Ethiopia’s all round backwardness is basically caused by poor-quality education and training. This fundamental cause has in turn given rise to poor political, economic and social leadership, unsuitable and inefficient institutions, an ill-educated and unskilled workforce, and therefore to a basic inability to operate, repair, maintain and copy stateof-the-art technologies and production processes.
On the other hand, the country has considerable resources including land, water, forests, animals, good climate and mineral potential. What Ethiopia lacks are knowledge and skills to transform these natural resources into capital, consumer and intermediate goods and services. It is obvious that our backwardness could be seen as an advantage rather than as a liability as there is no need for us to expend resources on research and development to invent or discover any of the latest technologies, production processes, institutions, elements or planets.
But high quality education is required even to copy, repair, maintain and reproduce already invented institutions and technologies. For example, we have not yet in the 21st century copied the institution of democratic government although its rudimentary forms have existed since ancient Athenian times. We still fail to grasp the innate capacity of capitalism to propel societies to ever higher standards of living despite its obvious weaknesses. Churchill once said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the other forms.
High quality education and training would produce excellent political, economic, social and business leaders, who would maintain and expand excellent education and training systems, establish viable democratic governments and institutions, and effective, efficient and fair capitalist economic systems, etc. From these perspectives, Haile Selassie’s government and economic systems were better than both Mengistu’s and Meles Zenawi’s systems. In the former, capitalist development, academic freedom and vibrant elections were beginning to thrive whereas in the latter case, dictatorial socialism and authoritarian kleptocracy were very much in evidence, respectively.
Haile Selassies’s reign also witnessed the beginnings of high quality education and training while those of Mengistu and Meles were characterized by the collapse of quality of education. In the latter periods, whole generations of youths were denied the basic requirements for good education, including proficiency in English, basic mathematical concepts, critical thinking, work discipline and the like. Hence, poor-quality education and training is the root cause of Ethiopia’s political, economic, social and technological backwardness. Meles Zenawi’s regime has not produced even a single high-profile and well-educated politician or economist worth his name.
Meles Zenawi himself, although clever, was not the visionary leader that Ethiopia long sought for. Quite on the contrary, he turned out to be a vindictive sort of person out to avenge imagined, rather than real, ethnic mistreatments. Similarly, Megistu’s overzealous patriotism and ignorance of geopolitics caused him to blunder into a catastrophic military defeat that changed the whole trajectory of Ethiopian history. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed emerged from the ruins of political ethnicism which has left thousands dead and buried, maimed and traumatized, displaced and stranded.
He is recognizably trying to resurrect Ethiopia from the ashes of twenty-seven years of inter-ethnic hatred, verbal vitriol and division. He definitely has a formidable task ahead of him. He has to re-unify the country, democratize it and map out a viable development strategy for sustainable economic, scientific and technological progress. To this end, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has promised to hold free and fair elections sometime in May 2020 as scheduled, but his party EPRDF, has, so to speak, its hands tied behind its back by twenty-seven years of political and economic mismanagement, human rights violations and systemic corruption.
Besides, the hitherto dominant party in the EPRDF coalition, namely the TPLF, is getting increasingly recalcitrant with each passing day refusing to toe Abiy’s reform line in more ways than one.
This, of course, complicates the already Herculean task the PM is facing, posing the unification challenge both at the national and the party levels. In fact, the TPLF standoff may force a postponement of the election date unless the PM contrives a way out of the apparent impasse. As things stand now, EPRDF’s chance of winning the national election as a majority party is quite frankly pretty slim, although well-loved EPRDF leaders including the incumbent PM may win seats in parliament on individual merit. Of course, all this is pretty dependent on what the opposition parties, numerous as they are, can manage to do in the face of what seems to be a vulnerable EPRDF.
If they continue with their old ways of bickering and recrimination, they may well lose an opportunity delivered on a silver platter. If they bang heads together, in a spirit of coalition politics, the election may well be theirs to lose. The main election strategy currently being bandied about is one of forming a broad front bringing together Arbegnch Ginbot 7, Oromo Federalist Congress, Semayawi Party, MEIAD, IRAPA, IDEPA and all the non-secessionist ethnic political parties and organizations, and facing the incumbent EPRDF head on. Secession is indelibly associated with EPRDF which rather stupidly enshrined it in the constitution, which, by the way, was never endorsed by the people in a referendum, as it should have been.
The key political figures on the opposition side as of now are: Prof. Birhanu Nega, Prof. Merera Gudina, Dr. Aregawi Berhe, Ato Girma Bekele (South), Ato Yeshiwas Assefa (Semayawi), Ato Teshale Serbaro (South), etc. The strategy here, as maybe quite obvious, is to try and have all the country-wide non-ethnic parties and non-secessionist ethnic parties rally behind these pivotal and easily recognizable leaders and face off the now vulnerable EPRDF! EPRDF and its affiliates cannot now pivot on Article 39 of the constitution (which recognizes the unilateral right of socalled nations, nationalities and peoples to secession) which it almost unilaterally has cast in constitutional stone!
The problem with all this narrative is that it indicates that the all-important issue of economic development is still forced to play second fiddle to politics in Ethiopia, unfortunately. As pointed out above, the key to political, economic, scientific and technological development is goodquality education and training, which, as indicated is non-existent in Ethiopia. So, political and economic leadership, strong institutions and positive and progressive outcomes have been woefully low, and sometimes even counter-productive. As regards political and economic leadership, in retrospect, Haile Selassie was much better than either Mengistu or Meles.
The Emperor’s record on education was in relative terms quite impressive, and American (US) assistance in this respect played a critical role, e.g. Law School and College of Business Administration at Haile Selassie University and Alamaya College.
American aid was also important in the establishment and management of Ethiopian Airlines, High Way Authority, Malaria Control and Eradication Agency, etc. More significantly, the overall economic development, although still fettered by feudalistic features, was pretty much on the right track, allowing and facilitating private ownership of land, thrift and saving and promoting private enterprise and initiative, etc. Under Mengistu, private enterprise was deliberately thwarted by law as it was wrongly thought to be the source of economic exploitation. Meles Zenawi, on the other hand, turned his ‘White Capitalism’ into a red-hot kleptocracy! The irony of it all is that those who led the revolution against Emperor Haile Selassie some 45 years ago as young radicals are now the mellowed elders who are advocating a return to the development model essentially similar to that pursued by the Emperor. Well, it is never too late to do good; hence, so be it.
At least, they have a relatively good education under the Emperor, and when their own creations, Mengistu and Meles, turned into uncompromising dictators, they fled to the origin of their good education, the US where they got even better education and training. And now they are back in Addis Ababa to right the wrongs they unknowingly wrought.
One such person is indisputably Prof. Birhanu Nega whose insight, vision and erudition are almost infectious. His core beliefs, I understand, revolve around citizenship politics and free market economics and he ardently advocates the creation of strong democratic and other institutions as a precondition for a viable and sustainable democratic and economic system. But he has to win the upcoming general election in the country (scheduled for sometime in 2020) if he is to implement his commendable ideas. Hence, his major challenge is to wean back the electorate from years of ethnic politics to a healthy diet of citizenship politics. As has been hinted above, arguably, one election winning formula is to form a coalition with ethnicitybased political parties which do not support secession.
Such a smart move would win him most votes in the north of the country, in Amhara, Tigray, Afar, Harari, Benshangul-Gumz regional administrations and in some parts of Oromia. But Prof. Birhanu insists that his priority is to build strong democratic institutions in close collaboration with PM Abiy Ahmed, but strong institutions in all fields of endeavor take many years to build, and cannot all be started and finished in one election period. Hence, winning political power for at least two terms for able leaders is perhaps the minimum timeline necessary to construct and consolidate strong institutions not only in politics, but more importantly in education and training, leadership and management, economic development, defense, foreign policy, banking and finance, and science and technology. However, at the end of the day, all political struggle should be for high quality education and training, which in essence is the source of true freedom, good leadership and management, strong institutions and positive outcomes in terms of economic, scientific and technological development.
Herald December 23/2018
BY TEKLEBIRHAN GEBREMICHAEL
