In many ethnically diverse countries, state-building does not marginalize the dominant ethnic group and the state generally reflects or at least is not antithetical to their aspirations. This is not the case in Ethiopia where the Oromo people have been locked in a century-long battle with the Ethiopian state, despite forming an estimated half of the country’s population and inhabiting a large territory rich in natural resources. Several of the European imperial powers in earnest and later the US have supplied the necessary material and ideological support to the Ethiopian state, arresting the development of the Oromo people, and denying them —and the rest of Ethiopians— a dignified life. Although successive generations of Oromos have sought both violent and nonviolent means to end the resultant political and economic marginalization, they have always fallen short of success.

In 2018, the nonviolent Oromo youth movement forced a reshuffle in the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), paving the way for Abiy Ahmed, an Oromo, to become the caretaker prime minister of Ethiopia on April 12th, pending general elections in 2020.

Prime Minister Abiy wasted no time in introducing a series of reforms: He lifted the state of emergency that was imposed by the previous administration, released thousands of political prisoners, and allowed the return of  formerly banned opposition parties to the country. In a speech to parliament on June 18, 2018, he admitted that his party had committed gross human rights violations against innocent civilians over the past 27 years: “We have tortured, caused bodily harm, and even put inmates in dark prison cells,” he said, adding “These were acts of terror we used to stay in power.” He also pledged to revise repressive laws that were previously used to silence and eliminate people in the opposition.

In a political culture that relies on violence to get to power and even more violence to maintain it, the prime minister’s admission of crimes and subsequent apology was interpreted by many as a sign that Ethiopia was at the dawn of a new era.

For the Oromo who have long borne the brunt of this violence, this meant that their historically incompatible and therefore antagonistic relationship with the Ethiopian state was about to change. It seemed as if Ethiopia, an empire that was founded on the conquest and dispossession of what became its largest polity —Oromia— was on its way to democratize itself. Unfortunately, that hope was dashed, and not for the first time. As one Ethiopian journalist noted: “Ethiopia is at war with itself, again!”

Paul Henze, the CIA station chief in Ethiopia during the Derg regime, attributed Mengistu Haile-Mariam’s bloodlust and counter-insurgency in Eritrea, then part of Ethiopia, to his lack of “blue blood” and good “Ethiopian credentials.” Unlike all previous Ethiopian rulers (Orthodox Christian, Amhara/Tigre), Mengistu came from the Southwest which was brutally conquered by Emperor Menilik in the late 19th century. According to Henze, Mengistu, an ethnic Konta, “​​felt necessary to prove his nationalism and he had to prove he was as tough as anybody else and he was desirous of protecting Ethiopia’s interests.”

After eliminating the radical left in a bloody purge, Mengistu reverted to Amhara nationalism, staffing the 200-member Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Ethiopia (WPE), which he founded in 1984, with an overwhelming majority of 118 Amharas, followed by 23 Oromo, and the remaining seats going to other nationalities. Menelik’s Avenue was featured in state ceremonies during his reign, and he personally visited and venerated Tewodros II’s tomb in the Lasta Mountains. As the insurgency against his regime intensified, Mengistu commissioned a previously dismissed royal historian to write a series of books emphasizing the continuity of the Ethiopian state through the lives of the last three emperors —Tewodros II, Yohannes IV and Menelik II. Notably absent was Haile Selassie, who was murdered and (reportedly) buried under a toilet by the Derg itself. And towards the end of his reign, Mengistu was said to frequently compare himself with Tewodros II. His current predecessor, Abiy Ahmed, prefers the phrase: “The seventh king of Ethiopia.”

In his famous book, The Wretched of the Earth, the Caribbean-born psychiatrist and political philosopher, Franz Fanon argues that people who have been colonized often internalize the values and beliefs of their oppressors and that this can lead them to conflate liberation with mimicking their oppressors. This inferiority complex manifests itself in many ways, including ‘lust’ and ‘envy.’ “The colonized man,” he writes, “is an envious man,” who fantasizes about the colonizer’s possessions, aspires to sit at the colonizer’s table, to sleep in his bed, “with his wife if possible.”

In this sense, to liberate oneself is to embody and fully become the oppressor. In the Oromo context, the apex of success in life, personal or political, is measured by how much one mimics Amhara culture, status, and way of life, however laced with Oromo symbolisms.

Prime Minister Abiy, like Mengistu, suffers from a deeply-entrenched inferiority complex, and his embrace of empire politics are symptoms of this colonial condition. This psychological dilemma was clearly at play in his speech at a town hall meeting in Eastern Oromia, where he advised Oromos to be like Jews “who prospered shortly after migrating to the US” as opposed to African Americans who “remained poor for dwelling on their past.” Ironically, he is making these statements while identifying with and glorifying Abyssinian rulers who subjugated the Oromo and other nations in Ethiopia in the past, and while at the same time preventing them from exercising their human and democratic rights today.

The disillusionment of Oromo youth with Prime Minister Abiy’s political trajectory is reflected in the song “Atii Enyuu?” (Who Are You?) by artist Chala Dagafa: “Oromo youth forced the TPLF back to their country, and you want to bring back the feudal system; What has gotten into you?”

Abiy’s plan for his constituency was made clear during a high-level meeting of his party, where he announced: “We need to rule Oromia like the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) did Tigray—without any opposition!” His plan to centralize power became a reality when he subsequently dissolved the EPRDF, the ruling coalition that comprised political parties representing several national groups, and established a new “Prosperity” party, ignoring all due process.

The Oromo youth whose protest movement helped put the prime minister in power were quickly designated enemies of the state, and a massive crackdown against them soon ensued. This statement explains, in short, the drive behind the pacification campaign in Oromia. In other words, the regime intends to run Oromo youth out of the country and thus strip Oromos of their will to live, resist, and exist, much like the Eritrean regime did to Eritreans.

One must understand that the conflict between the Oromo and the Ethiopian state is not only of a political nature; it also has economic and social layers. In Wollo, now part of the Amhara region, it is due to a social order imposed on the people by the Amhara Regional State. In other parts of Oromia, it is about underdevelopment, response to natural disasters, namely drought, and historical grievances against the center (Finfinne). The Ethiopian state has used everything in its arsenal to win this war with constant failure. One weapon used in this perpetual war is dehumanization.

Dehumanization as a tool to consolidate state power 

The logic of empire creates a binary, of ‘humans’ and “non-humans; of citizens and subjects. In the Ethiopian context, it’s the Amhara identity, culture, history, and value that forms the basis of what it is to be ‘human,’ or a citizen versus ‘others’ or subjects. Although individuals from Christian, non-Amhara backgrounds could rise to high offices in the country by deemphasizing their own identity and demonstrating the ability to subjugate their own group to the imperium, the collective agency of non-Amhara groups in Ethiopia is denied, their histories hidden, their cultures and traditions defiled, their resources plundered and youth population forced into joining the army.

As a policy, the Abyssinian/Ethiopian state has used dehumanization in its attempt to dispossess and contain the Oromo and other national groups. This is apparent in several dehumanizing terms ranging from “Galla” in the imperial times, to “Tabab Behretegna” (narrow nationalist) during the Derg, and “Terrorist” during the EPRDF.

With an Oromo at the helm, Oromos believed that the tales of being othered were behind them. They were wrong. The Ethiopian state came up with a new term for the Oromo: “Shane.” Since Abiy Ahmed’s ascension to power, an Oromo could be in Gimbi, Shashamane, Ambo, Bule Hora, Dembi Dollo, Jimma, or Naqamte, barely managing to conduct their daily business, often witnessing injustice and experiencing acute poverty, despite hailing from the richest region in the country and still experience state violence in its cruelest form.

The violence now is prompted not only because of their identity but also because of their opposition to an Oromo leadership. The moment s/he protests, a politician who is not Oromo, a foreign expert who never set foot in Oromia, and Oromo representatives would engage in an intellectual saga aimed at nothing but delegitimizing their demands and justifying inhumane measures taken against them by the regime.

Through no fault of their own, and often labeled by rivals, not peers, the Oromo find themselves always on the part of the aggressor. When Shashemene was turned into Aleppo by hooligans, Oromos, the owners of the city, were blamed for it. The media and the debate that followed legitimized the lunacy confirming without evidence that indeed Oromos burned down their city.

When Oromos from the Somali region were resettled in Adama, a city supposedly built to benefit the Oromo, they were attacked by non-Oromo residents of the town, unprovoked. Instead of holding these criminals accountable, the city administration decided to move the newly settled Oromos to the outskirts of the town, painting defenseless IDPs as the aggressors and legitimizing the perpetrators’ actions.

If Oromos were “Gallas” during the imperial period who lacked all the natural attributes that human beings possess— land, history, culture, rights, dignity — Oromo youth today are “Shane,” or “OLF Shane” and their lives are considered worthless.

The Ethiopian state remains structurally unchanged, but this time it’s the Oromos themselves who are propagating this dehumanization and killing their fellow Oromos. This is legitimized by the state, the civil society, and of course, the media, and the logic behind it is that an Oromo is at the top of the echelons of power.

Convincing everyone that a person’s life is worthless is hard work and requires a collective effort. This effort is evident by a practice of regime forces who made a habit out of filming themselves carrying out torture and summary executions and sharing the footage and photographs to social media influencers. Nathanael Mekonen, a pro-government online activist who appears to have links with regime forces on the ground, is one such case. He rose to prominence by sharing photographs of murdered Oromos on the messaging app Telegram, their faces mutilated and private parts exposed, in an attempt to further the humiliation and suffering of their families as well as propagate the idea that Oromo lives are worthless.

Normalization and Lack of Public Outrage 

Psychology is important in normalizing inhumane behavior. Time and again in the dangerous game of politics, psychological warfare is employed to achieve a political goal. The goal is to strip well-intentioned people of their cognitive processes that reject the inhumane treatment of others and lead to the normalization of the dehumanization of other human beings. Dehumanizing Oromos has been practiced as a rite of passage into Ethiopianess and for some the only solution to the problems facing both Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa.

One can speak to refugees from Eritrea, Somalia, or Yemen who fled dangerous circumstances in their respective countries and hear them use phrases such as “Oromos are backward”, “Oromos must be lying”, “Don’t go to Oromia; it is dangerous for non-Oromos” while simultaneously choosing to only settle in Finfinne, Adama or Dire Dawa. A reaction that is reflective of the daily consumption of conversations where the Oromo’s supposed partners in the country blame everything under the sun on the Oromo but also an indoctrination into Ethiopianess.

The public debate in Ethiopia is victim to the rhetoric of illusory truth effect to legitimize state crackdown on both individuals and communities. The illusory truth effect put simply is the process of accepting information to be true because it was heard before. Henceforth, public debate in Ethiopia begins with a lie, as a rule of thumb, and then repeated endlessly.

On the need to break the cycle

The Oromo people stand at a critical juncture. While an Oromo elite, albeit in name only, controls the levers of state power, this same elite class has pursued a policy of dehumanizing and persecuting its own constituency to maintain its grip on power. This policy stems, in part, from the inferiority complex that deeply entrenches many Oromo elites. In fact, nearly every instance of instability in the country can be traced back to the Oromo elite in power, whose attempts to govern the country by emulating the Abyssinians has left them with no allies in Oromia, Tigray, and lastly Amhara itself.

The Oromo elite’s rejection of their core identity and their failure to adhere to the principles of the Gada system manifests itself in the othering, dehumanization, and persecution of their own people. One cannot build a family, let alone a state, while simultaneously killing one’s own kin and kith. Neither would the world respect such a person or group.

As the Oromo Archbishop Abune Sawiros aptly observed, “A person who suffers from an inferiority complex is of no use to himself, his family, neighbors, or his country.” The Oromo elite must heed the archbishop’s wisdom and embrace their true identity, and work with (instead of marginalizing) Oromo potential at home and abroad and build a strong Oromia and, in turn, a stable Horn of Africa.

If the Prosperity Party seeks to break the cycle of recurring conflicts that plague Ethiopia, they must end the war in Oromia at all costs and ensure accountability for the crimes committed under their rule. To achieve this, sharing power and broadening the political space is essential not only in Oromia but also in other regions.

From 30th November to 12th December, governments, intergovernmental agencies, the private sector, civil society, donors and other stakeholders will be represented at the 28th United Nations Climate Change negotiations (Conference of the Parties – COP28) in Dubai. Governments will convene to pick up the discussion from where they left off during last year’s negotiations in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, where the parties agreed to provide “loss and damage” funding for vulnerable countries hit hard by climate disasters. The Loss and Damage Fund is a form of “payment for past actions that contributed to the climate crisis”, where rich nations are to pay damages to developing nations that are more vulnerable to climate change. The countries agreed to establish the fund last year and it is expected that the negotiations will now focus on its operationalisation.

This year’s COP is also happening against the backdrop of the inaugural Africa Climate Summit that took place in Nairobi in September. The Africa Climate Summit was an occasion for African governments to consolidate Africa’s position ahead of COP28, to discuss what global climate-related plans mean for Africa, and to develop the continent’s plan for addressing climate change. It was the moment to draft (and agree on) “Africa’s climate action plan”. The Nairobi Declaration, signed by twenty countries at the end of the Summit, called for new climate financing models for climate mitigation and adaptation measures.

Another topic that has gained traction in the lead-up to COP28 is “carbon trading” or “carbon offsetting”. Carbon offsetting describes the process by which companies opt to meet their emission reduction targets by funding projects that reduce or remove emissions from the atmosphere (or increase carbon storage) in other locations. The most common carbon offsetting projects are those that involve land restoration or the protection and regeneration of forests. African governments have been championing carbon offset projects as part of national actions to address climate change throughout the year. So far, Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania, and Zambia have drafted laws or regulations to guide carbon trading.

Earlier in November, CNN reported that Blue Carbon, a UAE company, has “secured” African land the size of the United Kingdom for carbon offset projects across five countries: Kenya, Liberia, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Blue Carbon has so far not confirmed the total size area of all its projects, how much money it has provided in financing, or how many credits it hopes to generate. According to another report published in The Guardian in late November, the deals cover 20 per cent of Zimbabwe’s territory, 10 per cent of Liberia, 10 per cent of Zambia, and 8 per cent of Tanzania. The latest deal is reported to cover “millions” of hectares of forests in Kenya. In addition to the direct implications of the land deals on the land rights of rural communities, another problematic detail is that Blue Carbon will have exclusive rights to sell the credits for 30 years (credits that these African countries cannot use for their climate commitments in that period), and will take up to 70 per cent of the revenues from the sale of carbon credits. The agreements are in the initial stages and are yet to be finalised; the company plans to present its deals at the COP28 summit as a “blueprint” for carbon trading.

The deals cover 20 per cent of Zimbabwe’s territory, 10 per cent of Liberia, 10 per cent of Zambia, and 8 per cent of Tanzania.

With the growing interest in carbon trading, there will likely be an increase in demand for land on which to undertake carbon offset projects. The majority of these projects will be undertaken on rural lands in Africa. The rush to meet this demand will have significant implications for rural communities that rely on land and land-based resources for their household food security and their livelihoods. However, with an estimated 90 per cent of Africa’s rural lands being undocumented and informally administered, rural communities that have been custodians of these lands and have legitimate claims to them may not get their fair share of the proceeds of carbon offset projects. There has already been a case of a carbon offset project in Kenya where the private company that acted as the intermediary for the deal allegedly received the largest share of the proceeds. The pastoralist communities that are the custodians and legitimate claimants of the land on which the carbon project was undertaken benefitted the least from the deal.

In 2019, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) passed a land tenure decision that called for the recognition of the tenure rights of communities living in areas targeted for land restoration. The decision is an acknowledgment that actions to protect forests and restore land will have significant impacts on the communities that live in the target areas and rely on land and land-based resources for their livelihoods.

As African governments prioritise the protection, regeneration and conservation of forests among other actions to restore degraded lands and mitigate climate change, they should ensure that these actions also contribute meaningfully to the livelihoods of the continent’s rural communities. The UNCCD’s land tenure decision provides lays the ground to ensure that efforts to protect the environment do not jeopardise the wellbeing of rural communities. The decision calls for the application of the principles of responsible land governance in land restoration programmes so as to reconcile community livelihoods with national environmental targets.

The pastoralist communities that are the custodians and legitimate claimants of the land on which the carbon project was undertaken benefitted the least from the deal.

Securing community land rights prior to implementing carbon offset projects (and other climate mitigation and adaptation measures) will not only act as a safeguard for their livelihoods, but will also encourage them to implement local-level measures that will contribute to national conservation plans. Findings from research conducted on this topic in Kenya, Benin, Madagascar and Malawi by the sustainability think tank TMG Research show that securing community land rights and tenure rights can incentivise them to become the stewards and champions of land restoration. Documenting tenure rights in areas targeted for environmental projects and programmes will be beneficial to the efforts to meet national environmental targets.

Additionally, if countries are to fully realise the potential of land restoration, national restoration plans will have to go beyond protection and conservation of public forests to include support for well-coordinated community-level contributions to restoration targets. For Africa, this will involve promoting forestry on private lands and support to communities to conserve and regenerate community forests. The efficacy with which this can be undertaken will be informed by the extent to which land and tenure rights issues have been resolved.

In the case of public forests, resolving tenure rights issues will entail documenting tenure rights and strengthening the capacities of community forest associations to meaningfully inform forest management decisions. For community forests, a first step in resolving tenure rights and land rights issues will be to register ungazetted community forests as community lands in accordance with the national laws for administering communally owned lands or customary land. (In Kenya, this national law is the Community Land Act of 2016.) TMG’s research findings demonstrate that documenting community lands in line with the existing legal framework (and improving the perception of tenure security) can further encourage communities to implement sustainable land management practices and to manage forest regeneration on communally owned lands.

Even as countries develop legal frameworks to regulate carbon trading (defining rights, roles and responsibilities in the context of carbon markets), we have to acknowledge that some of the carbon offsetting deals go beyond the scope of national laws. These deals are being signed between countries from different regions of the world (belonging to different regional economic blocs), and countries that are worlds apart in terms of development. The layer of regulation presented by regional blocs may not be sufficient for carbon markets. We also cannot overlook the power imbalances that are a result of the economic might of the countries and blocs of countries that will be buying these carbon credits.

This topic will benefit from a global decision to guide the land governance component, to hold these governments to account as they implement forest conservation and land restoration programmes, and to ensure these programmes do not lead to human rights and land rights violations. As the carbon markets topic gains traction, African governments need to present a position similar to the UNCCD’s land tenure decision, and to ensure that the urgency to mitigate climate change will not leave rural populations on the continent in a worse position. It is in the interest of these governments to ensure that their rural populations do not become even more vulnerable despite external parties investing hundreds of millions of dollars in land-based projects undertaken on the continent’s rural lands.

On November 19, Javier Milei secured the presidency of the Republic of Argentina with 56% of the vote. However, his victory is expected to significantly impact a specific segment of the country.

During my six-month exchange in Argentina’s Venado Tuerto (pop. 75,000) in 2016, I encountered someone of shared Black ethnicity on the street only once. A person whom many locals incidentally mistook for me—along with a Cuban Black girl, the only black person like me in the whole high school. As insignificant as a census of this small city’s population may seem, it effectively illustrates a sobering reality: the presence of Black people in Argentina is sparse, and their numbers have dwindled over time.

“Hay más por otros lados, acá no llegaron” (There are more of them elsewhere, they have not arrived here) is a rhetoric prevalent among many Argentines, but the reality is quite dissimilar. Contacts between Argentina and Black people, particularly of African descent, date back to the 16th century transatlantic slave trade, when West and Central Africa people were brought by Spanish and Portuguese settlers to the coastal city of Buenos Aires, only to be sold and moved mostly within the Río de la Plata, present-day Argentina and Uruguay. In “Hiding in Plain Sight, Black Women, the Law, and the Making of a White Argentine Republic,” Erika Denise Edwards reports that between 1587 and 1640 approximately 45,000 African slaves disembarked in Buenos Aires. By the end of the 18th century, one-third of Argentina’s population was Black.

What, then, became of the Black African population in Argentina? Some attribute their decline to historical factors such as their active involvement in conflicts including the War of Independence against Spanish colonists (1810-1819) and the war with Paraguay (1865-1870), in which Black men often found themselves on the front lines, enduring the brunt of the attacks, or even choosing to desert and flee the country. These factors intersect with a gradual process of miscegenation and interracial mixing, leading to a progressive whitening of the population—both in terms of physical attributes and ideology.

Adding to this complex mix, political rhetoric comes into play. Influential Argentine leaders, such as Domingo Faustino Sarmiento in the 19th century, idealized white Europe not only as a model for overcoming the country’s socio-economic challenges but also as a narrative that implied the absence of Black people in Argentina, thereby erasing an integral part of the nation’s history.

Doing so has shrewdly allowed a country to avoid reckoning with its past of slavery and navigate the complexities of its presence, using the escamotage that there are no race-related issues in the country because there are no Black people. This assertion is incorrect for several reasons beyond those mentioned above. First, despite being imperceptible to the naked eye, there is a small but existing population of Afro-descendants in Argentina. Nevertheless, in my second stay in Argentina, this time in Buenos Aires, it became more apparent to me how a certain nationalistic current, in the footsteps of Sarmiento, proudly makes itself of this consistent lack of Black heritage. Comparing itself favorably to neighboring countries, this current boasts a notion of white supremacy in Argentina, which celebrates the Italian immigration from the 19th and 20th centuries as the foundation of national identity, while largely overlooking the historical legacy of African bodies that predates it.

As a result, even in a cosmopolitan capital city such as Buenos Aires, a significant portion of the white Argentine population based its identity on my opposite—not knowing that as an Afro-Italian, my Italian citizenship actually made them closer to my blackness and African roots than they wanted. Asserting that there are no racial concerns in Argentina is misleading. It amounts to the invisibilization of racial discrimination in a country where those who deviate from the preferred prototype, including Indigenous communities such as Mapuche, Quechua, Wichi, and Guarani, experience limited access to education and social services, and are disproportionately prone to experience poverty than their white counterparts.

Even within everyday discourse in Argentina, the assertion is refuted: many are labeled Black despite not matching the physical appearance associated with the term. The expression “es un negro” might refer to everyone who has darker skin tones, grouping them into a specific social category. However, beyond a mere description of physical attributes, “es un negro” delineates a person situated at various margins and lower rungs of society, whether for economic or social reasons. The appellation is also ordinarily used in jest as a nickname for a person who, of “black phenotype,” has nothing. The label “morocho” seems to be the most appropriate appellation for dark-skinned people in the country.

Argentine white supremacist identity is often matched by a certain right-wing political ideology that is classist, macho and, to make no bones about it, xenophobic. In the 2023 elections, such a systemic structure takes on the face of Javier Milei. The Argentine’s Donald Trump claimed in 2022 at the presentation of his book that he did not want to apologize for “being a white, blonde [questionable element], blue-eyed man.” With false modesty, the demagogue took on the burden of what it means in the country to have his hallmarks: privilege, status, and power.

Milei’s need for apologies should not revolve around his connotations but rather the proposals presented during his election campaign and outlined in his political program, which include the dollarization of pesos and the removal of government subsidies. Besides assessing if these actions would really benefit the vulnerable economy of the country, it’s worth questioning why it’s the middle-class, often white population that stands to suffer the least from such policies. They can afford to transact in dollars, weather an initial depreciation of their income, and provide for their children’s education without relying on government subsidies. In essence, they can do without the limited benefits offered by the Argentine state, given their already privileged positions.

The election of this politician not only adversely affects Black minorities, but also targets apparent minorities whom this divisive ideology seeks to erase, including Indigenous populations and the poorest segment of society—the current Argentinian “blacks”—who significantly enrich the Argentine populace. In such a scenario, one can only hope that the world will strive for a more consistent record of their existence.

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This post is from a partnership between Africa Is a Country and The Elephant. We will be publishing a series of posts from their site every week.