Getachew Reda Says Egypt Promised the TPLF 500 Million Dollars and Sent 500 Thousand

Getachew Reda told a policy discussion forum in Addis Abeba that Egypt provided financial support to the TPLF during the war in the north, and that the sum delivered fell far short of what was pledged.

"The letter was sent as 500 million dollars. Then what they gave was 500 thousand dollars," he said of the Egyptians — a gap of three orders of magnitude between the figure on paper and the figure that arrived.

Getachew, who was with the TPLF during the war and later led Tigray's interim administration, framed the disclosure as something he was choosing to reveal: he prefaced it on stage with "let me tell you a secret." He said the TPLF had asked Egypt for financial support and that only a very limited amount was given.

Where he said it

The venue carries as much weight as the claim. The forum was organised by the Ethiopian Defence College and the Institute of Foreign Affairs — both state institutions, and both with a standing interest in the proposition that Egypt financed an armed movement inside Ethiopia.

That does not make the account false. It does mean it arrives through a channel built to amplify it, from a speaker whose own position has shifted repeatedly since the war ended.

Why it matters commercially

Egypt and Ethiopia remain locked in an unresolved dispute over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and the Nile. Allegations of wartime Egyptian financing of a domestic armed group, aired at a defence institution, raise the political temperature around a relationship that already shapes regional trade routes, Red Sea access arrangements and the diplomatic terms on which Ethiopian firms operate across north-east Africa.

Open

No documentary evidence was presented publicly alongside the claim — no letter, no transfer record, no named intermediary. Egypt has not responded. Nor is it clear in what form the money is said to have arrived, through what channel, or when.

Sources: Tikvah Ethiopia, 22 October 2026