Abiy Ahmed Ali often shortened to Abiy Ahmed or just Abiy; born 15 August 1976) is an Ethiopian politician serving since 2 April 2018 as the fourth and current prime minister of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia.
He remains chairman of both the ruling EPRDF (Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front and the ODP (Oromo Democratic Party) (which is one of the four coalition parties of the EPRDF). Abiy is also an elected member of the Ethiopian parliament, and a member of the ODP and EPRDF executive committees.
A former army intelligence officer, Abiy, since becoming prime minister, has launched a wide programme of political and economic reforms, not all of which have met with favour by supporters of the federalism-based constitution/system of Ethiopia and in Tigray (in which Abiy’s shake-up of the Ethiopian state that has targeted Tigrayans is seen as selective).
On 11 October 2019, Abiy was awarded the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize for his work in ending the 20-year stalemate between Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Early life
Abiy Ahmed was born in the town of Beshasha[10] in the historic Kaffa Province (in the present day Jimma Zone, Oromia Region), Ethiopia on 15 August 1976. His deceased father, Ahmed Ali, was a Muslim Oromo (and had four wives, while his deceased mother, Tezeta Wolde, was an OrthodoxChristian Amhara.
Abiy is the 13th child of his polygamous father and the sixth and youngest child of his mother. His childhood name was Abiyot (English: “Revolution”). The name was sometimes given to children in the aftermath of the Derg revolution of 1974. The then Abiyot went to the local primary school and later continued his studies at secondary schools in Agaro town. Abiy, according to several personal reports, was always very interested in his own education and later in his life also encouraged others to learn and to improve.
Education
While serving in the Ethiopian National Defense Force, Abiy received his first degree, a Bachelor’s degree in computer engineering[ from the Microlink Information Technology College in Addis Ababa in 2001.
Abiy holds a Master of Arts in Transformational Leadership[19] earned from the business school at Greenwich University, London, in collaboration with the International Leadership Institute, Addis Ababa in 2011. He also holds a Master of Business Administration from the Leadstar College of Management and Leadership in Addis Ababa in partnership with Ashland University in 2013.
Abiy, who had started his Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) work several years ago as a regular student, completed his Ph.D. in 2017 at the Institute for Peace and Security Studies, Addis Ababa University. He did his Ph.D. work on the Agaro constituency with the PhD thesis entitled “Social Capital and its Role in Traditional Conflict Resolution in Ethiopia: The Case of Inter-Religious Conflict In Jimma Zone State”. As a follow-up to his Ph.D. thesis, he published a research article on de-escalation strategies in the Horn of Africa in a special journal issue dedicated to countering violent extremism.
Personal life
He met and married his wife, Zinash Tayachew, an Amhara woman from Gondar, while both were serving in the Ethiopian Defense Forces. They are the parents of three daughters and one recently adopted son. Abiy is multilingual and speaks Afaan Oromo, Amharic, Tigrinya, and English. He is a fitness aficionado and professes that physical health goes hand in hand with mental health and, as such, he frequents physical and gym activities in Addis Ababa. Abiy is a devout Evangelical Pentecostal Christian of the Full Gospel Believers Church.
Military career
As a teenager and in early 1991, He joined the armed struggle against the Marxist–Leninist regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam after the death of his oldest brother. He did so as a member of ODP (Oromo Democratic Party), which at that time was a tiny organization of only around 200 fighters in the large coalition army of about 100,000 fighters that resulted in the regime’s fall later that year.] As there were only so few ODP fighters in an army with its core of about 90,000 Tigrayans, Abiy quickly had to learn the Tigrinya language. As a speaker of Tigrinya in a security apparatus dominated by Tigrayans, he could move forward with his military career.
After the fall of the Derg, he took formal military training from Assefa Brigade in West Wollega and was stationed there. His military post was in intelligence and communications. Later on he became a soldier in the now Ethiopian National Defense Force in 1993 and worked mostly in the intelligence and communications departments. In 1995, after the Rwandan genocide, he was deployed as a member of the United Nations Peace Keeping Force (UNAMIR), Kigali, Rwanda.In the Ethio-Eritrea War between 1998 and 2000, he led an intelligence team to discover positions of the Eritrean Defence Forces.[citation needed]
Later on, Abiy was posted back to his home town of Beshasha, where he – as an officer of the Defense Forces – had to address a critical situation of inter-religious clashes between Muslims and Christians with a number of deaths. He brought calm and peace in a situation of communal tensions accompanying the clashes. This foreshadowed his role as an inter-religious mediator he became in later years.[citation needed]
Political career
Member of Parliament
He started his political career as a member of the ODP (Oromo Democratic Party). The ODP is the ruling party in Oromia Region since 1991 and also one of four coalition parties of the ruling coalition in Ethiopia, the EPRDF (Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front). He became a member of the central committee of ODP and congress member of the Executive Committee of the EPRDF – in quick succession.
Rise to power
Starting from 2015, Abiy became one of the central figures in the violent fight against illegal land grabbing activities in Oromia Region and especially around Addis Ababa. Although the Addis Ababa Master Plan at the heart of the land-grabbing plans was stopped in 2016, the disputes continued for some time resulting in injuries and deaths. It was this fight against land-grabbing, that finally boosted Abiy’s political career, brought him into the spotlight and allowed him to climb the political ladder.
