[ilstormcloud]

We're all happy the election (most of it anyways) concluded peacefully. There was a fear of violence that didn't materialize. The results indicate a massive win for the PM's party. Given how popular he is, I was expecting his party to win, but not by this margin.

As for Tigray, people here are really pessimistic. Over the past 8 months, the Ethiopian government narrative was that the people of Tigray and the political party that rules them (the TPLF) were two different entities and that the former needs to be free from the latter (TPLF has ruled there probably for more than 4 decades, they had their shot).

And the TPLF narrative was that it, and the people of Tigray are one and the same. That TPLF was the only power that can protect/save Tigray. And that if it doesn't get its way it will take Tigray out of the Ethiopian Federation.

After 8 month of conflict, the only reason TPLF still exists is because it has popular support of the Tigrayan public. And the PM basically acknowledged as much.

TPLF has been a bad actor in Ethiopian life. I personally will not be okay with 70 year old TPLF cadres and generals continuing the game they played for 30 years. And I believe the overwhelming majority of Ethiopians will not accept them.

So, if Tigray accepts TPLF, and the rest of Ethiopia rejects it completely, then we're stuck.

Just like there are people in Tigray that want to break away, there are people in the rest of Ethiopia that want them to break away (paraphrasing, "nothing comes out of Tigray, their ambition and their actual population size is not matching up and they're not worth the trouble". This is really dangerous for Tigray because, despite their bravado, it's one of the poorest area in Ethiopia. It has food security issues even in the best of times. TPLF seems to be wanting to leverage the threat of breaking away to get concessions. I don't think they realize just how bad public opinion has soured against Tigray.

Of course, take everything with a grain of salt --- I'm not in politics. My sources are just people here (Like my taxi driver from Tigray who was upset and concerned about a youtuber calling for Tigray to break away).

[atlasunshrugged]

That's super interesting, thanks for sharing! I admit to being pretty confused by all of the politics and fighting; my impression is that the power of the TPLF came from 1) their military capacity and 2) the fact they had previously held a disproportionate number of senior positions and could give favors to Tigrayans. But given their main demand seemed to be succession and they could have demanded that as per the constitution, it didn't make a lot of sense to me to pursue it by military means.

What do you make of the recent ceasefire? Do you think people have negative opinions of the fact that Eritreans were in country and consider it a violation of sovereignty? I'm not sure if you're in tech or not but you're on HN so I'm curious what the tech scene is like & what you make of the new safaricom deal?

[ilstormcloud]

The TPLF led Ethiopia for 27 years. They are a tiny minority so the perception here is they used a divided and conquer strategy to govern. They were basically pitting the two large ethnic groups against each other and playing the peace-maker. The most common rhetoric on national television was about how they liberated the Oromo from the Amhara. That resulted in the Amhara developing a lot of animosity towards TPLF because, I'm paraphrasing, "Why should I, a poor person, be blamed for something someone did 200 years ago". In addition, TPLF took some lands away from the Amhara region when they came to power (What you hear in the media as "Western Tigray") and that has caused major anger. TPLF had Marxist origin, and they had to give names to their "ideological enemies". So Amhara were "Chauvinists" and the Oromo were "Narrow minded". This also rubs people the wrong way. I'm cringing as I write this, the whole thing is insane.

When it comes to Eritrea, They, for a long time were not in good terms with Tigrayans. This animosity actually predates the current conflict or the border war. There are a lot of nuances involved but generally speaking, it wouldn't be wrong to say those two are not friends. Of course the current conflict multiplied the hate a thousand fold.

The reason I'm writing this down is to give you a sense of the broader picture. In this scenario, an Independent Tigray will be a small and mostly very poor population in a dry area, with unfriendly neighbors. And the area has little natural resources to speak of, so it's not like USA or China would care to invest long term in it. The people of Tigray are hardy and disciplined but TPLF is a tyrannical organization, it's not the kind of government in which free thought and enterprise can thrive. In such a scenario, breaking away from Ethiopia don't make much sense. I suspect it would be disastrous. I think they know this.

* In my opinion, they started the war not to break away from Ethiopia but to topple the current Ethiopian government which they hate for breaking their near 3 decade rule of Ethiopia <-- I can unpack this statement a lot more. In the decades they were in power, they had morphed into a kleptocratic regime which enjoyed its life by wasting public money (like a billion USD on a fertilizer plant spent, with nothing completed, around 4 billion usd spent to build a series of sugar plantations and factories with nothing completed after 10 years of development... the list is long). The leaders were sending their kids for a vacation in Europe on public money while more than a million people in Tigray required food assistance to survive.

I think they started the war to topple the government and retain at least some of these benefits they lost under PM Abiy and perhaps more importantly, work to create a more opportune environment that would allow Tigray to break away.

* About the ceasefire, it's good and absolutely essential. THey have to farm this rainy season or the food insecurity will be 10x worse. But there is a problem, TPLF and most of Tigrayans *that I have talked to* thinks they won a military victory and they want to use the momentum to "liberate" western Tigray. Personally, I wouldn't be surprised if fighting resumed in those areas.

* As for Eritrea, they were probably invited in at a time of great danger for the Ethiopian military and they helped. People are grateful here, not angry. Of course some of the senseless atrocities have caused the enthusiasm to die down a bit but there seems to be a consensus (right or wrong) that most coverage of the war has a bit of propaganda in it.. a bit of manufactured consent, when people hear about atrocities, they're immediately wondering about who wrote it, what their motive is... this reduces the impact the news would have.

* I am really excited for the Safaricom deal. But I and a lot of people are expecting the US governments to place some sanctions on us wrecking the deal. So not sure if it will go through. I do indeed work in tech. And I have been working remotely for the past year and half. Bad and expensive internet connection is extremely frustrating. And it's hard for collogues abroad to understand the level of difficulty. Imagine trying to communicate a weird bug in the codebase that you don't even fully understand to collogues in Europe (with broken English) only find out you were disconnected minutes ago. It's painful. The safaricom deal promises 8 billion USD investment in telecom. I am absolutely excited for that and will switch if it's better.

The tech scene is unfortunately NOT as developed as it should be. Internet connectivity, power issues are factors, government procedures and policy over the decades. I think they feared tech and their policies directly and indirectly affected the industry.

An instance of government indirectly stifling growth: There is a government body called Information Network Security Agency (INSA). It was actually founded by the current PM. He was removed and over time, the agency started to moonlight as a the preferred tech company that government agencies work with. They had tens of thousands of employees and can win contracts due to political connections. In the past decade it dominated most government contracts for making software. They thought they were saving money but it was those kinds of contracts that would have allowed the private sector to develop. And to no ones surprised, the stuff they did was often of low quality and over budget.

And 5 or 6 years ago the government wanted to ban VOIP tech (prison time for using). In a separate instance, I very vaguely remember the then director of the agency, a military general (From TPLF ofc) talking about how local developers should consider working on security products rather than communication apps.

That said, there are a few interesting tech companies. We have the local clones of Uber. And they're pretty good (The Tigrayan taxi I mentioned earlier was actually driving for one of these). Food delivery startups. There are lots of companies developing health care logistic related software (lots of funding from USA on that area). A major payment platform in Nigeria (PAGA) is developed here also. There are labs that work on ML, I think the robot the Saudi's gave citizenship to was partially developed here. Right now, one of the current PM's initiative is to digitize Ethiopia. A focus area within the initiative are mobile payment solutions. This will breath new life on both business and tech.