Ethiopia’s federalism dilemma: Why regional power keeps fuelling conflict
Nearly four years after a peace agreement ended Ethiopia’s devastating war in Tigray, fighting has erupted again.
Tigrayan forces have seized control of airports in the northern region and clashes have been reported in Tigray and neighbouring Afar and Amhara, according to Ethiopian officials.
Tigrayan authorities say they are responding to attacks by federal forces, while the federal government has described the Tigrayan military action as an offensive. Both sides have accused the other of triggering the latest escalation.
The renewed fighting has shattered the relative calm that followed the November 2022 peace agreement and raised concerns about a wider conflict.
But the latest crisis is about more than Tigray. It has once again exposed one of Ethiopia’s most difficult political questions: how can a country with dozens of ethnic and linguistic communities balance regional autonomy with the authority of a single federal state?
At the centre of that question is Ethiopia’s system of multinational federalism.
A federation built around identity
Ethiopia’s current federal system was established in the 1990s following the fall of the military government of Mengistu Haile Mariam.
The 1995 constitution divided the country into regional states and recognised the rights of Ethiopia’s “nations, nationalities and peoples”.
Article 39 gives these groups rights to self-determination, including a constitutional route to secession, as well as rights relating to language, culture and self-government.
The constitution also says regional states should be enclosed according to settlement patterns, language, identity and the consent of the people concerned.
The arrangement represented a major departure from Ethiopia’s long history of centralised government.
Its stated purpose was to recognise the country’s diversity and give its constituent communities greater political autonomy.
However, the system also connected questions of political authority with territory and identity.
That can make disputes over regional boundaries more significant than common administrative disputes.
As governance analyst Austin Aigbe argues in his analysis of the country’s conflicts, the federal structure can create a difficult relationship between political authority, territory, identity and access to resources.
That does not mean federalism itself causes conflict, but it helps explain why questions over who governs a particular territory can become closely tied to wider questions of political representation and security.
When autonomy collides with central authority
The conflict between Addis Ababa and the Tigray regional government clearly demonstrates the problem.
The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), had been the dominant force within Ethiopia’s ruling coalition for about 3 decades before Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came to power in 2018.
Abiy subsequently adjusted the ruling coalition into the Prosperity Party, reducing the TPLF’s role in national politics.
Relations between the federal government and Tigray’s regional authorities deteriorated further in 2020. One of the key disputes concerned elections.
After the federal government postponed national and regional elections because of the Covid-19 pandemic, Tigray held its own regional election in September 2020. The federal government rejected the vote, while Tigray’s authorities argued that their regional mandate remained valid.
The political dispute eventually became a military confrontation. The war lasted two years and caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, according to estimates cited by the African Union and international organizations.
The November 2022 Pretoria agreement ended the large-scale fighting.
But it did not resolve every political and territorial question surrounding the conflict.
The territorial question
One of the most difficult issues has been Western Tigray, also known as Welkait.
The territory has been claimed by competing Tigrayan and Amhara interests and was one of the major areas of fighting during the war.
The conflict also displaced large numbers of people from the area.
The status of the territory, the return of displaced people and questions about future administration remain important elements of the post-war political dispute.
This is where Ethiopia’s federal structure becomes particularly relevant. When regional governments are organised partly around identity and territory, control of an area can affect not only administration but also political representation and the exercise of cultural and linguistic rights.
The territorial question is therefore not simply about where one regional boundary should be drawn. It is also about which government exercises authority there and which communities have political representation.
That is one reason the issue has proved so difficult to resolve.
Tigray and the meaning of federalism
For the federal government, the conflict with the TPLF has been framed largely around constitutional authority and the ability of the national government to exercise power across the country.
For the TPLF, the dispute has also been closely connected to the question of regional autonomy.
These positions reflect different interpretations of Ethiopia’s constitutional order. The constitution gives regional states substantial powers, while also establishing a federal government with responsibility for national matters including defence and foreign affairs.
The difficult question is where the boundaries of those powers lie when Addis Ababa and a regional government disagree. The Tigray war demonstrated the consequences when such a disagreement is no longer settled through political institutions.
The current fighting shows that the political questions left unresolved by the 2022 agreement remain highly sensitive.
Tigray is not the only fault line
Ethiopia’s federalism debate cannot be understood through Tigray alone. The country has also experienced serious armed conflicts in Amhara and Oromia.
In Amhara, Fano groups fought alongside federal forces during the Tigray war before relations with the government deteriorated.
In 2023, the federal government announced plans to dismantle regional special forces and integrate them into federal or regional security structures.
The government presented the move as an attempt to create a more coherent national security system. Fighting subsequently broke out between federal forces and Fano groups.
The conflict has continued, with civilians caught between the opposing sides. Fano is not a single organisation with one universally recognised command structure. It refers to a collection of Amhara armed groups and networks whose leadership and objectives vary.
That makes it difficult to describe the Amhara conflict as a simple confrontation between two clearly defined sides. It also means that political and security developments cannot automatically be attributed to every Fano group.
Oromia: a different conflict
In Oromia, the conflict has a different story.
The Oromo Liberation Army, or OLA, is an armed group that has fought Ethiopian government forces in parts of the region. The federal government considers the OLA a security threat, while the group and its supporters have framed the conflict around longstanding Oromo political grievances.
Those grievances have included questions about political representation, land, language and the distribution of political power. However, as with Tigray and Amhara, the conflict cannot be explained by a single issue.
Political competition, local disputes, armed mobilisation and violence involving different actors have all contributed to insecurity.
The killing of Oromo musician Hachalu Hundessa in 2020 became a major flashpoint. Human Rights Watch reported that at least 178 people were killed in the violence that followed, including members of different ethnic communities.
The episode illustrated how political tensions can intersect with ethnic identity and communal violence.
It also demonstrated the limits of treating Ethiopia’s conflicts as variations of the same dispute.
Is federalism the problem?
This is where the debate becomes more complicated.
It would be too shallow to argue that Ethiopia’s federal system is responsible for its conflicts. Violent struggles over political authority and territory predate the current federal constitution.
At the same time, the federal structure gives political and constitutional importance to regional identity and territory.
Aigbe argues that this creates a structural challenge: when political identity, territorial control, security and access to state resources become closely connected, competition over regional power can become particularly difficult to manage.
That is an interpretation, rather than an established causal explanation for Ethiopia’s wars.
Other factors are clearly involved. The country’s conflicts have also been shaped by historical grievances, political competition, disputed territories, economic interests, security concerns and decisions made by individual political and military actors.
The evidence therefore does not support reducing Ethiopia’s instability to either “ethnic federalism” or “centralisation” alone.
The centralisation dilemma
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government has increasingly emphasised national cohesion and stronger federal institutions. From the government’s perspective, a national government needs sufficient authority to provide security and prevent competing armed structures from undermining the state.
The 2023 decision to dismantle regional special forces was part of that broader effort. However, regional actors have not always viewed the process in the same way.
The disagreement illustrates a central tension in Ethiopia’s federal system. The federal government wants enough authority to maintain national security and constitutional order. Regional governments and political movements want meaningful autonomy within the constitutional framework.
The constitution itself provides for both federal and regional powers.
The difficulty arises when the two levels of government disagree about where those powers begin and end.
A new alliance of former rivals
The recent Tigray crisis has added another level.
On 20 September, seven Ethiopian armed and political groups announced an alliance seeking to remove Abiy Ahmed’s government. The coalition includes the TPLF and the Amhara Fano National Movement, which fought on opposing sides during the 2020-22 Tigray war.
It also includes groups from Oromia, Afar and Benishangul-Gumuz. The groups say they oppose what they describe as excessive centralisation of power and the marginalisation of Ethiopia’s regions.
The federal government has accused the alliance of receiving support from Eritrea, an allegation Eritrea has denied. The alliance is significant, but it does not mean the groups share a single political programme.
They have different histories, territorial interests and political objectives. Indeed, some have previously been on opposite sides of Ethiopia’s conflicts.
Its creation nevertheless shows that opposition to the federal government’s political direction is now being expressed by armed and political actors from several regions.
Can military force settle the dispute?
Ethiopia’s experience over the past several years suggests that military victories do not necessarily resolve political disputes. The Tigray war ended through negotiations rather than a comprehensive military settlement.
The Pretoria agreement stopped the large-scale fighting, but questions about territory, displacement, accountability and political authority remained.
The same broader issue applies to Amhara and Oromia. An armed group can challenge the state’s control of territory.
A federal government can deploy military force to restore that control. Neither action, by itself, determines how competing claims over political representation, land or constitutional authority should ultimately be resolved.
That requires political institutions and agreements that the parties accept as legitimate.
What would a longer-term settlement require?
There is no single agreed solution to Ethiopia’s political conflicts.
Some Ethiopian analysts have called for an inclusive national dialogue and constitutional discussion.
Aigbe argues that such a process should address the future of federalism while also dealing with transitional justice and the role of armed groups in political competition.
Those are his proposals, rather than established solutions.
Any broader settlement would also have to address concrete issues left by the conflicts: disputed territories, displacement, security arrangements, political representation and accountability for alleged abuses.
The Pretoria agreement showed that negotiations can end large-scale fighting.
The renewed tensions show that a ceasefire does not necessarily settle all the political disputes that produced a war.
The bigger question for Ethiopia
Ethiopia’s federal system was created to address a difficult problem: how to govern a country with enormous ethnic, linguistic and cultural diversity while maintaining a common state.
Three decades later, that question remains unresolved.
The debate is not simply between federalism and unity.
Ethiopia’s experience raises a more specific question: how much authority should belong to the federal government, and how much should remain with regional governments, when the two disagree?
