Who Is Ruling Ethiopia? 

 by Ahmed Mahmoud

Ethiopia today resembles less a state governed by law and institutions than a polity ruled by an oligarchy through proclamation, spectacle, and force. On paper, the trappings of modern governance remain intact—a prime minister, a parliament, a constitution, a foreign ministry. In practice, however, power is exercised outside these forms. Leaders speak not in the language of law, diplomacy, or policy, but in the language of inevitability: what is declared is assumed to be destiny.

Authority has become diffuse and unmoored, spoken into existence from podiums in a prosperity-gospel register, enforced through uniforms, and magnified by a relentless propaganda ecosystem. Power is no longer mediated through legal process or institutional restraint, but through assertion itself—where proclamation substitutes for policy and repetition stands in for legitimacy.

Political discourse increasingly abandons legality and diplomacy in favor of historical entitlement and mythic destiny. Territorial expansion is framed not as a claim subject to international law, but as a birthright awaiting fulfillment. War is rhetorically sanctified before it is legally justified, while international borders are treated as inconveniences—flexible, negotiable, or dismissible—rather than binding obligations of the international order. At the same time, the military has drifted from its constitutional role, behaving less as an instrument of civilian authority than as an autonomous political actor: circulating its own maps, issuing threats, and projecting ambitions never debated, authorized, or ratified through constitutional process.

The Perils of Governance by Prosperity Gospel, Militarised Politics, and Media Spectacle 

The question “who is running Ethiopia?” has ceased to be rhetorical. It now reflects a genuine crisis of authority, legality, and political coherence. The formal answer is obvious: the country is led by Abiy Ahmed, a tyranny who once symbolised reconciliation and reform. The substantive answer, however, is far more troubling. Power in Ethiopia appears fragmented across a constellation of actors and impulses—religious millenarianism, securitised militarism, personalised media propaganda, and an eroding constitutional order—none of which are anchored firmly in law, institutional restraint, or accountable governance. 

At the centre of this disorder is a style of rule increasingly infused with the language and logic of prosperity gospel politics. This is not merely religious rhetoric deployed for personal faith. It is a governing worldview that treats national destiny as an object of divine wish-fulfilment rather than legal, diplomatic, or material constraint. In this frame, outcomes are not negotiated, legislated, or earned through institutions; they are proclaimed, prayed for, and expected. If one desires access to the Red Sea, one speaks it into existence. If one wages war, victory is assumed to follow because it has been verbally sanctified. The problem is not belief per se, but the translation of belief into state policy—where aspiration replaces strategy and invocation replaces law. 

This theology of governance is especially destabilising when projected onto questions of sovereignty. Repeated public assertions about acquiring a Red Sea outlet—specifically at the expense of Eritrea—are not framed as diplomatic proposals, legal claims, or economic negotiations. They are framed as inevitabilities: things that will happen, because they have been wished for loudly and persistently. Such claims ignore binding international law, existing borders, and the foundational principle of territorial integrity that underpins the modern state system. They also hollow out Ethiopia’s own constitutional order by bypassing parliament, cabinet deliberation, and treaty-making processes. 

Parallel to this is the disturbing elevation of the military from an instrument of state policy to an autonomous political actor. Elements of the armed forces behave less like a professional institution under civilian control and more like a revolutionary vanguard defining national purpose. When military figures circulate maps that incorporate neighbouring territories—maps not recognised by parliament, the prime minister’s office, or any legal authority—they effectively claim constituent power. They speak as if they are the state. This posture evokes uncomfortable historical echoes of Mengistu Haile Mariam, when the gun supplanted law and ideology displaced accountability. Yet today’s version is even more incoherent: a fusion of militarism with prosperity theology, where territorial expansion is imagined as divinely preordained rather than politically negotiated. 

Compounding this fragmentation is the collapse of Ethiopia’s diplomatic voice into spectacle. Elements of the foreign service increasingly resemble influencers rather than diplomats—performing on TikTok, YouTube, and other platforms with nationalist bravado untethered from policy discipline or international norms. Statements that would once have been weighed carefully against treaty obligations and regional stability are now broadcast as performative wishes. Diplomacy becomes content. Law becomes optional. The state speaks in many voices, none authoritative. 

The information environment completes the picture. A constellation of online outlets—often operating in the grey zone between state sponsorship and plausible deniability—circulate incendiary narratives, ethnic vilification, and open calls for violence. Platforms such as YouTube and Facebook periodically shut them down, only for them to reappear under new names. The effect is corrosive: politics becomes a continuous mobilisation of grievance and fantasy, while responsibility dissolves. When the state neither disciplines nor distances itself from such propaganda, it tacitly legitimises it. 

What emerges, then, is not a coherent regime but a polycentric disorder. Formal institutions exist, but they no longer monopolise authority. The prime minister speaks in theological inevitabilities; the military sketches borders; diplomats perform nationalism; online propagandists incite; and parliament recedes into irrelevance. No single actor governs in the classical sense. Instead, Ethiopia is ruled by a volatile mix of belief, coercion, and media amplification. 

This is the true peril of prosperity-gospel governance. It replaces the hard disciplines of modern statecraft—law, institutions, restraint, and accountability—with the seductive promise that wanting something strongly enough makes it legitimate. History is unambiguous on this point: states that abandon legality for providential fantasy do not achieve prosperity. They generate conflict, isolation, and internal decay. 

So when one asks who is running Ethiopia, the most honest answer may be this: no one is fully in charge. Authority has been dispersed into faith-based aspiration, militarised impulse, and digital spectacle. Until power is re-anchored in constitutional order, civilian control, and respect for international law, the question will remain unanswered—and the consequences will continue to be borne by Ethiopians and their neighbours alike.