Like former Prime Minister Meles Zenawi Abiy's officials are tacking an independent line in the face of international pressure – whether on devaluing the birr demanding haircuts from private creditors or pushing ahead with the $4bn Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam which has fractured relations with Egypt...

Paradigm shiftThis move marks another massive shift away from the East Asian-style developmental state model of former Prime Minister Meles Zenawi which emphasised among other things tight control of capital and monetary policy to ensure cheap credit was directed into areas the government deemed most necessary such as transport energy and communications infrastructure and labour-intensive industries like textiles and sugar...

Initially Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed won plaudits for recasting the system inherited from his predecessor Meles Zenawi who dominated Ethiopian politics from 1991 until his death in 2012...

Issayas and TPLF leader and Ethiopia's first federal prime minister Meles Zenawi were archetypal frenemies...

A former police chief under Ethiopian prime ministers Meles Zenawi and Hailemariam Desalegn Workneh is a close Abiy ally...

By early January General Tsadkan Gebretensae a veteran guerrilla leader and a former Chief of Staff of ENDF retired by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi in 2001 had taken charge of strategy...

Its loss of power at the centre starting with the death of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi in 2012 had deepened those rivalries but since last November the war with Addis seems to have pulled the movement together...

This would satisfy a key demand of supporters of Ethiopiawinet 'Ethiopian unity' who heavily criticised the failure of former Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and the TPLF to take Assab in 2000...

National focusConventional wisdom suggests that Abiy like the late EPRDF visionary Prime Minister Meles Zenawi needs the dam as a rallying point...