By: Eyob Tilahun, concerned Ethiopian
I am writing to you with serious concern and a question that millions of Ethiopians, along with your global audience, deserve to get an answer to: What is your purpose in travelling to Ethiopia amid ongoing war, terror, and uncertainty, especially when many countries, including yours, have issued travel warnings?
With a following exceeding 19 million, your digital presence may carry geopolitical weight well beyond cultural and social issues. Your content not only entertains; it shapes global and domestic perceptions of stability, safety, and legitimacy at a critical political juncture. While that influence is not absolute and exists alongside other sources of information, your content may still be widely amplified and interpreted in different ways.
Hence, there is a responsibility to ensure accuracy through reliable, balanced, and representative sources of information together with contextual awareness, particularly in a country that is increasingly destabilised due to cycles of war, and where the broader implications of what you share cannot easily be separated from the realities on the ground.
Your arrival in Addis Ababa has been framed as part of a broader effort to position the capital as a premier destination for international influencers. However, this raises important questions about how such portrayals align with the wider realities in the country. While tourists, celebrities, and influencers typically visit countries considered safe, often focusing on places of historical and cultural significance, there is concern that selectively curated experiences may present an incomplete picture of the situation on the ground, shapingexternal understanding in ways that do not fully reflect the wider situation.
Besides, your visit to Ethiopia on the eve of the so-called national election scheduled for 1 June 2026 suggests that it may be part of the regime’s scripted public relations campaign aimed at covering the absence of an enabling environment for a genuinely free and fair election by bringing influential figures to the capital to convey the message to the international community that the country is safe, when in reality large parts of it remain engulfed in violence and gunfire.
While international influencers describe Addis Ababa as a symbol of peace and prosperity, millions of Ethiopians outside the capital continue to endure war, displacement, repression, and humanitarian suffering. The Amhara region remains engulfed in war, Oromia faces persistent instability, and Tigray, instead of recovering, is again shadowed by the looming war, and elsewhere is unsafe. At the same time, journalists and independent voices attempting to expose these realities face intimidation and detention, raising concerns that carefully managed visits by foreign influencers are being used to project an image of stability to the international community that sharply contrasts with conditions on the ground.
Ethiopia’s beauty, ancient history, and cultural richness are undeniable, and its people unquestionably deserve international recognition and respect. However, that recognition should not be confined to the carefully curated image presented in Addis Ababa alone. It must also acknowledge the suffering endured by millions across the country — communities subjected to drone strikes and heavy shelling, victims of mass killings and sexual violence, families facing desperate hardship in Amhara, ongoing violence in Oromia, widespread hunger across the nation, and the lingering devastation in Tigray. Any honest representation of Ethiopia must reflect not only its polished image and decorated showcases but, more importantly, the painful realities confronting so many of its citizens.
Dylan, your platform is founded on explaining complex global affairs to a wide audience with clarity, rigour, and a clear commitment to truth-seeking. We therefore encourage you to apply that same standard of responsibility in this context: to ask probing and necessary questions, to engage with perspectives beyond official and state-aligned channels, and, where it is not possible to travel beyond the capital, at least to acknowledge the wider national realities that extend beyond the carefully curated narrative presented to the public.
Finally, you may be in a position to present your audience with the full picture: that Ethiopia — once regarded as an anchor state renowned for its ancient civilisation, rich culture, proud history, and warm and hospitable people — is now engulfed in profound turmoil, killings, displacement, and extraordinary human suffering, under an administration increasingly focused on projecting an international image for foreign cameras rather than giving due attention to the voices, pain, and lived realities of its own citizens.
That would constitute a truly responsible exercise of an influencer’s platform, appropriate to the scale of its reach and influence.
Martin Plaut 
What is truly embarrassing is not a few TikTok creators promoting Ethiopia — it is the intellectual failure of sections of Ethiopia’s political elite who have reduced politics to attacking influencers while offering no serious alternative vision for the country.
Many opposition voices today are driven less by policy or national interest and more by resentment toward any political force that challenges Ethiopia’s traditional ethnic power structures. They cannot tolerate politicians, ideas, or public figures emerging outside the old ethnic gatekeeping system, so every success, every positive image, and every independent voice becomes a target.
At the same time, many of these actors posture as democratic politicians while openly or indirectly sympathising with armed violent groups when it suits their political objectives. They speak the language of democracy abroad while normalising instability and division at home.
What makes their outrage less credible is that many remained silent when abuses, repression, and corruption occurred under governments led by their own political or ethnic allies. And many Ethiopians believe they would remain equally silent again if their own kin returned to power. That inconsistency is exactly why people no longer take them seriously.
Criticising government policy is legitimate. But obsessing over TikTokers and travel videos while failing to present concrete economic ideas, governance reforms, or a unifying national vision only exposes the deeper problem: today’s opposition is rich in outrage but empty in solutions.
No country is built through bitterness, ethnic resentment, or permanent online outrage. Ethiopia needs leaders who can think beyond ethnic loyalty and political sabotage — leaders capable of offering a real alternative instead of simply opposing everything associated with Prosperity Party.