Abiy Ahmed, the progressive Prime Minister of Ethiopia, has made major changes to the African state in the last two months. In mid-October, Ahmed filled half of Parliment’s seats with women in an effort to combat Ethiopia’s long-standing patriarchy. More recently, Ahmed elected the nation’s first female president Sahle-Work Zewde, former Peacekeeper of the United Nations.
Prime Minister Ahmed has enacted a number of progressive changes to the government within the last few months. He’s helped settle a decade-long dispute with neighboring Eritrea. He’s welcomed opposition groups who’ve been banned from re-entry to the state under the leadership of the previous Prime Minister. He’s opened up foreign investment to major industries, as well as vowed to implement a more democratic system into the government. The amount of progress in Ethiopia within the last six months has shocked analysists around the globe.
In Mid-October, Ahmed appointed a female to the position of the newly named “Ministry of Peace” for the first time in African history. Despite the fact that the Presidency of Ethiopia is largely ceremonial, the idea of women becoming decision-makers within government has been more accepted.
With all the changes in gender representation, came large changes within its political system. For decades, the utilitarian country has championed state-led economic growth. These new changes have been no exception to its authoritarian regime. Jason Mosley, a researcher at Oxford’s African Studies Center, says that this authoritarianism is precisely what can facilitate such massive change.
“You can have these kinds of radical overhauls of gender balancing a Cabinet when it’s authoritarian,” Mr. Mosley said. “…competitive political landscape[s] are part of the thing that keeps western democracies from achieving these kinds of results.” (The Independent UK)
Although authoritarianism has been largely shied away from by the west, Prime Minister Ahmed has taken many democratic ideologies and have put them to work in this new progressive Ethiopia state.