Studying urban contestations in Ethiopia’s secondary cities can help us understand how the urban centres outside of Addis Ababa are evolving during an ongoing period of significant socio-economic and political change. Ethiopia’s urban centres are the location of ongoing political conflicts, economic instability and socio-cultural ruptures. This synthesis report uses a set of comparative case studies to identify and examine political, economic, social and ideological contestation in three urban centres: Dire Dawa, Hawassa and Hosanna.

Summary

• Dire Dawa and Hawassa are often celebrated as ‘melting pots’ of tolerant diversity and cosmopolitanism. The post-2018 period, however, tells a different story. Both experienced heightened tension and violence relating to ethnolinguistic and religious identities. 
• Hosanna provides a different insight as the majority of the population are from the Hadiya ethnolinguistic and sociocultural group, and so Hadiya clan identities are salient. The flow of remittances from the Hadiya diaspora, mainly in South Africa, has been a primary factor in shaping contestation in Hosanna.
• The report is based on a comparative analysis framework that has two strands. The first synthesized the economic and political dynamics from the case studies. The key elements in this are domestic and international migration, access to resources and opportunities and the politics of recognition and representation.
• The second strand synthesized the social and ideological aspects, which are often influenced by historical relations between communities. The critical elements identified include contestation over public spaces and events, language and religion.
• The two strands are connected to some of the overarching structural challenges that Ethiopia faces. The identified common features illustrate how national political processes or socioeconomic trends shape particular contestation.
• The contested legacy of Ethiopian state-making generates competing narratives and interpretations of political, economic and socio-cultural relations among communities. Political elites in the three urban centres then use these competing understandings for mobilization, which can become violent.
• As with other urban centres in Ethiopia, over the last decade the case studies have had growing populations with increased access to education and information and communication technologies combined with a shortage of good jobs. This has created social pressures.
• In addition, Ethiopia has a large youth cohort, which brings young people to the forefront of urban contestation. The studies show young people’s role both as the mobilizers of identity-based movements and the instrumentalized foot soldiers of political elites. They have at times been the perpetrators and also the victims of violence.

The Ethiopia Peace Research Facility

This report was written for the Ethiopia Peace Research Facility (PRF) and is part of its Knowledge for Peace (K4P) series on contested urban spaces. The PRF is an independent facility combining timely analysis on peace and conflict from Ethiopian experts with support for conflict-sensitive programming in the country. It is managed by the Rift Valley Institute (RVI) and funded by the UK government.