Addis Abeba — The status of federal cities was among the agenda items at the ruling party's political convention, described as the Ethiopian National Dialogue Conference, which concluded on 22 August, 2026, after forty days of deliberations. When the issue was taken up, the Addis Abeba case triggered an intra-ruling-party brouhaha over the city's "ownership," even though the discussion was supposed to focus on administrative status. What began as a specific subject of discussion among the participants quickly escalated into a national imbroglio, dominating public discourse in the conference's closing days.
Discover moreEthiopian history resourcesnewsEthiopian election analysis In the months leading up to the self-styled national dialogue, Addis Abeba's status was not the central axis of Ethiopia's political crisis. The wars in Oromia and Amhara regions, the unresolved devastation in Tigray, the displacement of millions, and the collapse of the federal-regional jurisdictional autonomy were the country's defining fractures. None, however, received comparable attention or procedural urgency during the conference. Instead, Addis Abeba's status became a national flashpoint about city ownership as the proceedings neared their conclusion.
This was no spontaneous public eruption. The Prosperity Party (PP) deliberately introduced, sequenced, and amplified the controversy to transform a constitutional and administrative question into a political weapon. By recasting Addis Abeba's status as a demand for sole ownership, the ruling party sought to polarise political debate, ethnicise legitimate constitutional concerns, and mobilise public emotion in pursuit of expedient and ultimately corrosive political gains.
Geopolitics consulting Diversion and Division
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Before the conference convened, Addis Abeba's status had settled around four broadly accepted pillars: the city is geographically located within Oromia; it serves as the seat of both the federal government and the regional state; its residents' right to self-rule is inviolable; and any unsettled issues are to be resolved through negotiation and statutes. These principles are not radical innovations; they reflect constitutional realities, administrative practice, and the lived experience of the city's residents. There was no urgent crisis in the city that demanded intervention by the PP's national dialogue participants.
Discover moreJournalism workshopTigray drone reportsRead Political News For the ruling party, however, reopening the matter served several strategic purposes. It sparked a polarising debate that fractured public opinion along ethnic and regional lines, shifting attention away from the party's responsibility for ongoing conflicts and governance failures. It also created a diversionary spectacle that obscured the dialogue's structural deficiencies--its exclusionary participant selection, its avoidance of core political issues, and its predetermined outcomes. For a brief moment, the uproar allowed the regime to present the dialogue as vibrant and contentious, even as it remained tightly controlled.
Ethiopian culture guide More consequentially, the controversy served as a pretext for constitutional revision. By framing Addis Abeba's ownership as an unresolved national crisis, the PP positioned itself as the sole actor capable of "resolving" the issue through constitutional overhaul--consistent with its broader project to dismantle the 1995 constitutional order and replace it with a centralised framework aligned with its political vision. The uproar reinforced the party's narrative of national unity under threat, a familiar justification for repression and the erosion of regional autonomy.
Tigray news coverage Despite contentious exchanges between emissaries from Oromia and Amhara regional states, the PP's national dialogue ultimately reaffirmed the four pillars that had long defined Addis Abeba's status. The remaining question, whether the constitution should explicitly recognise Addis Abeba as Oromia's capital and the seat of the Oromia Regional Government, requires no transformative constitutional innovation. A workable resolution begins by acknowledging the existing facts about Addis Abeba's relations with Oromia and by categorically rejecting any reinterpretation that undermines the city's residents' right to self-government.
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A matter that could be resolved through democratic negotiation becomes an existential ethnic confrontation."
The imbroglio offers a clear lesson. The crescendo of manufactured controversy reflects a familiar strategy: elevate a symbolic question, frame it as a threat to group identity, mobilise emotional responses, encourage citizens to fear one another rather than scrutinise those in power, and generate a crisis that only the ruling party can claim to manage.
Geopolitics consulting Emotional Mobilization
Although the controversy surfaced within the dialogue's framework, it had been orchestrated long before the conference launched on 15 July, 2026. Cultural productions reframed a settled administrative question as an existential ethnic confrontation. Symbolic issues eclipsed substantive governance failures; emotional issues became instruments of mobilisation; constitutional debates were weaponised to advance partisan agendas. Ultimately, emotional mobilisation was adopted as a strategy to rally the Oromo constituency behind the ruling party.
A striking example of the PP strategy of using artistic production for political advantage is a YouTube video built around the loaded question, "Who owns Addis Abeba?" The video's choreographed performance tries to stir passions, reshape how people see one another, and transform constitutional questions into existential ethnic claims. It recasts Addis Abeba as an ethnic patrimony rather than a civic space, hardening boundaries between communities that must coexist. Its potency lies not in artistic sophistication but in its ability to manufacture fear, mobilise identity for action, and legitimise misguided political agendas.
In response to his question about who owns Addis Abeba, the singer provides, in Amharic, and in the most provocative and corrosive terms, his proposed solution and the inevitable consequence if it is not implemented immediately. He declares, "Addis Abeba must be returned to Oromo ownership. ... Addis Abeba is the navel of the Oromo. So it is my home. Addis Abeba is ours. Leave now. You've soiled the place. Your preconditions are unacceptable. Get out of here, now."
Addis Ababa events The lyrics then shift to Afaan Oromo. The singer calls the Qeerroo, Oromo youth, to action, saying, "Tell them to go home, and you migrate to the city. Tell them to go home and reclaim your inheritance. Tell them enough is enough; they've stayed long enough, looted more than enough. Tell them, 'Your time is up, time to go home.' There is no room for compromise or reconciliation; tell them to go home. Enough of spilling Oromo blood. Tell them, if you stay any longer, Oromo is now a roaring lion, ready to devour. Tell them to go home, or we spill your blood."
In the final section of the song, the singer exhorts the qeerroo in a mix of Afaan Oromoo and Amharic, apparently to send unambiguous messages to both the potential victim and the perpetrator in their respective languages. It exhorts them to uproot and displace its residents: "You took advantage of qeerroo patience and silence, and seized Oromo land and built your home on it. Renamed Finfinnee Addis Abeba, Dildila Adurree Entoto, Hurufa Boombii Jalmeeda, and Chaffee Araaraa as Sidist Kilo. Remove these [settlers] today, not tomorrow, from all these places, and from Burayu, Sababta, Bishoftu, Lagatafo, Sululta, and Chanchoo. We've been beaten and killed in droves. Qeerroo Unite! Your time is now."
The accompanying images, youth brandishing AK-47s and wielding sticks, sporting dreadlocks, waving Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) flags, dragging people out of their houses, beating them, and driving them away, reinforce a subliminal message: that the OLF and qeerroo intend to expel non-Oromo residents. This portrayal pushes the OLF to the extreme edge of the Oromo political spectrum so that its antagonist, the Oromo People's Democratic Organization (OPDO)--which later became the Oromia Democratic Party (ODP) and the Oromia Prosperity Party (OPP)--can occupy the political centre.
Geopolitics consulting Allegations that the production was planned or amplified by actors linked to the regime, while tenuous, are credible. The PP has repeatedly used artistic production to glorify the government, glamorise war, elevate its leader, and vilify opponents. The record shows that PP officials have consistently deployed artists for political ends or mobilised resources to counter artistic works they perceive as threatening. Its response to Teddy Afro's Das Tal, reportedly financed by regime operatives with millions to neutralise the song's message, is a notable example. The connection makes the song's moral stakes a calculated act of political manipulation.
Political Engineering
The song's message is unsettling because it is not merely provocative but morally dangerous. Its lyrics and delivery in heavily accented Amharic imply that the threat to "drive out" non-Oromos came from "uncultured, unscrupulous, uncompromising Oromo youth." This framing takes the most incendiary formulation, "Addis Abeba belongs to Oromo alone," and wraps it in rhetoric and imagery that are violent, threatening, and at points chillingly eliminationist toward non-Oromos who have every right to participate in the life of the city they call home.
This is where political engineering is expressed in morally indefensible terms. Legitimate political questions are not debated on their merits; they are demagogued, caricatured, and replaced by their most extreme and terrifying versions. Instead of discussing administration, jurisdiction, representation, constitutional arrangements, and residents' rights, the issue is reframed as "They are taking away your ancestral city." And the manufactured response becomes, "We must defend the city from them."
Legitimate political questions are not debated on their merits; they are demagogued, caricatured, and replaced by their most extreme and terrifying versions."
Once that shift occurs, the real political question disappears. A matter that could be resolved through democratic negotiation becomes an existential ethnic confrontation. Citizens who should be debating governance begin to see one another as threats. Political disagreement becomes fear; fear becomes mobilisation; mobilisation becomes violence--and violence leaves scars that endure for generations.
This transformation is not just dangerous--it is devastating. It is not accidental. It is purposeful. And we must ask: who benefits from the fear, the division, and the manufactured hostility?
Merchants of Death
Among politicians who claim to defend the rights of Addis Abeba's residents, Berhanu Nega, EZEMA's former leader once declared that his political mission was to "save Addis Abeba from Oromos." In September 2018, his supporters killed Oromos for waving the OLF flag the day after his return from exile. This cohort may view the blowout at the conference as validation of their incendiary rhetoric. But irresponsibility cannot be answered with more irresponsibility. As an Oromo proverb cautions, if a rabid dog bites you, you don't stoop down and bite it back. Oomo politicians would do well to heed the wisdom of the ancestors.
Addis Ababa events Some YouTube personalities further inflame the controversy to boost viewership. Whether "knaves" or "fools," they play with the fire in Ethiopia's politics. At best, they are indifferent; at worst, they prioritise profit. The more incendiary the content, the more views and revenue it generates. They are active participants in the attention economy, gamblers whose stakes are human lives. No public good comes from giving attention to merchants of death.
The more direct indictment lies in the insertion of the Addis Abeba controversy into the PP's national dialogue agenda. This was deliberate and purposeful. The scheme succeeded briefly in turning Addis Abeba's status into an interethnic flashpoint, a tinderbox that the regime can ignite for political expediency at any time. For this reason, the politicisation and ethnicisation of Addis Abeba's status for cheap and transient political benefit warrants not only political scrutiny but also moral condemnation.
Similarly, the use of musical production or other cultural expressions to bend public sentiment to a particular group's political will must be condemned and curtailed. The case on hand is not an artistic response to an existing dispute but an attempt to manufacture the dispute itself. The practice of taking an administratively manageable question, inflating it into its most extreme version, provoking fear around that version, and then presenting political power as the only indispensable force capable of containing the crisis it helped create must no longer be tolerated.
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Rhetoric versus Reality
The status of Addis Abeba raises questions of jurisdiction, administration, representation, language, culture, residents' rights, and constitutional and political arrangements regarding the relationship between the city and the surrounding communities. The cultural and symbolic values that Oromos attach to Finfinne are not baseless. These issues should never be dismissed or trivialised. They must be considered with seriousness and dignity and through legal, negotiated, democratic, and peaceful political discourse.
Ethiopian culture guide But none of them justifies asserting an abstract claim of ownership over a cosmopolitan city. What does it even mean to say an Oromo living in Dembi Dollo or Dire Dawa "owns" Addis Abeba? Are those Oromo who live in Detroit or Düsseldorf entitled to ownership rights? What political authority or material benefit would that grant to Oromos rights not equally shared by an Ethiopian living in Bahir Dar, Mekelle, Hawassa, or anywhere else? And why should a child born and raised in Addis Abeba, regardless of ethnicity, have a weaker claim to participate in the city's political life than someone who has never lived there, perhaps never visited, and has no connection to its civic reality?
These questions matter because Addis Abeba is not just an abstract city, a mere bloodline, or a birthright patrimony. It is a home where millions wake up, raise children, build lives, and imagine futures. It is a living community for its inhabitants. In this sense, a right to a place one claims is granted through presence, conferred on citizens who live there and on whoever is present to bear the obligation that accompanies the right. Those who live in the city, its residents, must have a decisive voice in its governance.
An Authoritarian Maneuver
The manufactured controversy ultimately reflects a broader authoritarian strategy: transforming governance failures and accountability crises into horizontal conflicts among citizens. Framing Addis Abeba as a national crisis conceals the structural failures of the PP's national dialogue and enables the ruling party to justify centralisation, constitutional revision, and expanded executive authority. Instead of citizens scrutinising those who wield power, citizens are encouraged to fear and fight one another.
So perhaps the real question is not, "Who owns Addis Abeba?" The more urgent question is, how do we stop the politically powerful from radicalising manageable political questions, turning Ethiopians against one another, and manufacturing interncine conflict as a means of expanding and consolidating autocratic rule?
Geopolitics consulting The latter is the more pertinent question because sometimes the most dangerous political failure is joining a choreographed political dance designed to prolong a conflict that keeps dangerous politicians in power. AS
Editor's Note: Ezekiel Gebissa is a professor of History and African Studies at Kettering University in Flint, Michigan. He can be reached at egebissa@kettering.edu
