A new book: ‘Why Ethiopia Remains Poor’

This book examines the constraints that inhibit the emergence of a civil society and
democracy in Ethiopia during the EPRDF period, 1991-2005. Freedom and democracy
are taken as precondition for development and social transformation. It introduces a
conceptual construct on synergizing three political and sociological categories, namely¹ the state and society relationship², freedom and democracy, and [3] development, –
poverty eradication, social change and social transformation in transitional societies,-
placing freedom as a pivotal link.

The thesis establishes a marked continuum in the modalities of state and society
relationship throughout the three post-War governments. It examines the current
state/society relationship and highlights lack of freedom as the major constraint. This is
examined against the backdrop of what the historical realm for social change in post-
War Ethiopia was supposed to be. It examines the policies of the current government
(EPRDF) on non-state organizations, the irrational viewpoint it advances and how the
basic perceptions that the ruling party held back in 1975 haven’t changed. It holds that
the government exacerbated the problem of the fragile relationship it had with society.
Why Ethiopia Remains Poor also examines the government’s perception on ethnicity as
the ‘rational’ that governs the functions of its institutions of governance and deconstructs
EPRRDF’s “revolutionary democracy”, the dichotomy between quality and quantity as
well as between cadres and experts. It also deconstructs the EPRDF’s thesis on the
“national question” both in terms of its claims to have proceeded from the positions of
the old student movement on the one hand and from the Marxian theoretical perception
on the other.

The analysis is extended to examine the development challenges that Ethiopia currently
faces. Four major development challenges are advanced for examination: gender,
environment, rural development and population. A chapter is devoted exclusively to
gender while the other three domains of sustainable development, i.e. environment, rural
development and population, are analyzed in one Chapter. The thesis concludes that the
EPRDF has failed to resolve these structural problems and has no capacity to do so.
EPRDF’s exclusion of the nascent ‘civil society’, suppression of freedom in general is
taken as the main factors behind the failure.

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Note: the book can be ordered online from Amazon.com. The publishers put the price at 79 Euro or
$98 at current exchange rate.