On May 28, 2026, the Economist wrote a brilliant analysis of the grandiose Abiy Ahmed Ali, prime minister of Ethiopia. He just won “a landslide election” competing against himself. History will remember this form of dictatorship as the one that inflicted multipronged pain and suffering on the Ethiopian people and undid Ethiopia.
It is unfortunate that the African Union, the European Union, and IGAD as individual entities and as a consortium of actors friendly to the Prime Minister granted Abiy Ahmed Ali and his party a legitimacy they do not deserve. They diminished the Ethiopian people by bolstering the cruelest, crudest, savage-like, tribal, and most tyrannical government in Ethiopian history.
We should no longer wonder why recurrent killings of innocent civilians—Christian, Muslim, Afar,Annuak Amhara, Gurage, Oromo, Sidama, Somali, Tigray, Wolyayta and all the rest persist and wonder when this will stop?
Bloodletting will not, in my assessment, stop if Abiy Ahmed’s OPDO dominated Prosperity Party continues to control state and government power.
This commentary is about Ethiopia’s state capture by the Oromo ethno-nationalist Prosperity Party and its implications for the future of the country’s eighty plus ethnic groups and for the country itself.
What is state capture?
State capture is when powerful private interests or groups or parties systematically take control of key state institutions, levers of power and rules so that the captors use public power primarily for their benefit, not for the broader public good.
Experts often associate state capture narrowly with corruption like land acquisition, theft, graft, bribery, misallocation of capital budget and the like.
State capture goes beyond ordinary corruption to shaping the “rules of the game” themselves and for themselves.
What does state capture involve in the case of Ethiopia?
- Control of legislation, laws, and regulations
Party control of parliament and its organs enables those in power (the Captors) to dictate legislation, laws, and regulations.
Party control influences the type of legislation and regulations citizens at large must observe. For example, Parliament approves a State of emergency that provides the state with unchecked power to go after and punishes its enemies with impunity.
Party control of laws and regulations provides loopholes, tax breaks, or protections that favor specific firms, families, ethnic groups, or networks. This punishes opponents and rewards allies. This impoverishes enemies and enriches allies. Those without power lose.
Whether make believe or real, electoral victory provides the party in power legitimacy to dictate policy, programs, and the allocation of budgetary resources.
This is the reason I suggest in the strongest terms that the African Union and the European Union both should have refrained from granting Abiy Ahmed Ali’s party a legitimacy it does not deserve.
The party competed against itself but never received the consent of the Ethiopian people to govern. The Amhara, Oromia, and Tigray regions where most Ethiopians live and work did not participate.
So, the AU and EU failed to apply even the rudimentary criteria concerning free and fair elections.
- Capture of key institutions
Politicizing, staffing and dominating courts, boards, prosecutors, regulators, central banks, commercial entities, embassies, customs, tax authorities, and state‑owned enterprises constitute state capture. As does using appointments, promotions, and budgets to ensure loyalty over competence.
Capture of state and government materializes through the grooming, incentivizing and appointments of key personnel loyal to the party, state, and government. Abiy Ahmed Ali has succeeded in implementing the above over the past eight years. He, an Oromo, is the Prime Minister. Field Marshall Birhanu Jula, an Oromo, is Chief of Staff of Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF). Demelash Gebremichael (Oromo) is Commissioner of Federal Police. Yilma Mergassa (Oromo) is chief of the Airforce. Sisay Tolla (Oromo) is Chief of Artificial Intelligence Agency. Debele Kabita (Oromo) is Chief of the Customs office. Adanech Abiebie, Oromo, is mayor of Addis Ababa.
These key figures also serve as members of critical state-owned enterprises like the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia. This is a core part of incentivizing.
None of the federal institutions that I know of are outside the reach, control, and influence of the OPDO PP state and government mafia.
Over the past eight years, Abiy Ahmed has politicized the country’s major faiths: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. He has succeeded in decapitating the leaderships of these faiths, assigning loyal cadres to lead narrations either directly or indirectly. This is the reason the formal leaders of these institutions are in no position to express outrage when massacres of their followers take place in Arsi or Wellega or anywhere in Ethiopia.
The way out is not to beg Abiy Ahmed and his clique to save innocent civilians. He cannot and will not because he is part of Ethiopia’s tragedy. The way out is to organize and dismantle the perilous ethnic federal system Abiy Ahmed maintains using force.
C/ Distortion of public policy
The state steers public spending, privatizations, subsidies, and licenses to insiders and loyal people and entities.
The state aligns policy priorities (what problems get solved, what does not) with narrow interests.
Two examples illustrate this policy. The Afar, Amhara and Tigray regions suffered disproportionately during successive wars (2020-2022 in Tigray and 2023 to date in Amhara. No single person held accountable for war crimes, crimes of genocide, crimes of rape and economic destruction amounting to tens of billions of dollars.
The state kills but rejects responsibility for its action. It operates above the law.
Foreign visitors to Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa get the misleading impression that Ethiopians are well off under Abiy Ahmed’s rule. One cannot deny the physical transformation that has occurred under the rubric of corridor development.
The potential benefits include the following:
Improved Urban Infrastructure and Mobility
Expanding, improving roads, and creating wider sidewalks and pedestrian zones
Adding bicycle lanes and improving traffic flow and connectivity
Upgrading public spaces and lighting
Enhancing urban Aesthetics (the Dubai phenomenon)
Creating green spaces, public parks, improved lighting, and riverside development.
There is no doubt the capital is cleaner and more attractive than before.
On the other side of the balance score card is the following:
Massive displacement and evictions, often without notice and alternatives. This is a human rights violation of epic proportions (Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and others).
Demolition of homes and businesses.
Relocation of residents and homelessness.
Loss of livelihoods and lack of or insufficient compensation.
Decimation of small and medium size enterprises that cause hardships for thousands of businesspeople, most female.
Destruction of historical sites that are irreparable.
Total disregard for the welfare of citizens owing to the lack of consultation (Amnesty International).
Misallocation of scarce investment capital.
Distortion of the urban land and housing market.
- Manipulation of information and oversight
State capture takes place by undermining independent media, civil society, and audit institutions.
State capture bolstered by restricting access to data, attacking, and dismantling independent civil society, gutting professional unions, and weakening any semblance of checks and balances.
Under Abiy Ahme’s single party system, the state has not just misused occasionally; it has structurally configured the entire system to serve captors.
What are the key implications?
1. Economic and social impacts
State captured has distorted markets and competition. This in turn increases costs for consumers and causes inflation.
State capture has created entry barriers for non‑connected firms. Politis dictates entry into business and not the market itself. It is who you know and your loyalty that matter.
State capture protects monopolies or oligopolies from competition. If the party controls the AI revolution, the chance of independent actors to benefit from the AI revolution is at best minimal.
States capture slow innovation and productivity growth because success depends on connections, not performance. It is no longer competence that enables any person to succeed in Ethiopia; it is loyalty and obedience to the one-party state. It is affinity to tribes.
Access to education enhances human freedom, freedom from poverty for instance. Consider the fact that in the Amhara region alone more than 4.5 million youth are unable to attend school. The state closed the future potential of these young people.
The state denies them the chance to benefit from the AI revolution. Don’t you think this is criminal?
The Abiy regime manned or staffed disproportionately by his own tribal allies is this much crude and cruel. Its cruelty is deliberate and systemic. This is exclusion. This a form of ethnic cleansing and a form of genocide.
2. Misallocation of resources
Under the current system public funds and credit favor low‑value but politically connected projects.
On the surface Corridor development offers the eye the glitz that mimics Dubai. But the bigger picture of abject poverty at 43 percent and multidimensional poverty at more than 70 percent of Ethiopians is real and compelling. This is why I question the misallocation of limited capital resources favoring glitz projects.
In the light of Ethiopia’s poverty level and backward economy, the strategic sectors that will yield huge dividends in the long term are investments in energy, infrastructure, telecoms, natural resources, small and medium size enterprises, modernized small holder farming, factories and industries that employ tens of thousands.
Abiy Ahmed’s growth and development model lowers income and creates higher social inequality. Under this system, overall investment quality declines; long‑term growth weakens.
This mafia-like system concentrates wealth and assets among the capturing elite. Because of this, social mobility has fallen. When social mobility fails, the bonds that tie the society together as human beings and as Ethiopians also fail.
3. Political and institutional impacts
Captors erode democratic institutions. This defies the idea of why voters chose the same person and party that wounds, kills, jails, displaces, marginalizes, starves, impoverishes them, and diminishes their potential.
Captors continue elections to gain legitimacy. These elections are neither free nor fair. There is media bias. Abiy controls the media. Abiy misuses state resources and applies legal harassment of opponents. He keeps them checked or in jail.
Captors control Parliamentary oversight, judicial independence, and hollow-out regulatory autonomy.
Captors weaken rules of law. In fact, lawlessness is widespread in Ethiopia. The ongoing massacres of Christians in Arsi is a form of lawlessness. Constant abduction too.
Captors apply laws selectively. They protect allies and punish opponents. This is part of Abiy’s tool kit.
Captors ensure that legal certainty for ordinary citizens and businesses declines, increasing risk and encouraging informality. Forget regulations; they do not work. The system captors support is corrupt in its entirety,
4. The path to dependency and entrenchment
Once the chosen few capture the state as is the Ethiopian case, institutions are hard to “uncapture” or to undo because:
Captors control information and coercive tools like the media, federal police, national security and defense, customs, banks, lands, and the rest.
Meaningful reforms threaten powerful actors’ survival, so they fiercely resist them.
Here is the bottom-line. If you think Abiy Ahmed and his mafia-like team will change for the better; think again. This will not happen.
In fact, last week’s election gave the one-party state legitimacy to consolidate power, punish more people, and re-make Ethiopia in Abiy Ahmed’s image. The Ethiopia we know will be no more.
4. What are the social impacts of state capture?
Loss of trust and civic disengagement is real.
Ethiopian citizens perceive the system as rigged. It is.
Voter turnout is miniscule and morale is low.
Citizens’ willingness to comply with rules has declined. Only fear of punishment compels citizens to obey the law and abide by regulations. This will not last. Critical mass is likely to form sooner than later.
There is heightened conflict risk throughout Ethiopia.
Most Ethiopians perceive injustice and exclusion. This fuels protests, radicalization and armed resistance against the mafia state and government.
Ethiopia political culture revolves around ethnic identity and ethnic divisions championed by elites to maintain power and control.
Ethiopian society is hemorrhaging from brain drain, with skilled and nonskilled people emigrating because they no longer see opportunities at home.
This exodus weakens Ethiopia’s capacity to gain dividends from its immense human capital.
5. Governance and policy implications
Reform is not just technical. Abiy touts his financial and monetary reform imposed by the IMF and the World Bank as success. It failed.
Abiy Ahmed has co-opted the standard “good governance” fixes (new laws, anti‑corruption agencies, IT systems) to no avail. It is the system that he created that poses a singular threat.
Abiy Ahmed has managed to change procedures to please donors; but failed to change the power dynamics including market competition and incentives that matter most.
Ethiopia deserves broad coalitions to survive as a country. This means initiating anti-state capture measures.
Effective anti‑capture reforms usually require alliances among reformist insiders within the party, the bureaucracy, judiciary, and political parties, professional associations, civil society and opposition parties, independent media including those exiled, the business community hammered and excluded by state capture and diaspora groups committed to an all-inclusive, democratic, stable, peaceful and prosperous Ethiopia.
In addition, and given the current crisis, the reform must consider armed groups that share commonalities; ready and willing to abandon armed struggle and pursue peaceful political competition.
The prevailing tense environment may require participation by competent and trusted international observers. This is especially prudent because part of the undoing of State capture must deal with the question of transparency and accountability.
6) Transparency and accountability tools
Ethiopia is corruption ridden. Distorted asset declarations, opaque contracting, skewed beneficial ownership registries, and the dearth of strong audit institutions have made State capture costlier and riskier for society, especially for domestic businesses.
Transparency is untenable without enforcement and independent courts. These courts must be independent of party and government control. Stakeholders must staff these new courts with competent professionals including those from the Diaspora.
7/ How do you sequence de-state capture?
There is a high probability that abrupt reforms will threaten entrenched interests and provoke backlash or entail authoritarian consolidation. ENDF generals who have accumulated immense wealth and power may take over power (coup d’etat).
When phased, strategically prioritized reforms—starting with areas where coalitions are strongest—tend to be more sustainable. Coalition building today will mitigate this risk.
I urge stakeholders to work on coalitions for radical change of the system.
The essence of this commentary is as follows.
1/ In Ethiopia, state capture under Abiy Ahmed Ali has de-constructed and transformed the state from an imperfect but potentially public‑oriented and inclusive institution into a mechanism for organized private gain through an ethnically engineered, organized state and government system. This is tantamount to single ethnic hegemon that in turn engenders permanent human insecurity, lawlessness, instability, and civil wars.
2/ The implications of this capture are both immediate and long‑term. Short term, it means the state uses all tools at its disposal to punish and crush its opponents. It is not bound by any norm including ethics and morality. It operates above the law because it is the law. It dictates policy to bodies like parliament and state media. This is the reason I call it mafia-like.
3/ Long term, state capture means weaker growth and development, countrywide poverty, deeper inequality, hollowed‑out democracy, and persistent difficulty in achieving genuine reform. This is paralysis in governance.
4/ Ethiopia’s captured state cannot reform itself. The way out of this horrendous trap is for Ethiopian stakeholders adversely affected by the state and government to reach out to one another, organize and dislodge the regime that keeps them fearful, weak, and disenfranchised.
Finally, I would like to urge all Ethiopian stakeholders within and outside Ethiopia to set aside non-strategic differences, reach-out to one another faster than ever before, organize and dismantle the tribal system that persists on divide, conquer, and kills innocent civilians without mercy.
It is time for Ethiopians together to show unmatched determination to unite and win. Only Ethiopians together can save Ethiopia from its perilous journey.
Editor’s Note : Views in the article do not necessarily reflect the views of borkena.com
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Long winded diatribe with hidden message. The author wants the current state structure to be dismantled, which he calls ethnic federalism. It seems he would prefer the old uniform state structure that did not acknowledge the diversity, oppression and marginalization of the very people he calls ethnic. The federal structure is non negotiable for majority of Ethiopian nations and nationalities. One can only advocate for democratization of it. His convoluted idea of state capture is unconvincing and dishonest.