Abiy Ahmed Wins – But Ethiopia’s Real Problems Are Just Beginning

The result was never seriously in doubt.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s victory in Ethiopia’s June 2026 general election was described by voters themselves as already decided and already calculated before a single ballot was cast. His Prosperity Party, which controls the machinery of state, the security forces, and the flow of resources to regional administrations, was always going to win. The question was never the outcome. The question was what the outcome means for a country that is simultaneously holding an election and fighting multiple wars.

The answer is not reassuring.

Major regions including Amhara, Gambela, Tigray and Oromia are currently experiencing armed conflict against the federal government. In Amhara, the Fano militia — which represents the grievances of one of Ethiopia’s largest ethnic groups against what it sees as political marginalization — has been fighting government forces for years with no resolution in sight. Civilian casualties were recorded across multiple zones in Amhara Region during election week itself, with drone activity recorded in several areas.

In Tigray, the situation is different but equally unresolved. The peace agreement signed in Pretoria in 2022 ended the formal fighting but not the underlying political crisis. The entire Tigray Region was excluded from the 2026 election, with the National Election Board citing unfavourable conditions following the civil war and continuing political turmoil. Millions of Tigrayans had no vote in the government that will rule them for the next five years.

Analysis suggests that Ethiopia’s election results will likely confirm the status quo — a Prosperity Party government with a commanding parliamentary majority, facing armed opposition in multiple regions, presiding over a fragile peace agreement in the north, and managing the competing pressures of a $2.34 trillion birr federal budget, international debt obligations, and the expectations of a population that voted in large numbers despite having little confidence that anything would change.

Abiy himself cast his vote in his hometown in Oromia, declaring that the next five years will be a period where Ethiopia sees many historic turning points.

He may be right. But the turning points he is describing and the turning points that ordinary Ethiopians in Amhara, Tigray, and Oromia are living through may be very different things. An election that excludes millions, that is held while active conflicts rage in major regions, and whose outcome is described by voters as predetermined before it begins is not a democratic consolidation. It is a performance of democracy conducted over the unresolved grievances that, if left unaddressed, will define Ethiopia’s next crisis.

The votes are counted. The result is known. The harder work — the negotiations, the accountability, the genuine political inclusion that could actually stabilize Africa’s second most populous nation — has not yet begun.