Accounts of a Nation are based on sets of beliefs that are agreed upon in a community. Something as tangible as a country, its land, flag, constitution, can be challenged or changed, yet the collective understanding of what a country has been through, where it came from, and where the future is leading it is what keeps people bonded together over hundreds of years and between different places.
Ethiopia has an abundance of stories. Its rich history includes an unbroken civilization predating colonization by Westerners; an amazing military victory at Adwa that inspired Africa; a diverse population of more than 80 ethnic backgrounds and languages; the presence of an Orthodox Christian Church that has existed longer than most of Europe; and its contribution to the Nile River Basin as the only country providing water to millions of people while most of that water goes to waste because nearby countries produce nothing and have no way to share resources with each other.
However, in the last few decades the question of what actually constitutes Ethiopia’s national narrative, who has the right to define it, what experiences are included and emphasized or excluded, and what story will be told, has become one of the most contentious and important issues in Ethiopia today. The “battle” for Ethiopia’s national narrative is as much about politics as it is about media; and media are not simply neutral bystanders in this political dispute—they are part of the battle.
The Making of the National Narrative
The national narrative of Ethiopia has historically been the same throughout the country’s modern history. In Ethiopia’s recent history, all of the major political powers that ruled have always sought to manipulate or completely censor the content of the national narrative, and use censorship mechanisms and mechanisms to monitor abuse against the individual, or independent, media; the emperor was an enemy when the Derg controlled Ethiopia, and the Derg became an enemy after the EPRDF took control, but, every time, the controlling force did maintain the same structural logic; the state controlled the story, and the story served the state.
The EPRDF was theoretically going to completely change the structure of the nation; the EPRDF enshrined ethnic federalism with the 1995 Constitution, thus, affirmatively recognizing the rights of all nations, nationalities, and peoples to self-determination; creating new regional states based on ethnicity; designating and giving official status to regional languages; and creating regional broadcasters in order to provide a voice to identities that had been historically silenced. As a result, the national story, in theory, became a collection of stories from across the nation, or a federation of stories.
However, the legal construct of a story and how members of the nation experience a story are two very different things. The question of what is the national story, or who represents the national story, has never really been addressed, but only managed, or ignored, until it eventually erupts.
What Media Liberalization Unleashed
When Abiy Ahmed took office in April 2018, he quickly set out to reform Ethiopia’s media system by freeing jailed journalists; opening up previously blocked websites; and bringing back into the country many of the journalists and writers that had temporarily fled due to their writing and/or broadcasting. Many viewed this as the beginning of a free press in Ethiopia, and they were correct. However, in a country as divided as Ethiopia, freedom does not equate to pluralism; it equates to amplification.
What was amplified through the reform of Ethiopia’s media was not an inclusive national story with many diverse voices; rather, it was amplified ethnic narratives that sought to challenge each other’s right to determine what constitutes “Ethiopia.” In addition, research supports that ethnicity is now the primary driver of media polarization, replacing the historical divide between the state and private media. Furthermore, within each community, there is a wide variety of outlets; however, these outlets emphasize the grievances of their respective communities, while minimizing or denigrating the grievances of neighboring communities. Ultimately, rather than being one nation with many stories, Ethiopia consists of numerous competing nations that occupy the same geographical area.
The Tigray conflict has exemplified the destructive nature of this polarization. For example, following the start of the Tigray conflict, the government media establishment in Ethiopia produced a variety of messages blaming the Tigrayans as a group for the conflict, while various Tigray-based and diaspora based media organizations issued messages expressing the view that the Ethiopian government was committing genocide. Each of the corresponding hashtags (#EthiopiaPrevail and #TigrayGenocide) mobilized significant resources; entrenched opposing views; and escalated the violence of the war that has resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of human beings.
When competing narratives share no common ground, no dialogue, and no shared framework for truth, the outcome is not debate. It is war.
Medemer and the Search for a Shared Ethiopian Story
Abiy Ahmed developed Medemer, a political philosophy, and introduced to Ethiopia’s damaged environment. Medemer is an example of a vision in terms of both objectives and locale. The development of this philosophy began with a book written by Abiy, followed by the use of state media to communicate his vision to the public, as well as the merging of ruling political parties into one party called the “Prosperity Party,” better than what had come before it.
The state media communicated Medemer as the new national story to tell. Evidence of its promise can be seen by the creation of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, which symbolically is the basis for demonstrating the realities of Medemer.
However, the political realities of Ethiopia do not match what is claimed by Abiy in terms of forward-thinking and the promises made within his philosophy, the result being that in approximately the first month of Abiy’s appointment to office, numerous political “alignment” and “disalignment” occurred with a number of political factions throughout the country. The potential for examining the differences between the Medemer philosophy and the realities of combat, displacement, and ethnic violence, as well as being supported by other forms of media, has not occurred. The state media supported the philosophy without question, whereas independent media sources were subjected to harassment and to shutdowns for questioning or not supporting the Medemer philosophy. Therefore, the new national story has been based upon aspirations, not upon the realities of the actual results of Abiy’s vision.
Toward a More Responsible National Narrative
The media in Ethiopia does cover the country, however the coverage is typically filtered to aligns with either specific ethnic groups’ or government interests of the Ethiopian state. Therefore, independent journalism, offering some courage to report simultaneously for the entire spectrum of Ethiopian identities dependent on no political master, is absent therein.
To quote an Ethiopian editor: “You cannot imprison your way to a unified information space.” Merely suppressing damaging narratives does not eliminate it; it re-distributes them and drives them into a more extreme state. The number of one-sided Youtube channels and other platforms run by exiled journalists is evidence of what a closed domestic journalism environment produces.
A credible narrative for the entire country must be housed by the Ethiopian media, in its newsrooms. An Ethiopian narrative would document the Battle of Adwa as well as the Irreechaa massacre as equally a part of Ethiopian history. A credible narrative would have reported about the GERD not only as an engineering marvel, but also as a major point of political contention. A credible narrative would incorporate Tigrayan, Amhara, Oromo, Somali, Afar, and Sidama voices not as ethnic representatives, but as citizens possessing overlapping, intricate identities that transcend ethnicity.
Lastly and most importantly, a credible narrative would not suggest the false binary that exists between pan-Ethiopianism and ethno-nationalism. Most Ethiopians do not occupy either extreme; rather, they occupy both, and journalism has a responsibility to meet the Ethiopian people at their intersection point.
Ethiopia: A Nation Still Being Written
According to Benedict Anderson, the shared imagination of people who have never met creates the idea of a nation, not blood or territory. Ethiopia’s imagination has always been vast enough to encompass its diversity—but will this be possible in 2026? Will Ethiopia’s media be able to share and portray that diversity?
At this point in time the answer is no, but we have the building blocks for a better environment. These include fact-checkers (working in various languages) who are able to work across ethnic lines to report on communities, and journalists and editors who are committed to the idea that complexity is not disloyalty.
The narrative of Grand Ethiopia will not come from the government or any one ethnic group or the diaspora abroad. It will be slowly and imperfectly created by journalists who are committed to telling the whole truth about the whole country, a task that has barely begun. It must begin now.
The writer can be reached via moges4994@gmail.com
