This week Ethiopia’s government entered the controversial sixth year of its five-year mandate. Covid-19 has produced plenty of political drama these last few months, but Ethiopia has experienced more than most—here’s why. Ethiopian politics operates in a system of “ethnic federalism”—while there is a central government to this federation, its constituent parts are carved out along ethnic lines and jockeyed over by parties promising the best deal for the ethnicities within them (of which there are dozens throughout a country of 112 million).
