National dialogue is supposed to be a forum for truth-telling — a bridge between wounds of the past and the compromises of the future. Yet in Ethiopia today, the process risks becoming just another polite conversation, dwarfed by political sensitivities and diplomatic caution. Beneath the banners of unity and reconciliation lies a growing fear that the country is mistaking silence for peace.
For years, Ethiopia has been haunted not only by conflict but by the stories it refuses to tell. Communities across regions carry parallel versions of history — each convinced of its own truth, each nursing its own pain. The purpose of a national dialogue, as imagined when the idea was launched, was to face these truths head-on: to acknowledge injustice, to speak what was unspeakable, and to lay the moral foundation for a shared state. But a dialogue without discomfort is no dialogue at all.
Too often, reconciliation initiatives in post-conflict societies drift toward diplomacy instead of justice. They aim to soothe tensions rather than address root causes. In the case of Ethiopia, this tendency manifests in the over-management of speech: who gets to speak, what is considered “acceptable,” and how criticism is framed within the bounds of “responsibility.” The result is a political culture where honesty is recast as extremism and moral clarity is often deferred for the sake of maintaining appearances of stability.
If the goal of national dialogue is genuine transformation, Ethiopia must confront this culture of caution. Real reconciliation is not built on selective memory. It requires confronting all the painful legacies — mass displacement, extrajudicial killings, property confiscations, censorship, and the ethnicization of opportunity — even when doing so makes those in power uncomfortable. The silence around uncomfortable topics may buy temporary calm, but it also breeds resentment and cynicism, especially among the younger generation, who see the repetition of old cycles masked by new slogans.
The courage Ethiopia needs today does not reside in the language of diplomacy but in the practice of truth. Diplomacy has its place in international relations, in mediating between states or balancing interests. But nation-building is not diplomacy. It is a moral project that asks citizens and leaders alike to confront what went wrong and to imagine what can be done differently.
There are precedents for this across Africa. South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, while imperfect, showed that moral courage — the willingness to tell the truth about the past — can become a political force in itself. Rwanda, after 1994, combined local-level Gacaca court systems with state-led forgiveness campaigns that helped bridge profound trauma. Neither of these processes relied on politeness or vague dialogue; they relied on structure, testimony, and accountability. Ethiopia can learn from these examples without replicating them wholesale. What matters is the courage to name wrongs, establish facts, and ensure that history cannot be rewritten each election cycle.
The Ethiopian National Dialogue Commission has an enormous responsibility — and a rare opportunity. If its work is limited to high-level negotiations among elites or prepackaged “consultations,” it risks becoming another symbolic exercise. For the process to matter, it must listen to the voices usually excluded: farmers pushed off their land, mothers who lost sons to war, journalists who suffered for writing uncomfortable truths, communities displaced by development projects. A national dialogue that excludes pain cannot deliver peace.
Moreover, the Commission must defend the freedom of speech as the oxygen of dialogue. Participants should not fear consequences for expressing grievances or perspectives that challenge official narratives. Without such openness, the dialogue becomes another bureaucratic ritual rather than a nation’s catharsis. As in medicine, a wound cannot heal while it is still covered — it has to be exposed, cleaned, and treated with honesty.
Courageous speech, however, must be matched by courageous listening. Too often, Ethiopia’s political culture prizes proclamation over empathy. Each side speaks but rarely hears. A successful dialogue must cultivate listening as an act of patriotism — an understanding that agreeing to hear a painful truth is not a betrayal but a step toward collective recovery.
To move forward, Ethiopia’s national dialogue must do three things. First, institutionalize truth-telling as a core mechanism, not an afterthought. Testimonies should inform policy recommendations, not merely fill transcripts. Second, protect free expression within the dialogue framework, ensuring that participants are shielded from reprisals. And third, translate findings into a binding social contract — one that reforms public institutions, rehumanizes citizenship, and transforms governance from competition for power into collaboration for justice.
Such a process will not please everyone. It will anger those accustomed to control, unsettle those who prefer to forget, and exhaust those who see peace only as the absence of noise. But the alternative is far worse: a fragile quiet where the roots of conflict remain untouched, ready to bloom again.
Ethiopia has lived through cycles of hope and heartbreak, progress and relapse, liberation and suspicion. The task now is not simply to talk, but to speak courageously — to weave a single national memory from many truths and to anchor peace not in silence but in understanding.
Diplomacy may win friends; courage builds nations. The cost of silence is too high for a country that must finally find its collective voice.
Can Africa and Russia rewrite global rules, together?
By the end of this week, African foreign ministers will gather in Cairo for the Second Ministerial Conference of the Russia–Africa Partnership Forum. Officially, it is a diplomatic meeting. Unofficially, however, it carries a far heavier meaning.
For many of us who think seriously about Africa’s place in the world, this gathering is less about protocol and more about something we have been denied for a long time: the space to choose, to negotiate, and to define development on our own terms without being punished for it.
Africa has spent decades inside a narrow corridor of “acceptable” relationships. Our foreign policy options were quietly limited. Our economic decisions were audited. Our political experiments were tolerated only when they did not disrupt Western interests. And that history still shapes how Africa moves today. This is why the Russia–Africa partnership matters, not because Russia is “flawless,” but because this relationship emerges from a different historical experience, one that does not begin with the colonization of African land and people.
We do not come to this moment without memory. Africa remembers who colonized it, who drew borders with rulers and maps, who extracted labor and minerals while preaching civilization. We remember the era of European empires, and we remember how, after independence, those empires were replaced by financial institutions, military commands, and development agencies that continued to discipline African sovereignty.
Russia does not belong to that particular history in Africa. It never ruled African societies, never ran settler colonies here, never organized our economies around a racial hierarchy. That does not make Russia virtuous, but it does make the relationship structurally different, and in international politics, structure matters.
It also explains why so many African liberation movements once looked to Moscow when Western capitals saw them as threats. From Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana to Amílcar Cabral’s struggle in Guinea-Bissau, from Angola’s MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola) to the African National Congress in South Africa during apartheid, there was an understanding that colonialism was not something to be managed more gently, but something to be dismantled.
That legacy still echoes today, even though the world has changed and Russia itself is no longer the Soviet Union.
One of the most damaging features of Western engagement with Africa has always been instruction disguised as partnership. Aid arrived with political conditions, loans came tied to austerity, development plans were written elsewhere and imposed here, and security cooperation often left behind more instability than safety. Africa was treated less as a partner and more as a project to be supervised.
Russia does not approach Africa through the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank. It does not freeze African assets when governments pursue policies it dislikes; it neither weaponizes development assistance nor claims moral authority over African political systems. This does not mean Russian interests are absent, but it does mean the relationship is less paternalistic, and less obsessed with disciplining African sovereignty. When African ministers sit with their Russian counterparts in Cairo, they are not being summoned – they are negotiating. This distinction matters.
For Africa, the talk of a multipolar world is not theoretical. It is practical and urgent, because a unipolar world has always been dangerous for us. When power is concentrated in one center, Africa becomes a periphery, useful mainly as a supplier of raw materials and a consumer of finished goods. Engaging Russia widens Africa’s room to maneuver, and it creates alternatives. It restores a measure of bargaining power and allows African states to engage Europe and the United States from a position that is slightly less vulnerable. This is what Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere meant when he spoke of non-alignment, not as passivity, but as independence of judgement.
The Cairo meeting is not about choosing Russia over the West. It is about refusing to be locked into a single orbit, a single model, a single set of rules written elsewhere. Choice itself is a form of power.
Economically, Africa’s tragedy has never been scarcity. It has been structure. We export raw materials and import finished goods; we sell cheap and buy dear. Colonialism built this system, and post-colonial dependency preserved it. Western partnerships rarely challenged this structure because they benefited from it. Africa’s minerals powered foreign industries, Africa’s markets absorbed foreign products, and Africa’s debt kept the system in place.
Russia–Africa cooperation offers not a guarantee, but an opportunity to renegotiate that pattern. Energy partnerships can be structured to include local processing. Mining agreements can be negotiated to include African ownership and technology transfer. Agricultural cooperation can strengthen food sovereignty instead of deepening import dependence. Russia is not engaging Africa out of charity, it is seeking markets, influence, and long-term partnerships. That reality gives Africa leverage, if it chooses to use it collectively and intelligently.
Finance is another area where the difference becomes clear. Western finance has shaped Africa more through discipline than development. Structural adjustment hollowed out states, while debt conditionalities undermined planning and credit ratings punished independence. Russia does not dominate global finance, and paradoxically, that is precisely why partnership with Russia matters. It opens space for alternative arrangements, for trade in national currencies, for development strategies not subordinated to Western financial institutions. This is not about abandoning responsibility or transparency. It is about restoring policy space, the ability of African governments to plan, invest, and protect strategic sectors without external vetoes.
On the other hand, for security, Africa must always proceed with caution. We know too well how a foreign military presence can turn into permanent guardianship. Western security frameworks have often meant permanent bases, proxy conflicts, and endless counter-terrorism operations without development. Russia’s approach, whatever one thinks of it, is not framed as a civilizing mission. It does not come wrapped in humanitarian language that later justifies bombing campaigns or sanctions. It is transactional, and requested rather than imposed. Still, Africa must insist that security remains African-led, anchored in the African Union and regional mechanisms. Partnerships can assist, but sovereignty cannot be outsourced.
Throughout all this, Africa would do well to remember its own intellectual and political traditions. When Kwame Nkrumah warned against neo-colonialism, he was warning against a world where independence is symbolic and power remains external. When Amílcar Cabral spoke of liberation as a cultural and economic process, he understood that dependency reproduces itself daily. When Nelson Mandela insisted on an independent foreign policy, he knew that dignity begins with choice.
The Russia–Africa Partnership Forum belongs to that unfinished struggle. It is a reminder that Africa does not have to accept a single path to development, a single definition of partnership, or a single hierarchy of power.
Africa must approach Cairo without illusions. Russia is pursuing its interests, as all states do. The responsibility lies with African leaders to negotiate collectively, transparently, and firmly. Unity remains our greatest leverage. But the very fact that Africa can engage Russia openly, without apology and without fear of punishment, already signals a shift.
When African ministers gather in Cairo, they will not just be discussing action plans and trade figures. They will be testing whether Africa can finally exercise something it has long been denied: the right to choose its place in the world. History will not judge Africa for engaging Russia. It will judge us for failing to turn this opening into sovereign development, fair trade, industrial capacity, and real independence. And that responsibility, at last, rests with us.
