Why Ethiopia fails to meet millennium development goals (MDGs)

Adopted by world leaders in the year 2000 and set to be achieved by 2015, Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is numerical
benchmarks for tackling extreme poverty and common end for human development reaches
everyone, everywhere and cut world poverty by half. As an effort to meet the MDG, poverty
reduction was the overriding development agenda for Ethiopia for the last one decade. There
were Plan for Accelerated and Sustained Development to End Poverty (PASDEP) I and II
covering the period 2000-2011.

According to Ethiopia government report, encouraging progresses have been registered in most
economic and social sectors. In 2010, the government developed a 10 years Growth and
Transformation Plan (GTP), with a major aim of sustaining faster economic growth obtained
from Plan for PASDEP I and II in the period 2000-2011. With the double digit growth of
Ethiopian economy, the incidence of poverty fell from 44 percent in 2001 to 29 percent in 2010.
However the pace of change is not adequate for Ethiopia to accelerate the progress towards
achieving the MDG. Besides there is no clear link between the 10 year poverty reduction plan
and the current transformation plan. The current plan gives much emphasis to economic
development and doesn’t give a clue how poverty issue would be addressed. Ethiopia has still
low levels of income, savings and productivity in the agricultural sector, structural food
insecurity, environmental degradation, limited implementation capacity, high unemployment and
a narrow modern industrial sector base. The economy is threatened by the twin challenges of
inflation and sustaining the macroeconomic stability is still a major challenge as it’s clearly
indicated in the MDG Report.

Ethiopia is still dependent on rain-fed agriculture, small-scale and subsistence farming which is
very much vulnerable to climate change. Due to lack of structural transformation in agriculture,
droughts still a major threat. Although there is reduction in level of poverty in some rural areas
there is increment in urban poverty. The Hunger and malnutrition are still endemic problem in
the country. Despite the progress reiterated by the government, it’s clear that halving poverty by
2015 would be unrealistic. The government of Ethiopia believes that the country is heading in
the right direction to meeting the MDG targets, however according to UN 2010 report, Ethiopia
is one of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa where little has been made in reducing extreme
poverty and not expected to achieve the MDG poverty reduction target.

Depending on the priority in the government current development agenda, there is expansion in
gross primary school enrolment. Despite the impressive gains in primary school enrolment, the
education sector in Ethiopia faces major challenges; low quality of education, limited resources,
average pupil-teacher ratio, distance from schools, large class-sizes, shortage of teaching
materials and discouraging teaching-learning process. These necessitate a balanced development
across all tiers of the education system, curriculum development and expansion in supply of
trained teachers. Health sector has made major expansion and has strategy to strengthen the
provision of preventative and primary health care services. However, still Ethiopia has the
highest maternal and child mortality and morbidity. As Ethiopia’s demographic and health
survey showed 25,000 women died every year giving birth and thousands of babies died
annually across the country.

Ethiopia is beset with a range of serious development challenges including: rapid population
growth, high level of poverty, low capacity including skilled human resources to sustain the
economic growth. Periodic droughts are causing a series of humanitarian assistance need that
many million people are in need of emergency and recovery assistance. The level of
unemployment in Ethiopia is high and poses major challenges in the context of poverty
reduction. The rise in urban unemployment reflects the urban economy’s limited capacity to
absorb the rapidly expanding urban work force. The unemployment problem is particularly
severe amongst the youth as employment opportunities for school leavers are very limited.

Despite the government plan for the MDG there is the rampant corruption throughout the county,
according to transparency international Ethiopia has one of the highest corruption in Africa and
ranked113th out of 176 countries. Ethiopia contributes to significant portion of the capital fight
in Arica; according to a research conducted by University of Massachusetts in 2012 Ethiopia’s
capital flight in the last four decades estimated to be 25 billion USD. Corruption is becoming a
way of living; most government officials and institutions are involved in government work and
business. The country’s national and commercial banks are used to enrich party-owned and
endowed enterprises and individuals. This practice is hampering the country development effort
and achieving the MDG targets.

According to Human Rights Reports: Ethiopia, 2010: developmental aid goes to ruling party
members and the disadvantaged and poor people are not befitting form the development effort of
the county. Human right indicated that aid have been subject to distortion for political purposes.
Lack of good governance and absence of fair play ground for all citizens and development
partners are major problems of the country. The ruling party is in power for the last two decades
and manipulating things for its own political agenda. Many people believe that the economic
growth related number and other indicators are cooked data by the government to maintain its
legitimacy. The government insists in its developmental state ideology and hampering inclusive
and multi-party political system. The overall absence of democratic system, good governance
and lack of equal participation of all citizens are hindering the development of the country and
the country progress toward the MDG targets. Therefore considering the current level problem
and the country entwined with many sort of issues; Ethiopia will be one of those countries which
will not meet the MDG targets by 2015.

Some of the factors that contributes why Ethiopia is not meeting the MDG targets

Highly polarized political system: ‘ethnic-state, ethnic-politics and ethnic-federalism’

The current ruling party, from minority population of Ethiopia, has been in power for the last two
decades. Many Ethiopian believe that there is no free and fair election which is one of the
ingredients of sustainable development. The majority of people are marginalized from the
political system and there is no fair play ground for all citizens. Highly educated and competent
Ethiopians are living in exile as a political asylum. Due to the current political philosophy of
developmental state, democratic system building as a means of achieving sustainable
development is neglected by the government. According Dr Birara, an Ethiopian economist who
worked at World Bank for more than 30 years, in his new book entitled, Endemic Poverty That
Globalization Can’t Tackle But Ethiopians Can, stated that “legalization and institutionalization
of an ethnic-state, ethnic-politics and ethnic-federalism tearing the Ethiopian society apart and
destroying a sense of ownership’’. He also said that the political system was “designed to serve
the ethnically-based ruling class and leftist single party is unlikely to care for the poor”. Thus in
order to achieve sustainable development including meeting the MDG targets in Ethiopia there
has to be equal participation and inclusive political system.

Lack of good governance and ownership among community

According to Robin Broad and John Cavanagh “Poverty is not simply an absolute
condition; it needs to be understood as a dynamic. It is necessary to look at the social,
economic, and political interactions of poor people with the elites. It is not a matter of
“cleaning up” disease”.

There are immense efforts in order to alleviate poverty and mitigate its impact. Government and
different development actors are playing pivotal role however the government didn’t build a
sense of ownership among the community and there is no common understanding. The
government does things in a campaign like “cleaning up” disease and there is no long term plan.
Most government officers are short sighted and took office by political commitment not by
professional competency. Most government offices are poorly equipped with both human and
infrastructure. Ethnic representation is the main criterion for managerial position of most
government office which is jeopardizing effective system and development in the country.

Ethiopian land policy

In Ethiopia the government owns the land; as most literatures shows absence of land ownership
discourage individuals and farmers motivation of productive and remain on subsistence farming.
Ethiopia’s economic and social problem resolving and sustainability can be achieved if there is a
modification in the ownership and management of land. According to Birara, with the recent
land grab close to 600,000 hectares of Gambella’s farmlands have been leased and number of
farmers and households have been forced to move and work for the new investors at wages
below poverty level (less than a dollar a day). According to OXFAM the new tragic land grab
phenomena is described as “This buying up of land is negating all attempts to build sustainable
agricultural development, it is an attack on Africa’s food, its water sources, the nutrition of its
children, its women and on its states.” This shows how land ownership issues disempowered
local people and made them vulnerable to wrong government policy and adversely affecting
sustainable development in Ethiopia.

Ineffective use of aid

According to Word Bank, official Development Assistance (ODA) that Ethiopia received in the
last 2 decades is estimated to be around 35 billion USD. World Bank stated that there is
development in Ethiopia but not structural change to alleviate poverty and make basic changes.
ODA assistance that the current regime has received over the years has not reached the common
people, failed to achieve minimal growth and made Ethiopia to be dependent on foreign aid.

According to human right report the government use development aid as a political instrument.
Ethiopia is still unable to achieve food self-sufficiency. All forms of foreign aid that has been
flowing to the country directly to the government won’t improve wellbeing and reduce poverty.
Foreign aid will not transform Ethiopian society from poverty to a sustainable and equitable
prosperity unless the government is committed to the poor and with the right policy measures.

Lack of coordination among development partners

In Ethiopia development partners are contributing their share to the national effort of
development and MDG targets. Donors, local and international CSOs/NGOs and other
development partners are involved in poverty reduction, health, education, HIV/AIDS, Gender
and other development interventions. However their intervention is not clear and visible. Efforts
for addressing the problems are not well coordinated to avoid duplication of efforts and
contribute towards common goal. Besides they are not put in the way that can galvanize actors
engaged in the development of the country to fill missing gaps and enhance better contribution.
There are no standard tools to measure, quantify and show their contribution. There are no means
to capture data from grass-root level, bring to a national level and advocate for common goal.
Even the geographic areas of intervention are not well known and defined, the areas of
specialization are not visible to others and concerned stakeholders working in the area.

Overambitious plan

All development plans PASDEP, GTP and sector ministries plan are over ambitious, as the
government itself confirmed. The MDG target are not well tailored with the existing situation of
the country and were not planned based on realistic data and figures on the ground. Thus meeting
the MDG targets would not be realistic.

The attainment of MDG needs change in the country political system and good governance.
Other economic targets will largely depend on right policy, coping mechanism with weather
conditions and effective utilization external aid. The country’s development needs to be about
effective voice and equal participation of all citizens in the development and political process of
the country. Based on current trend and in the remaining 2 years, only universal primary
education of the MDGs targets is likely to be attained. Thus in order to achieve the development
of Ethiopia and poverty reduction even after the MDG target, 2015, Ethiopia needs to do:

• Change political system: inclusive government, equal participation and voice of all
  citizen, all ethnic group and space for multiparty system,

• Good governance and effective government system,
• Reform the land policy,
• Develop effective mechanism of using aid and coordination among development partners
• Further effort in the participation and empowerment of girls and women,
• Addressing the issue of climate change.