Ethiopia holds parliamentary and regional elections on Monday that analysts expect Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's party to win by a large margin, despite significant unrest across much of the country.
More than 50 million of Ethiopia's 135 million people are registered for the elections, in which voters will choose the 547 members of the House of People's Representatives, the lower house of the Federal Parliament.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, 49, is confident of victory. He was appointed in 2018 following mass protests against the long-ruling EPRDF coalition, and on taking office moved to liberalise Ethiopia's tightly controlled economy and freed journalists, activists and other political prisoners. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for ending hostilities with neighbouring Eritrea. His Prosperity Party won 410 out of 484 seats in parliament in the 2021 elections.
Prosperity Party candidates have campaigned on the government's economic record, citing improved food security and economic growth in Africa's second most populous country. Ethiopia's economy is expected to grow by 7.8 per cent in 2025-26 and 8.5 per cent in 2026-27, according to the African Development Bank.
"It is obvious that the PP will win these elections," an expert working for ACLED on the Horn of Africa told RFI, on condition of anonymity. "The elections were also much more open in 2021, and even more so in 2005, the most democratic polls in the history of Ethiopia so far."
One region excluded
The country is voting without participation from the northern Tigray region, where the electoral board has cited "unfavourable conditions" following a civil war from 2020 to 2022 and continuing political turmoil. More than 750,000 people remain displaced by the war.
"Organising an election remains impossible in Tigray," Muauz Gidey, a researcher at the Tigray Institute of Political Studies, told RFI's correspondent in Addis Ababa, "due to an extremely degraded security context and the collapse of the political system."
Although the Pretoria Agreement ended the civil war in Tigray in 2022, researchers say the conflict caused hundreds of thousands of deaths. A move by the main political party there to reassert control over the region's administration last month has led officials and analysts to warn of the risk of fresh unrest.
Political dialogue between Addis Ababa and Mekele, Tigray's political capital, is also at a standstill. On 8 April, the federal government reappointed General Tadesse Werede as head of the Tigray Interim Administration, angering the TPLF, which then reinstated the pre-war regional parliament, deemed illegitimate by Addis Ababa.
A Tigrayan who left Mekele four months ago to work in Addis Ababa told RFI that "life has become so difficult in Tigray, everything is expensive, and we struggle to survive, so thinking about elections, getting involved in politics, that's not a priority for people at all, it's a luxury."
Kinge Hadush Belay, president of the Tigrayan opposition party Salsay Weyane Tigray (Sawet), told RFI that the population of the region is now "held hostage between a party that is fighting for its survival and the federal government, which does not create a climate conducive to elections and dialogue."
Ethiopia also faces insurgencies in its two largest regions, Oromiya and Amhara, linked to grievances by different ethnic groups over alleged marginalisation within Ethiopia's federal system.
In Abiy's home region of Oromiya, in the south of the country, fighting between government forces and the Oromo Liberation Army separatist group has killed hundreds of people in recent years.
In neighbouring Amhara, a militia known as Fano has seized large parts of the countryside since 2023. As a result, voting will not take place in at least eight of Amhara's 138 constituencies.
"Even the Prosperity Party was not able to campaign in Amhara," the ACLED expert told RFI. "Delays are likely to affect multiple constituencies in Amhara and in the Somali region," they added.
Elections are "just a multiplier of all the crises the country is going through", according to the same expert.
Weak opposition
The Prosperity Party is nevertheless expected to dominate the elections against a fragmented opposition weakened by internal rivalries.
Some opposition parties accuse the federal government of undermining them through the arrest of their leaders and legal obstacles to their political activities, charges the government denies. His opponents and human rights activists also accuse his government of reversing the gains of his early years in office by detaining journalists, shutting down civil society groups and overseeing military campaigns marked by atrocities. The government has denied systematic human rights abuses and said its actions are necessary to protect national security.
For all these reasons, and against a difficult economic backdrop, the elections are generating little interest among voters. A subdued campaign has left the opposition struggling to make its voice heard.
Two observer missions are deployed in the country: one from the African Union and one from IGAD, the regional organisation for the Horn of Africa. Around 100 experts in total are present to monitor the independence of the election.
"People aren't paying much attention to this vote because, for them, everything is already decided, everything is already calculated. We know the result and nothing will change," one voter told RFI's correspondent in Addis Ababa.
"Politics doesn't interest me that much," said another. "I could have voted for an opposition candidate who, in my opinion, deserves it, but in the end, I didn't even bother to register and get my voter card," said Yohanes, making no secret of his weariness with the political situation.
Semhal said people are more concerned about tensions in the country than about politics. "So many people are heading towards Libya to leave the country. The population is more worried about these kinds of things because they are very stressed," she said.
Results are not expected until 11 June.
