Former officials from the previous regime, a ferociously repressive Marxist junta called the Derg, which had ruled Ethiopia from the fall of Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974 until 1991, were welcomed back.

To the dismay of many Ethiopians old enough to remember the days of the Red Terror, in which tens of thousands had been murdered, mutilated and tortured in the name of class revolution, some were granted an audience with the prime minister.

Nonetheless, Pentecostal churches across the land declared that Abiy had been sent by God.

So too did senior government officials: Gedion Timothewos, a widely respected constitutional lawyer who would later become Abiy's justice minister, personally told me so.

The rest of the world was catching Abiymania too.

In August 2018, the prime minister embarked on a tour of the Ethiopian diaspora in the US, visiting Washington, Los Angeles and Minneapolis in the hope of persuading some of them to return to Ethiopia and invest there.

Wherever Abiy went he was welcomed with wild enthusiasm.

A crowd of 20,000 people filled the Walter E Washington Convention Center, which was bedecked in red, yellow and green, the colours of the Ethiopian flag.

"It was euphoric," recalled Tewodros Tsegaye, a Tigrayan journalist in Washington.

"The intellectuals who were meant to analyse and ask him questions there were not using their brains. They just were saying: 'Hail Abiy.'" Not everyone was so happy.