Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (PhD) has paid a monumental visit to Vietnam, a rapidly growing country in South East Asia. For a country that is striving to speed up its economic development, the visit to Vietnam gives additional energy and increases the country’s overall ties in the southeastern Asia region.
If Ethiopia has to emulate a country that has succeeded in its economic development, Vietnam stands as an ideal candidate. The two countries indeed share many similarities in terms of population, socio economic background and natural resources endowment.
During the last six or more decades, Vietnam has passed through a lot of ups and downs and finally turned itself as a model for others. Especially, Ethiopia has to trace the footprints of Vietnam towards transforming its agriculture, manufacturing, tourism sectors.
According to the World Bank report of October 2024, Vietnam is a remarkable development success story. The report explains that since the launch of the Đổi Mới policy in 1986, it has shown exemplary performances that rendered it as one of the world’s poorest nations that climbed to a middle-income economy in one generation.
The Đổi Mới policy was a successful attempt to modernize and liberate their economic policies. Prior to that, the country was an underdeveloped country that was highly tattered by war and foreign invasion. The political ideology that former leaders followed also kept the country at bay failing to form strong economic ties with other countries.
To solve this problem, the then leaders implemented the new reform policies entitled Đổi Mới and involved transitioning from a state-controlled centralized economy to a market-oriented economy.
By now Vietnam is mentioned for its success in manufacturing industry, tourism, health and education sectors among others. Ethiopia shares stark similarity with the circumstances that Vietnam passed through during the last quite half a century or more. It has undergone foreign invasion, civil war, shifting to different ideologies, natural disaster, among others. All these had their impacts on the speed of the economic development putting the country in a catastrophic situation. To address the consequences the country has been implementing various economic development policies during the last three decades following the models of countries especially in South East Asia.
Now it has started implementing a macroeconomic policy since July 2024. The policy is designed to transform the country’s economy from the business as usual track and transform the fundamental issues that are dragging its progress.
Accordingly, the government has taken a bold measure to implement the policy and lead the future path of the country’s development via unprecedented but highly anticipated path. This needs strong courage and commitment as it determines the fate the country that is paddling a new path.
Hence, emulating the courage and commitment of Vietnam becomes handier here. Without any need to fully rely on it as there are differences as well as similarities, Ethiopia can learn from the strength, principles and other qualities of Vietnam in designing and implementing such transformational reform policy.
The agreement signed between the two countries to intensify cooperation in education and trade is also pivotal in cementing the overall cooperation and bringing about meaningful ties that can go a long distance.
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD THURSDAY 17 APRIL 2025
