(Getahun Assefa)
In a world where Generation Z is igniting revolutions from the streets of Nairobi to the squares of Kathmandu, Ethiopia’s youth—comprising over 60% of the nation’s 135 million people—remain a tragic footnote of inaction. Born into the digital age of TikTok manifestos and viral hashtags, these young Ethiopians should be the vanguard of change. Instead, they nestle together in the streets of cities and towns in the shadows of despair, shackled by abysmal education, ethnic fissures, and a regime that weaponizes their vulnerability. The government’s deliberate actions to control the internet and limit access (Ethiopia has the lowest internet connectivity in Africa contributed its own share to the problem).
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government, once hailed as a reformer, has devolved into an ethnocentric machine of repression, accused of genocidal campaigns against Tigrayans and Amhara alike. While Amhara Fanos wage a fierce insurgency against this brutality, urban Gen Z slumbers, their potential for peaceful uprising stifled by systemic despair and tyrannical controls. This dormancy isn’t apathy—it’s engineered paralysis. As global peers topple corrupt elites, Ethiopia’s youth teeter on the brink of explosion or extinction. It’s time to ask: What will it take to detonate this dormant dynamite?
The roots of Ethiopia’s Gen Z crisis dig deep into a soil poisoned by educational neglect, economic abandonment, poverty and unemployment. According to the government’s own data, nearly 586,000 high school seniors sat for the 2025 university entrance exams, their futures hanging on a threadbare system that chews up dreams and spits out statistics of failure. Only 48,929— a meager 8.4%—crossed the passing threshold of 50%, earning a shot at higher education. This isn’t an anomaly; it’s a pattern. In 2024, the pass rate limped to 5.4%, and in 2023, it cratered to 3%.8. These numbers aren’t just digits; they’re indictments of a regime that prioritizes warmongering over classrooms and vanity projects over development. Overcrowded schools, underpaid teachers fleeing to private gigs, devastating wars, and curricula warped by ethnic biases leave Ethiopia’s Gen Z largely uneducated or miseducated—ill-equipped to grasp civic rights, let alone wield them.
Uninformed and fragmented, these young Ethiopians navigate a labyrinth of ethnic divisions sown by the TPLF initially and grown by Abiy’s “Prosperity Party”. Abiy masquerades as pan-Ethiopian unity while systematically and deliberately fueling sectarian strife. The 2020-2022 Tigray War alone claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, with UN investigators documenting acts of genocide, including mass rapes and ethnic cleansings targeting Tigrayans. Now, the Amhara face similar horrors: drone strikes on civilians including hospitals, schools and public amenities leading to forced displacements, and a state narrative that brands them as terrorists. Abiy’s rhetoric—once poetic—has curdled into denialism, dismissing Amhara genocide claims as fabrications while his forces raze villages, schools, health facilities, and infrastructure. This isn’t governance; it’s exploitation, turning ethnic fault lines into weapons to divide and conquer.
Enter the Fano: the Amhara’s ragtag resistance, born from centuries-old self-defense traditions but forged in the fires of modern betrayal. Since April 2023, Fano fighters have clashed tooth-and-nail with federal troops, reclaiming swaths of Amhara territory in a guerrilla war that exposes the regime’s brutality and fragility. Their bravery is legendary—ambushes on convoys, sabotage of supply lines—but it’s a bloody, rural symphony far from Addis Ababa’s urban cafes. There, Gen Z’s large swath— dependent on remittances, fashions and city lives as well as relatively better connected (technologically) than rural poor—remains dormant. Why? They know the brutal math: Protest means arrest, torture, or worse. The regime’s security apparatus, bloated with conscripts from the very youth it starves of opportunity, crushes dissent with impunity. However, freedom is not free. Nor are prosperity and equal opportunity in ethnically polarized societies such as Ethiopia’s.
The dormancy of Ethiopia’s Gen Z is no accident; it’s the bitter fruit of opportunity’s absence. With university slots rarer than rain in the Danakil Depression, the 537,000 who failed the entrance exam face a void: no jobs, no skills, just the specter of forced military service. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), Ethiopia’s youth unemployment hovers at 25%, but for Gen Z, it’s a soul-crushing 40% in urban areas, where dreams of startups clash against a economy rigged for anaemic corruption, nepotism and cronies. Conscription isn’t voluntary; it’s a trapdoor to the frontlines of Abiy’s endless wars, from Tigray- to-Amhara-to- Oromia regions. Young men vanish into uniform, women into domestic drudgery or migration’s perils. How can they organize peaceful resistance when survival demands silence? The regime’s warmongering—escalating border skirmishes with Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan—siphons resources from schools to bullets, ensuring Gen Z’s chains remain invisible but unbreakable.
Yet, across borders, Ethiopia’s peers prove dormancy is a choice, not destiny. In Kenya, Gen Z’s #RejectFinanceBill2024 campaign erupted in June 2024, a digital wildfire that stormed Parliament and forced President Ruto to withdraw the exploitative tax hikes. Hashtagged fury morphed into street marches, blending nonviolent tactics with live streams that shamed the world into watching. Over 40 deaths later, the bill died— a triumph of youth-led accountability that reversed extortionist policies overnight.
Madagascar’s Gen Z Mada collective, meanwhile, has paralyzed Antananarivo since late 2024, demanding President Rajoelina’s ouster amid healthcare collapses and corruption scandals. Students and jobless grads, wielding megaphones and memes, rejected the leader’s “senseless” pleas, vowing “all necessary measures” until reforms bloom. In Morocco, the leaderless Gen Z 212—named for the country’s dial code—has shaken the monarchy since September 2025, with demos in over a dozen cities calling for social justice and an end to youth marginalization. Their decentralized debates on Discord echo a new activism: fluid, fierce, and fearless.
Nepal’s tale is bloodier but no less inspiring. In September 2025, Gen Z protesters—aged 13 to 28—unleashed fury against corruption and a social media blackout, toppling a government in 48 hours despite police firing on crowds, killing 50. “Politicians get rich while we suffer,” one survivor tweeted, striking a nerve that rippled across South Asia. Sri Lanka’s Aragalaya movement, reignited in 2024 after the 2022 uprising, saw Gen Z storm the presidential palace again, protesting a rail disaster that killed 16 and exposed elite neglect. From Bangladesh’s student revolts to Indonesia’s digital dissent, Asia’s youth are dismantling entrenched elites, united by hashtags and shared rage.
Ethiopia’s Gen Z, dwarfed by these beacons, constitutes a sleeping superpower—over 80 million strong, digitally native, and demographically dominant. They outnumber the regime’s enforcers tenfold, yet ethnic schisms—Amhara vs. Oromo, Tigray vs. all—keep them fractured, ripe for manipulation. Abiy’s playbook is simple: Stoke divisions to smother unity. But cracks are forming. Whispers on Telegram, underground poetry slams in Addis—the embers glow.
The sad reality demands a reckoning. Without jobs, education, or hope, Ethiopia’s youth won’t ignite spontaneously. International pressure must floodlight the atrocities: Sanctions on Abiy’s inner circle, aid tied to reforms, platforms amplifying Fano’s nonlethal allies. Gen Z must bridge ethnic chasms, learning from Kenya’s rainbow coalitions or Nepal’s raw solidarity. Imagine: Addis streets alive with #EthioGenZRise, blending Fano’s grit with urban savvy, toppling warmongers without a single shot.
Ethiopia’s dormant dynamite won’t stay buried forever. The question is, will it erupt in chaos or catalyze change? The world watched Kenya reverse taxes; it must now heed Ethiopia’s silence before it shatters into screams. Gen Z, your hour approaches. Seize the spark—or watch tyrants snuff it out.
Editor’s Note : Views in the article do not necessarily reflect the views of borkena.com
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