Is Ethiopia Moving Towards a Militaristic or Developmental State?

Meles Zenawi has been bragging about rapid development and poverty reduction since TPLF’s grip of power in Ethiopia. Particularly, since the rejection of his rule in the 2005 election, Meles’ junta has been claiming consistently high levels of economic growth in the country. But a closer scrutiny of credible researches reveals that investment patterns of the government tell a totally different story.

Table 1. Trends in federal government budget allocations in selected African countries 2000-2007

Country Agri. Edu. Health Transp/Comm Social Defense Other*

Ethiopia 9.4 9.2 1.9 4.4 9.9 18.3 46.6
Ghana 0.5 15.1 4.7 1.2 0.0 2.1 76.3
Kenya 4.3 27.7 6.0 5.6 5.6 7.8 43.1
Malawi 5.0 18.2 12.2 4.1 7.0 2.6 50.9
Mozambique 5.1 20.1 12.9 15.4 N.A N.A 46.2
Nigeria 2.9 7.6 4.6 2.4 2.5 6.2 73.8
Uganda 3.9 18.7 10.7 9.6 2.9 10.0 44.1
Zambia 10.8 16.6 7.9 1.0 0.4 12.4 50.9

Source: IFPRI (Jan. 2012 Study Report)
*Other government functions including general administration, fuel and
energy, and manufacturing, construction and mining

From a cursory look at the above table, the following critical observations can be made:

 Ethiopia has by far the lowest investment in education (except Nigeria) and health and the highest investment in defense.

 Ethiopia’s defense allocation is almost twice the country’s allocation for education and health.

 The proportion Ethiopia allocates for defense is almost equivalent to the combined defense allocations of Ghana, Kenya, Malawi and Nigeria. Ghana is an African democracy now, and the other two had relatively better democratic elections.

While the basic building blocks for a nation’s development are its people’s education and health, it is ridiculous when Woyane puports to making Ethiopia a middle income country in the next decade, while it stands at the tail end even by African standards.

The government’s investment pattern and illicit financial flows shown in other reports tells us that this a regime destined to bleed the country dry by the hench of its military. Adios development.