Ethiopia: from promises of prosperity to civil war

Considered by some as the «China of Africa» in the 2000s and 2010s, Ethiopia looked set to enjoy a new prosperity as it opened up to the world, a far cry from the famines and wars of the past century. How could such promises have been lost, and Ethiopia plunged into civil war?

It was certainly by design that on November 4, 2020, when the world was preoccupied only with the difficult US elections, the Tigray Peoples' Liberation Front (TPLF) chose to launch a rebellion against the central Ethiopian government. Since then, offensives and counter-offensives have followed between the Tigrayan rebels on the one hand, and the federal government, local militias and the Eritrean army on the other. In the wake of the fighting, famine and violence spread throughout a large part of northern Eritrea.