Many people see industriousness in the personality of Tedros Adhanom (PhD), minister of Foreign Affairs (MoFA), well known for his adoption of social media. An EPRDFite with immense experience in public health and infectious diseases, Tedros moved to the foreign affairs office in 2012, after his predecessor, Hailemariam Desalegn, then Deputy Prime Minister, moved up the party and state ladder to fill the position of the late Meles Zenawi.
Tedros’ adoption of Facebook and Twitter as instruments of communicating with the educated and urban population, in a country with one of the lowest internet penetration rates in the world, at less than 2.5pc, has always been a controversial matter both inside the ruling coalition as well as out in the public sphere. Optimists perceive Tedros’ approach largely as an individual effort to bring some light of hope to openness in a party that is considered excessively secretive, difficult to predict and opaque.
In the eyes of his proponents, then, Tedros is a rare breed of Revolutionary Democrat with a conviction and pragmatism to embrace the changing realities of the time. It is unfortunate that the ruling coalition moved to embrace social media as an instrument of communication, denying evidence to this group of people.
Even without the latest development, the perspective towards Tedros is not shared by conservative EPRDFites and sceptics. They prefer to focus on instances where the tweets or status updates of the nation’s top diplomat created public furores to eventually compromise the reputation of the ruling party. Sceptics see his approach rather as political trickery. There even are people, who see the activities of the foreign minister as inconsiderate and undiplomatic.
None of this seems to worry Tedros, however. He has continued to tweet, retweet, favourite, update, like and comment. In a way, then, his evaluation of social media engagement seems to be very far from his critics or his admirers.
Things became disproportionally divisive with the latest conflict in Yemen, in which Ethiopians got stranded between fighting factions; the clashes between nationals and migrants in South Africa; and the beheadings of Ethiopian migrants in Libya by the militant group, the Islamic State in Iraq & the Levant (ISIL). As much as proponents were quick to approve Tedros’ effort to use social media as a means to disclose government positions, mobilise the public to help Ethiopians in those countries and inform the public on what the state is doing, critics were furious about the reactivity and reluctance of the foreign ministry in helping Ethiopians. It became a battle.
Surely, there was an unjustifiable level of passivity within the foreign policy machine that Tedros oversees when it came to protecting Ethiopians living in those countries. Efforts were largely limited to announcing phone numbers. There was no visible sense of anger at what happened. If any, it was not communicated well.
For a government with considerable connections and influence, at both continental and global levels, the reluctance was unacceptable. It lacked the ingenuity that Ethiopians often expect from their government when it comes to foreign policy issues. The high words the EPRDFites uses in expressing their achievements and the standards of foreign policy excellence established since the Imperial Era seem to feed the expectations.
But not everything has to do with the passivity of the diplomatic machine. A considerable part can be attributed to the very foreign policy adopted by the ruling EPRDF and no swiftness could have changed things so much as long as the threads are rooted in the policy.
The Foreign Policy & National Security Strategy of the ruling party, most of which was drafted by the late Meles, puts priorities in the order of “internal first, external second”. According to the policy document, released in 2004, Ethiopia’s vulnerabilities, “essentially emanate from poverty, underdevelopment and lack of good governance”. Hence, the policy document argues that the foreign policy machine has to constitute “an army of development officers” with a mission “to look for development credits and loans”. It is under the prism of such a policy that the diplomats, including Tedros, conduct their business.
A closer look into the presumptions of the policy shows inconsistency, lack of comprehensiveness and improper segmentation of policy determinants. It even shows the limitations of foreign missions.
By way of segmenting the foreign policy agenda as “internal first, external second”, the foreign policy of the ruling party seems to emerge from a mentality that overvalues internal risks, but undermines external ones.
Such a mindset might be justified, albeit temporarily, in a situation where political instability is highly probable and edges of economic volatility are rampant. It, however, does not exist well when stability is established and the economy is thriving.
Segmentation of such kind could not be rationalised when remittances, an external factor, are contributing more than exports, an internal factor, for the national economy. A similar logic applies to foreign direct investment, whose contribution to the economy is more than tax revenue and official development assistance.
Cascading the case to the latest event, there is no rationale in preferentially treating Ethiopians at home than Ethiopians abroad. The case may have been justified for a tax policy or an investment incentive system, as economics has a way of rationalising spatial differentials, but not to a foreign policy.
The problem has to do with the vulnerability analysis of the policy too. Ethiopia’s major vulnerability may be related to the absolute poverty of 25 million of its citizens and its underdevelopment. Yet, one could not say that is the single contributing factor.
It also has to do with its geography, its history, the culture of its people, its alliances and the values it distastes. With regard to the beheading of Ethiopians in Libya, for instance, the vulnerability relates not only to its economic situation, but its culture and alliances. Hence, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to extend essential protection to Ethiopians living abroad under a vulnerability analysis that reduces the whole matrix to local situations.
It is also too reductionist to narrow down the foreign policy visions of the country to one objective of “looking for development credits and loans”. For a country that has multiple economic, social, cultural, security and technological interests, having a single strand diplomatic objective, is unreasonable and short-termist. It seems as though the nation would not be having all these interests had it been a country with no need of development credit or loans.
A state working with such a set of policy prerogatives and analyses of vulnerabilities is certainly destined to remain passive whenever incitements fall out of the matrix. After all, the whole framework is designed to limit the activities to the state and its responses in a certain way.
In light of this, therefore, it would be a mere imposition to demand that Tedros and his compatriots at the foreign ministry act more swiftly when it comes to protecting Ethiopians living abroad. The right request would be for the EPRDFites to revise their foreign policy prerogatives and vulnerability analyses.
A globalised world, in which interests of countries are as varied as their sources of vulnerabilities, demands a comprehensive foreign policy in which risks are treated based on their probability, magnitude and impact, not on their spatial sources. Diplomatic interests are also guided by changing realities, not political fixations.
True, visions matter. But they only matter when they are guided by timely, realistic and rational analyses. Else, they will only be limits to progress.
It is this latest scenario that the EPRDFites, including the socialite foreign minister, ought to avoid when it comes to their foreign policy. Only then can they provide sufficient protection to Ethiopians living abroad.
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