The Ethiopian Prime Minister’s party has easily won the parliamentary elections | Election News

The Nobel Peace Prize winner will remain in power, as experts warn of renewed tensions.

Ethiopia’s Prosperity Party has won again in this month’s elections, with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed expected to retain the top job.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner was widely expected to win the national elections as candidates for his Prosperity Party touted the government’s economic record and improved food security in a country that has experienced several famines in the past.

Abiy, who was elected in 2018 following mass protests against the former Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), formed the Prosperity Party the following year. The party won more than 90 percent of the seats in the last parliamentary elections in 2021.

The Ethiopian leader has been widely praised at home and around the world for freeing journalists, activists, and other political prisoners and lifting bans on many political parties after taking power. He was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for ending the war with neighboring Eritrea.

But his critics and human rights activists accuse his government of reversing what it has achieved in recent years by jailing journalists and shutting down civil society groups.

Ethiopia has experienced years of violence in several parts of the country, including Abiy’s native Oromia, Ethiopia’s largest region, and the second largest region, Amhara, where a militant group known as Fano has seized rural areas since 2023.

The civil war in northern Tigray from 2020-2022, which began due to the breakdown of relations between Abiy and the Tigrayan leaders who controlled the country’s politics before his ascension, has killed hundreds of thousands of people, researchers say.

Although the 2022 peace agreement ended the conflict, Tigray’s main political party moved in May to reestablish political control in the region in violation of the agreement. This has prompted Ethiopian officials and analysts to warn of the risk of renewed unrest.

Elections were not held in Tigray, one of Ethiopia’s 12 regions, due to what the electoral commission called “unacceptable conditions” there.

Abiy’s government plans to grow the economy by 10 percent in 2026, one of the highest in Africa.