Debretsion Gebremichael ( ti, ደብረጽዮን ገብረሚካኤል, pronunciation: ) is an Ethiopian politician and current president of the

Tigray Region The Tigray Region, officially the Tigray National Regional State, is the northernmost regional state in Ethiopia. The Tigray Region is the homeland of the Tigrayan, Irob, and Kunama people. Its capital and largest city is Mekelle. Tigray is ...

and chairman of

Tigray People's Liberation Front The Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF; ti, ህዝባዊ ወያነ ሓርነት ትግራይ, lit=Popular Struggle for the Freedom of Tigray), also called the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front, is a left-wing ethnic nationalist paramilitar ...

(TPLF). His position as titular head of the Tigray Region is disputed by the federal government of Ethiopia who in November 2020 appointed Mulu Nega as the chief executive of the

Transitional Government of Tigray The Transitional Government of Tigray was a caretaker administration that was formally declared by the House of Federation of Ethiopia on 7 November 2020, in the context of a conflict between the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), in po ...

, succeeded by Abraham Belay. Since July 2021, Debretsion leads again the Tigray Region, while Abraham Belay left the transitional government to become Ethiopia's minister of Defence. His party nominally won all 152 contested seats and 98.2% of the votes of the 2020 Tigray regional election, which was held in defiance of the federal government that had postponed the elections because of the

COVID-19 pandemic in Ethiopia The COVID-19 pandemic in Ethiopia is part of the ongoing worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 () caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (). The virus was confirmed to have reached Ethiopia on 13 March 2020. Th ...

Early life

Debretsion was born and raised in the town of

Shire Shire is a traditional term for an administrative division of land in Great Britain and some other English-speaking countries such as Australia and New Zealand. It is generally synonymous with county. It was first used in Wessex from the beginn ...

in Tigray. He gave up his engineering studies at

Addis Ababa University Addis Ababa University (AAU) ( am, አዲስ አበባ ዩኒቨርሲቲ) is a national university located in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. It is the oldest university in Ethiopia. AAU has thirteen campuses. Twelve of these are situated in Addis Ababa, ...

to join the TPLF in the 1970s and fight the

Derg The Derg (also spelled Dergue; , ), officially the Provisional Military Administrative Council (PMAC), was the military junta that ruled Ethiopia, then including present-day Eritrea, from 1974 to 1987, when the military leadership formally " c ...

military junta. He was sent to Italy on a false passport and received training in communications technology and led the team that launched the Dimtsi Woyane ('Voice of the Revolution') radio station in 1980. Debretsion was also involved in disrupting the Derg's radio systems.

Education

After the

Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front The Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF; am, የኢትዮጵያ ሕዝቦች አብዮታዊ ዲሞክራሲያዊ ግንባር, translit=Ye’Ītiyop’iya Ḥizibochi Ābiyotawī Dīmokirasīyawī Ginibari) was an eth ...

's 1991 victory, he joined Addis Ababa University while working full-time as the second man to

Kinfe Gebremedhin Kinfe Gebremedhin (; d. 13 May 2001) was an Ethiopian national who fought as a commander of the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front (TPLF) against the military junta known as the Derg. Upon the overthrow of the Derg, Kinfe served as Chief of Secur ...

. He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering from

. He received a PhD in information technology from

Capella University Capella University is a private for-profit, online university headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The school is owned by the publicly traded Strategic Education, Inc. and delivers most of its education online. Capella has 52 degree progr ...

in 2011. His dissertation was on "Exploring the Perception of Users of Community ICT Centers on the Effectiveness of ICT on Poverty in Ethiopia".

Personal life

Debretsion is an avid tennis player in his free time. He married Askale Gebrekidan. He has two young children. They are US citizens.

Political career

In 2005, Debretsion was appointed director of the Ethiopian Information and Communication Development Agency (EICDA). As its director, Debretsion claimed to improve its public service by launching the Public Service Capacity Building Program (PSCAP). In 2007, Debretsion launched a $1.5 billion infrastructure project with

ZTE ZTE Corporation is a Chinese partially state-owned technology company that specializes in telecommunication. Founded in 1985, ZTE is listed on both the Hong Kong and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges. ZTE's core business is wireless, exchange, opt ...

which expanded the network capacity to 30 million (from 6.5 million in 2007 and 1.35 million in 2001) and constructed 10,000 km of fibre cable. By 2012 Ethiopia had constructed 16,000 km of fibre cables and had voice cellular coverage at 64% of the country. In 2012, Debretsion was appointed the federal Minister of Communications and Information Technology. In 2012, Debretsion announced that a $1.6 billion deal had been reached with

Huawei Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. ( ; ) is a Chinese multinational technology corporation headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China. It designs, develops, produces and sells telecommunications equipment, consumer electronics and various smar ...

, Ericsson and ZTE to significantly expand the capacity of Ethiopia's communication infrastructure. As of September 2016 project has been progressing on schedule. 4G cellular service is now available in

Addis Ababa Addis Ababa (; am, አዲስ አበባ, , new flower ; also known as , lit. "natural spring" in Oromo), is the capital and largest city of Ethiopia. It is also served as major administrative center of the Oromia Region. In the 2007 census, t ...

. The ultimate goal of the project is to increase cellular coverage to 100% and to increase capacity to 50 million. Before becoming Tigray's leader, he was sometimes considered as a "low-key technocrat" according to ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

''. Debretsion was appointed as Deputy Prime Minister for Finance and Economic Clusters in 2012. In 2015, Debretsion helped to launch a free trade zone with Sudan. In 2015, he inaugurated the construction of the ICT park in Bole Lemi Industrial Park in Addis Ababa. In 2017, he laid the cornerstone for the ICT park and stated that he wants to build more ICT parks in the regional states. Debretsion was the Board Chair of Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation. In his role in the state owned electricity company, he oversaw the construction of billions of dollars of hydropower dams and electrical infrastructure, as well as seeing service as the Board Chairman of the National Council for the Coordination of Public Participation for the Construction of the

Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam , image = , image_caption = The main dam after first filling , image_alt = , location_map_caption = , coordinates = , country = Ethiopia , location = Guba, Benishangul-Gumuz Region , purpose = Power , status = UC , construction_began ...

. In November 2017, Debretsion was elected chairman of the TPLF. His rise within the party was largely facilitated by the fact that he was viewed as a younger figure when compared to the high-ranking figures that had led the TPLF for decades prior, as well as the perception that he was a political moderate who was less committed to Tigrayan nationalism than his predecessors. In January 2018, he was also elected Deputy President of Tigray Region. As Debretsion was not a member of the Tigray Regional parliament, he could not become president. Nonetheless, as the post of the President became vacant, he became the President of Tigray Region in an acting capacity.

Tigray War

On 4 November 2020, the

Tigray War The Tigray War; ; . was an armed conflict that lasted from 3 November 2020 to 3 November 2022. The war was primarily fought in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia between the Ethiopian federal government and Eritrea on one side, and the Tigray Peop ...

started with the TPLF special forces' 4 November attacks against the Northern Command. Debretsion described the attacks as a pre-emptive defensive action. On 12 November, the Federal Police Commission issued an

arrest warrant An arrest warrant is a warrant issued by a judge or magistrate on behalf of the state, which authorizes the arrest and detention of an individual, or the search and seizure of an individual's property. Canada Arrest warrants are issued by a j ...

against him and 64 top officials of the TPLF for severe

human rights violations Human rights are moral principles or normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for certain standards of hum ...

ethnic cleansing Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, and religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making a region ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal, extermination, deportation or population transfer ...

, and

terrorism Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...

. The Ethiopian government announced a military victory against TPLF on 28 November 2020. Debretsion was rumoured to have taken refuge in South Sudan until his message to all TEGARUs came out in March claiming that he is, in fact, near the town of Mekelle (Tigray's capital) stating the TDF forces are still fighting intensively and the outcome will only be victory of the people of Tigray. As of early December 2020, TPLF members and their leader Debretsion resisted the Ethiopian and Eritrean invasion by remaining in the mountains. In June 2021, after the TDF controlled Mekelle, Debretsion returned to the capital of Tigray, Mekelle and remains among the main political influencers of this conflict.

References