Ethiopia is heading to the polls, but not everyone can votePrime Minister Abiy Ahmed's party is expected to dominate the election as conflicts overshadow the vote.3 hrs agoAfrica

Ethiopia’s general election takes place on Monday as conflict rages in parts of the country, meaning many people will not be able to vote.

In fact, the whole northern region of Tigray, which has been trying to recover from a brutal civil war that ended in 2022, has been totally excluded from the poll.

It is the seventh election since the downfall of the military regime in 1991 – an upheaval that led to Eritrea’s secession two years later – and it takes place as Ethiopia’s relations with its northern neighbour are once again dangerously fraught.

The media is tightly regulated and many organisations, including the BBC, have not been given press accreditation.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed – although he is not directly elected. Voters elect representatives to the 547-member parliament and the party that secures at least 274 seats earns the right to form the next government to lead the country for the next five years.

Abiy, 49, came to power in 2018 following widespread anti-government protests against the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), a coalition – dominated by politicians from Tigray – that had ruled since 1991.

He went on to dissolve the EPRDF, of which he was a part, and replace it with his Prosperity Party, a more centralised and less federal form of governing.

Prof Merera Gurdina, a veteran opposition politician and member of the Oromo Federalist Congress, alleges the upcoming election is the least competitive in Ethiopia’s recent history.

“We are participating symbolically because the law says you cannot boycott elections consecutively. We are participating, mainly to avoid deregistration,” he told the BBC.

When Abiy first assumed office, he was hailed as a champion of democracy and press freedom after releasing hundreds of politicians and journalists from prison.

He was awarded the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize mainly for bringing an end to the 20-year military stalemate with neighbouring Eritrea.

Seven years later things could not be more different.

Critics accuse his government of suppressing dissent, forcing opponents into exile and arresting political rivals.

Under Abiy’s watch the government went to war in 2020 with Tigray’s leaders in a two-year conflict estimated by the African Union’s mediator to have killed some 600,000 people and which drove the region to the precipice of famine.

According to Reporters Without Borders’ 2025 press freedom index, Ethiopia came 148 out of 180 countries.

In its September 2025 publication, Human Rights Watch condemned Ethiopia’s government for arbitrarily arresting journalists and media professionals and called for an end to the harassment of independent journalists.

After the credentials for three reporters working for the Reuters news agency were revoked in February, the Committee to Protect Journalists said there was “a troubling pattern of repressive regulatory action against international and independent press in Ethiopia”.

They argue that Abiy has transformed the country for the better.

The capital, Addis Ababa, symbolises these reforms as it is undergoing a rapid urban transformation, in what is known as the prime minister’s “Corridor Development” and “Riverside” projects.

Though these initiatives to improve transport and public spaces have too faced criticism for mass demolitions that have displaced tens of thousands of residents.

Abiy’s economic reforms have received support from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, under the proviso the country liberalises its foreign currency exchange market and gets a handle on its debt. This stood at $36.5bn (£27.1bn) in 2024, according to the World Bank.

With a population of 135.9 million, Ethiopia is Africa’s second most-populous nation – after Nigeria – and one of the continent’s fast-growing economies, according to World Bank estimates.

This is despite the ongoing insecurity in regions such as Amhara and Oromia, the hangover from the Tigray war and the rising costs of goods and services.

The country’s GDP per capita – which is a measure of a person’s average income – is projected to reach $1,133 in 2026, compared to $641 in 2016.

Besides continuing tensions in Tigray, two of the country’s most-populous regions, Amhara and Oromia, have experienced violent insurgencies in recent years.

Fano militias in Amhara and the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) in Oromia continue to fight government forces, resulting in thousands of civilian deaths and forcing hundreds of thousands of people from their homes.

Both want greater ethnic autonomy and feel betrayed by Abiy, though for differing reasons:

• The Amhara militias, who fought on the side of the government in the Tigray war, refused an order to disband in 2023, saying the move would leave their region vulnerable to attack
• The OLA, which is designated a terrorist organisation by parliament, wants greater autonomy for Oromos, the country’s largest ethnic group that has long felt marginalised.

According to conflict monitoring group Acled, more than 9,400 people were killed in 2024 as a result of the violence in those regions.

Despite the insecurity, the government says 97% of areas in Amhara and Oromia are ready to hold elections.

The Coalition for Ethiopian Unity, an opposition alliance formed to contest the elections as a unified front, disputes this.

“We have previously stated that we cannot campaign in the Amhara and Oromia regions because there are no enabling conditions,” Mistreselasie Tamrat, the coalition’s secretary, told BBC Amharic.

Magnus Taylor, Horn of Africa expert at the International Crisis Group (ICG) think tank, says it will be interesting to see how many people will be able to cast their vote.

“Prime Minister Abiy will be confident that he will be re-elected. This shouldn’t obscure the fact that there are various internal insecurity issues, insurgencies and a risk of a new war in the north. The two things can exist at the same time,” he told the BBC.

Home to an estimated six million people, Tigray was governed by an interim administration following the peace deal signed in November 2022 in South Africa’s capital, Pretoria, between the government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).

But earlier this month, the TPLF – angered by Abiy’s reappointment of the administration’s leader without consultation – has muscled in and elected Debretsion Gebremichael to take over.

He had led Tigray during the war when the government had designated the TPLF a terrorist organisation.

Tensions between the TPLF and Addis Ababa have been steadily deteriorating over the last year.

One major disagreement was over whether the TPLF needed to register as a new party. The election board said it did, the TPLF disagreed – and it is now effectively banned, its legal status revoked.

The TPLF also believes the government has reneged over other issues in the Pretoria accord – and in particular it wants back territory it lost during the war, like western Tigray.

Around a million people fled that area during the conflict and have been living in poor conditions in makeshift camps in Tigray.

Another issue is Eritrea, which borders Tigray to the north.

During the civil war, it fought alongside Ethiopia’s government – but those friendly relations have since soured, largely over Abiy’s ambition to get access to a Red Sea port.

When Eritrea gained its independence more than 30 years ago, it took with it a 1,350km (840-mile) coastline – leaving Ethiopia landlocked.

There are also reports Eritrea has been cosying up to the TPLF – increasing tensions between Abiy’s government and Tigray’s leadership.

In May, the electoral board confirmed there would be no voting in any of Tigray’s 38 constituencies.

This has all raised fears of a return to a wider conflict – and the ICG analyst believes regional mediation is needed to open lines of communication between the government and Tigray’s leaders.

“At the very least that can prevent miscalculation or reduce the temperatures down to a situation in which they tackle their differences through talking rather than shooting,” Taylor said.

The election board says more than 50.5 million people have registered to vote and despite the conflicts and political tensions, many young and first-time voters say they hope the election will bring stability.

“If the outcome of the election is not positive, I think it will affect my daily life economically and politically. If instability arises, I may not be able to continue my education and it could be harder to move around,” Fenet Dereje, a resident of Addis Ababa, told the BBC.

Abiy’s Prosperity Party won by a landslide in the 2021 election.

Deputy Prime Minister Temesgen Tiruneh, who comes from the Amhara region where voting has already been cancelled in 30 out of 137 constituencies, told local media in March that the ruling party “did not want to win everything” this time round.

“We have ministers who are members of opposition parties. This trend will continue. We do not want to win 100% of the votes. We want to see our competitors claim victory because we want to accommodate diverse voices,” he said.

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