Is there peace and stability?
Briefly stated, Ethiopia
has the appearance of peace and stability. Social and political fissures are
everywhere to see. Diversity is used as a wedge rather than as an asset.
Evidence shows that government has not tapped fully into the country’s immense
diversity, natural resources, strategic location as a hub of the African
continent and as a bridge to North Africa and the Middle East. It has not
offered its youthful population—64 percent under 35—employment opportunity. It
has not harnessed modern information technology that is transforming poor
societies to tackle poverty, boosting the middle class and increasing incomes
(Bangladesh, Kenya) etc. etc. The Ethiopian government is one of the few
anywhere in the world to retain state control of the telecommunication sector,
a cash cow. “The absence of competition has seen a country of 94 million lag
badly behind the rest of the continent in an industry that has generally
burgeoned alongside economic growth…with mobile phone penetration of 70 percent
in SSA compared to a paltry 2.5 percent in Ethiopia; internet access of 40
percent in Kenya.”
Modern IT opens windows
for private enterprise and employment. It enhances freedom and facilitates
knowledge transfer. It serves as an essential tool for youth to better
themselves. It is at the heart of the quest for choice and freedom from poverty
and oppression. Government unwillingness to give space; to be all inclusive;
and to unleash the creative potential of the country’s youth and to harness the
peace, gender (females) and information technology dividend, including freedom
of expression, have diminished national social cohesion, productivity and the
emergence of a robust national private sector. Africa Business quotes Guang Z
Chen, World Bank Country Director, Ethiopia, who asked the Ethiopian government
“to allow the private sector to play a bigger role in the economy.” Chen says,
“For the country to continue to grow I strongly believe industry has to take a
much bigger role because there is no other country that I am aware of, aside
from resource-rich countries, that can grow to middle income status with still
50 percent of GDP on agriculture.” The private sector suffers from lack of
access to credit, foreign exchange, land, licenses and permits. Procurement of
goods and services is not transparent or competitive. “Making credit available
for the private sector is certainly one area the government can do more. The
trend that worries us is that while the public investment (the biggest source
of bribery, favoritism and corruption) as a share of GDP is increasing, the
private sector as a share of GDP is decreasing” as are savings. Illicit outflow
of scarce capital continues unabated, reducing capital resources.
By all measurements, the
government fails to empower and unleash Ethiopia’s productive potential. It
gives preferences to foreigners at a cost to Ethiopian entrepreneurs. It
counters national cohesion and integration, the opposite of global trends. A
2010 Gallop Poll shows that trust in government and its institutions is among
the lowest in Sub-Saharan Africa. Those with wealth make money without
generating employment and without creating national wealth for the country and
its people. Some fear that a nationalist government would go after their
ill-gotten wealth. Some say that they are leaving the country in droves and voting
against the government by not investing in their homeland. Whatever the motive,
it is the people who are being bled dry. The only institutions in which there
is a high level of trust is in faith institutions: Christianity and Islam.
However, both are under constant harassment by the ruling party.
Reform must be
relentless, inclusive and empowering
Ethiopia is one of the
few countries in the world where social change has always come from within. The
1974 Revolution was a result of the Ethiopian Student’s Movement that
galvanized the entire society. It was national and not ethnic or religious. It
was transformative but not well designed, planned or executed. In this sense,
the country has gone backwards: from a national to that of an ethnic political
and social culture. I have argued that this type of social and political
culture entails risks and unintended consequences. Observers within and outside
Ethiopia agree that the Socialist Military Dictatorship that toppled the Haile
Selassie government in 1974 and ruled the country with an iron-fist for 17
years was among the most oppressive. Its leaders, leftist groups with different
ideologies and motives, foreign sponsors, ethnic-based liberation movements,
supporters of the defunct Imperial system and others turned the country into a
blood bath. An entire generation was lost. Hundreds of thousands of young
people were murdered; and hundreds of thousands fled. This period triggered the
first wave of human capital flight at a massive scale. A trend was established.
Before then, Ethiopians sent overseas for further education returned home.
Today, an estimated 5.5 million Ethiopians—almost all with high school
education and 1/3rd with college education–live and work in the two Sudans,
Saudi Arabia, the Gulf, Western Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand
and numerous Sub-Saharan African countries. Ninety one percent of domestic
workers in the GCC are Ethiopian females aged 20-30. In 2009, 42,000
Ethiopians, most of them young, left through Yemen. According to one Canadian
institution, between 1991 (when the TPLF/EPRDF took power) and 2006 (after the
2005 elections were reversed), Ethiopia trained 3,700 medical doctors. Of the
total 3,000 left the country. This brain-drain continues unabated. An estimated
80 percent of educated and trained Ethiopians leave the country. Simply put, no
matter how much money we remit each year ( In 2011, the World Bank disputed
Ethiopian lower government data and estimated that Ethiopia’s growing Diaspora
remitted more than $3 billion per year), Ethiopia’s national growth will be
diminished by brain-drain for decades to come. It is true that many in the
diaspora have vested interests and contribute to the glitz economy.
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