UNVEILING FEKADE SHEWAKENA’S MISLEADING RENDITION OF DEVELOPMENT REALITIES IN ETHIOPIA

Introduction       The purpose of this writing is twofold. First, it is educational and informational on current realities in Ethiopia, and secondly it is to put the record straight and unveil the manifest assertion by Mr. Shewakena and his likes in an article addressed to Minister Sufian Ahmed on budget distribution in Ethiopia. Minister Sufian has competently responded to earlier allegations of discriminatory distribution of government budgets and international aid.[1] While it is widely acknowledged that Ethiopia faces serious problems and challenges of development and democracy, there is also a wide consensus that the peace and security achieved in the past decade and the capacity building development programmes underway are state-of-the-art measures acknowledged by world-class pundits in the business. Nonetheless, as the purpose of Mr. Shewakena’s submission is less sincere than what it looks like at face value, what it deserves is a good analysis of his assertions and corresponding reply to his iconoclastic submission.    On resource allocation and management: 1. Ethiopia has registered growth of over 11% in 2005 in spite of the economic governance system inherited from decades of suppression by the fuedo-military complex. True government officials do not deny that the nation still faces a lot of policy and strategic challenges that they must address. Nonetheless, our historical vulnerabilities stem from decades of decadent economic policies of the feudal regimes and the Dergue holocaust that continue to haunt the country today (poverty, social exclusion, the Wollo famine of 1970s that finally lay bare the inhumane nature of the feudal order was a cumulative impact of decades of feudal policies that made the Ethiopian people vulnerable to the whims of nature and still lingers to date in a more abrasive rendering…). Ironically many in the minority Diaspora          ETHIOPIA THEN AND NOW 1990 2004 Gross Domestic Product growth                                                     -2.5% 11.6% Agricultural growth                                        -2% 18.9% Industrial growth                                             1.3% 6.9% Distribution service                                         1% 7.6%                         Inflation  25% 9.6% Percentage of women in total labor force activity 12% 35.4% Functional adult Literacy rate 11% 41.5% Combined Gross school enrollment ratio (%) 9% 34% Girls/boys ratio 12.5% 43.98% Population with access to drugs 5.5% 50.8% Population with access to improved sanitation 3% 12%   nostalgically remember these eras as the ‘good’ times; while in diametrically opposed action they have been the harbingers of the vulnerabilities that Ethiopia is trying to mend over the past decade. ETHIOPIA THEN AND NOW 1990 2004 Gross Domestic Product growth                                                     -2.5% 11.6% Agricultural growth                                        -2% 18.9% Industrial growth                                             1.3% 6.9% Distribution service                                         1% 7.6%                         Inflation  25% 9.6% Percentage of women in total labor force activity 12% 35.4% Functional adult Literacy rate 11% 41.5% Combined Gross school enrollment ratio (%) 9% 34% Girls/boys ratio 12.5% 43.98% Population with access to drugs 5.5% 50.8% Population with access to improved sanitation 3% 12% 2.      On a positive note, the new economic policy of 1991, coming on the hills of the commandist economy, gave a strong accent to the private sector limiting the role of the state; redefining responsibilities for economic and social development among the private and the public sectors. A market economy established by the new economic policy is indeed a significant departure from centrally planned paradigm. Ethiopia has now developed comprehensive plans that can provide the basis for an in depth re-evaluation of its core mission. 3.      The state has also established capacity for policy and strategic harmonization and sound knowledge management towards the establishment of sound institutional capacity in government for real-time strategy development, sensitivity analysis (to project the likely effect of particular measures), policy coordination, and attention to the details of implementation. In this connection, the national capacity building initiative has made substantive progress on information systems on micro-economic behaviour, including market networks, and the specific requirements of technology transfer and adaptation that are all preconditions for sound policy and strategy analysis, formulation and management. Planning and policy-making are characterised by on-going dialogue between government and different groups of economic actors. Privatizing and commercializing activities are in full swing to more efficiently provide a competitive, multi-channel environment and enhance the private sector. 4.  Mr. Shewakena mistakenly asserts that resources are squandered by the ruling party, that the government disproportionately allocates the highest resources to Tigray and claims that even the people of Tigray do not benefit from this because “the ruling party is stocking it up in its kitchens”. This is an allegation that cannot be substantiated in any way as our least worries are not corruption at the political level. You, Mr. Shewakena, must understand this very well unless you raise it for the sake of substantiating a pointless argument. Mr. Shewakena also asserts that resources allocated to Tigray are the highest. Here again you are mistaken. For one, Ethiopia’s main income trajectories of revenues are public companies, government employees, international and local trade and aid. Much of this is generated at the national level. Secondly, the formulae used for resource allocation is fairly and clearly established on grounds of districts that have been vulnerable to poverty, underdevelopment, war, droughts and epidemics. Implementation capacity is also an important measure as many of our regions forgotten by the feudo-military order are under capacitated to implement programmes and hence the focus on capacity building. The chart below shows budget distribution from 2000-2005, directly illustrating that Mr. Shewakena’s source, Valfort’s paper, is flawed. In fact the winners are the regions (Benishangul Gumuz, Afar, Gambella etc. and not Tigray!) hitherto denied of their Ethiopianness by the very groups that the minority vocal Diaspora represent. Region Domestic External Loan External Aid Total (000) Population (000) Per capita distribution Rank Addis Abeba   118223 629037 747260 2973 251.34 11 Afar Region 1159560 91157 90828 1341545 1389 965.83 5 Amhara Region 5542300 427341 776574 6904217 19120 361.09 9 Benshangul Gumuz 858110 76466 75693 1010269 625 1616.43 3 Dire Dawa 451170 28834 26319 506323 398 1272.17 4 Gambella Region 647270 50080 38746 736096 247 2980.15 1 Harari Region 375770 25676 19501 420947 196 2147.69 2 Oromia Region 7853414 119017 664157 8636588 26553 325.26 10 Southern NNP Region 4790520 405328 428084 5623932 14902 377.39 8 Somali Region 1809020 160339 159972 2129331 4329 491.88 7 Tigray Region 1875970 177548 302282 2355800 4335 543.44 6                 Source CSA Statistical Abstracts 2005 and UNFPA 5.  In March 1996, the Government launched the second development phase of the reform programme to address reported problems and improve the performance of the civil service on five fronts, namely: expenditure management and control; human resource management, human resource planning, and human resource information system; service delivery to facilitate positive changes in the culture, attitude and work practice of government officials towards the provision of effective and equitable public services; top management systems involving reforms to enhance the quality and speed of decision making through the development of top officials’ and senior managers’ capacity to manage, and to improve systems and processes governing institutions’ policy development and management, annual and     strategic planning, performance evaluation and monitoring, delegation of responsibilities, and reporting; and ethics focusing on the development and implementation of mechanisms and best practices to combat corruption and impropriety. The overall objective for the reform programme is to build a civil service that is supportive of achieving social and economic development policies, capable of promoting the principles of federalism and serving citizens honestly and diligently, as well as being accountable to elected representatives.   On foreign aid Multilateral, bilateral and non-governmental external agencies have in recent years taken a large number of initiatives aimed directly or indirectly at helping Ethiopia develop and democratise its way out of the economic chaos and political instability of the Dergue. In doing so, they rely on a wide variety of programmes, institutional mechanisms and policies. Indeed, growing external involvement in African projects of democratisation and economic recovery has resulted in increasingly challenging problems of conceptualising and understanding the role and function of international agencies.      An assessment of the growth of foreign interventions that seem in marked contrast to the limited thought and effort exerted by donors to put the interventions in coherent theoretical or strategic perspective had resulted in institutionalising one of the most successful aid norms – The Direct Budget Support to the national budget, jointly monitored by the Government, civil society and the donors – that was acknowledged for its effectiveness and replicated in many African nations. Aid is a catalyst for change and does not replace what we Ethiopians working in Ethiopia ought to do on our own. Ethiopia has indeed done very well by all standards of transparency, accountability and prudence in the management     of aid funds that have been received. Mr. Shewakena only needs to see the thousands of miles of new roads, new hydro power and universities in the hitherto marginalised communities to see what foreign aid has catalysed in Ethiopia.      Nonetheless, thanks to a vocal minority Diaspora that has now stood on the throat of the Ethiopian poor by lining up on the stairs of the American Congress and the European legislature, they have successfully subverted popular programmes into a political spin of unbridled proportions. What a spent force! It is this irresponsible group that has hoodwinked the allegedly violent opposition leader and made them face justice. It is this irresponsible group that has sown the seeds of hatred among the Diaspora itself who never attend the Ethiopian Orthodox Church Mass together in Washington – blame the ruling party in Addis Abeba for this too! It is this irresponsible group that is trying to derail peace and immerse in the blood of innocent victims of conflicts in Ethiopia by infusing propaganda via their adopted nations’ mass media. It is this irresponsible group in cooperation with the Eritrean mafia that is financing agent provocateurs that are bombing civilian targets in Addis Abeba.      The important message that these issues suggest are not sufficiently addressed, or even raised, in much of the current political debate in the home towns of the Diaspora - Washington and Brussels. Insofar as the activities of the minority economic Diaspora and their external supporters are not brought to discourse in an open forum, their contribution to the well being of Ethiopia may diminish with their proliferation. Hence the rationale to engage in such educational mission that one hopes will ultimately develop a mature dialogue among the minority vocal Diaspora that borders on a cataclysmic mission for the citizens of Ethiopia who ultimately have to bear the brunt of their apocalyptic political calling.             ======== END ========

[1] Notwithstanding the quote from an ostensibly perverted Valfort’s paper ‘Ethnic altruistic voting in multi-ethnic developing country – evidence from Ethiopia’ (March 2006); a paper that sets out right in the beginning by hypothesising that the ‘current political elite is implementing a “divide and rule strategy”, by the author’s own admission “we must here underline that the university students (who were the basis for the survey) constitute a very “special” group and cannot be considered as representatives of the Ethiopian population”. The study’s statistical base and the selection of respondents remain dubious as the author clouds the study as one done under the grapevine.

(c) Walta Information Center, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia