The Capital That Must Belong in More Than One Way

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

Addis Ababa, Oromia and the Constitutional Imagination Ethiopia Still Needs

By Mohamud A. Ahmed – Cagaweyne

Some questions become dangerous not because they should never be asked, but because they are asked in language that has already chosen the answer. “Who gets Addis Ababa?” is one such question. It turns a constitutional problem into a contest of possession, converts historical recognition into presumed conquest, and invites Ethiopians into the debate already fearing either victory by another community or loss by their own.

I approach this subject neither as a historian claiming authority over the city’s past nor as an advocate carrying an ethnic or ideological brief. I am simply an Ethiopian who had the opportunity to read opposing arguments, consider the legitimate anxieties behind them, and ask whether one of the country’s most sensitive questions can be discussed without dividing citizens into owners and outsiders. Addis Ababa is too important to be defended through sentiment alone, while its relationship with Oromia is too consequential to be dismissed through national slogans.

The principal arguments contain truths. Addis Ababa was built into a modern metropolis by generations of Ethiopians from across the country. Its residents possess an undeniable right to govern the city in which they live. Oromia’s historical, geographic, and constitutional relationship with Finfinne is neither imaginary nor expendable. The federal government, meanwhile, requires a capital that remains accessible, secure, and equally meaningful to every Ethiopian.

The difficulty begins when one of these truths declares itself complete.

A national capital does not cease to possess a local history because it serves an entire country. A city does not lose its cosmopolitan character because the region surrounding it seeks constitutional recognition. Residents do not become temporary guests because history preceded them. Nor does historical injustice disappear merely because modern demography has made its remedy politically complicated.

The challenge is not to decide which narrative defeats the others. It is to construct a constitutional settlement spacious enough to contain them all.

Addis Ababa carries more meanings than its administrative boundaries can comfortably hold. It is Ethiopia’s federal capital, the diplomatic capital of Africa, the seat of Oromia’s administration and the intimate home of millions. It is Addis Ababa and Finfinne; a national symbol and a place of local memory; a city shaped by migration and situated within an Oromo landscape whose history cannot be treated as an administrative inconvenience.

These identities need not cancel one another. Yet Ethiopia has repeatedly approached them as though recognizing one must diminish the rest.

The Wrong Grammar

The National Dialogue’s consideration of Addis Ababa concerns far more than municipal labeling. Its agenda has included the city’s legal status, federal-capital function, relationship with Oromia, boundaries, budget, working language, police, courts, historical heritage and institutional inclusivity. These matters determine who regulates land, controls expansion, collects revenue, provides services, administers justice and answers to the people living within and around the city.

To compress these complexities into the question “Who gets Addis Ababa?” is to use the wrong grammar for a federal republic.

A capital is not a trophy. A city is not an heirloom that one generation may permanently assign to a single constituency. But neither can national symbolism be used to suspend geography, constitutional obligations or historical memory.

The proper task is not to identify a victor. It is to design an arrangement in which Addis Ababa belongs nationally, regionally and municipally—but in different constitutional senses, under separated powers and within a common structure of equal citizenship.

Any durable settlement must therefore accept three propositions simultaneously.

First, Addis Ababa is the capital of the Ethiopian federation and must remain open and equally meaningful to every Ethiopian. Second, its residents possess the democratic right to govern local affairs through representative and accountable institutions. Third, the city exists historically and geographically within Oromia, whose constitutional, economic and administrative relationship with it cannot be reduced to ceremony.

These propositions are often presented as mutually exclusive. They are not. Article 49 of the Constitution itself attempts, however incompletely, to hold them together.

The Constitution identifies Addis Ababa as the federal capital, guarantees its residents a full measure of self-government, makes the administration responsible to the federal government and provides for residents’ representation in the House of Peoples’ Representatives. The same article recognizes Oromia’s special interest concerning social services, natural resources and joint administrative matters arising from the city’s location within the region.

The Constitution therefore imagines neither a federal island severed from its surroundings nor an ordinary municipality under unrestricted regional control. It creates a layered political space in which federal, municipal and regional interests must coexist.

The deeper failure has been the reluctance to implement this design. For more than three decades, Ethiopia postponed the detailed laws and institutions needed to translate Article 49 into practice. The Constitution promised particulars; successive governments preserved ambiguity.

That ambiguity became politically useful. Federal authorities could govern as though Oromia’s interest were symbolic. Oromo movements could regard nonimplementation as continuing dispossession. Residents could fear that recognizing Oromia would weaken municipal autonomy. Political parties could reactivate the dispute whenever they needed an inexhaustible grievance.

The National Dialogue did not invent this contradiction. It inherited a constitutional debt Ethiopia had repeatedly refused to pay.

A National City Within a History

Modern Addis Ababa is unquestionably the accumulated work of Ethiopians from every region. Generations arrived, traded, taught, constructed, invested, worshipped and raised families there. Oromo, Amhara, Gurage, Tigrayan, Somali, Sidama, Afar and numerous other communities helped transform it into Ethiopia’s principal political and economic centre.

That shared contribution establishes a powerful civic claim: no Ethiopian lawfully residing in Addis Ababa should be treated as a guest whose belonging depends upon ethnicity. No resident should face discrimination in property, employment, education, policing, public services or political participation. The city’s cosmopolitanism is not an inconvenience; it is one of its greatest achievements.

But national contribution does not erase territorial history. Migration can make a city plural without making it geographically weightless.

Addis Ababa’s national character and its Oromo historical association are not contradictory facts. The contradiction emerges only when either is converted into an exclusive doctrine. If Addis Ababa is described solely as an Oromo city, millions may fear that their citizenship is being reduced to tolerated residence. If it is described solely as a national city with no meaningful Oromo relationship, historical recognition begins to resemble historical erasure.

Neither position is adequate.

Addis Ababa is simultaneously a federal capital, a diverse home and a metropolis situated within Oromia. A mature constitutional order must recognize all three without allowing any one identity to consume the others.

The language of ownership is dangerous because it collapses different forms of belonging into one struggle for possession. Every Ethiopian has a national relationship with Addis Ababa because it is the federal capital. Residents possess municipal political rights because it is their home. Oromia possesses a regional constitutional interest because of history, geography, and cross-boundary consequences. The federal government requires sufficient jurisdiction to protect national institutions and diplomatic functions.

These claims do not confer identical powers.

National belonging does not mean that every Ethiopian directly governs the municipality. Resident self-government does not entitle the city to disregard surrounding communities. Oromia’s special interest does not authorize ethnic discrimination or the elimination of municipal democracy. Federal-capital status does not give the central government unlimited authority over land, policing and local elections.

The real question is which institution should exercise which power, for what purpose, under whose supervision and subject to what remedy.

Once expressed in those terms, the dispute becomes manageable. Addis Ababa can remain Ethiopia’s federal capital while serving as the seat of Oromia’s government. Residents can retain an elected municipal administration. Federal authorities can protect federal institutions. Oromia and the city can jointly govern matters crossing administrative boundaries.

That would not award Addis Ababa to anyone. It would distribute authority according to function.

Oromia, Residents and the Federation

Recognizing Oromia’s relationship with Addis Ababa does not require other regions to receive equivalent “compensation.” Federalism does not impose identical solutions upon dissimilar circumstances.

Oromia surrounds the capital. Addis Ababa’s expansion affects Oromo communities, agricultural land, water resources, transport systems, cultural sites and neighbouring municipalities. The city depends upon Oromia for labour, food, water, transport corridors and physical room for growth. Oromia is correspondingly affected by decisions taken inside the city.

No other regional state occupies precisely this position. Recognition is therefore not a prize but a response to particular geography and an explicit constitutional obligation. Equality in a federation does not mean pretending that every region has the same history. It means applying consistent principles to different realities.

Oromia’s interests should be defined precisely. Afaan Oromo services, protection of historical sites, regional institutional presence and participation in cross-boundary administration can be guaranteed without transforming non-Oromo residents into lesser citizens. Equally, historical claims cannot be answered through symbolic renaming while displacement, inadequate compensation and uncontrolled expansion continue. Cultural recognition without material justice would merely decorate the grievance.

No settlement can be legitimate, however, if it treats Addis Ababa’s residents as spectators. The promise of self-government must mean more than an administration controlled by the federal executive. Residents should elect their government, influence taxation and expenditure, participate in planning and challenge official decisions before independent courts.

Yet the residents’ voice, though indispensable, cannot be the only voice. Metropolitan decisions affect communities outside municipal boundaries. Expansion, water use, transport, waste disposal and industrial development can burden people who do not vote in city elections. A purely municipal conception of democracy could protect present residents while silencing those who bear the consequences of urban growth.

The answer is nested democratic authority: residents govern local affairs; Oromia participates in decisions with regional consequences; federal authorities secure national functions; and joint institutions manage genuinely shared responsibilities. Democracy is not weakened when affected communities participate at different levels. It is weakened when one authority claims to speak for everyone.

More Than Symbolism

For Ethiopians confronting unemployment, inflation, unaffordable housing and declining public services, constitutional debate may appear like political theatre. But Addis Ababa’s status is not detached from ordinary life.

Land administration influences rent. Fiscal authority determines infrastructure. Boundary policy affects housing and displacement. Language rules influence access to public services. Policing arrangements determine security and accountability. Relations with Oromia affect transport, food, water and urban expansion.

The constitutional architecture of the capital is embedded in the cost of living there.

Ambiguous jurisdiction facilitates corruption because responsibility can be shifted among institutions. Uncertain boundaries encourage speculation and politically connected land acquisition. Excluded communities resist development. Overlapping administrations duplicate expenses. Political insecurity discourages investment.

The person calculating the price of teff and the delegate discussing metropolitan government do not inhabit separate worlds. The quality of one decision may eventually determine the burden carried by the other.

This is why the National Dialogue must be judged not by the number of delegates assembled or by declarations of consensus, but by the integrity of its procedure. Reports of walkouts, disputed formulations or possible attempts to introduce predetermined language deserve scrutiny. The Commission should publish the alternatives considered, amendments introduced, voting procedures, results and dissenting positions.

Consensus must not become a dignified word for exhaustion or pressure.

At the same time, disagreement is not necessarily failure. Heated debate may demonstrate that participants were not assembled simply to endorse a script. Ethiopia does not need artificial unanimity. It needs an honest record of what was agreed, what remains contested and which constitutional process will decide the rest.

The Commission can recommend; it cannot, by moral authority alone, rewrite the constitutional order. Final restructuring must proceed through legitimate legislative, constitutional and, where necessary, popular mechanisms.

A Constitutional Compact

A durable settlement should preserve Addis Ababa as the federal capital while defining its relationship with Oromia. The city should have a directly elected government with protected municipal powers. The federation should retain authority over national institutions and diplomatic functions. Addis Ababa could formally host Oromia’s government without subordinating municipal administration to regional control.

A joint metropolitan council representing the city, Oromia, surrounding municipalities and the federation could manage transport, water, waste, environmental protection and regional planning. Boundary changes should require transparent law, public consultation and independent adjudication. Communities affected by expansion should receive fair compensation and long-term benefit-sharing.

Oromo language, place names, historical sites and cultural institutions should be protected alongside the heritage of other communities. Access to property, employment, education, justice and services must remain equal irrespective of ethnicity or regional origin. Independent courts should resolve jurisdictional disputes, while transparent fiscal arrangements should recognize both the city’s economic capacity and the regional costs created by its expansion.

Every authority must also carry a limitation. Oromia’s recognized role must not become unrestricted control. Municipal autonomy must not become permission to disregard neighboring communities. Federal responsibility must not become central tutelage. Historical recognition must not become ethnic preference. National citizenship must not become an instrument of historical erasure.

Such a settlement would satisfy no maximalist demand. That may be its greatest strength. Constitutional compromise does not require anyone to abandon identity; it requires everyone to abandon the ambition of exclusive control.

The future of Addis Ababa cannot be secured by declaring it exclusively Oromo. Nor can it be secured by insisting that its national function makes Oromo history and geography irrelevant. Both positions demand simplicity from a city whose defining reality is complexity.

The better aspiration is a capital capable of belonging in more than one way: to Ethiopia as the seat of the federation; to its residents as a democratic home; to Oromia through a substantive constitutional relationship; and to all its communities through equal citizenship and protected memory.

Addis Ababa should not become the property of an ethnicity, a political party, a municipal elite, or the federal executive. It should become something more difficult and valuable: a genuinely federal city – shared without being ownerless, rooted without being closed, and national without demanding historical amnesia.

The question is therefore not who receives Addis Ababa. It is whether Ethiopia possesses the constitutional imagination to build a capital in which no community must disappear for another to belong.

Mohamud A. Ahmed – Cagaweyne is a Columnist, Political and Security Analyst, Researcher at Greenlight Advisors Group in the  Somali Region of Ethiopia. He can be reached at 251 900 644 648 or  254 759717898

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

Related Reading : Addis Ababa Is Not Anyone’s Special Interest. It Is Ethiopia’s Last Common Ground.

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