Nowhere was the collective entrancement more striking than in western embassies and capitals.

Prime minister Abiy's liberal democratic rhetoric; his admission that the EPRDF's violence could be likened to terrorism; his appointment of a gender-equal cabinet and a respected elder stateswoman, Sahle-Work Zewde, as president; his apparent pragmatism – all played marvellously with western audiences.

"It was like they were meeting a rockstar," said a British aid official recalling the occasions when government ministers would visit Ethiopia.

"The joke among the diplomats was: 'I hope my minister doesn't ask him for an autograph.'" Michael Raynor, then the US's wide-eyed ambassador, stood out as the most unabashed cheerleader among the western diplomatic corps.

He told colleagues that Abiy was the "real deal" while pointedly refusing to engage with the prime minister's political rivals.

One of Raynor's senior embassy colleagues told me at the time that the new Ethiopian leadership consisted of "individuals who have service as the driving force in their work and lives".

Raynor later told a European counterpart in Addis Ababa that Abiy was the "most pro-west leader we're going to get".

Quite what the breezy assessments were based on, given how little western diplomats actually knew about either Abiy or his colleagues, was never clear.

But in the absence of firm direction from Washington during the Trump years – the then national security adviser, John Bolton, told me he doubted the president had even read his own administration's Africa strategy – the embassy in Addis Ababa was given a free hand to cultivate Abiy as it saw fit.

In its internal strategy document of 2018, the embassy cheered Abiy's "strongly western orientation" and argued that his administration represented a "once-in-a-generation opportunity to advance US interests in the region".