Campaign posters of Ethiopia\u2019s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s Prosperity Party line the road leading to his birth town of Beshasha where he is a local hero.<\/p>\n
He was born in 1976 into a modest family in the rural town of around 8,000 inhabitants, and is the first person from the Oromo community to lead Ethiopia.<\/p>\n
Residents point to recent development projects as signs of change.<\/p>\n
Despite its modest size, the town benefits from the modernisation projects and construction works Abiy has, in the main, devoted to major cities and certain specific remote areas.<\/p>\n
Houses and a library are springing up and numerous brand-new small shops line the impeccably paved road from Jimma, the nearest major town in Oromia.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn’t expect roads like this to be built here. Within just eight or nine months, they completed projects that transformed the area,\u201d says 29-year-old shopkeeper Haider Fayidi.<\/p>\n
He is one of many residents in the town who speak with pride about Abiy and the transformation they say his government has brought to the area.<\/p>\n
The Oromo are the largest of Ethiopia’s 80-odd ethnic groups but have felt marginalised for decades.<\/p>\n
\u201cPreviously, we were told that an Oromo could never come to power. That is what we kept hearing. We never thought the leader of Ethiopia would come from this town,\u201d Fayidi says.<\/p>\n
Abiy, who has been in office since 2018, is widely expected to consolidate power in the country’s general election on Monday.<\/p>\n
Initially feted globally for his democratic reforms, the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize laureate then presided over a civil war in Tigray and ongoing ethnic insurgencies.<\/p>\n
But despite growing criticism of his administration which is seen as increasingly autocratic, “Abiymania” is still very much alive in Beshasha.<\/p>\n
Abdulqadir Abagaron, 59, a farmer from Beshasha who knew Abiy before he became prime minister, had praise for the country’s leader.<\/p>\n
“He has always possessed a uniquely gifted nature given to him by God, even from childhood. He was truly a special child. Even back then, he was someone who consistently worked to bring peace,” he says.<\/p>\n
Abiy\u2019s party holds a massive 96 per cent of seats in the outgoing parliament and is widely expected to win a landslide victory.<\/p>\n
He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to bring about reconciliation between Ethiopia and neighbouring Eritrea, following two decades of conflict and subsequent acrimonious relations.<\/p>\n
But the war Abiy led between 2020 and 2022 against the dissident Ethiopian state of Tigray has tarnished his reputation as a man of peace.<\/p>\n
The war in Tigray claimed at least 600,000 lives and over the past three years, relations with Eritrea have once again become strained, raising fears of a new conflict.<\/p>\n
Abiy is expected to cast his vote on 1 June in Beshasha, with dozens of locals cleaning the streets ahead of his arrival.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Campaign posters of Ethiopia\u2019s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s Prosperity Party line the road leading to his birth town of Beshasha where he is a local hero. He was born in 1976 into a modest family in the rural town of around 8,000 inhabitants, and is the first person from the Oromo community to lead Ethiopia. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21011,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":7,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"AFP","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,2362,33],"tags":[124,114,4060],"class_list":["post-21010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-africa","category-featured","category-politics","tag-abiy-ahmed","tag-ethiopia","tag-prosperity-party"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21010"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21010\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21012,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21010\/revisions\/21012"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}