The Unheeded Alarm
The year was 1988. The Derg regime still held power, and Ethiopia stood at a crossroads. That year, as a Public Relations Officer at the “Ethiopian Works National Control Committee” I wrote my first article about what I then called “the cancer in our system”—the pervasive, normalized practice of using public position for private gain. Little did I know that this would become my life’s work, or that 36 years later, I would be writing not about progress, but about regression; not about healing, but about metastasis.
In the Reporter newspaper alone, I have published approximately one hundred and eighty articles. Among these, about 30 focused specifically on political criticism, with titles that still ring in my ears: “Briber and Bribery,” “Calling a Thief a Thief,” “What Should the EPRDF Do?” and “How to Protect Our National Wealth from the Corrupt?” Each piece was written with the hope that naming the disease might begin the cure. Each was crafted with the belief that exposure leads to reform.
Yet here we stand at the tail end of 2025, and the bitter truth must be spoken: the situation has not improved. In fact, it has evolved, mutated, and spread. The social stigma of corruption—once concentrated in political circles—has now permeated every layer of Ethiopian society. The moral decline I warned about has become our national reality.
The Expanding Stain
What began as political corruption has become societal corruption. The disease has spread from politicians to religious leaders, from government officials to intellectuals, from brokers to journalists, from doctors to teachers. We are witnessing what sociologists call “normalization of deviance”—when unethical behavior becomes so common that it ceases to shock, and instead becomes expected, even accepted.
The broker who demands a percentage simply for connecting citizens to services they’re entitled to receive. The journalist who writes favorable coverage in exchange for access or favors. The doctor who prioritizes patients based on connections rather than need. The teacher who trades grades for gifts. The religious leader who leverages spiritual authority for material gain.
We are all swimming in these polluted waters. As the Amharic proverb says, “አንድ ፍጥረት ከሌላ ፍጥረት ይጠጣል,” loosely translated as “One creature drinks from another.” We have created an ecosystem of mutual exploitation where everyone is both victim and perpetrator, both exploited and exploiting.
Understanding the disease: What exactly is conflict of interest? Beyond Simple Corruption
Many people confuse conflict of interest with corruption. They are related, but distinct. Corruption is the overt act—the bribe taken, the favor granted. Conflict of interest is the condition that makes corruption possible, likely, even inevitable. It is the situation in which a person in a position of trust has competing professional and personal interests.
The formal definition: A conflict of interest arises when an individual or organization is involved in multiple interests, one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation or decision-making of the individual or organization.
But let me simplify it with an Ethiopian context: Conflict of interest occurs when you use your authority or position to serve your personal interest instead of the public interest or the entrusted responsibility.
The Ethiopian Contextualization
In our culture, with our strong emphasis on family and community, conflict of interest takes unique forms that we often fail to recognize as problematic.
Consider the nepotism dilemma: When is hiring a relative an act of family responsibility, and when is it a betrayal of public trust? Consider our gift culture: When does a gift become a bribe? How does our tradition of gift-giving during holidays and celebrations create expectations of reciprocity in professional contexts? Consider community obligation: How do we balance our duty to our specific ethnic, religious, or regional community with our duty to the nation as a whole?
These are not abstract questions. They are daily realities for every Ethiopian in a position of authority or influence.
The many faces of the disease: Sector-by-sector analysis
Politics and Government: Where It Began
My earliest articles focused here, and for good reason. When political leaders model self-serving behavior, it sends a signal that permeates the entire society.
Consider a hypothetical but all-too-real scenario: A regional administration needs to purchase one hundred vehicles for its transportation department. The tender process begins. One company, owned by the cousin of the head of the procurement committee, submits a bid. Their vehicles are of lower quality and higher price than competitors. The committee, under subtle pressure, finds ways to disqualify other bidders on technicalities. The cousin’s company wins.
The consequences cascade: The region receives inferior vehicles that break down frequently. Maintenance costs skyrocket. Public transportation suffers. Citizens lose trust in government. The message spreads: success comes through connections, not competence.
This isn’t just a stolen contract—it’s stolen public trust, stolen development opportunities, and a stolen future.
Journalism and Media: The Watchdogs Who Stopped Watching
I write this as a journalist of nearly four decades, with pain in my heart. Our profession, meant to be society’s conscience, has become compromised.
There are levels to this compromise. The first is the overt bribe: a journalist receives money or gifts to write a favorable story or kill an unfavorable one. This is increasingly rare because it’s too obvious.
More common is the access trade: the journalist who cultivates relationships with powerful figures, writes favorable coverage, and receives exclusive access in return. The journalist becomes a PR agent rather than a truth-teller.
Most subtle—and most damaging—is the career calculus: when journalists shape their reporting based on what will advance their careers, please their editors, or avoid controversy. Truth becomes secondary to careerism.
I have seen colleagues who started with fire in their bellies slowly become “practical.” They learn which truths can be told and which must be whispered. They learn that some officials are “untouchable.” They learn that some stories have consequences not just for their subjects, but for their careers. This slow erosion of principle is perhaps more dangerous than outright corruption, because it happens with the complicity of the journalist’s own rationalizations.
Religious Institutions: Trading Spiritual Capital
Perhaps most heartbreaking has been watching this disease infect our religious institutions. When faith becomes a commodity, something sacred dies.
Consider the religious leader who travels abroad “on interfaith dialogue” but spends more time fundraising for his personal projects than building bridges. Or the local religious figure who convinces followers to donate to a “school” or “clinic” that never materializes, or that benefits his family disproportionately.
The damage here is multidimensional. It corrupts genuine faith. It exploits the most vulnerable—the poor who give from their poverty. It creates cynicism about all religious institutions. It undermines the moral foundation society needs to combat corruption elsewhere.
Healthcare: When Healing Becomes Business
The Hippocratic Oath begins: “First, do no harm.” Yet in our healthcare system, conflicts of interest are causing profound harm.
Consider a surgeon who owns shares in a private diagnostic clinic. When patients come to him, he disproportionately refers them to “his” clinic for tests, even when less expensive options exist. Or consider the pharmaceutical representative who provides “educational grants” to doctors who prescribe their medications most frequently.
The consequences are measured in human suffering. Patients pay more for care. Medical decisions are influenced by profit, not patient need. Public trust in healthcare erodes. The brain drain accelerates as ethical doctors flee the compromised system.
Education: Corrupting the Next Generation
If we poison education, we poison the future. Yet conflicts of interest have become endemic in our schools and universities.
A teacher gives better grades to students whose parents provide gifts or favors. A university professor requires students to purchase his privately published textbook at inflated prices. An administrator admits students based on family connections rather than merit.
Each instance teaches the next generation that merit doesn’t matter, that rules are for the powerless, that success comes through manipulation, not effort, that the system is rigged. We are literally teaching our children to be corrupt, then wondering why society becomes more corrupt.
Business and Commerce: The Illusion of “Just Business”
In the private sector, conflicts of interest are often dismissed as “just business” or “smart strategy.” But they distort markets and harm economic development.
Consider the contractor cartel: Business owners in the same industry sit on government tender boards. They rotate winning bids among themselves, keeping prices artificially high and quality artificially low. New, innovative companies cannot compete because the system is rigged.
The economic cost is staggering: higher costs for government projects, poor quality infrastructure, stifled innovation and entrepreneurship, reduced foreign investment as investors avoid corrupt markets.
The social and economic cost: Beyond morality to survival
The Poverty Connection
Some may ask: “Why focus on ethics when we have poverty to fight?” This misunderstands the relationship. Conflict of interest isn’t just an ethical issue—it’s a primary cause of poverty.
Let’s quantify what we lose.
Financially, the World Bank estimates that corruption costs countries up to five percent of GDP. If we take a certain country, with a GDP of approximately one hundred twenty-six billion dollars, that’s over six billion dollars annually—enough to build thousands of schools, hospitals, and roads.
Consider the opportunity cost: When contracts go to connected but incompetent companies, projects fail, funds are wasted, and development stalls. A road that should last twenty years crumbles in five. A school building leaks. A hospital lacks essential equipment.
Consider the brain drain: Our best and brightest leave not just for higher salaries, but for systems where merit matters. Every doctor, engineer, or entrepreneur who leaves represents lost potential for national development.
The Social Fabric Torn
Beyond economics, conflict of interest destroys something equally precious: social cohesion.
Ethiopian culture has traditionally valued community—the concept of living together. But normalized self-interest transforms society from a community into a collection of competitors. The elderly proverb “አንዱ እጅ ሌላውን እጅን ያጥባል” (one hand washes the other) becomes perverted from mutual support to mutual backscratching.
Young people growing up in this system learn that ethics are for losers. They see that the successful are those who game the system. They internalize that public service means private gain. We are creating generations of cynics who will perpetuate and worsen the problem.
The psychology of complicity: Why good people do nothing
The Normalization Trap
One of the most perplexing questions is: Why do essentially good people participate in or tolerate this system?
The answer lies in psychological adaptation
No one starts by accepting a major bribe. It begins with small “gifts,” then slightly larger favors, until what was once unthinkable becomes normal. “Everyone else is doing it” becomes a powerful rationalization. When corruption is everywhere, not participating can feel like disadvantaging yourself and your family.
In our culture, family obligations are powerful. When relatives expect you to use your position to help them, resisting feels like betrayal of familial duty. With economic pressures mounting, many feel they have no choice. The public servant earning an inadequate salary rationalizes that “supplementing” income through favors is necessary for survival.
The Bystander Effect
Equally important is why observers do nothing.
There is a diffusion of responsibility: “Someone else will address it” or “It’s not my problem specifically.” There is fear of retaliation: Speaking up can cost jobs, opportunities, even safety. There is a feeling of futility: “The system is too big to change” leads to resignation. And there is comfort with the devil known: Even a corrupt system provides predictability, while change brings uncertainty.
International perspectives: What can we learn?
Case Studies in Reform
While Ethiopia’s situation is serious, other nations have faced similar challenges and made progress.
Consider Botswana, once one of Africa’s poorest countries, now ranking among the least corrupt on the continent. Key factors included consistent political will from leadership, independent anti-corruption agencies with real power, a cultural emphasis on “Botho” (respect for community), and transparent management of diamond revenues.
Consider Georgia and its traffic police miracle. In the early two-thousands, Georgia’s traffic police were notoriously corrupt. Reform involved firing the entire traffic police force—sixteen thousand officers—and rebuilding from scratch with higher pay and strict oversight, creating a culture where taking bribes became socially unacceptable. Public trust in police rose from five percent to eighty-three percent in five years.
Consider Rwanda’s use of technology through the Irembo platform, which digitizes government services, reducing opportunities for petty corruption by minimizing human interaction in service delivery.
The Ethiopian Context: What Works Here?
International examples must be adapted to Ethiopian realities.
We must leverage our cultural strengths such as keeping your honor/dignity to make corruption shameful, employing religious institutions as moral educators, utilizing community structures like idirs and maheber or peer accountability.
We must take practical first steps: beginning with sectors where public anger is highest, likely land administration and traffic police; creating protected whistleblower mechanisms; implementing transparent e-governance for high-corruption services; paying living wages to reduce “survival corruption.”
A path forward: Concrete steps for Ethiopia
Immediate Actions
We need a national diagnosis: an independent, transparent audit of conflict of interest in five key sectors: procurement, land administration, customs, judiciary, and education.
We need a leadership declaration: Political, religious, and business leaders must publicly commit to and model ethical behavior. Symbolic acts matter: leaders publicly declaring assets, refusing inappropriate gifts.
We need public education: a national conversation about what constitutes conflict of interest, using relatable examples from daily life.
Medium-Term Reforms
We must strengthen the legal framework: clarifying conflict of interest laws with specific examples and realistic penalties.
We must establish institutional guards: an independent Office of Public Ethics with investigative power, protected whistleblower channels, mandatory conflict of interest declarations for public officials.
We must implement systemic changes: increasing public servant salaries to reduce economic pressure for corruption, digitizing high-risk services like permits and licenses, creating merit-based promotion systems in the civil service.
Long-Term Cultural Shift
We must integrate ethics education from primary school through university, tailored to the Ethiopian context.
We must create a social reward system with public recognition for ethical behavior through awards, honors, and media coverage.
We must foster intergenerational dialogue: structured conversations between elders who remember different norms and the youth about rebuilding ethical foundations.
We must encourage religious reformation: religious institutions must clean their own houses and lead by example.
Final thoughts
In 1988, when I wrote my first article on this subject, I was young enough to believe that exposing truth would lead to change. At thirty-six years older, I am wiser but not cynical. I have seen enough to know change is difficult, but I have also seen enough to know it is possible.
This is not just about laws or systems. It’s about who we are as Ethiopians. It’s about reclaiming our heritage of integrity. Our ancestors built Lalibela and Harar not for personal glory but for divine glory. Our scholars preserved knowledge through centuries not for personal gain but for collective enlightenment. Our farmers share water according to ancient rules of equity, not selfishness.
The disease of self-interest has infected us, but it has not killed our essence. I have seen taxi drivers return lost phones. I have seen neighbors care for orphans. I have seen teachers buying supplies for poor students from their meager salaries. The ethical Ethiopia still exists—it’s just being suffocated by the normalized corruption.
We must choose. We can continue down this path where everyone takes a little, and together we lose everything. Or we can begin, person by person, institution by institution, to rebuild an Ethiopia where position means service, where authority means responsibility, where success means contribution.
The conflict of interest epidemic will not be cured by a single law or a dramatic event. It will be cured by millions of small decisions: the official who refuses the inappropriate gift, the journalist who reports truth despite pressure, the religious leader who models humility, the businessperson who competes fairly, the teacher who grades honestly, the citizen who demands better.
I am in the evening of my life and career. I may not see the Ethiopia I have written toward for so long. But I write this for the young journalists, the future officials, the next generation who must decide what Ethiopia they will build. The question is not whether we can eliminate all conflict of interest—human nature guarantees we cannot. The question is whether we will normalize it or fight it.
After 36 years and one hundred eighty articles, my message remains the same, but now more urgent: Choose to fight. Start today. Start with yourself. Our children’s future depends on it.
Teshome Berhanu Kemal is a veteran journalist, researcher, and prolific author who has contributed to Ethiopian public discourse since 1988. His scholarly research on Islamic civilization, peaceful coexistence, and religious tolerance has been presented at both local and international forums.
Contributed by Teshome Berhanu Kemal