Foreign Policy published on 5 December 2018 a commentary titled "Abiy Ahmed Is Not a Populist" by Tom Gardner, Ethiopia correspondent for the Economist.
After acknowledging charges by some that Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is a populist in the mode of Donald Trump or Turkey's Recep Tayyip Edrogan, the author concludes that he is a liberal democrat--or the closest approximation of one in contemporary Ethiopian politics--and not a populist.