Abiy Ahmed

The name was sometimes given to children in the aftermath of the Ethiopian Revolution in the mid-1970s.

The then Abiyot went to the local primary school and later continued his studies at secondary schools in Agaro town.

Abiy, according to several personal reports, was always very interested in his own education and later in his life also encouraged others to learn and to improve.

Abiy married Zinash Tayachew, an Amhara woman from Gondar, while both were serving in the Ethiopian National Defense Force.

They are the parents of three daughters and one adopted son.

Abiy speaks Oromo, Amharic, Tigrinya and English.

He is a fitness aficionado and professes that physical health goes hand in hand with mental health and, as such, he frequents physical and gym activities in Addis Ababa.

Abiy is a Pentecostal Christian, born of a Muslim father and a Christian mother.

He was raised in a family of religious plurality.

Abiy and his family are regular church attendees, and he also occasionally ministers in preaching and teaching the Gospel at the Ethiopian Full Gospel Believers' Church.

His wife Zinash Tayachew is also a Christian who ministers in her church as a gospel singer.

Abiy Ahmed Ali (Abiyi Ahmed Alii; አቢይ አሕመድ ዐሊ; born 15 August 1976) is an Ethiopian politician serving as the third Prime Minister of Ethiopia since 2018, and as the leader of the Prosperity Party since 2019.

At the age of 14, in early 1991, he joined the armed struggle against the Marxist–Leninist regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam after the death of his oldest brother.

While serving in the Ethiopian National Defense Force, Abiy received his first degree, a Bachelor's degree in computer engineering from the Microlink Information Technology College in Addis Ababa in 2009.

Abiy holds a Master of Arts in transformational leadership earned from the business school at Greenwich University, London, in collaboration with the International Leadership Institute, Addis Ababa, in 2011.

Abiy is the 13th child of his father and the sixth and youngest child of his mother, the fourth of his father's four wives.

His childhood name was Abiyot (English: "Revolution").

He also holds a Master of Business Administration from the Leadstar College of Management and Leadership in Addis Ababa in partnership with Ashland University in 2013.

The African Union described the election as an improvement compared to the 2015 election and positive overall, urging the government to continue the commitment to democracy.

Abiy, who had started his Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) work as a regular student, submitted his PhD thesis in 2016, and defended it in 2017 at the Institute for Peace and Security Studies, Addis Ababa University.

He did his PhD work on the Agaro constituency with the PhD thesis entitled "Social Capital and its Role in Traditional Conflict Resolution in Ethiopia: The Case of Inter-Religious Conflict In Jimma Zone State", supervised by Amr Abdallah ). In 2022, Alex de Waal described Abiy's PhD thesis as constituting an anecdote on an event in which an individual friendship between people of opposite sides augmented social capital and inspired the resolution of a local violent conflict in Jimma Zone. De Waal saw the thesis as "perhaps enough for an undergraduate paper", but not deep enough to cover social capital, background literature on armed conflict and resolution, or literature on "identity, nationalism and conflict". In 2023, de Waal and colleagues recommended that Addis Ababa University re-examine Abiy's PhD thesis for plagiarism, based on their claim of the presence of plagiarism on every page of Chapter 2 of the thesis.

Abiy published a related short research article on de-escalation strategies in the Horn of Africa in a special journal issue dedicated to countering violent extremism.

The New York Times, in a 2018 interview with Abiy, stated that his mother "was Amhara and Orthodox Christian" and "converted to Islam when she married" and The Guardian in 2019 described Tezeta as Amhara.

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.

Unlike his earlier reforms, Ethiopia has transformed into authoritarianism under Abiy's premiership since 2019, marked by severe human rights violations, media censorship, internet shutdown, civil conflicts and systematic persecution of thousands of ethnic Amharas, and southern Ethiopia region such as Amaro Koore, Konso and Gedeo Zones.

Politically motivated purges also became common and many journalists and activists were arrested by police for alleged breach of "constitutional laws".

As of June 2022, 18 journalists were arrested in allegation of "inciting violence" while reporting for independent media outlets or YouTube channels.

Abiy Ahmed was born in the small town of Oromia Beshasha, Jimma zone, Ethiopia.

His deceased father, Ahmed Ali, was a Muslim Oromo.

Abiy's father was a typical Oromo farmer, speaking only Oromo.

The ethnicity of Abiy's deceased mother, Tezeta Wolde, varies according to the sources.

The Ethiopian Reporter stated in 2019 that Tezeta was "a converted Christian".

In a 2021 Oromia Broadcasting Network interview redistributed on YouTube, Abiy stated that his parents were both Oromo, and asserted that "no one is giving or taking away my Oromummaa."

Tezeta was a fluent speaker of both Amharic and Oromo.

In June 2020, Abiy and the National Election Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) postponed parliamentary elections because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The postponement was criticised, especially from the opposition, and raised questions about the delay's constitutional legitimacy.

An election was eventually held in 2021.

During 2020, ethnic and political tensions grew, and in early November, the attacks on the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) Northern Command, was the start of the Tigray War between the combined forces of the ENDF and the Eritrean army against forces loyal to the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF)—an ethnicity-based party which dominated the ruling EPRDF coalition during a nearly thirty-year period marked by rapid development alongside increasing interethnic tension —as well as those loyal to significant allied groups such as the Oromo Liberation Army.