Vol. 7, Issue 2, Part G (2025)

This article delves into historical overview of ethnic conflicts in Ethiopia, analyzing the role of ethnic-affiliated social media platforms in specified periods and exploring the implications of the Pretoria agreement in shaping the future of ethnic relations in the context of Ethiopia. It is contended that the role of ethnic-affiliated social media platforms in easing political reconciliation has been disadvantageous to the peaceful political reconciliation as evidenced in the process of Pretoria agreement. This study uses digital ethnography as a method to study the role of ethnic affiliated social media platforms associated with the two numerically, economically and politically dominant ethnic groups (‘Oromo’and ‘Amhara) in Ethiopia. By focusing on various social media platforms affiliated to these two major ethnic group in Ethiopia, the paper uses thematic, visual and content analysis as a methodological tool to understand how social media platforms plays an important role in smoothing political reconciliations in contemporary Ethiopia particularly during the Pretoria Agreement in the year Nov, 2022. This study also supplements the online data with unstructured interviews conducted with key respondents from civil society members of Ethiopia apart from the contents collected from online social media sources. The study also critically engages with previous works on related topics and tries to understand the nature of public sphere and various conflicting voices within this domain in contemporary Ethiopia. The study reveals how the failure of the political reconciliation happened as evident in ambiguity with respect to contesting physical boundary demarcations of plot of lands in Ethiopia. some restrictions of the political activities imposed on opposition parties led to the situation where social media platforms became a path to vent out political propaganda leading to constructions of rigid ethnic boundaries that contributing a lot to the escalation of the war between Tigray People’s Liberation front and Ethiopian government and the failure of full implementation of Pretoria agreement on time as scheduled.