- Equatorial Guinea, Theodore Obiang, the longest-running dictator in the world
- Rwanda: Paul Kagame, the man with the iron heart in Africa
Its name means "revolution" in Amharic and could not be better chosen. Since he was a child he was a predestined child, as if everything that has happened to him, all the books he read, the courses he studied and all the decisions he made were focused on obtaining the award that accredits him as Nobel Peace Prize 2019, an award very important for Ethiopia, but capital for the African continent, so in need of positive narratives that counteract the story of war, hunger and underdevelopment that marks the African simplifications .
From a Muslim father and a Christian mother, Abiy Ahmed Ali (Beshasha, Kaffa, 1976) is the youngest prime minister in Africa. He is a computer engineer, hence his obsession with technological modernization, one of his most outstanding achievements in the Ethiopia of 4G, smartphones and startups beating in the center of Addis Ababa. He was also a military man and fought against the Marxist dictatorship of Mengistu Haile Mariam. He was later deployed in the multinational force in Rwanda postgenocide, where he learned a lot about the resolution of cystic conflicts. Back in his own country, he was assigned to his hometown, Beshasha, where he had to deal with a religious conflict between Muslims and Christians that left dead but did not escalate by his mediation work. He reached the rank of lieutenant colonel and left the military career.
In Addis Ababa he enrolled in the Institute for Peace Studies, where he presented his thesis, "Social capital and its role in the resolution of traditional conflicts in Ethiopia." It is not an academic document, but a road map to apply in cases of real clashes, with people of flesh and blood, in delicate moments. Two peoples exemplify these efforts: oromos and amharas, sometimes raised violently and killed against the Government for the appropriation of land, which has been partially halted thanks to its commitment. Under his Government he has released 7,600 political prisoners in Oromia and another 575 in other regions, in addition to facilitating the return of exiles.
Although his greatest achievement, and that is why they have given the Nobel Peace Prize, is to have ended one of the longest and most terrible wars on the continent , the conflict with neighboring Eritrea, which has never been completely closed. Wikipedia says that the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea began in 1998 and ended in June 2000 with 70,000 dead along the way. The reality is that the conflict never went out completely and created huge pockets of hungry people. The entire border that separates both countries is full of mines, rusty tanks and guard posts everywhere. That border between the two countries, which were once only one, is one of the hottest on the planet. Although real attempts had been made to stop the fire before him, it was Ahmed Ali who has achieved a lasting peace that, except for some misunderstanding, has been respected between the two countries. To consolidate it, the Ethiopian Airlines airline, the pride of the country and one of the best in Africa, began flying again between Addis Ababa and Asmara, the capital of Eritrea and both countries were reconnected by telephone so that relatives who do not they had contact for three decades they could speak again. It was not easy to reach agreements with the Stalinist dictatorship of Isaias Afwerki in Eritrea, the last of these characteristics in Africa, but Ahmed Ali got it and that is why he already deserves the Nobel.
Since he began his career as prime minister in 2018, Ahmed Ali has also tried his luck with other hard-fought cyclical conflicts, such as South Sudan. Since the country was founded in 2011 and returned to civil war between factions in 2013, it has not stopped bleeding. Ahmed Ali has offered Addis Ababa as the permanent place to dialogue and sign peace agreements . To his misfortune, the 'warlords' of South Sudan do not keep the commitments as he does and so far both President Salva Kiir and his vice president Riek Machar have breached what was signed in Ethiopia again and again.
Promoting women
Internally, she supported the election of Sahle-Work Zewde as president of the Republic to promote the participation of women in Ethiopian politics, traditionally reserved for men. He also did so by appointing Meaza Ashenafi as president of the Supreme Court, in addition to respecting parity in his council of ministers .
His revolution is also economic reformist. It is not easy to dismantle the industrial monopoly of the Ethiopian State that the Marxist government imposed on the country, but liberalization is leading Ethiopia to a large GDP growth and the arrival of foreign money that can be seen in the horizon of tall office buildings in Addis Ababa, one of the most dynamic capitals in Africa. Its great challenge, not yet achieved, is to fight against the enormous inequality that affects the majority of the population , as is the case with other powers of the continent such as Nigeria, South Africa or Kenya. With Ahmed Ali, the persecution of critical journalists has ended, the jailed informants and bloggers have been released and media that were closed by the previous government have been reopened. Until he came to power, Ethiopia was one of the countries marked in black by organizations such as Reporters Without Borders .
The Nobel Prize for a young and daring courage, with tangible achievements and a discourse that favors democracy, equality and economic expansion against the old African dinosaurs (Obiang, Museveni, Biya, Kagame or Déby) that have been perpetuated in the to be able to embrace democratic fictions and interested and murky relations with the West.
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