“Democracy is an existential issue for Ethiopia. There is no option,” says former Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, “but multipartyism.”
Hailemariam, who had taken over as the Prime Minister from Meles Zenawi on his death in 2012, resigned in February 2018 following a protracted period of violent unrest, states of emergency and mass arrests. In an interview in Harare in July 2018, where he was heading the African Union's election observation mission, he said that “if I had not resigned, we would not be talking now”.
Until this happened, Ethiopia's high rates of economic growth were taken to extol the virtues of authoritarianism or, put more politely, what was described as “a development state”. According to the International Monetary Fund, Ethiopia was the third-fastest growing country of 10 million or more people in the world between 2000 and 2016, recording more than 10% annual growth, nearly twice the regional average.
High growth has been necessary, but the country remains poor, with a per capita income of under $800. Jobs are hard to come by with a burgeoning population, expected to nearly double to 190 million by 2050. Despite a 40% reduction in poverty this century, a quadrupling of primary school enrolment, halving of child mortality and doubling of those with access to clean water, the political unrest has its roots in perceptions of exclusion: of widening wealth inequality between the majority and those with access to power, and of access to power itself.
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