The aim of this paper is to present the ambiguity in the decentralization movement that Ethiopia has been engaged in since 1991, without underestimating the magnitude of the changes promised by federal reform. This involves understanding why the centralist structures continue to exist, and how they adapt to a new etho-federal context. We thus observe how and by what ingenuity the social and/or territorial structures have been able to evolve without encountering any problems and serve the interests of the changing policies, particularly given the decentralization of public power. In the light of the issues of changing public policies, the functioning of regionalization, and the difficult emergence of local governments, we observe that Ethiopia's government remains highly centralized today.