Ethiopia is a country in conflict. Despite repeated efforts to build national unity, violence has only intensified—particularly following the death of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi in 2012. Since the outbreak of the Tigray War in 2020, fighting has escalated in both scale and brutality, leaving thousands dead or displaced and further straining an already fragile sense of national cohesion. These conflicts have also raised fundamental questions about who qualifies as a citizen of Ethiopia—and what rights and responsibilities that citizenship entails.
“Critical junctures,” or key political transitions and defining moments in recent Ethiopian history, offer a useful framework for understanding how national identity has evolved and how political debates are shaped today. In their January 2026 article, SFS Professor Lahra Smith and alumna Bethania Michael (SFS’19, MSFS’22) explore how tensions and violence can be better understood via these junctures—and what pathways might exist toward resolution.
We spoke to Smith and Michael about the historical roots of Ethiopia’s current crisis, the question of what meaningful citizenship and national identity look like, the pivotal moments that shaped the country’s modern history and the misconceptions they hope readers will leave behind.
Q. For those who might not be aware of the situation in Ethiopia, can you briefly explain what’s happening in Ethiopia and the historical context behind it?
A. It is challenging to summarize. Ethiopia is a country with an ancient history, and one that has been built and shaped by internal and external forces of social and political change within the Horn of Africa region. Most recently, since the mid-1990s and after a major social revolution and a military dictatorship, Ethiopia attempted a federal system.
But, as our research takes seriously, there are turning point events or chains of events. In Ethiopia, the 1995 federal constitution was crafted and directed by the leadership of a particular party and region of the country, though they are not its only champions. Opposition to it later came to be framed as against that region, the Tigray region, and its people. Therefore, when Prime Minister Meles Zenawi passed away in 2012 and when public protests later broke out, there was a turn by some in Ethiopia against the Tigrayan people and the region. Since Abiy Ahmed became prime minister in 2018, these splits have deepened and eventually led to a bloody civil war referred to as the Tigray War (2020-2022). At least 100,000 Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF), Tigrayan troops and Eritrean troops—acting with the Ethiopian troops—died, and at least 600,000 died in total, mostly civilians. Ethiopians have since experienced multiple insurgencies within the country and a significant increase in insecurity.
At the same time, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has pursued his own vision of political consolidation, rapid urban expansion and a revisionist nationalist history. This continues a long history of leaders who have not addressed the issue of inclusionary citizenship within their nation-building programs, leaving grievances shaped by the country’s diverse historical experiences unresolved. There is generally a combination of violence and control, together with a state-led and top-heavy developmental vision, a phenomena seen now in contemporary Ethiopia.
Q. What is the Ethiopian national question, and what does “meaningful citizenship” look like, both within Ethiopia and the diaspora?
A. There are many versions of the “national question” in Ethiopia, but for us, and for many Ethiopians, it represents what historian Bahru Zewde summarizes as “a cardinal element of the political ideology and configuration of post-1991 Ethiopia.” It encapsulates a deep longing to belong to the nation-state by all who reside within Ethiopia and who grasp for full inclusion and participation. At the same time, the “national question” is about how to incorporate groups of people, mostly ethnic groups—“nations, nationalities and peoples,” as they are referred to in the Ethiopian Constitution—into a large, diverse and historically unequal society that aspires to freedom, justice and equality.
One of us (Smith, 2013) has written elsewhere about meaningful citizenship as “the way in which rights are exercised, or the effective practice of citizenship” (p. 4). It demonstrates “a deepening of the social language of equality and is absolutely pivotal to any subsequent attempts at actual legal and political reform.” It is not only something that applies to Ethiopians but represents a concept that can be useful anywhere, including the United States. It is certainly about who is a legal citizen, but so much more. It is also about who is seen as a citizen and treated as one in daily practice, as well as who lives by shared citizenship ideals and who does not and how citizenship is instantiated.
Q. You focused on three “critical junctures” in modern Ethiopian history. How did you select them?
A. This was actually one of the most challenging parts of this research, because like any country, there are many actual turning points, moments of rupture or change that can contribute to political transformation—revolutions, war, death of a leader, elections, national dialogue, peaceful protests and so much more. In identifying such moments, we also considered their potential to foster participatory politics and the forms of meaningful citizenship we have outlined.
Given the depth and complexity of the histories of Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa more broadly, as well as the range of possible methodological approaches to identifying critical junctures, we acknowledge that alternative interpretations are both possible and valid. Readers may reasonably identify different moments as critical, and to this end, our approach should be understood as one interpretive framework among several.
Q. What do you think people outside of Ethiopia often misunderstand about the situation? And what’s the key takeaway you hope to leave readers with?
A. We push back against the notion early on in our article that Ethiopia is destined to exist within an endless cycle of war. As regional and intra-state wars continue across the region, it can be easy for onlookers to become drawn to conflict-centered renderings of Ethiopian history. Ethiopia, as is the case for the entire region, is weighed down by a deeply complex history with varied interpretations, some of which can readily be wielded in support of conflict. Our hope is that readers come away from this article with a more constructive interpretation, one that speaks to the power of institutions and people themselves to expand meaningful citizenship.
At the time of writing, we highlighted Ethiopia’s national dialogue process as a moment to seize upon. Now, some months later, the country conducted elections amidst ongoing regional conflict, with over 40 electoral districts prevented from voting. To that end, centering the role of improved state capacity in charting a path forward continues to be critical for durable peace. The national dialogue continues, and a transitional justice process must be begun and rapidly accelerated.