Tom Gardner on Muck Rack

Tom Gardner

London, Nairobi
As seen in: The Economist, Daily Mail, HuffPost, Reuters, The Guardian, 1843, The Atlantic, Al Jazeera English, Quartz, Foreign Policy Magazine, Haaretz and
Africa correspondent @TheEconomist // Author, "The Abiy Project: God, Power and War in the New Ethiopia” Beginning to migrate over to: @tomgardner18.bsk.social
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Articles

The Abiy Project: God, Power, and War in the New Ethiopia

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By Ken Opalo, Tom Gardner
| Foreign Affairs
Gardner’s account of the rise of Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is essential reading for those interested in understanding how individual ambition and structural factors combine to mold a leader’s choices. His efforts to consolidate power and push through his vision of modernizing Ethiopia’s economy and politics have been hobbled by the country’s legacy of ethnic politics. A child soldier at 14, then a successful commander, military officer, and politician, Abiy became prime minister in 2018.
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The Abiy Project: God, Power and War in the New Ethiopia

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By Tom Gardner
| Literary Review
Building a state takes decades of hard labour. Destroying one can be done virtually overnight. In September 2018, the prime minister of Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed, flew to the Eritrean capital, Asmara, to sign a tripartite pact with Isaias Afwerki and Mohamed Abdullahi (known as ‘Farmaajo’), presidents of Eritrea and Somalia respectively. Both Abiy and Farmaajo were young and charming, apparently free of the shackles of their countries’ troubled pasts.
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Is Abiy Ahmed a Peacemaker or a Warmonger?

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By Tom Gardner
| Foreign Policy Magazine
To catch the eye of his new boss, Abiy Ahmed had an idea. One day in the early 2000s, the young radio operator walked into the office of General Teklebrhan Woldearegay, then the head of Military Intelligence’s Technological Information Department, and presented him with a proposal. He had recently written his own Amharic-to-English dictionary, he told the older officer. Now he needed money to publish it. Could the Ministry of Defense help? To catch the eye of his new boss, Abiy Ahmed had an idea.
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