Oromia Broadcasting Network (OBN)

The Oromia Broadcasting Network (OBN) is the regional public-service broadcaster of the Oromia Regional State, the largest of Ethiopia’s regional administrations and home to roughly 35 million people. OBN is headquartered in Adama (also known as Nazret), the Oromia regional capital, the existing public sources sometimes give “Addis Ababa” or the Oromo place name “Finfinne” for the capital, but OBN’s own social-media presence and operational base list Adama. The network broadcasts radio for 119 hours per week and television 24 hours a day, covering 100 percent of the Oromia region by FM and AM radio waves and more than 70 percent by terrestrial microwave television, with international satellite distribution via Eutelsat (Ethiosat platform), Nilesat, Galaxy 19, NSS 12 and Thaicom 5. According to OBN’s own institutional description, programming is produced in 17 Ethiopian languages and three international languages(English, Arabic, French), an expansion from the 14-language footprint reported in 2024. OBN’s main channels include OBN (Afaan Oromo), OBN International, OBN English, OBN Documentary, OBN Horn of Africa, OBN Gaammee (children’s), and OBN Cyber Media (digital, launched in 2018).

Media assets

Television: OBN, OBN International, OBN English, OBN Documentary, OBN Horn of Africa, OBN Gaammee

Radio: OBN RadioDigital: OBN Cyber Media (obn.com.et)

Ownership and governance

OBN is administered by the Oromia Radio and Television Organization (ORTO), a regional government entity established under Proclamation No. 113/2006 by the Oromia Regional Government. ORTO was originally created as the Oromia Mass Media Organization (OMMO) on 12 July 2006 and restructured and renamed under Proclamation No. 164/2011 in 2011. The OBN broadcaster itself was established under the parallel Proclamation No. 133/2006 to “widely disseminate timely gathered international and local information to the public and government bodies.”

ORTO functions under the direct authority of the Oromia regional cabinet. Its leadership is appointed by the regional administration, currently led by Oromia Regional President Shimelis Abdisa, and the executive board is politically appointed. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed served on the ORTO board before his April 2018 elevation to the federal premiership, a personal continuity that has shaped OBN’s institutional positioning during his administration. In February 2018, then-Oromia regional president Lemma Megersa publicly pledged to “defend the independence and impartiality of the state-run Oromia Broadcasting Network”, a statement made at an Oromo People’s Democratic Organization (OPDO) central committee meeting in Adama, signalling the political stakes attached to OBN’s editorial direction. As of April 2026, no public reform or restructuring of ORTO’s governance framework has been reported. The current ORTO Director General is not publicly disclosed in available external sources.

OBN’s institutional positioning is structurally distinct from federal state broadcasters EBC and ENA: it operates under a regional rather than federal proclamation, is funded by the Oromia regional budget rather than the federal budget, and is editorially aligned with the regional ruling formation (now part of the federal Prosperity Party but with distinct Oromo-political positioning).

Source of funding and budget

ORTO is wholly funded by the Oromia Regional Government. According to Oromia-based journalists interviewed for the previous SMM profile in March–April 2024, OBN receives 100 percent of its operating budget from the regional government. There is no published budget, no annual report, no audited accounts, and no disclosure of staff numbers or capital expenditure. Some advertising revenue is accepted, but figures are not disclosed and analysts judge advertising income to be a small fraction of the operating budget. Oromia regional budget data are not transparently published at outlet level. Despite the Addis Fortune-reported 1.45 billion birr media-complex investment, substantial by Ethiopian regional-state-broadcaster standards, no detailed financial breakdown of capital or operating costs has been published.

Editorial independence

OBN exhibits no formal editorial independence. The 2006 and 2011 proclamations governing ORTO contain no statutory guarantees for editorial autonomy, and there is no independent regulator: the Ethiopian Media Authority (EMA) regulates federal media but does not have effective jurisdiction over regional state broadcasters’ internal editorial practices, and no Oromia-level media regulator exists. Programming overwhelmingly reflects the priorities of the Oromia regional administration: regional development achievements, speeches by the regional president and senior officials, ruling-party messaging, and federal-government framing on national issues including the Tigray war (2020–2022) and the ongoing Amhara conflict.

OBN’s editorial role has been politically contested at the highest levels. Following the 29 June 2020 assassination of popular Oromo singer Hachalu Hundessa, which triggered widespread violence in Oromia and the deaths of several hundred people, the federal Attorney-General launched an investigation into OBN alongside Tigray TV and Dimtse Woyane, alleging the broadcaster had played a role in inciting ethnic violence. The federal government linked OBN’s coverage to the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), designated a “terrorist agent”, and the three channels were warned and ordered to shut down per a federal proclamation in early July 2020. OBN continued to operate in modified form, but this episode established a pattern of contestation between the federal Prosperity Party and the OBN editorial line that has continued through the 2023–2026 Oromia security crackdown. During the ongoing Oromo Liberation Army insurgency in western and southern Oromia, OBN has consistently aligned its coverage with the regional administration’s security framing rather than offering independent reporting.

Through 2025–2026, OBN’s coverage has been dominated by federal–regional development narratives, the run-up to the June 1, 2026 general elections, the September 2025 inauguration of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, and Oromia regional security operations. Critical coverage of regional state institutions, opposition political viewpoints (notably the Oromo Federalist Congress and OLF-aligned positions), and investigative reporting are absent from OBN’s regular output. OBN’s reach across the Oromo-speaking population, Ethiopia’s largest single ethnolinguistic community, also extending into Kenya, Somalia and the diaspora, gives it disproportionate communicative weight in the Horn of Africa media environment despite its regional rather than national institutional status.

AI and digital policy

OBN operates an active digital portfolio: the obn.com.et website (Afaan Oromo primary edition), an English Facebook page with 192,000+ followers, an Afaan Oromo Facebook page with nearly 2 million followers, YouTube, Telegram, Instagram, TikTok and X/Twitter accounts. OBN Cyber Media, the dedicated digital service, was launched on 26 February 2018 (Ethiopian calendar reference 26 Guraandhala 2018, equivalent to 5 March 2026 in the Gregorian calendar; the digital service has been operational since the late 2010s under various branding). No formal AI policy, content-provenance commitment (e.g. C2PA), or disclosure framework for AI-generated content has been published. There is no public statement on synthetic-media disclosure, automated translation between OBN’s 17 operating languages, or AI use in editorial workflows. Given OBN’s operational role in Ethiopia’s most ethnolinguistically polarised information environment, the absence of any AI-content or fact-checking framework, combined with the documented 2020 federal allegations of incitement coverage, is a notable gap in professional self-regulation.

April 2026