Survey
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
FEDERAL DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF ETHIOPIA1 A. General Country Data Surface Area (1997) Population (millions) Population Growth Urban Population (1999) Population Density (1999) GDP (1999) in billion GDP per capita (1997/98) National Budget (1990) (1997) Monetary Unit Human Development Indicator HDI Rank out of 174 countries 1,104,000 sq.km 65.3 3% p.a. 17% of total 63 inh./ km2 US$6.5 US$109.6 27.2 % of GDP 25.5% of GDP Ethiopian Birr 0.252 169 Borders, Topography and Climate Ethiopia is found in the Horn of Africa. It is surrounded on the south by Kenya and Somalia, in the east by Somalia and Djibouti, in the north by Eritrea and in the west by Sudan. The country has an area of 1,104,000 square km, about twice the size of France, and a population of 65.3 million in 2001. Ethiopia is a country of great geographical diversity with altitudes ranging from 110 meters below sea level to 4620 meters above sea level. It is made up of high and rugged mountains, flattopped plateaux, and deep gorges with rivers and rolling plains. There are 18 major agricultural zones and 62 sub-zones having their own physical and biological potentials and constraints. The climatic conditions closely follow the topographic conditions: the higher areas being wetter and cooler, and the lower areas drier and hotter. In general, about 50 percent of the country receives annual rainfall ranging from 800 to 1600 mm. But for about 55 percent of the country, the variation of annual rainfall might be as high as 50 percent. In terms of effect, slopes and runoff on the highlands, and high temperature and evaporation in the lowlands have adverse effects. The majority of the Ethiopian population is concentrated in the highland plateaux, which show alpine vegetation, while the lowlands are characterized, by bushlands, woodlands, savannah grasslands and semi-arid shrubs. Small rains come during February and March, while the big rains predominate from June to September. One consequence of the rugged terrain is a poor transportation system, a major obstacle to development, limiting the nation’s capacity to provide services and exploit natural resources. Characteristics, and Recent Developments of the Political System The Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia was established in August 1995. The new constitution established multi-party based parliamentary system, and democratically elected 1 The terms and data used in this publication are in no way an indication of the authors' position regarding the legal status of the countries, territories, cities or zones mentioned, or of their authorities or borders. governments at Federal and regional levels. Election is done every 5 years. The constitution emphasises democracy, peace and development. The Federal Government is responsible for national defence, foreign relations, and general policies of common interests and benefits. Regional States are vested with legislative, executive and judicial powers for self-administration. The country is divided into regions, and the regions into lower administrative units. Experience shows that the regional governments have serious constraints of lack of adequate financial and human resources to effectively carry out the management of decentralized administration and development. Effort is now being made to build up the capacity of lower administrative units (woredas and kebeles) to enable them caters to the needs of people at grass root level. Agriculture in Ethiopia Agriculture accounts for 50 percent of GDP, 90 percent of the foreign export earnings and employs about 85 percent of the population. Smallholders manage close to 95 percent of the cultivated land and contribute about 96 percent of the annual agricultural output. Agriculture production in Ethiopia is largely rain-fed and traditional. Its sensitivity to climatic changes is so high that agricultural production has been frequently fluctuating along with rainfall. Invariably, failure in rains means drought resulting in food deficiency in both crop producing and pastoralist’s areas, and a decline in the economy as a whole. The performance in agricultural production could be seen from the perspective of two time phases: Until the mid1990s (from 1979/80 to 1993/94) food production from both crop and livestock origins grew annually by only 0.5 percent making it necessary for the country to increasingly depend on food aid to cover the chronic shortfalls in domestic supplies; and from the mid-1990s, Ethiopia has put a vigorous effort to intensify production in areas where rainfall is reliable. The effort involved the use of participatory extension system and demonstration trials where improved agronomic practices, and increased use of inputs were intensively promoted using farm credit system. There has been consistent increase in the distribution of inorganic fertilizer and improved seeds. This effort in extension has produced very tangible results: in the farms of participating farmers in the extension package: the yields of major crops were increased two to three times, and total crop production has gone up from an average of 5.5 million tons from 1985 to 1996 to an average of 9.1 million tons since 1996; and there is now an increased awareness and change of attitude about the importance of the rehabilitation of natural resources. Despite this, the total domestic production was not adequate to ensure national and household food security. For one thing, production has a tendency to fluctuate as per the weather and rainfall. For another, production in drought-prone lowland areas did not show much improvement because of the lack of appropriate technical packages, and poor development of water resources and infrastructures. The more serious threat was the fast growth of population, which grew by almost 2.9 to 3.1 percent (over 2 million additional people annually), seriously negating the progress made on the food production side. Current Economic Situation The structure of the Ethiopian economy changed very little in the last 18 years. The percentage share of the sectors is agriculture 51.2, service 38.1 and industry 10.6. The key constraint is the extremely high dependence on agriculture, where land and labour productivity are very low. The contribution of the other sectors towards the national economy has remained stagnant over a long period of time. This means that the degree to which the Ethiopian economy grows largely depend on the performance of the agricultural sector. The latter in turn entirely depends on the vagaries of nature and other man made uncertainties such as war. The average growth rate of the economy /GDP in the past 7 years ranged from 4.4 to 6.2 %. However, the structure of foreign trade did not show marked change in the past few decades. Coffee still dominates the country’s export hovering around 50-60 percent of the total exports. It could be said that the sustainable development of the economy needs structural transformation which will involve the transformation of the agricultural sector and reducing the role of agriculture in the economy by significantly increasing the growth of the other sectors, particularly industry. B. On-going Decentralization Process Background, Objectives, and Legal Framework The Ethiopian state has a history of more than 2000 years. However, the modern state was not born until the mid 19th century. The modern Ethiopian empire flourished for about 120 years coming to an end with the overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974. During these years and regimes, administrative, economic and political decision making was highly centralized. Following the fall of the military, Transitional Government of Ethiopia (TGE) was set up in July 1991 and decision was made to set up a decentralized regional administration within a federal structure, introduce a multi-party politics and an independent judiciary. The decentralization has the objective of transforming Ethiopia from a highly centralized unitary state into a federal government based on substantial devolution to ethnically defined jurisdictions. In August 1995, successor government to the TGE was formed known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (FDRE) and the country has been divided into 9 Regions and 2 Special Administrative Areas (the cities of Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa). Functions, Resources, and Autonomy of Decentralized Entities The decentralization process has produced far-reaching effect on regional planning, and resource mobilization and utilization. Under the federal structure, the regional self-governments have executive, legislative and judicial powers in respect of all matters within their geographical areas except matters which fall under the jurisdiction of the FDRE which includes defence, foreign affairs, declaration of state of emergency, conferring of citizenship, deployment of army where situations beyond the capacity of the Regional Government arise, printing of currency, establishing and administrating major development establishments, and administrating major communication networks . Article 5 of Proclamation 33/1992 of the Federal Government identifies three sources of revenue for each region: those which are designated for its own income; those which it shares with the Federal Government; and grants from the Federal Government. Review of the responsibilities and resources of the regions indicate that the responsibilities are far in excess of the revenue that can be generated from the above sources. The revenue raised by regions cover only 20 to 30 percent of their annual budget. The balance, close to 80 percent, is covered by the federal government in the form of a grant which makes the regions heavily dependent on federal resources. C. Decentralization and Rural Development Forms of Decentralization, Agricultural and Rural Development Policy Formulation The constitution assumes a 4-tier structure: federal, regional, zonal and woreda. The country is divided into regions, the regions into zones, and the zones into woredas. In total, there are now 9 regions, 66 zones and 556 woredas , though the zonal and woreda figures change from time to time because of continuous administrative adjustments. The central/federal government organ consists of the elected Council of Representatives and the appointed Council of Ministers. The former is a legislative body with supreme power of decision-making on matters of national concern. The Council of Ministers prepares the social and economic development plans and budget of the federal government. It submits plans and budgets to the Council of Representatives and implements them when approved. A similar structure is replicated at the lower level. The Regional Council which is an elected body for 5 years is the supreme decision making power in the region. The regional executive committee is responsible for policymaking and major administrative decisions. It supervises the bureaux that are counterparts to the ministries in the federal government. The bureaux are independent of federal ministries; even though there are areas in which they co-operate and get technical support .The responsibilities of the bureaux include policy formulation, coordination and overseeing of the activities of zonal and woreda corresponding departments and offices, and control of capital and recurrent budgets. The regions are divided zones, woredas and kebeles. The zone does not have its own council. The position of the zone is a delegation of authority from the Regional Council to some of its members to co-ordinate and administrate in its behalf the large number of woredas/districts in the zone. Under the zonal executive committee, there are sectoral departments corresponding to the bureaux at the regional level. The woreda is the key or basic local administrative unit in the regional government structure. The woreda is administratively subordinated to the region and zonal administration. It has no direct contact with central government. It has a council and an executive committee and it has legal mandate to plan and effectively implement development efforts in its respective area. A woreda may consist of 7 to 15 or more kebeles. The kebele is the lowest administrative unit and consists of a large number of households in rural or urban neighbourhood. Their major function is to co-ordinate social and economic activities at grass-root level. The Transitional Government of Ethiopia (TGE) announced in 1991 a New Economic Policy liberalizing the former socialist economy by focusing on promotion of marketing development, encouraging private sector investment and enhancing the development of rural infrastructure. The policy placed food security at the top of its development priorities. This policy announcement was followed by the articulation of the Agricultural Development-Led Industrialization Strategy (ADLI) for the long-term development of the country. The strategy aims to achieve rapid and sustainable economic growth by improving the productivity of agriculture and building-up agro-based industrial sector using local raw materials and labour intensive technologies. The long-term objective is to structurally transform the economy in such a way that the relative weights of agriculture, industry and service will change significantly in favour of the latter two. Decentralization and Agricultural Support Services Government has put huge resources (financial and human) to re-organize the agricultural research system and support the extension service. Regional research organizations were established with clear mandates and responsibilities for research in their respective regions and to be supported by the federal institution, the Ethiopian Agricultural Research Organization (EARO). The Bureaux of Agriculture in the regions manage the regional extension service. The number of extension staff in the country increased from 4000 in 1990 to over 16000 (14,165 Development Agents, 935 Home Agents and 1281 Supervisors) by April 2000 and they are serving over 7 million farmers. Development Agents: Farmers’ ratio went down from 1: 1500 to 1: 672 (MOA 2000) Farmers’ co-operatives took a dive after the fall of the socialist government in 1991. Effort has been made since then to organize them on the basis of the interest of the members and have their footing in business activities. By 1999, there were 4222 co-operatives with 4 million members and Birr 345 million capital (Birr 8.5 = US41). Most are service co-operatives engaged in input distribution, grain marketing, commodities supply, and provision of other important services such as flour milling. Input supply including inorganic fertilizer, and pesticides and animal drugs are handled by private companies, and improved seeds by both state enterprises and private companies. Agricultural credit and rural marketing is not well developed largely because of the lack of micro financing organizations operating in many rural areas , and the general problem of poor transport and communication infrastructures. This situation has produced situations in which some areas of the country suffer from food shortage and high prices while at the same time other areas may be suffering from surplus production and very low prices. Support Policies, Constraints and Evaluation of the Decentralization Process The decentralization process has been supported by policies such as the Food Security Strategy initiated in 1996, and Women Policy, Population Policy, Education and Health Sectors Development Programs, Policy on HIV/AIDS and more recently Poverty Reduction Strategy. Substantial resources from Government as well as from donors sources have been put for agricultural development (research and extension), rehabilitation of natural resources, social programs (health and education), institutional capacity building and rural infrastructure development, all important measures to help the development of regions and the decentralization process. The major constraints of the decentralization process has been the following: The regions do not generate sufficient resources to cover their expenditures. With limited revenue sources at their disposal, they are dependent on transfers/heavy subsidies from the federal government which in effect is not likely to allow them to seriously succeed in their quest for development. Hence the revenue and budget system is going to be a major political issue for years to come; The elaboration of federal-regional tasks, roles, and relations is expected to take long time. It is also likely to occur unevenly as there is great variability between the regions in terms of economic potential, and administrative and financial capacity; Shortage of trained manpower (professional, technical and administrative) is a national problem. But the problem of insufficient institutional and administrative capacity tends to be more acute in the regions and it is heavily impacting on local development. The issue is more acute in remote and less developed regions as they have trouble in attracting and retaining competent personnel; Devolved power has not trickled down to units such as the woredas and the kebeles, which are the focal centres of development. Hence the logical units for enhanced popular participation are not yet fully operational as local administration for development. The problem is appreciated and measures of institutional capacity building are recently launched. The formation of federal regions primarily on the basis of ethnicity and languages has inherent dangers. Even though it may enhance peoples’ empowerment, and selfconfidence, it is also a development risk, as it tends to constrain free movement of people, business and investment from regions to regions. Outlook For the decentralization process to be effective, the following need to be adequately addressed: The availability of sufficient financial resources for the regional states; Problem of institutional capacity of the lower administrative units in the regions to carry out participatory development programs; and Formulation of mutually working mechanisms to support regional development without jeopardising national unity.