First came the shock, then the tears of joy, then the dreams of home.

As a three-month-old political revolution sparked by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has gathered pace, Ethiopians forced into exile by decades of war, repression and economic stagnation are thinking the unthinkable - it’s time to go back.

“When you have this kind of change, out of the blue, it’s time: I’m going back,” said Kassahun Gebrehana, barely able to contain his excitement as he sat in the sunshine outside his restaurant, Little Addis, in downtown Johannesburg.

The 39-year-old left Ethiopia 17 years ago after running into “political problems” with the government, a common refrain among the million or more Ethiopians who have left to build new lives in Africa, Europe or the United States.

Many departed in the 1980s, fleeing the brutal “Derg” military dictatorship that ruled Ethiopia from the overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974 until the late in the following decade.

Others followed later as the Horn of Africa nation was riven by ethnic conflict, culminating in a brutal 1998-2000 border war with neighboring Eritrea in which an estimated 80,000 people were killed.

Even after the guns fell silent, others - Kassahun included - fled the pervasive authoritarianism of the ruling EPRDF coalition, which recently detained around 30,000 people, including students, journalists and bloggers, in response to protests against economic mismanagement and inequality.

With exile groups routinely denounced by Addis as “terrorist organizations”, he has been too scared to set foot in his home country since his departure.

In just three months, the 41-year-old Abiy has changed all that. He ended a state of emergency, freed political prisoners and made peace with Addis’ sworn enemy Eritrea, once a part of Ethiopia before it split in 1993 after a long independence war.

For Africans, it was the equivalent of bringing down the Berlin Wall.

“I’m not going to Ethiopia on holiday,” Kassahun said. “I’m going home.”

Members of the diaspora coming back with their skills and dollars could provide a big fillip to an economy starved of foreign exchange and hobbled by the legacy of decades of Soviet-style central planning.

Peace with Eritrea should also allow both sides to spend less on weapons and more on health and education, while giving landlocked Ethiopia access to the ports it needs to make its dreams of export-led growth come to fruition. (Reuters)

•A worker wearing an Ethiopian soccer jersey is seen at a shop, in downtown Johannesburg, South Africa, July 20, 2018.

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