African Studies Commons^™

Differential Adoption Of Technologies And Its Implications For Policy Choice Between Equity And Growth, Beyene Tadesse

International Conference on African Development Archives

Government policies often attempt to create simultaneous impact on economic efficiency and equity. The Ethiopian government optimistically has targeted to simultaneously achieve at improvement in agricultural efficiency (growth) and equitable distribution of the benefits by all farmers in the whole part of the country. However, many scholars most often argue that growth and equity are inversely related in most development processes. Thus, the main objective of the paper was to evaluate the interhousehold and interregional technology adoption pattern (implies both growth and equity). The conceptual relationship of growth and equity, and experiences in adoption studies were first assessed. Then three …

Ethiopia, The Tplf And Roots Of The 2001 Political Tremor, Paulos Milkias

International Conference on African Development Archives

No abstract provided.

Reflections On Development In Ethiopia, Paul B. Henze

International Conference on African Development Archives

I visited Ethiopia frequently and traveled extensively in all parts of the country during the Derg period. I observed firsthand the deleterious effects of the Derg's attempt to turn the country into a communist "people's republic".1 Since the fall of the Derg in May 1991 I have made eleven visits to Ethiopia (with a twelfth scheduled for June 2001), usually for periods of several weeks, totaling well over a year of travel in the country in all. During these same years I have also spent time in 16 other post-communist countries, ranging from Slovenia and Armenia to Mongolia, observing the …

Perspectives On Institutional Reform And Development In Ethiopia: The Critical Role Of Building Enabling Institutions For Economic Growth And Development, Sisay Asefa

International Conference on African Development Archives

This paper provides some normative perspectives on sustainable economic and political reform in contemporary Ethiopia, by focusing on the need to establish enabling institutions for economic growth and development. The paper begins with the basic premise that poverty in Ethiopia is primarily a problem of institutional failure, and that at a successful economic reform not only must be focused on poverty-focused economic growth in a country where about 50 percent of the population is below the poverty line, but it must also be accompanied with institutional reform and development that may result in a positive-sum outcome for all constituent groups …

Sustainable Small Hydropower Development In Ethiopia Case Study Ropi Hydropower Plant (Bilate Basin, Ethiopia), Zelalem Hailu, H.B. Horlacher

International Conference on African Development Archives

The paper considers a case study of the Ropi hydropower site in the Bilate basin in Ethiopia to show the effect of seasonal variability of river flow on the magnitude and reliability of power supply.

Bureaucratic Neutrality In An Ethnic Federalism: The Case Of Ethiopia, Berhanu Mengistu, Elizabeth Vogel

International Conference on African Development Archives

The question addressed in this paper is whether bureaucratic neutrality, or the depoliticization of civil service, is compatible with ethnic federalism. This question is explored by reviewing the classic theories of bureaucracy as a foundation for examining the research question and contextualizing bureaucratic neutrality in Ethiopian ethnic federalism.

Distance Education Initiative For Ethiopia, Abebe Kebede

International Conference on African Development Archives

In Ethiopia the last three decades have been marred with political, social and economic turmoil. These decades have also witnessed a significant decline in the education system of the country. The system has failed miserably to keep up with demand. Among the major contributing factors for the deterioration of the educational system are the growth in enrollment, lack funding for infrastructure and innovation. For example primary school enrollment increased from about 957,300 in 1974/75 to nearly 2,450,000 in 1985/86. (Country Studies, 1996) According to government statistics during the same period primary schools grew from 3,196 to 7,900. These numbers are …

Private Sector Development In Ethiopia, Solomon Deneke

International Conference on African Development Archives

Ethiopia is known for its longstanding freedom and civilization that go as back as over three thousand years. Unfortunately the country is now known as backward, least developed and one of the poorest of the poor. This historic plight has its own background and long process that this paper does not intend to get into. The major objective of this paper is to assess private sector that plays a paramount role in the Ethiopian economy.

Foreign Direct Investment And Uncertainty: Implications For Ethiopia, Adugna Lemi, Sisay Asefa

International Conference on African Development Archives

The paper examines the effect of price and exchange rate uncertainty and political instability on the inflow of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) to selected African economies. Measures of uncertainty of inflation rate and real exchange rate are incorporated by taking the conditional variance of the residual of the Autoregressive (AR) processes of each series. Pooled data result without accounting for country specific factors is misleading. Fixed effects model provides a better explanation of the variation of FDI flow to African economies. The results show that uncertainty in the rate of inflation and political instability constrain the flow of FDI only …

The Macroeconomics Of Foreign Aid To Ethiopia: Internal Balance And Fiscal Response-An Alternate Framework, Getnet Alemu

International Conference on African Development Archives

Foreign aid recipient fiscal response in developing countries is studied using utility/welfare maximization principle. The underlying assumption of this function (utility/welfare can be maximized by narrowing the deviations of the actual values from their desired values subject to the constraints of finance) doesn’t capture the interplay between project aid inflows and the adjustment process of the government budget. This paper proposes an alternative framework in conceptualizing the recipients fiscal response. This was possible due to the special feature of this paper that aid is disassociated from foreign capital inflow and also identified by its usage which is not the case …

Health And Education Issues In Ethiopia, Meskerem Shiferaw

International Conference on African Development Archives

This paper is written for use in the International Conference on Contemporary Development Issues in Ethiopia that will be held, at Western Michigan University, from August 16-18, 2001. It is written for participants of the conference who are interested to know about the current situation of health and education sectors in Ethiopia, in the overall framework of the country's economy. In the paper, the earlier and existing policies and their impact on the development of the sectors is touched up on.

The Conflict Of Ethnic Identity And The Language Of Education Policy In Contemporary Ethiopia, Teshome G. Wagaw

International Conference on African Development Archives

This paper examines the current language policy of Ethiopia, especially its significance for the educational systems of that country. The policy in its present form was proclaimed in 1991 after the present government drove out the former Marxist-Leninist military junta, which had ruled the country for the preceding twenty years2. The language policy, along with other human rights and ethnic-related policies, was incorporated into the new constitution that took effect in 1996. Among other things, the policy provides for Ethiopia’s more than 90 language groups to develop and use their respective languages in the courts, in governmental and other political …

Women's Higher Education In Ethiopia Under Three Regimes, 1950-1997, Alem Habtu

International Conference on African Development Archives

A recent World Bank report sums up the condition of the "typical" Ethiopian woman as follows: "She is a victim of her situation, without the capacity to initiate change within the quagmire of her poverty, high fertility, poor health and domestic drudgery" (cited in Ethiopia, NPA, April 1995, pp. 14-15).

Generally speaking, most Ethiopian women live in impoverished subsistence. They are expected to marry early, and bear many children. They lack knowledge of hygiene, nutrition or family planning. They live in conditions of very high maternal, infant and child mortality. Lack of education, high fertility, infant mortality, and generally poor …

The Effects Of Food Aid And Household Composition On Child Farm Labor Supply In Rural Ethiopia, Takashi Yamano

International Conference on African Development Archives

This paper determines the effects of household demographic composition and food aid on child farm labor supply controlling for household fixed effects. The results indicate that a child has a higher probability of working on farm if he or she is living with younger children, suggesting that older children are reducing resource constraints. The results on food aid indicate that receiving free distribution has relatively larger positive effects on the probability of girls working on farm than boys, while participating in food for work has relatively larger negative effects.

Causes Of Seasonal Food Insecurity In Oromiya Zone Of Amhara Region: Farmers' View, Degefa Tolossa

International Conference on African Development Archives

Ethiopia is currently facing challenging problems, ranging from those induced by environmental crises to those caused by demographic and socio-economic constraints which adversely affect peoples` production system. The country is generally characterized by extreme poverty, continued and high population growth rate, severe environmental degradation and recurrent drought (Getachew 1995; Markos,1997, NOVIB, 1999). Resulting from these, the performance of agriculture, the sector that makes livelihood for 85% of the country’s population, has been poor over the last few decades, to the extent that the country could not adequately feed its population from domestic production. This has been manifested in the prevailing …

Simulating Strategy Options For Enhancing Hyv-Maize Technology Adoption In Oromia, Ethiopia, Bedassa Tadesse

International Conference on African Development Archives

Using a sample selection induced bivariate probit model fitted to data collected from small scale, resource poor farmers in Western Oromia (Jimma, Ilu-Ababaor, Estern and Western Welega zones), I define and simulate different strategy (Pure and Mixed) scenarios. The scenarios provide the extent to which the adoption of maize technology package (HYV-seeds, fertilizers and planting methods) among currently non-adopter maize growers could be increased with the use of different strategies. Among the scenarios evaluated, I find a strategy that emphasizes information approach, as a pure strategy, or when integrated with education and/or the agent approaches-in a mixed strategy, significantly influential …

Supply Response Of Ethiopian Farmers To Price And Non-Price Factors, Abrar Suleiman

International Conference on African Development Archives

The main purpose of this study is to examine the responsiveness of peasant farmers to changes in price and non-price factors. To this end, quadratic production and restricted profit functions are fitted to farm-level survey data from Ethiopia. The results indicate that farmers respond significantly to price incentives, but the effect of prices on output supply and fertilizer demand is negligible. The most important finding is that non-price factors are far more important in affecting production and resource use than price incentives. The results underscore the need to strengthen market incentives through effective policies that will improve farmers’ access to …

Does The Ethiopian In The Diaspora Have A Role In Ethiopia’S Development?, Temesghen Hailu

International Conference on African Development Archives

Ethiopia is one of the economically poor nations in the world. It doesn’t take effort to identify what economic and social problem characterizes our country. Underemployment, malnutrition, subsistence farming, deforestation, erosion, poor transport and telecommunication services, inadequate access to drinking water and health care, high mortality and birth rates, low life expectancy, etc. All these are recipes of what can be considered as individuals living below poverty line, however specific it may be defined. A host of problems face our country. The solution, therefore become complicated because strategies to solve one problem may accelerates others. These problems are the result …

The Eprdf And The Crisis Of The Ethiopian State, Aregawi Berhe

International Conference on African Development Archives

Present day Ethiopia constitutes a multi-ethnic society where ethnic politics and ethnic mobilization had been the path to power and the pillars to maintain it, perceptibly since the Era of Princes (1769-1855). During that period, Ethiopia was parcelled or ‘decentralized’ in disorderly fashion among local princes, who drew support from their ethnic or sub-ethnic base. To this day, ethnic grounds have been the power base of Ethiopian political elites under various banners and forms.

Ethiopia is now facing yet another experimental policy under the autocratic regime of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) whose core element is the Tigray …

Impact Of Government Policies On The Development Of Ict In Ethiopia, Dawit Bekele

International Conference on African Development Archives

During the last decades Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has changed the lives of a vast portion of the world’s population. Beyond any doubt, the impact of ICT on the human civilization will continue to be very important for decades to come.

Coffee-Enset-Livestock Interaction For Sustainable Livelihood In The Sidama Area Of Southern Ethiopia, Tsegaye Yilma

International Conference on African Development Archives

The coffee growing areas of Sidama, the midlands, are one of the densely populated areas in Ethiopia, with a population density of 500 persons per arable land. Coffee serves as the major cash source to the farm household, which expends the cash to its different uses one of which is asset formation through the purchase of livestock. Livestock of different type are reared with small herd size in the area. The population pressure brought land to be the most limiting production constraint. Due to its limitation the available land is mainly allocated to the major staple food of the area, …

Decision Making On Manure Use And Fallowing As Soil Fertility Maintenance Techniques In The Northern Highlands Of Ethiopia: The Case Of Ankober District, Senait Regassa

International Conference on African Development Archives

Degradation of the highly scarce agricultural resource, land, has been one of the notorious problems in Ethiopia. One form of degradation of land resource is soil nutrient depletion. Manure application as a source of major plant nutrients contributes to managing land resources towards sustainability through the improvement of physico-chemical properties of the soil. Fallowing too, allows for natural regeneration of the soil. However, decisions on how to manage the land are ultimately made by farmers and their decision-making process is influenced by several factors. This paper attempts to examine the effects of some important farm, family and institutional variables on …

Community Resource Management: The Case Of Grazing Lands In Northern Ethiopia, Berhanu Gebremedhin, John Pender, Girmay Tesfay

International Conference on African Development Archives

Communal grazing lands are important sources of livestock feed in developing countries (ILRI, 1998). In the presence of sufficient demand for livestock or livestock products, unrestricted access to the grazing lands will result in overexploitation of the resource and the scarcity rent of the resource remains unappropriated. Each individual user of the resource enjoys the full benefit of her use of the resource but bears only a fractional part of the cost. As a result, the traditional uncontrolled and free grazing system in many developing countries has caused severe degradation of the grazing lands.

The Evolution And Development Of The Public Health College And Training Center In Gondar: The History Of Che-Che-La, From An Italian Consular Office To Medical College /1910s- 1970s/, Solomon Getahun

International Conference on African Development Archives

No abstract provided.

Determinants Of Farmer Perceptions Of The Severity And Yield Impact Of Soil Erosion: Evidence From Northern Ethiopia, Berhanu Gebremedhin, Scott Swinton

International Conference on African Development Archives

Farmers must perceive soil erosion as a problem before they will invest in preventing it. However, perceptions are often overlooked in the conservation literature. This study analyzes the levels and determinants of farmer perceptions of soil erosion in northern Ethiopia. Results are based on a survey of 250 farmers managing 900 fields during the 1995-96 cropping season. Farmer perceptions of the severity and productivity impact of soil erosion were measured at plot level as ordinal variables. Ordered probit and ordinary probit statistical regressions were used to analyze the levels and determinants of farmer perceptions.

Farmers were more likely both to …

The Elite And The Quest For Peace, Democracy And Development In Ethiopian: Lessons To Be Learnt, Merera Gudina

International Conference on African Development Archives

The present experiment involves the objective of accomplishing two historical tasks: the tasks of creating a country that houses 'nations, nationalities and peoples' of equals and ending an authoritarian rule by democratizing the Ethiopian state and society as a whole, a precondition for peace and development. However, as the result of the accumulated five grand failures of the Ethiopian elite in a century, the prennial quest for peace, democracy and development continue to be as illusive as ever. The most fundamental question is, therefore, what lessons to be learnt to move forward? This paper, which sums up the political history …

Participation Of Ethiopian Women In Education And Development, Sewnet Mamo Mengesha

International Conference on African Development Archives

The population of Ethiopia, which is about 55 million, is the second largest in Africa. According to the current growth rate it is projected to be doubled over the next 20 years. UN’s human development index states that Ethiopia is one of the lowest four countries in terms of social development. After the end of a long civil war in 1991, it is in the process of social and economical transformation.

Ethiopia is not only at a lowest stage of social development but also it is one of educationally disadvantaged countries in the world. Most of the school aged children …

A Review Of Distributed Generation Technologies And Their Applicability In Ethiopia, Haeran Fisseha, Yared Mengistu

International Conference on African Development Archives

This study has four parts. The first part reviews the current energy and electricity situation in Ethiopia by examining the consumption and supply patterns of energy in general, and the electricity sector in particular. The second part explores Distributed Generation, its definition and the reasons for its current popularity as the emerging electric power generation paradigm. The third part evaluates makes a preliminary financial analysis of the “Mega” hydro electricity vs Distributed Generation electricity. Finally, the concluding section summarizes the different issues raised, and comes up with a few recommendations.

Economic Reforms And Structural Changes In Ethiopia Since 1992; An Inquiry, Prabhakar Reddy Tada

International Conference on African Development Archives

Since the beginning of the nineties, Ethiopia has been experiencing significant political, economic and social changes. Despite the efforts of the Ethiopian government to strengthen market economy mechanisms and to decentralize and regionalize decision making structures, the country is still facing a number of problems such as poverty, soil degradation, regional conflicts etc. The elaboration of sound development strategies is essential to promote economic growth, and to alleviate poverty in the context of limited resources. In brief, the economy is undergoing the process of transformation in all most all the fields. In this context, the paper is an attempt to …

Agricultural Research System Of Ethiopia: Past History And Future Vision, Tesfaye Zegeye

International Conference on African Development Archives

Agricultural Research in Ethiopia began in Jimma and Ambo in 1952 and was extended to the then College of Agriculture at Alemaya in 1957 and later in 1965 included Debre Zeit. Realizing the importance of agricultural research in economic development the Ethiopian government established the Institute of Agricultural Research (IAR) in 1966 as a semiautonomous organization under the general supervision of the Ministerial Board of Directors.

The specific mandates of the Institution of Agricultural Research was to: Formulate national agricultural research policies, Coordinate national agricultural research Undertake research in its centers and sub-centers located in various agro-ecological zones of the …