July 31, 2026
Borkena News Desk
TORONTO, Canada — Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s two-part interview with the Amhara Media Corporation—the first installment of which was released on Friday afternoon—reveals the layers of resistance his government has faced after losing legitimacy, as demonstrated through large-scale armed conflicts in the Amhara and Oromia regions, among others.
Responding to a question regarding why he lost the support of the Amhara diaspora, which initially supported what his government calls “change,” he responded that the opposition is not only from the Amhara diaspora but also from the rest of the Ethiopians in the diaspora. He thinks, as he said in the interview, that “three reasons and groups” can explain the situation.
The first he mentioned was “ownership of the change,” as he called it. “There was a miscalculation that people [in the diaspora] believed they owned the change,” and that they want the “change” to go in the direction they want. When they found out that they cannot influence change that way, they started to oppose it. “The mission of the change was not to fulfill individuals’ interests,” he added. Ethiopians in the diaspora have been accusing Abiy Ahmed of causing unbearable economic hardship in the country, failing to unite the country by ending ethnic-based administrations and divisive ethnic politics, and causing a security crisis.
He went on to add about the second group and reasons for opposition. He said they are in opposition for silly reasons to make a “YouTube business,” as he said, and their goal is trivial.
He categorized the third group as having reasonable ground. This group, he said, thinks that their concern and question is not adequately addressed.
As he seems to admit, a significant portion of the opposition to his rule comes from the Ethiopian Diaspora. An estimated three million Ethiopians live in the diaspora. Initially, his strongest support came from the Ethiopian Diaspora. It was rooted in the hope that the prime minister would unite the country as he pledged in his first speech in the Ethiopian parliament in April 2018.
As it turns out, his administration started to face political problems barely three years after he took power as prime minister. Security crises in the country reached the point that mobility between Addis Ababa and cities in the Oromia region via road transportation turned out to be a risky business. The massacre of tens of thousands of civilians in rural Oromia and Benishangul added impetus to the opposition against his administration.
Devastating wars in the Amhara, Oromia, and Tigray regions are also cited as one of the reasons why his government faced a legitimacy crisis for several years now. Members of the diplomatic community have been warning about another devastating war in the north as the difference between Abiy Ahmed’s government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF)—which has formed a political and military alliance with Eritrea—has reached a confrontational level.
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