April 13, 2026
Yonas Biru, PhD
This article examines whether the Prosperity Party’s choice of a sheaf of wheat as its 2026 electoral symbol is standard political branding, calculated propaganda, or the epitome of an institutionalized culture of deception.
- Branding builds a consistent political identity through symbols and narratives.
- Propaganda stretches and embellishes a kernel of truth to attract followers.
- Deception, on the other hand, weaponizes falsehood to mislead, obscure, and govern through illusion.
Traditionally, the sheaf symbolizes fertility, honesty, and agrarian virtue. The Prosperity Party, however, deploys it as a sign of progress beyond its official claim of food self-sufficiency. The symbol heralds Ethiopia’s trajectory “Towards an Exemplary Nation.” This is not an innocuous slogan. It is an organizing narrative that signals abundance, productivity, and sovereignty, and stretches across the country’s economic, technological, and political ambitions. It runs the gamut from claims of wheat self-sufficiency to projections of double-digit growth, from plans for an AI-driven future to aligning with the Prime Minister’s declared ambitions to make Ethiopia Africa’s largest economy by 2036 and one of two global superpowers by 2050.
1. Facts, Perception, and Deception
The central question is straightforward: Does the government’s narrative align with Ethiopia’s realities? Or does it reflect aspirational exuberance—or worse, a nationalist alchemy that plays on the Ethiopian psyche? The people long to restore the greatness of Axumite and Agaw civilizations. The question is whether the Prosperity Party is weaponizing that longing.
Aspirational exuberance is not inherently harmful, provided it is guarded by vigilance and subject to scrutiny. The concern is that the government is turning the sheaf of wheat into the gold of a lost empire—manipulating the nation’s psychological appeal to “greatness” as a tool for political survival.
Deception has consequences. It erodes trust in governance, misallocates the nation’s meager resources based on false premises, and undermines accountability and the rule of law. In more severe cases, it can allow manageable challenges to escalate into systemic crises. These risks warrant examination without undue restraint by academic caution or political correctness because it bears serious, or even existential, consequences.
Key features of institutionalized deception are:
- Systematic: coordination across institutions, media, and government messaging platforms
- Habitual: recurring patterns across sectors and policy areas
- Protected: persistent dismissal of counter narratives and suppression of contradictory evidence
2. Let the Wheat Speak for Itself
2021–2022: The Announcement
In June 2021, the Prime Minister announced Ethiopia would achieve wheat self-sufficiency within a year and would begin exporting wheat shortly thereafter. In 2022, he escalated the claim, declaring that Ethiopia had achieved wheat self-sufficiency and announced plans to export wheat to neighboring countries.
Echoing the Prime Minister’s self-sufficiency propaganda, a 2022 paper produced by government researchers lauded the government’s “achievement” as a paradigm breaker and predicted Ethiopia could replicate Asia’s Green Revolution by 2023. The paper stated:
“With a total of 2.6 million hectares of land cultivated under both rain-fed and irrigated systems, followed by a record amount of wheat harvest (8.2 million tons) in 2022, Ethiopia achieved a wheat self-sufficiency ratio of 100% and more than 1 million tons of surplus for export…”
2022–2023: Contradictions Emerge
In 2022, reports emerged that Ukraine, through UN-supported initiatives, were shipping wheat to Ethiopia to address severe drought-induced food shortages. The Ethiopian government reacted sharply. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed publicly criticized such reports, suggesting they were intended to “paint a picture that we are starved,” and framing them as an attempt to undermine the country’s narrative of achieving food self-sufficiency.
In 2023, the US and UN stopped humanitarian aid to Ethiopia after discovering massive government theft of donated food that was meant to feed starving Ethiopians. Donated wheat was turned into flour and exported to Kenya and Somalia, presumably to meet the Prime Minister’s export target to tout Ethiopia as a wheat exporter.
The Prime Minister’s spokesperson warned the US and UN, stressing their decision to withhold humanitarian food aid would subject millions of Ethiopians to starvation. This came from the very Prime Minister’s office that claims Ethiopia is exporting wheat to meet the needs of other African countries.
2024–2026: The Data Speaks
In 2023, the government reported Ethiopia had become “Africa’s emerging wheat exporter.” In a June 8, 2025, interview with the Ethiopian News Agency, the Prime Minister reiterated this claim, stating:
“When I first took office, Ethiopia was spending close to 1 billion USD annually on wheat imports. In the past three years, that figure has dropped to zero… Ethiopia is currently hosting over one million refugees from neighboring countries. The wheat brought in to support these refugees is often misinterpreted. It should be understood as part of a global humanitarian effort, not an indication of domestic shortage.”
The import-export data published by several international agencies conclusively reject the government’s narrative. Trade data from 2023 shows that Ethiopia imported approximately 12,000 tons of wheat from Kenya—valued at nearly $7 million—while exporting only negligible quantities of wheat or wheat-related products in return.
In 2024, wheat imports to Ethiopia amounted to 1.4 million metric tons—ten times higher than its exports, which stood at 150,000 metric tons. The estimate for 2025 imports is 1.3 million metric tons, and there is no recorded export. The European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO) estimates that about 18.9 million people in Ethiopia needed humanitarian assistance in 2025, which includes food aid as a major component of needs. For 2026, FAO’s emergency assessment is that around 15.8 million people in Ethiopia are facing acute hunger.
The Verdict on Wheat
As noted above, willful deception involves coordinated actions across ministries, media, and campaigns. The false wheat narrative is peddled by the Prime Minister, the Ministry of Agriculture, state media, and government research outlets. It is also habitual, manifesting pattern across policies.
It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the wheat narrative is willful deception—a bold lie. The sheaf of wheat and the associated slogan “Ethiopia, Towards an Exemplary Nation” crumble under the weight of the true wheat data.
I have provided substantial evidence on systemic economic data misrepresentation in my article titled “A Tale of Two Ethiopias: An Auspicious Official Narrative and the Crushing Weight of Reality.” Therefore, I will not dwell on it here. Instead, I will provide two concrete examples to show the breakdown of law and order, focusing on systemic violation of property rights by the federal and state governments and the proliferation of kidnapping for ransom industry, rivaling Nigeria.
3. The Breakdown of Constitutional Guarantees: Property Rights
The government’s disregard for truth extends to the constitutional bedrock of property rights. The Constitution provides clear protections regarding property rights. However, the Corridor Development Project has flattened the Constitution along with the residential and business structures it demolished. Article 40(8), Article 43(2), Proclamation 1161/2019—all have been bulldozed.
- Article 40(8): Property rights are not absolute. The government may expropriate private property for public purposes, but this is strictly “subject to payment in advance of compensation commensurate to the value of the property.”
- Article 43(2): “Nationals have the right to participate in national development and, in particular, to be consulted with respect to policies and projects affecting their community.”
- Proclamation 1161/2019: While the Constitution provides the framework, Proclamation No. 1161/2019 requires that landholders be handed a written notice. While the specific “handover” time can vary based on the urgency of the public purpose, international standards (which Ethiopia’s Constitution incorporates in Article 13) and domestic practice usually dictate a notice period that allows for a “dignified transition.”
All of the above constitutional articles and proclamation are recklessly violated to facilitate the Prime Minister’s Corridor Development Project.
Amnesty International confirmed this after conducting a detailed investigation and published a report on April 14, 2025, titled “Ethiopia: End Mass Forced Evictions.” The report used satellite imagery and survivor testimonies to confirm that at least 872 individuals were forcibly evicted from the Bole and Lemi Kura sub-cities in November 2024. Amnesty explicitly stated that these residents were removed with as little as 24 to 72 hours’ notice and, critically, none of the individuals reported receiving any compensation.
The Ethiopian Human Rights Council (EHRCO) corroborated Amnesty International’s report in its field report dated February 2025. It revealed multiple reports from Piassa and Arat Kilo (early 2025) describing “door-to-door” intimidation where residents were told they had days to vacate before the bulldozers arrived. An evicted businessman lamented:
“They told us we had three days. When we asked where we should go or about our compensation, they told us to ‘be patriots’ and that the city needed this space.”
The Prime Minister’s Contradictory Statements
In the meantime, in various town hall meetings and state-media sit-downs, the Prime Minister provided conflicting stories. On one hand, he boldly lied, stating that in Addis Ababa, the corridor development has not displaced a single person without providing better housing or full compensation.
On the other hand, in January 2025, during a televised address and public meeting, the Prime Minister claimed that approximately 15,000 residents in Jimma town whose properties were affected by the Oromo region’s corridor development did not request compensation. He used this as a “moral anchor” to criticize residents in Addis Ababa who were demanding payment, suggesting that the Jimma community’s willingness to “waive” their rights was proof of their commitment to national progress.
To the contrary, The Reporter Ethiopia (January 2025) documented: “Several Jimma residents say they were stiffed on compensation payments after leaving behind their homes and properties…” This has been corroborated by APAnews (April 13, 2025).
Ethiopia has become a tale of two violently clashing narratives. On the government side, the Prime Minister, his Cabinet members, cadres, and government media outlets peddle proven lies. On the other side, local and international media outlets, human rights organizations, and the displaced people themselves record reckless violations of the constitution.
4. Security and the Expansion of Kidnapping for Ransom
A government that lies about wheat and violates property rights cannot protect its citizens. The collapse of law and order has now reached crisis proportions in a new arena: kidnapping for ransom.
Nigeria and the Sahel region, particularly Mali and Burkina Faso, have historically been epicenters of Africa’s kidnapping crisis. In Nigeria, for example, kidnapping became a systemic financing mechanism for armed groups and criminal networks from the early 2000s onward and escalated sharply after 2010.
Ethiopia is currently experiencing a trajectory that security analysts increasingly compare to the “kidnapping industry” seen in Nigeria and the Sahel before violence became an integral part of their economies. Since early 2026, mass abductions on major transit routes have become routine across multiple regions.
- Oromia (March 2026): A bus abduction saw passengers sexually assaulted and killed when ransoms went unpaid.
- Tigray: 16-year-old Mahlet Teklay was strangled with her own shoelaces after her family could not raise a 3-million-birr demand.
- Amhara: A peace council official was killed in August 2025 after his family paid only 210,000 of a 1.6-million-birr ransom. Thirteen teachers and over thirty truck drivers were abducted in separate incidents in early-to-mid 2025.
Together, these cases demonstrate that Ethiopia now faces a multi-regional kidnapping crisis—rivaling the Nigerian and Sahelian “kidnapping industry” in both tactic and consequence.
The sheaf of wheat promises abundance. But abundance without security is a lie. The government that cannot protect a 16-year-old girl from strangulation has no right to wrap itself in symbols of virtue.
5. Conclusion: A Trajectory Towards Existential Crisis, Not “Towards an Exemplary Nation”
Symbols such as the sheaf of wheat, and the broader slogan “Towards an Exemplary Nation,” derive their power from credibility. To test this threshold, we began with a question: Is the sheaf of wheat branding, propaganda, or deception?
Branding requires consistency between symbol and identity. The Prosperity Party has neither agrarian virtue nor honesty. Propaganda requires a kernel of truth. The government’s wheat narrative contains no kernel—only imports, hunger, and stolen aid. Deception requires falsehood wielded systematically, habitually, and protected from scrutiny. The evidence presented here—wheat data, evictions without compensation, constitutional violations, and a kidnapping epidemic—meets all three criteria.
The sheaf of wheat is not a brand. It is not propaganda. It is the symbol of a government that has learned to govern through illusion, fortified with bold lies and intimidation. The government’s coordinated deception confirms not only a virulent breach of basic democratic rights but also a reckless violation of property rights—the cornerstone of any constitutional order.
Facts are stubborn, and they show Ethiopia propelling towards an impending crisis, not towards becoming a beacon of aspiration and accelerated transformation.
Ethiopia’s history is replete with failed governments. None of the past governments match the recklessness, incompetence, ignorance, and the pathological deception of the current Prime Minister.
Even worse is the failure of the hermito-tribal intellectual class, consisting of hermitized Amhara, Tribalized Oromo and hermito-tribal Tigrayan political elites. As the nation’s primary opposition forces, they have failed to build a critical mass to challenge the Prosperity Party. Their governing principle is presented in my article titled: “Ethiopian Ethnic Politics: The ‘Screw Me Alright, But Screw My Adversaries Even More’ Calculus.”
Editor’s Note : The article appeared first on Kebour Ghenna’s SM page
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