Abiy Puts a Former Defence Minister in Charge of Ethiopia's Nuclear Programme

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has appointed Abraham Belay (PhD) as Commissioner of the Ethiopian Nuclear Energy Commission, the body leading the country's emerging nuclear energy programme. The appointment took effect on 24 September 2026, according to the Office of the Prime Minister.

Abraham comes to the commission from the Ministry of Irrigation and Lowland Areas. He has previously served as Minister of Defence and as Minister of Innovation and Technology. Birr Metrics also describes him as a former head of Ethiopian Electric Power.

A political appointment to a technical body

The nuclear commission was created by the Council of Ministers to run the preparatory work — regulation, safety framework, site studies, partner agreements — that has to exist years before any reactor does. It is, for now, an institution-building job rather than an engineering one.

That is why the choice of a minister rather than a physicist is the story. Ethiopia's nuclear ambition has so far advanced through memoranda with foreign state nuclear companies rather than through domestic capacity, and the commissioner's real work is holding those relationships, financing them, and getting a regulatory regime past a parliament that has not had to think about one before. Someone who has run defence procurement and the innovation ministry is being asked to do a coordination job.

For Ethiopian industry the relevance is simple and distant. Manufacturers who ration production around load-shedding are not going to be relieved by a nuclear programme this decade. What an appointment of this weight does signal is that the government still intends to put baseload generation beyond hydropower on the national plan, and intends to fund the preparatory stage.

Open

No timetable, budget or partner has been published alongside the appointment, and the commission has not said what its work programme under the new commissioner will be. Nor has the government said who replaces Abraham at the Ministry of Irrigation and Lowland Areas.

Sources: Birr Metrics, 27 September 2026, Tikvah Ethiopia, 27 September 2026