activists have played a role in advancing the conditions for the transition to democracy, bringing together political forces and social groups that were rival and fragmented in the interest of challenging the status quo and toppling a deeply entrenched authoritarian regime.

Contested Space, Politics and Self-determination: The Dynamics of Ethiopia’s Digital Space

Kebene Wodajo — Thu, 13 Jul 2023 00:00:00 -0400

Government-to-people and people-to-people relationships are increasingly mediated and configured by emerging technologies. By addressing the major technologically assisted counter-power movements in Ethiopia between 2015 and 2021, this article examines digitally mediated encounters that are struggling to produce a specific form of subjectivity. It examines these encounters and the patterns of the relationships between main actors in the digital space –users, the government, and platform technologies – through the lens of the network theory of power. The article problematizes the deployment of state surveillance, and regulatory leverages and the gatekeeping role of platform technologies in suppressing the emergence of a self-determined critical mass. As a solution to addressing the risks inherent in intersecting state-corporate configuration and surveillance, the article proposes a broadly defined yet context-specific right to privacy that enables self-development, protects a socially and culturally constructed self, and encourages the capacity for self-determination. To analyse the right to privacy, the study uses a critical legal analysis of privacy rights with a focus on the Ethiopian constitution. Throughout the analysis, it seeks to highlight three overarching arguments that have relevance beyond the specific case of Ethiopia. Firstly, it argues that digital platforms provide venues for contested and rival narratives and interests, and that not every actor in the digital space has equal leverage over the digital infrastructure. The digital space therefore manifests an asymmetric power relationship. Secondly, it argues that the capacity of citizens for self-development and -determination is increasingly modulated by the surveillance and regulatory leverage of state and corporate power, which is used to suppress the emergence of critical mass. It therefore argues that thirdly, there is a pressing need for the reinterpretation of legal protection for privacy rights as a protection for a socially and culturally constructed self, protection to the capacity for self-determination, critical subjectivity and democracy.