The Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) is the combined military force of Ethiopia. ENDF is consisted of 10 command forces which is controlled by the Chief of General Staff.
The president of Ethiopia is the head of state of Ethiopia. The position is largely ceremonial with executive power vested in the Council of Ministers chaired by the prime minister. The current president is Taye Atske Selassie, who took office on 7 October 2024. Presidents are elected by the Federal Parliamentary Assembly for six years.
The prime minister of Ethiopia is the head of government and chief executive of Ethiopia. Ethiopia is a parliamentary republic with a prime minister as head of the government and the commander-in-chief of the Ethiopian Armed Forces. The prime minister is the most powerful political figure in Ethiopian politics. The official residence of the prime minister is the Menelik Palace in Addis Ababa. The prime minister is elected from the members of the House of Peoples' Representatives and presents a government platform. The prime minister must receive a vote of confidence in the House of Peoples' Representatives to exercise executive power as chief executive. Abiy Ahmed is the third prime minister of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, serving since April 2018.
Sahle-Work Zewde is an Ethiopian diplomat who served as president of Ethiopia from 2018 to 2024, the first woman to hold the office. She was elected as president unanimously by members of the Federal Parliamentary Assembly on 25 October 2018.
The Council of Ministers is the cabinet of the Government of Ethiopia. Under the Constitution of Ethiopia, the Council of Ministers is the country's executive body.
Abiy Ahmed Ali is an Ethiopian politician who is the current Prime Minister of Ethiopia since 2018 and the leader of the Prosperity Party since 2019. He was awarded the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize "for his efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation, and in particular for his decisive initiative to resolve the border conflict with neighbouring Eritrea". Abiy served as the third chairman of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) that governed Ethiopia for 28 years and the first person of Oromo descent to hold that position. Abiy is a member of the Ethiopian parliament, and was a member of the Oromo Democratic Party (ODP), one of the then four coalition parties of the EPRDF, until its rule ceased in 2019 and he formed his own party, the Prosperity Party.
The 2018 Eritrea–Ethiopia summit was a bilateral summit that took place on 8–9 July 2018 in Asmara, Eritrea, between Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and officials from the two countries.
The Ethiopian Republican Guard is an elite praetorian guard unit and the special forces branch of the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF). It is tasked with providing protection to the Prime Minister and top government officials in Ethiopia and specializes in special operations.
The 2019 Amhara Region coup d'état attempt was an attempted coup d'état against the Amhara Regional government on 22 June 2019, during which factions of the Amhara Region's Peace and Security Bureau assassinated the Amhara Regional President Ambachew Mekonnen. A bodyguard siding with the nationalist factions also assassinated General Se'are Mekonnen, the Chief of General Staff of the Ethiopian National Defense Force, as well as his aide Major General Gizae Aberra.
Se'are Mekonnen was an Ethiopian general who served as the Chief of General Staff of the Ethiopian National Defense Force from 2018 until his assassination on 22 June 2019.
Brigadier General Asaminew Tsige was an Ethiopian military officer who served as chief of the regional security forces in the Amhara Region during part of 2019. He had previously been serving a life sentence in relation to an alleged coup attempt staged by Ginbot 7. During his imprisonment, he was allegedly tortured and lost sight in one eye. He was released in 2018 and restored to his prior rank and pension.
Ahmed Shide is an Ethiopian-Somali politician who is serving as the Minister of Finance since October 2018. He was the Minister of Communication Affairs from April until Abiy Ahmed cabinet dissolved the ministry in October 2018.
The 2019 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the prime minister of Ethiopia Abiy Ahmed "for his efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation, and in particular for his decisive initiative to resolve the border conflict with neighbouring Eritrea." The award was announced by the Norwegian Nobel Committee on 11 October 2019.
Temesgen Tiruneh is an Ethiopian politician who is serving as the current Deputy Prime Minister of Ethiopia since 8 February 2024. He previously served as the director general of National Intelligence and Security Service of Ethiopia since 2020
Abiy Ahmed is currently the third serving Prime Minister of Ethiopia. In 2018, he became the first ever Oromo descent to assume the role of prime minister in the history of Ethiopia. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in his second year as a prime minister of Ethiopia in 2019 becoming the eighth African laureates to win the award for peace.
The 1995 Ethiopian Federal Constitution formalizes an ethnic federalism law aimed at undermining long-standing ethnic imperial rule, reducing ethnic tensions, promoting regional autonomy, and upholding unqualified rights to self-determination and secession in a state with more than 80 different ethnic groups. But the constitution is divisive, both among Ethiopian nationalists who believe it undermines centralized authority and fuels interethnic conflict, and among ethnic federalists who fear that the development of its vague components could lead to authoritarian centralization or even the maintenance of minority ethnic hegemony. Parliamentary elections since 1995 have taken place every five years since enactment. All but one of these have resulted in government by members of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) political coalition, under three prime ministers. The EPRDF was under the effective control of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), which represents a small ethnic minority. In 2019 the EPRDF, under Abiy, was dissolved and he inaugurated the pan-ethnic Prosperity Party which won the 2021 Ethiopian Election, returning him as prime minister. But both political entities were different kinds of responses to the ongoing tension between constitutional ethnic federalism and the Ethiopian state's authority. Over the same period, and all administrations, a range of major conflicts with ethnic roots have occurred or continued, and the press and availability of information have been controlled. There has also been dramatic economic growth and liberalization, which has itself been attributed to, and used to justify, authoritarian state policy.
Girma Yeshitila was an Ethiopian politician and the head of the Prosperity Party in the Amhara region who was assassinated in 2023.
On 23 June 2018, a large popular pro-government rally at Meskel Square for the support of political reform of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, was attacked by an assailant using a grenade. The grenade exploded just 17 metres away from the stage. Shortly afterwards, the assailant was taken away by security officials. The attack was the first attempted assassination of an Ethiopian national leader in modern Ethiopian history, after similar incidents during Haile Selassie and Derg era.
