# Abiy Ahmed Prime Minister of Ethiopia since April 2018, Nobel Peace laureate of 2019, and the man who ordered the offensive that began the [[Tigray War]] **thirteen months after collecting the prize**. He is the vault's sharpest available case study in how a centralising project can produce peace abroad and war at home from the same premise. ## The first year The reforms were real and rapid. Over a thousand prisoners were released by June 2018; a further thousand jailed Ethiopians were freed from Saudi Arabia in May and thirty-two from Egypt in June. Parliament **delisted Ginbot 7, the Oromo Liberation Front and the ONLF** as terrorist organisations in 2018, and a deal was signed with OLF leaders in Asmara on 6 August. Partial privatisation of Ethio Telecom and Ethiopian Airlines was announced. The **Joint Declaration of Peace and Friendship** with Eritrea was signed in Asmara on **9 July 2018**, ending two decades of frozen conflict. The Nobel Committee announced the prize on **11 October 2019** "for his efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation, and in particular for his decisive initiative to resolve the border conflict with neighbouring Eritrea." ## The centralisation In **November 2019** Abiy dissolved the EPRDF — the four-party ethnic coalition that had run Ethiopia since 1991 — and merged its members into a single national **Prosperity Party**, formally established 1 December 2019. The [[Tigray People's Liberation Front]] refused to join and was excluded. The 2020 election was postponed on COVID grounds; Tigray held its own in September anyway; the federal government declared it illegal and cut the regional budget; on **4 November 2020** Abiy ordered a military offensive he described as a "law enforcement operation." > [!important] ⭐ The prize and the war were the same policy > The peace with Eritrea was not a separate good deed that a later war betrayed. **[[Eritrea]]'s Isaias Afwerki had one enemy, the TPLF**, which had fought his 1998–2000 border war and blocked the rapprochement; the deal that won Abiy the Nobel was, from Asmara's side, an alliance against a common domestic rival. When the war came, **Eritrean troops fought in it on Ethiopia's side**. The unifying project that dissolved the ethnic coalition, the peace that isolated the TPLF internationally, and the offensive that attacked it are three moves in one strategy. **Ask what a peace agreement is for before crediting it — a treaty between two governments can be a coalition against a third party rather than an end to violence.** ## Where he is now The 2021 election gave the Prosperity Party 457 of 547 seats with 65 seats' contests cancelled for insecurity and no vote in Tigray; IRI and NDI observers found "political space, participation, and competition were acutely limited by widespread insecurity." The **seventh general election of 1 June 2026** returned **438 seats of 501 filled**, with **no voting in Tigray at all**, thirty Amhara constituencies suspended for Fano interference, and voting interrupted at at least 143 polling stations. Abiy simultaneously runs: an unresolved Tigray settlement in open breakdown since July 2026; a **Fano insurgency in Amhara** that began in April 2023 when he ordered the regional forces dissolved, has killed over 15,000, and unified into a single Amhara Fano National Movement in January 2026; an **Oromo Liberation Army** insurgency in his own home region; a deteriorating relationship with Eritrea over access to the port of **Assab** that specialists have been assessing as pre-war since 2025; the **Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam**, inaugurated 9 September 2025 over Egyptian objection; **[[BRICS]]** membership since 1 January 2024; and an IMF programme whose July 2024 currency float has taken the birr from 57 to roughly 158 to the dollar. > [!warning] Alliances in the Horn have inverted since 2020 > In **October 2025** Ethiopia's foreign ministry accused **the TPLF and Eritrea jointly** of financing and directing Fano forces in North Wollo. Ethiopia's two allies of 2020–22 are now accused of backing the insurgency against it. Any analysis of this region written before 2025 has the sides wrong. ## See also [[Nobel Peace Prize]] · [[Ethiopian History Hub]] · [[Tigray War]] · [[Tigray People's Liberation Front]] · [[African Union]] · [[BRICS]]