Abiy Ahmed, controversial winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in October, Prime Minister of a regime of which he is the pure product, son of modest villagers has made profound changes in Ethiopia, raising hopes and enmities. The prestigious award will be presented Tuesday, December 10 in Oslo, Norway.
Since he took the reins of the second most populous country in Africa in April 2018, the forty-year-old has shaken to his foundations a regime ankylosed by more than 25 years of authoritarian exercise of power and weighed on the dynamics of the Horn of Africa.
Barely six months after his inauguration, 43-year-old Abiy Ahmed had made peace with his Eritrean neighbor, released thousands of dissidents, publicly apologized for the violence of the security forces, and welcomed members of exiled groups described as "terrorists" by his predecessors.
More recently, it has developed its program of opening up a largely state-controlled economy and is now putting all its weight behind it in order to hold inclusive legislative elections in May 2020.
In doing so, warn analysts, the young leader has placed himself in a delicate situation: his flagship measures are too radical and too sudden for the old guard of the old regime and not ambitious enough and fast for a youth eager to change.
Its opening also freed local territorial ambitions and old inter-communal disputes that led to deadly violence in many parts of the country. In October, clashes at demonstrations by supporters of Jawar Mohamed, a former ally of Abiy Ahmed hostile to the prime minister's centralism, killed at least 86 people.
Sleeping on the floor
Born to a Muslim father and a Christian mother in a small town in the center west, Beshasha, Abiy Ahmed "grew up sleeping on the floor" in a house that had no electricity or running water. "We were fetching water from the river," he said in a September interview with Shepher FM radio, adding that electricity and asphalt were only discovered after the age of 10 years.
Teenager, Abiy Ahmed engages in the armed struggle against dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam's regime. The young radio operator learns by necessity the language of the Tigrayans, the ethnic group largely in the majority in this fight which will form the hard core of the regime after the fall of Mengistu in 1991.
He then began a linear rise in the ruling coalition, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), first in the security apparatus, then in politics.
He climbs the ranks of the army to become a lieutenant-colonel and will be in 2008 one of the founders of the national intelligence agency, which he will lead de facto for two years. In 2010, he swapped the uniform for the politician costume. He became a member of the Oromo party, member of the EPRDF, then, in 2015, Minister of Science and Technology.
At the end of 2015, a popular anti-government protest movement was gaining momentum in the two main communities of the country, the Oromo, from which Abiy Ahmed was born, and the Amhara.
The movement, although violently repressed, ends up carrying Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, a symbol of a coalition unable to provide answers to the aspirations of youth. In desperation, the EPRDF designates Abiy Ahmed to save the situation, making him the first Oromo to hold the post of prime minister.
Save the coalition
Once in power, Abiy Ahmed has multiplied the initiatives on the regional scene. In addition to the dramatic rapprochement with Eritrea, he played an important mediating role in the Sudanese political crisis and tried to revitalize the fragile South Sudan peace agreement.
As to whether these steps will ultimately be successful, the question remains unanswered. Including on the Eritrean case, where concrete signs of rapprochement are still waiting.
The next real challenge for the leader will be the organization of free and fair elections, which could give him the legitimacy of the ballot boxes. It will also be necessary to hope that the enmities caused by its reforms, the community violence and important movements within the security apparatus do not catch up with it.
With AFP
Newsletter Do not miss out on international news
Do not miss out on international newssubscribe
google-play-badge_FR