"Down, down Woyane!" : a qualitative study of the qeerroo movement in Ethiopia using political process theory

Abstract

September 9th 2016, René Lefort wrote “There is every sign that Ethiopia is plunging into a crisis whole scale, intensity, and multiple and interdependent drivers are unprecedented since the founding of the regime in 1991” (Lefort, 2016). Mid-February 2018, three major events occurred in one week and the hashtag #ethiopiacrisis trended on Twitter. After protests and demands for reform from several movements, a number of prominent political prisoners were released. Prime minister Hailemariam Desalegn of almost six years resigned without being thrown or diseased, an unprecedented event in Ethiopian history. Lastly, rumours of a new state of emergency was confirmed, hardly six months after the last. Following this chaos was the appointment of a new prime minister, the Oromo Abiy Ahmed, which manifested the major shift happening in the ruling coalition, EPRDF.