She is one of only two female heads of state on the continent, along with Tanzania’s Samia Suluhu Hassan. However, she is a powerless president, as the constitution has reduced her role to a ceremonial one. One can only imagine how dismayed and helpless she feels.
Since 4 November 2020, and the start of the war in Tigray, President Work-Zewde has been going through an ordeal that many of her friends and most of the diplomats posted in Addis Ababa know about, but which she cannot talk about publicly.
This independent, sensitive and cultured woman graduated from the University of Montpellier in France and then served as ambassador in Dakar, Djibouti and Paris. She later held other high-level positions within the UN in Bangui, Nairobi and then Addis.
From the beginning, she believed that Abiy Ahmed, the man who will undoubtedly remain the most controversial Nobel Prize recipient in
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