The queues at the polling stations in Addis Ababa are long on Monday.
"It is a critical moment when the future of the country is being determined," 38-year-old Binyam Gideyelem, who is voting for the first time, told the AFP news agency.
However, analysts predict an almost guaranteed landslide victory for Abiy Ahmed, who came to power in 2018. The following year he received the Nobel Peace Prize for the peace agreement with neighboring Eritrea, but since then his rule has become increasingly authoritarian and violent, with harsh crackdowns on dissent.
No elections are being held in the Tigray region, where a brutal war between local leaders and Ahmed's central government has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives since 2020.
