Former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo described Ethiopia's National Dialogue Conference as historic and an example for Africa at the event's closing ceremony in Addis Ababa on 24 August, after about 4,000 participants deliberated for 46 days on some of the country's most consequential political questions.
Obasanjo, who attended the closing, said the dialogue had opened a path toward the kind of peace that could unlock Ethiopia's potential. After four years of preparation, he framed the undertaking as a continental model. The assignment's source material also names former Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta as having addressed the closing, but his attendance could not be independently confirmed from available reporting.
The conference, which opened on 15 July, was organized by the Ethiopian National Dialogue Commission (ENDC). The ENDC says the process drew on four years of consultations across more than 1,200 woredas. Working groups, each comprising 500 participants, deliberated on eight agenda pillars, and four of those groups reached consensus on recommendations during the conference. The discussions produced approximately 400 recommendations aimed at addressing longstanding political, social, and institutional challenges.
The scale of the exercise was substantial by any national standard. Yet the praise from the former leaders does not amount to a continental consensus. Their remarks were delivered at an event organized by the Ethiopian government, and no comparable endorsement from sitting heads of state or multilateral bodies has been reported.
The dialogue's inclusiveness has also been contested. The Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) suspended its participation in October 2024 over disagreements concerning participant selection. Tigray remained absent from the process entirely, while ongoing conflict continued to restrict participation across parts of Amhara and Oromia. Critics have pointed to the Prosperity Party's dominance within parliament, which exercises oversight over the ENDC, as undermining the dialogue's independence, along with the absence of strong institutional guarantees for the process.
The available reporting does not specify whether the approximately 400 recommendations carry binding legal force or what formal mechanism exists for their implementation. The gap between the volume of proposals produced and the political infrastructure that would be needed to act on them is wide, particularly when significant regions and political actors were not party to the deliberations.
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Obasanjo's characterization of the dialogue as a model for the continent rests on the assumption that the process was broadly representative. The participation of about 4,000 citizens across weeks of structured discussion is a notable logistical achievement. But the absence of Tigray, the ONLF's withdrawal, and the restricted participation in conflict-affected areas of Amhara and Oromia complicate a straightforward reading of the exercise as inclusive national consensus-building.
The divergence between the celebratory framing at the closing ceremony and the documented gaps in participation illustrates a familiar tension in African peace processes: the political need to declare success can outpace the slower, harder work of securing buy-in from all parties to a conflict. For the dialogue's recommendations to carry the weight Obasanjo ascribed to them, they will need endorsement — or at minimum engagement — from the actors who were not in the room.
The ENDC conducted consultations across more than 1,200 woredas over four years before convening the approximately 4,000 participants in Addis Ababa. The conference has drawn both domestic and international attention as one of the largest structured dialogue exercises on the continent, though the legal weight and implementation pathway of its recommendations have not been publicly defined.
Sources: Fana Broadcasting Corporate, Horn Diplomat, Ethiopia Insight, ENA.
