A Tale of Two Futures Part 3 (Amsal Woreta)

By Amsal Woreta

The contrast between Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia and Captain Ibrahim Traoré of Burkina Faso is not merely one of leadership styles—it reflects two radically divergent paths for Africa’s future. Abiy Ahmed, once seen as a reformer, has become emblematic of a deeply entrenched elite politics that prioritizes prestige, palaces, and power consolidation over the urgent needs of his people. The $15 billion Chaka Project, lavish drone displays, and ongoing military campaigns stand as symbols of misplaced priorities in a nation where over twenty million depend on food aid, millions of children are out of school, and entire regions are engulfed in war and displacement.

Abiy’s Ethiopia has become a nation where education is collapsing, journalists and students are jailed or disappeared, and religious and ethnic divisions are deliberately inflamed to extend power. His governance reflects an inward gaze—a vision of legacy at the cost of livelihood, and authority over accountability.

In sharp contrast, Ibrahim Traoré’s leadership has reenergized a pan-African narrative centered on sovereignty, youth empowerment, and national dignity. While facing real security threats, Traoré has redirected the national focus toward reclaiming economic control, promoting educational innovation—even teaching coding and robotics to children as young as seven—and resisting neocolonial dependence. He wears his captain’s uniform not as a costume of authoritarianism, but as a symbol of shared sacrifice and front-line service.

Where Abiy rules from palaces built on displaced communities, Traoré leads from the battlefield and the classroom. Where one weaponizes division to sustain power, the other mobilizes unity to reclaim a nation’s soul.

Africa’s crisis is not only institutional but moral. The choice between Abiy Ahmed and Ibrahim Traoré is a choice between illusion and integrity, repression, and renewal. As the continent faces the challenge of demographic shifts, economic precarity, and external manipulation, its people must decide: will they be governed by elites who build monuments to themselves, or by leaders who build futures for their children?

Call to Action

Ethiopia—and Africa—deserve more than survival. They deserve vision grounded in justice, humility, and action. Between war rooms and classrooms, the lesson is clear: the leader who invests in minds, not monuments, shapes a better tomorrow.

In the case of Ethiopia, we the people have all been betrayed no matter what ethnic group you are from. The article urges the nation to “Wake Up”, presenting a situation of widespread conflict, with wars in several regions and what it describes as state-sponsored intimidation. 

A Leader Who Weaponized Hope

Abiy Ahmed did not build a country — he built illusions. Instead of factories, he erected palaces. Instead of irrigation systems or commercial farms to fight hunger, he built vanity resorts designed to impress foreign powers. Instead of building homes for the displaced, he paved roads to luxury compounds and called it “beautification.”

While tens of millions suffer, he boasts about drone shows, robotic futures, and imaginary economies.

This is more than a policy failure. It is the reflection of a wounded ego — a man scarred by childhood deprivation, now consumed by psychological overcompensation. Abiy is not building Ethiopia for its people; he is reconstructing it as a monument to his ego. In doing so, he punishes the very people he was entrusted to serve.

Kidnapped Dreams: The Shame of Student Abductions

What kind of nation allows its children to vanish in broad daylight?

Under Abiy’s rule, Amhara university students — especially young women — have been kidnapped while traveling home from school. These are not soldiers on battlefields, but students. Many have never returned. There have been no real investigations. No justice. Only silence.

This is not random lawlessness — it is state-sponsored intimidation. It is a campaign of fear targeting Amhara youth to suppress education, activism, and political engagement. It sends a chilling message: “Know your place — or disappear.”

All this while Abiy brags about Ethiopia’s military strength, claiming he can defend the nation from any enemy. Yet he cannot — or will not — protect the most vulnerable inside his own borders.

A Nation Where Fantasy Replaces Reality

What good are drones and robots when over 10 million children are out of school?

What are good places when twenty million people rely on food aid?

What use are AI labs when hospitals lack medicine and villages have no electricity?

Under Abiy’s rule, Ethiopia has witnessed:

• A brutal war in Tigray, followed by another in Amhara and Oromia
• Mass displacement of millions
• Massacres, torture, and mass graves ignored or denied by the state.
• The rise of ethnic militias empowered by impunity.
• A deliberate weakening of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church for political gain
• The suppression of journalists, students, and religious leaders
• The disintegration of national unity in favor of ethnic loyalism

Wake Up, Ethiopia

If you once believed in Abiy — ask yourself:

What has become of that hope?
Has he delivered on his promises?
Is your region safer, more united, more prosperous?

Blind loyalty has no place in a nation burning. Ethiopia cannot afford illusions while students vanish, while hunger spreads, while ancestral land is sold off to the highest bidder.

Loyalty to a leader must never outweigh loyalty to your people.

Ethiopia Deserves Better, We deserve:

• Farms, not festivals
• Clean water, not corridor projects
• Jobs, not jails.
• A leader who feeds children, not one who builds castles.
• A government that protects students, not one that silences them.

Conclusion

“Rise Before It is Too Late,” emphasizes that every day of silence allows for more suffering: another family losing a child, another student vanishing, another community being displaced, and more resources being wasted. It posits that Abiy Ahmed rose to power on the people’s hope, using it to elevate himself above them. However, the conclusion expresses a firm belief that “the truth always catches up” and that “the people will always rise — if not today, then tomorrow”. It finishes with a direct call: “Let today be the day Ethiopia wakes up”.

Africa’s future will be shaped by the kind of leadership its people demand. Ethiopia, with its rich history of resistance and civilization, deserves better than betrayal wrapped in modern robes. The continent must watch—and choose—between the palace and the schoolroom, between drone wars and digital dreams.

Editor’s Note : Views in the article do not necessarily reflect the views of borkena.com           

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