Gebrehiwot Baykedagn: Ethiopia’s first development thinker

 “When the property and the knowledge of a people increases, the government’s policy and wealth parameters also increase.As the knowledge and wealth of people develop, the governments’ instruments of policy implementation acquire additional strength

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This quote is taken from GebrehiwotBaykedagn’s book ‘MengistinaYeHizbAstedader’written in 1917 and translated as ‘State &Economy’ in Early 19^th Century Ethiopia’ by Karnak House & Red Sea Press.

NegadrasGebrehiwotBaykedagnis a prominent thinker and a pioneer African development economist as stated by ZinabuSamaroRekiso in his paper‘Economics of Late Development and Industrialization: Putting GebrehiwotBaykedgn (1886-1919) in Context.’

GebrehiwotBaykedagnwas born in May Mesham/Maimshem near Adwa on 30 July 1886 and grew up at a Swedish mission in Eritrea during the years of the Great Ethiopian Famine (1888-1892), which together with the ravages of internecine wars was devastating Tigray, according to MatteoSalvadore.

As the prominent Ethiopian historian BahruZewde put it Gebrehiwotwas one of a few “children of fortune by reason of the fortuitous circumstances under which [the first generation of Ethiopian intellectuals] acquired their education abroad”. Gebrehiwot lived and studied in Germany and Austria for a few years until the German government recruited him as an interpreter for a diplomatic mission to Addis Ababa. He soon became an important figure in Emperor Menelik II’s entourage, putting his linguistic skills to good use. In the turbulent years of Menelik’s illness leading to his death in 1913,Gebrehiwotlived in Sudan.

He returned to Ethiopia only in 1913 to serve under LejIyasu (1913- 1916) until his overthrow. Until his death, Gebrehiwotheld two post in the government: first he was assigned as Inspector of the Addis Ababa-Djibouti Railway (the only rail-way in the country at the time), and briefly held the post of Nagadras(Chief of Commerce and Customs) of Dire Dawa (an important import-export trade hub).

NegadrasGebrehiwotwrote two books in Amharic, both of which were published by his friend PaulosMenameno. The first one is AtseMenilikna Ethiopia (Emperor Menelik and Ethiopia). This is a short book of just about 28 pages which was specifically written as an advice piece to Eyasu Michael, the young heir-designate to EmprorMenelik.

In Menelik and Ethiopia, ZinabuSamaro noted,Gebrehiwot makes an interesting note regarding one feature of state vis. economic development: in a developed society, the state is a sort of voluntary association of citizens where their leader’s authority is constitutionally and legally limited and where change of leadership or death of a leader does not significantly affect the existence and continuity of the state. He contrasts this with the situation of the then Ethiopia where the king/emperor is the state/government and any change of leadership threatens the very existence of the country as a polity since constitutional and legal frameworks and well functioning bureaucratic public administration did not exist. Thus, for him, existence of a stable and constitutionally governed state that has a meritocratic public administration is a necessity for economic development and modernization.

His more significant work is howeverMengistinaYeHizbAstedader. As indicated by PaulosMenameno (the publisher) in the preface to the book, following the death of the author, the manuscript of the book were scattered in different places, and written partly in ink and partly in pencil. It was published in 1924 by the BerhanenaSelam Press. This book is essentially a treatise on political economy of development (or in today’s language economics of development); however, there is no consensus among historians and commentators as to why Gebrehiwot chose to give it this title. Nevertheless, it is very clear from the very beginning of the book that the author intended it to be specifically about how a people or nation may fail or succeed to develop and attain high standards of living and welfare. The book was annotated, introduced and translated into English by TenkirBonger in 1995.

Zinabu noted that in brief, for Gebrehiwot, the main keys to economic development are the creation, accumulation and use of knowledge and skill, technology, innovation and technical change. The means to do this is through deliberate and comprehensive set of state directed, synergistic interventions in areas such as infrastructure development, human development and education, promotion of technology adoption and innovation, internal market expansion, financial sector development and import protection.

In 2011 the Addis Ababa University Press published “The Works of Gebre-HiwotBaikedagn” in Amharic. It is actually two books combined into one: – “AtseMenelik and Ethiopia”; and “MengistinaYeHizbAstedader.”

MatteoSalvadore in his paper ‘A Modern African Intellectural: GebrehiwotBaykedagn’sQuest for Ethiopia’s Sovereign Modernity’ stated that Gebrehiwotwas deeply concerned with the state of the Ethiopianeconomy at large and of the peasantry in particular as it was suffering underoverlapping layers of oppression. The erosion of rest rights, the growth ofglutdemands, and the lack of land ownership in the South made the livesof the Ethiopian peasant unbearable.

Gebrehiwotwrote that “whenland is in the hands of a few people, it is a bad omen for the country. Itsignals that people have become poorer and that the authority of thegovernment had diminished. If the land is equitably distributed and heldby many people, it indicates that power is wielded by the people and thegovernment”.

In Gebrehiwot’sview the peasantry was victimized by a gluttonoustax system feeding an unproductive elite, as later testified by Gebre-Wold-IngidaWorq’sEthiopia’s Traditional System of Land Tenure and Taxation, which confirmed Gebrehiwot’s denunciation of a system where“the tribute paid in the form of labour is exhausted instantly. The tributetax paid in grain is consumed in vain by those who do not work. That is, itis wasted like the first tribute. The third type of tax tribute is money. Thismoney tax is not returned to the peasant; it all goes to the foreign workersin lieu of […] non essentials”.

Gebrehiwotalso have an uplifted view of the Ethiopian peasantry. He started his main workcontending that “a government which wants to help and strengthen itspeople should strive to improve the life of the peasantry.” TheEthiopian oligarchic system based on the extraction of surplus from avictimized peasantry had become untenable. Gäbre-Heywät envisioned a change of mentality, arguing that “We have not understood yet that menare respected for their work and their intelligence; we discount those whocan write and we treat them as sorcerers; with regard to those who knowhow to use their hands, we diminish them […] The only glory we know isthat of the soldier, who carries an old rifle and spends his days followinghis chief like a dog”. It is with statements such as this that Gebrehiwotexplicitly rejects warlike values.

Gebrehiwot saw unstoppable change flowing in from Europe butrefrained from judging these forces of change as inherently better, as partof a superior civilization,Salvadore noted. His thought was very much the product of a newworld view that characterized intellectual production in Menelik’sEthiopia, one with an “increasingly clear perception of the world beyondEthiopia in the late nineteenth century”. His thought lacked theideological stiffness that characterized visions later elaborated by Marxistintellectuals in Ethiopia and Africa. The flexible and compromising natureof his stance — the idea of taking the best of two worlds and making itwork — could be seen as the serene perspective of somebody who hadbeen spared the horrors and sufferance of colonialism, Salvadore stressed.

Citing historian Baharu and other sources,AlemayehuGeda and Abraham Abebe in their paper work onGebrehiwotBaikedagn published in Institute of African Economic Studies, characterized Gebre-Hiwot as a reformist intellectual of the early twentieth century Ethiopia. Ethiopian economists, they said, take him as a pioneer development economist and environmental students of Ethiopia viewed him as the first Ethiopian thinker on environment and development.

In his review of the “Works ofGebrehiwotBaikedagn,”Abebe Haile said: What is perhaps most amazing is the fact that such an intellectual of the highest order lived at that period in Ethiopian history and very few Ethiopians know him and here we are talking about him now. Quoting prominent Ethiopia historian, Abebe further added the reason for the Gebrehiwot’s anonymity is the fact that he lived in Africa and wrote his seminal theory of development economics and political theory in Amharic. One may also add that Gebrehiwot was not connected to any great academic institution and that he died when he was only 33 years old, long before he could expound and test his theories or firmly establish his credentials.

BY STAFF WRITER