July 26, 2026
Borkena News Desk
TORONTO, Canada — Delegates representing the ruling Prosperity Party are reportedly divided on the issue of the status of Addis Ababa.
Geographic Reference
Wazema Radio reported that four options were provided at the sub-group level discussion. Addis Ababa as a city state, a part of the Federal government, a federal state on its own, and Addis Ababa as part of the Oromia administration were the four options, according to the source. The option “part of the federal government” is unclear, and there is no information as to how it was presented to the delegates.
Politics
As Borkena reported before, the National Dialogue Commission identified the governance structure of the two city administrations—namely Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa—as one of the eight major agenda items to be discussed at the conference which is currently underway.
Under the existing arrangement, the Oromia administration has been getting “special privilege” over Addis Ababa, a practice that has generated political resistance. In the months before the establishment of the Prosperity Party, the Abiy Ahmed-led Oromo Democratic Party (ODP)—which emerged as a dominant political actor after the TPLF lost dominance at the Federal government level in 2018—claimed an exclusive right over Addis Ababa.
According to the Wazema Report, which cited sources from the conference, the four options presented to delegates at the sub-group discussion level of the conference were narrowed down to two: Addis Ababa to be part of the Federal government or to be part of the Oromia administration. It is at this stage that the ruling party delegates were divided.
Delegates of the ruling party from the Oromia administration advanced the view that Addis Ababa should be part of the Oromia administration. On the other hand, Prosperity Party delegates from other parts of the country have supported the status of Addis Ababa as part of the Federal government.
The National Dialogue Commission on Saturday announced that the first phase of the discussion is completed and that the process is progressing “well.” It did not mention details about differences of views between participants.
The report from Wazema is not independently verified.
With nearly 150 years of existence, Addis Ababa has been home to Ethiopians from different parts of the country. When the Prosperity Party became dominant at the demise of the EPRDF coalition in 2019, there were reports that over 70 percent of the population is not ethnic Oromo. However, there have been allegations of demographic engineering to reconfigure the ethnic composition of the city. Activists on social media have been extensively reporting about it. This was one of the reasons why Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s Corridor Development project, which displaced hundreds of thousands of residents from Addis Ababa and relocated them to the outskirts towns organized as Shaggar City under the Oromia administration, was getting strong political resistance from residents of Addis Ababa and several opposition parties including Balderas.
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