Abiy Ahmed

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Abiy in 2017

Abiy Ahmed Ali ( Amharic አብይ አህመድ አሊ , Oromo Abiyyi Ahimad Alii ; born August 15, 1976 in Beshasha , Kaffa ) is an Ethiopian politician. He has been Prime Minister of his country since April 2, 2018 . He is chairman of the ruling party coalition Revolutionary Democratic Front of the Ethiopian Peoples (EPRDF) and the Democratic Organization of the Oromo People (OPDO).

In 2019 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his reconciliation policy with neighboring Eritrea .

Life

Origin and family

Abiy Ahmed is from the fourth marriage of his Muslim father Ahmed Ali, who belongs to the Oromo , to Tezeta Wolde, a converted Ethiopian Orthodox Christian from the Amhara people . His parents' union resulted in five more children. Abiy also has seven other half-siblings on her father's side. There are contradicting statements about his religious affiliation. He is referred to as a Muslim, Christian, Protestant or Pentecostal . According to Asfa-Wossen Asserate , Abiy has joined the Pentecostal Church “Ethiopian Full Gospel Believers' Church”. His child's name, often based on the overthrow of the Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie , is derived from the word "Abiyot", which means "revolution".

Abiy is married to Zinash Tayachew. The couple met in the Ethiopian military. The connection resulted in three daughters. Abiy speaks Oromo , Amharic , Tigrinya and fluent English .

Childhood, education and military career

Abiy grew up in his native Beshasha, where he attended elementary school and is said to have been held in high regard by his family. He attended secondary school in the nearby town of Agaro. His father was imprisoned under the rule of the Derg . Abiy's youth are said to have been heavily influenced by the overthrow of the head of state Mengistu Haile Mariam in May 1991. In the ensuing uprising, his oldest brother was killed. At the age of 15 Abiy joined the political group Democratic Organization of the Oromo People (OPDO), which advocates the interests of the Oromo people within the Revolutionary Democratic Front of the Ethiopian Peoples (EPDRF). In 1993 he joined the Ethiopian Army, where he received technical training and was deployed in telecommunications units. Abiy served in 1995 as part of a UN peacekeeping mission in Rwanda and in the Ethiopian-Eritrean border war (1998–2000) and is said to have risen to the ranks of officers. From the 2000s he made a name for himself in his home region as a mediator between Christians and Muslims. During his time in the military, Abiy successfully completed a bachelor's degree in computer and communications technology (2001) and a postgraduate degree in cryptography in Pretoria, South Africa (2005).

Abiy also successfully completed a master's degree in “Transformational Leadership” at the University of Greenwich in London in 2011 . In Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa he bought in 2013 a Master of Business Administration at the Lead Star College of Management and Leadership, the 2017 at the city's university , the scientific doctoral degree ( Ph.D. followed) for a regional case study on the solution of interreligious conflict in his home region. On the basis of his doctoral thesis Social Capital and its Role in Traditional Conflict Resolution in Ethiopia: The Case of Inter-Religious Conflict in Jimma Zone State at the Institute for Peace and Security Studies, Abiy published the article Countering Violent Extremism through in the Horn Of Africa Bulletin in August 2017 Social Capital: Anecdote from Jimma, Ethiopia .

Political career

Director of INSA and switch to politics

Between 2007 and 2010, Abiy was Deputy Director of the Information Network Security Agency (INSA), which he helped set up. The agency oversees all telecommunications in Ethiopia and has been rated by journalists as a government tool used to suppress opposition forces. In the parliamentary elections in 2010 Abiy won a mandate for the OPDO in the lower house, while the EPRDF was able to secure almost all parliamentary seats; five years later he was re-elected. While there were violent clashes in Ethiopia between the two largest ethnic groups, Oromo and Amharen , Abiy held the post of Science Minister under Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn for one year from 2015 . After his resignation, Abiy, who was praised as a young modernizer, took care of the regional development of his home region in various positions and was promoted to General Secretary of OPDO in 2017. He also worked politically with the National Democratic Movement of the Amhars (ANDM).

Promotion to Prime Minister

Due to years of national protests, Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn announced his resignation in February 2018. Abiy subsequently became party chairman of the OPDO after his popular predecessor Lemma Megersa , who was out of the question for formal reasons, relinquished the post to him. On March 27, 2018, Abiy was elected as the new EPRDF chairman by secret ballot. Six days later, on April 2nd, he became the first Oromo to win the election of prime minister . Abiy dissolved 8 of the 28 ministries and filled half of the departments with women, including the Ministry of Defense (Minister: Aisha Mohammed ), Trade, Transport and Strategic Planning as well as the " Ministry of Peace" responsible for police and intelligence.

Although skeptics highlighted Abiy's work at INSA and saw him as a supporting figure of the existing system, he initiated a rapid reform course that surprised even his critics. By early June 2018, he lifted the state of emergency in the country, released political prisoners and campaigned for state companies to be opened up. Abiy's government also announced that it would "fully" implement the resolution of an international arbitration commission supported by the United Nations on the border between Ethiopia and Eritrea in 2002 and withdraw from the disputed areas.

On June 23, 2018, he escaped a grenade attack at a rally in Addis Ababa that killed at least two people and injured 156 others. But Abiy did not let himself be stopped by the "well orchestrated attack" in his reform projects. At the beginning of July 2018, after a meeting with the Eritrean President Isayas Afewerki in Asmara , he announced that after decades of hostility, the resumption of diplomatic relations between Ethiopia and Eritrea had been agreed. It is planned to reopen embassies and borders, to re-establish flight connections and to make ports accessible. When Abiy arrived in Asmara, there was a symbolic hug between the two politicians - a gesture that had been unthinkable a short time before.

In October 2018, he almost fell victim to a military plot. Abiy then fired important officials in the military, including the chief of staff. He is widely supported in the population.

In 2019 Abiy was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize "for his efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation, and in particular for his determined initiative to resolve the border conflict with neighboring Eritrea" .

Awards

Web links

Commons : Abiy Ahmed  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Ethiopian Abiy Ahmed: Christian Prime Minister receives the Nobel Peace Prize. In: idea . October 11, 2019, archived from the original on October 11, 2019 ; accessed on November 15, 2019 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Abiy Ahmed , Internationales Biographisches Archiv 21/2018 from May 22, 2018 (lm), in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of the article freely available) (accessed on July 12, 2018 via Munzinger Online ) .
  3. ↑ Ethiopia: Prime Minister Ahmed plans to visit the Vatican. In: Vatican News . January 18, 2019, accessed October 11, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Ethiopie: ministre Abiy Ahmed choisi pour devenir Premier. In: Radio France Internationale . March 28, 2018, accessed August 15, 2018 (French).
  5. ^ Pentecostalism in Ethiopia: God wants Ethiopians to prosper. In: The Economist . November 24, 2018, accessed October 11, 2019 .
  6. ↑ a b c David Signer: The enigmatic Abiy Ahmed. In: NZZ.ch . November 23, 2018, accessed November 26, 2018 .
  7. ^ Zelalem Girma: Ethiopia in Democratic, Transformational Leadership. In: AllAfrica.com . April 3, 2018, accessed August 7, 2018 .
  8. ↑ Abiy Ahmed: Countering Violent Extremism through Social Capital: Anecdote from Jimma, Ethiopia. (pdf, 866 kB) In: Horn Of Africa Bulletin. 29/4, July 2017, pp. 12-17 , accessed on October 11, 2019 (English, reproduced on africaportal.org).
  9. ↑ Bartholomäus Grill: Aufbruch der Frauen . In: Der Spiegel . No. 9 , 2019, pp. 96-98 .
  10. ↑ a b After decades of hostility: Ethiopia and Eritrea establish relationship. In: tagesschau.de . July 8, 2018, accessed October 11, 2019 .
  11. ↑ Addis Ababa: Fatal explosion after address by President Abiy. In: Spiegel Online . June 23, 2018, accessed October 11, 2019 .
  12. ^ The Nobel Peace Prize for 2019: Announcement. In: nobelprize.org. October 11, 2019, accessed October 11, 2019 .
  13. ↑ Honor for a "bearer of hope" and "reformer". In: hessenschau . September 23, 2019, accessed October 11, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Ahmed, Abiy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ahmed Ali, Abiy (full name); Alii, Abiyyi Ahimad; አብይ አህመድ አሊ (Amharic)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Ethiopian politician
DATE OF BIRTH 15th August 1976
PLACE OF BIRTH Beshasha , Kaffa