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Dining with Despot: How African Leaders Are Normalizing Ethiopia’s Next War

Berhanenemeskel Nega

https://borkena.com/2026/02/18/ethiopia ... -next-war/

February 18, 2026



When African leaders gathered in Addis Ababa for the 39th African Union (AU) Summit in February 2026, they were welcomed not only by speeches about unity and peace but also by a lavish state dinner at Ethiopia’s national palace, hosted by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. Set against Ethiopia’s current realities, however, this spectacle is less a celebration of unity than a case study in how international elites help launder the image of a government at war with its own people.

Ethiopia today is not a country at ease. It is a country where large numbers of its population face acute food insecurity, expected to experience Emergency conditions in early 2026 in many parts of the country. Human rights organizations and conflict monitors continue to document grave abuses, including widespread civilian killings from military operations and mass displacement due to ongoing wars across Amhara, Oromia, and other regions.

Even during the week of the summit itself, intense fighting was underway across the Amhara region, including drone strikes carried out by the government that killed and injured hundreds of civilians and deepened an already dire humanitarian crisis.

This is the backdrop against which the palace doors swung open for a state dinner, that rivals the pomp of far richer and more stable nations. The problem is not that Ethiopia hosted visiting dignitaries; diplomatic hospitality is a normal feature of international life. The problem is the scale and symbolism of this display – a spectacle of abundance staged by a government presiding over deadly conflicts, deepening deprivation, and repression. In established democracies, leaders understand that an ostentatious feast for foreign elites, held amid widespread hardship at home, would be politically costly and ethically jarring. They avoid such excess not because they lack resources, but because they recognize the optics of revelry during a crisis.

The Addis Ababa palace banquet was more than courtesy. It was a political performance. Lavish receptions are classic tools of authoritarian regimes’ image‐making, carefully choreographed to project stability, prosperity, and international acceptability. By filling the palace with heads of state, the Ethiopian government sought to communicate that it is secure, respected, and firmly embedded within continental and global power networks. The same security apparatus that has overseen drone strikes and military campaigns against its own citizens is also capable of producing exquisite table settings and graceful photo opportunities. The message to domestic audiences is clear: whatever critics may say, African leaders and other dignitaries still come, still smile, and still raise their glasses with the prime minister.

Responsibility for this message does not rest with Ethiopia alone. The African and other global leaders who chose to attend and indulge in such extravagance, bear their share of accountability. The AU claims as its founding principles the promotion of human rights, peace, security, and good governance on the continent. The United Nations, whose secretary‐general addressed the summit, is mandated to maintain international peace and security and to advance respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. When representatives of these institutions sit down to a sumptuous dinner hosted by a government responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity and mass abuses against its own citizens, they do more than look away. They actively undermine the norms they are sworn to defend.

Whether consciously or not, their presence symbolizes political capital for the host. Attending the banquet, exchanging pleasantries, and posing for group photos normalizes Ethiopia’s leadership in the eyes of its own public and of regional elites. It recasts a pariah as a partner, a government under sustained human rights scrutiny as a government still embraced at the global stage. At a moment when analysts warn of further militarization inside Ethiopia and rising tensions in the Horn of Africa, such visible solidarity risks being read as an endorsement of whatever comes next—whether more severe crackdowns at home, new campaigns in Amhara or Oromia, or adventurous moves beyond Ethiopia’s borders.

That is the deeper irony of the palace feast. Ethiopians who cannot reliably secure one or two meals a day see their leaders hosting a candlelit dinner for foreign leaders, complete with elaborate décor and carefully curated entertainment. Communities that have endured bombardment and displacement watch their government enjoy the company of those who, on paper, are entrusted with safeguarding African and global norms on human rights and peace. Instead of using their presence in Addis Ababa to press for accountability, de‐escalation, and humanitarian access, visiting leaders’ risk being remembered for something consequential: they raised a glass in the palace while the country burned around it.

More principled diplomacy is both possible and urgently needed. It would begin with the recognition that engagement with a host government does not require indulgence in excess, and that solidarity with states must never come at the expense of solidarity with their people. It would insist that AU and UN leaders align their behavior with their own stated values, not just in formal communiqués but in the choices they make about which stages they occupy and which spectacles they are willing to legitimize. It might mean declining invitations to grand banquets while conflicts rage around the country, or conditioning ceremonial participation on meaningful steps toward protecting civilians, opening humanitarian corridors, and credibly investigating atrocities.

Such an approach will not, by itself, end Ethiopia’s wars or feed its hungry. But it would send a different signal—to Ethiopian citizens, to victims and survivors across the country, and to elites who calculate that they can wage war at home and still be feted abroad. It would tell them that international prestige is not guaranteed, that there is a political and reputational cost for presiding over large‐scale abuses and humanitarian crises. And it would remind African and global leaders that the legitimacy they seek in Addis Ababa, New York, and beyond depends less on the splendor of their dinners than on the consistency of their principles.

Until that alignment is restored, images of African leaders and other global dignitaries dining in the Ethiopian palace will endure as symbols of a broader failure of leadership— one measured not in toasts or speeches, but in the lives of those who will never see the inside of a palace, yet pay the heaviest price for decisions made within its walls to embolden the Ethiopian government to unleash its next war against them and neighbors.

Berhanenemeskel Nega – is Former Senior Ethiopian Diplomat and former UN Senior Official with over 35 years of experience in multilateral diplomacy and UN peace and humanitarian operations around the world, particularly in conflicts in Africa.

Editor’s Note : Views in the article do not necessarily reflect the views of borkena.com