Abiy Ahmed Silences Ethiopia's Independent Press

When a government shuts down a newspaper, it does not just revoke a license. It takes away citizens' right to know what is happening in their own country. On Monday, the Ethiopian Media Authority, the EMA, suspended the license of *The Reporter*, one of the country's few independent newspapers. The paper publishes in English and Amharic, in print and online. It asks questions that power does not want to hear. That is precisely why it is under threat.

We must ask the question plainly: how many independent newspapers must be closed before a country stops being a democracy and becomes an administration that manages information like inventory? Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019. That prize honored a man who promised openness. Five years later, his government is dismantling the last spaces where his version of the facts can be challenged. The contrast is obscene, and it must be named.

The facts are stubborn. *The Reporter* did not fall alone. A few months before this suspension, the EMA revoked the license of *Addis Standard*, another independent media outlet. Its team contested the decision. Two independent outlets struck within a few months of each other: this is not an administrative accident, it is a method. A newsroom that loses its license loses its advertisers, its journalists, its readership and its capacity to investigate. Power does not even need to imprison reporters. It only needs to make them unable to publish.

Reporters Without Borders confirms it. Ethiopia ranks 148th out of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index. Behind that number are newsrooms wondering every morning whether they will still exist by evening. There are journalists who self-censor out of survival instinct. There are families who do not know whether their son or daughter, a reporter working in a region under tension, will come home. Tigray, Amhara and Oromia have suffered serious violence in recent years. Every time the press is gagged, it is the victims who vanish from the official story. A massacre without a witness becomes a rumor, and a rumor becomes a fact that can be denied.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the continent, another warning came from Abuja. On Monday, the European Union and the International Press Centre, the IPC, opened a two-day summit on the integrity of electoral information. The EU Ambassador to Nigeria and to ECOWAS, Gautier Mignot, warned that deepfakes and AI-generated disinformation threaten the 2027 general elections. The IPC Director, Lanre Arogundade, urged participants to move beyond declarations of intent. He is right. But Nigeria must also look into its own mirror. A cybercrime law, in force since 2015 and amended in 2024, has already been used to prosecute journalists and critics of the government for publications deemed defamatory. You cannot fight electoral lies by criminalizing fact-checkers.

Here is the trap we must refuse. African democrats are tempted by the easy path: entrusting the state with deciding what is true. That is a bad idea, whether it comes from Addis Ababa, Abuja or Brussels. A regulator that can suspend a newspaper with a stroke of a ministerial pen is not a guardian of the truth. It is a political instrument. And African history is full of political instruments that ended up turning against those who forged them.

We know what works. Botswana, for decades, has sustained a vigorous press and institutions that hold power to account. Mauritius built its prosperity on the rule of law, private property and freedom of expression, and its press does not need a minister's permission to exist. Ghana, under its best governments, has shown that peaceful alternation of power and a free press reinforce each other. Senegal proved in 2024 that the street and the ballot box can defend democracy when institutions are under pressure. These countries are not perfect. But they understood something simple: press freedom is not a luxury for calm times. It is the life insurance of democracy.

So what must we demand? First, that any decision to suspend or revoke a media license be subject to independent judicial review, with a suspensive right of appeal. Second, that regulators be made up of figures appointed transparently, whose mandates do not depend on the goodwill of the government. Third, that the press be protected by clear and public rules, not by decisions taken behind closed doors. Finally, that African states, instead of spending fortunes on propaganda communication, invest in fact-checking, in public archives and in media education that teaches citizens to doubt intelligently.

In Nigeria, the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, must publish its results, its polling-station records and its decisions in real time. Political parties must commit not to use synthetic content in their campaigns. Digital platforms must be held accountable for the spread of electoral deepfakes, with proportionate sanctions overseen by judges. And the European Union must treat Nigeria as a partner, not a pupil, by funding African verification institutions rather than projects that do not survive their own press release.

What is at stake in Ethiopia and Nigeria concerns every one of our countries. A newspaper shut down in Addis Ababa is a warning for Kampala, Dakar, Kinshasa or Abidjan. An election rigged with images fabricated in Abuja is a warning for all of West Africa. Silence never stays local. It travels, it settles in, it becomes a habit.

We Africans do not need guardians to tell us what freedom is. We paid for it with our struggles against colonialism, against military dictatorships and against presidents-for-life. We know that a people who cannot read their own newspaper cannot choose their own future. So let us demand the reopening of *The Reporter* and the restoration of *Addis Standard*'s license. Let us demand that the EMA publicly explain its decisions. Let us demand that Nigeria protect its journalists even as it fights lies. And let us demand of our own leaders that they understand an elementary truth: a government that is afraid of journalists has no legitimacy left to lose, because it has already lost the trust of its people.

Based on reporting by ACSS-EMAIL