Democracy and Social Justice to Further Ethiopia's 2025 Vision Educating for Democracy and Social Justice to Further Ethiopia's 2025 Vision (original) (raw)
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Educating for Democracy and Social Justice to Further Ethiopia’s 2025 Vision
International Journal of African and Asian Studies, 2017
The paper use Ethiopia’s 2025 Vision to frame a transformative theoretical framework in and around which critical discourses about Educational strategy can be articulated to develop and implement Democracy, social justice, educational access and strategies that empower citizens to take charge of their individual and collective destiny to work together with industriousness in pursuit of the national vision of development with equity and prosperity. Keywords: Education, Democracy, Social Justice, Development, Middle Income
Beitrag in: In: Iris Clemens, Marcelo Parreira do Amaral, Marco Rieckmann (eds.): Education in the Context of Global Transformations. Opladen, Berlin, Toronto: Barbara Budrich. p. 141-152. , 2018
The origins of Agenda 2063 lie in the Golden Jubilee of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) now the African Union (AU). The AU summit tasked the African Union Commission (AUC), supported but the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), the Planning and Coordinating Agency (NPCA), the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) to prepare a 50-year continental agenda. This was to be achieved through an extensive consultative process involving a series of meetings across the continent with stakeholders spanning many areas of African society including youth, women, civil society organisations, the diaspora, African think tanks and research institutes, planners, the private sector, religious organisations, the Forum for Former African Heads of State and others. This gave rise to the Aspirations of the African People, the driver of Agenda 2063. 3 As Lélé first noted back in 1991, it has become something of a 'metafix' "that will unite everybody from the profit-minded industrialist and risk minimising subsistence farmer to the equity-seeking social worker, the pollution concerned or wild-lifer loving First Worlder, the growth-minimising policy maker, the goal-oriented bureaucrat, and therefore, the votecounting politician" (Lélé 1991, p. 613). 9 The authors explain that by 'flows' they refer to "the movements of physical artefacts, people, symbols, tokens and information across space and time', whilst 'networks' is used to refer to 'regularized or patterned interactions between independent agents, nodes of activity, or sites of power" (Held et al. 1999, p. 16). 43 Usage of the term can be dated back to Nelson Mandela's (1994) speech to the OAU summit in Tunis in which he spoke of the vision of an African Renaissance following on the liberation of South Africa. It is Thabo Mbeki, however, who is most credited with articulating and developing the concept in the form of a call to action for Africans at the turn of the new millennium. Subsequently, the term has become a point of reference for politicians in Africa, has spawned a number of conferences and led to the establishment of the African Renaissance Institute in Tshwana (formerly Pretoria).
Context brief Ethiopia 2016-2030.pdf
This document was intended as trigger to the focus group brainstorming sessions in preparation of scenario planning with decision makers in 2016. It consolidates contextual information from various sources and focuses on the uncertainties Ethiopia is facing on its path towards 2030. The macro level uncertainties will frame the development of scenarios for higher education and its pivotal role in the development of Ethiopia. Against the backdrop of the success story of Sub Saharan Africa as a whole, it is clear that Ethiopia is surfing the wave and is actually a star performer in terms of growth. However, in some important aspects Ethiopia is taking a different path from its SSA peers. Instead of joining the 'Washington consensus inspired liberalisation, privatisation and open economy strategy coupled with democratisation followed by its peers, Ethiopia has been inspired by the successful developmental state strategies pursued by Asian emerging countries since the 1970's. The main uncertainties highlighted in this brief are linked to Ethiopia's developmental state strategy. As it turns out, while the execution of the ambitious and fast paced growth and transformation plans (GTP) is delivering stunning results, it is also creating critical uncertainties for the macroeconomic and political stability that the government needs in order to deliver on its ambitions. From our research we have seen that both the macroeconomic and political stability are under pressure, while the government is carrying out fast paced deep structural changes in the economy and society. Macroeconomic stability is on a tightrope between an artificially high exchange rate; fuelling imports and consumption while undermining competitiveness of the export economy the government intends to build, and the expansionary monetary policies and external and debt financing of the trade deficit and the gap between domestic savings and investment needs of GTP. The contradictions in the political economy of Ethiopia hold the seeds for sudden shocks and hence macroeconomic instability if no adjustments are made. Against the backdrop of an ethnically based federal system with federal government holding most powers centrally, and in its quest to execute its ambitions without too much political transaction costs, the ruling coalition is closing important avenues for pluralistic democratic consensus by squeezing all opposition out of the legislative and the executive, and entrenching its monopoly on power both within the coalition and vis-à-vis the opposition. The limits of the developmental state lie in the degree to which the population is ready to give up political rights and civil liberties in exchange for economic opportunity and a better life. Also the developmental state, by keeping control as much as it can keeps the burden of finding solutions on its own shoulders thereby foregoing the creativity, innovation, and shared responsibility a more open style of government may provide. The government may be striking a Faustian bargain in which it increasingly sacrifices political rights and civil liberties on the altar of the developmental state in name of law and order so it can free its hands in implementing its well-laid GTP as orderly and as fast as possible. In this way it hopes to deliver its results and provide economic opportunity to the growing numbers of higher educated working age young generations, while instead it runs the risk of more frequent and more violent protests, undermining the very conditions that the execution of GTP needs. Against this canvas of macro level uncertainty, this brief further develops a long view on Ethiopia 2030 and puts forward a set of trigger questions for scenario building with a focus on the pivotal role of higher education in the development of Ethiopia and the uncertainties it deals with.
Before the 1990s, highest level of policy making in developing countries, influenced by international trend setting institutions like the World Bank, was informed by the thesis that the private returns of higher education were much higher than the social counterparts, and hence governments focused their resources rather on lower level education. Today, however, it is clear that higher education not only produces social benefits that are too significant to ignore, rather it is considered as an essential element of the development dynamics in the global competitive environment (Bloom et al, 2014a, 2014b; Bell, 2008; Montenegro & Patrinos, 2013). In 2006 the former Secretary General of the UN, Kofi Annan, made the argument that "university must become a primary tool for Africa’s development in the new century". This was also reflected in the policy direction of many international organizations and of countries; the UNESCO World Conference on Higher Education in 2009 highlighted this ambitious and promising vision (Montanini, 2013). Similarly, the World Bank (2009) suggested that a new version of "Development University" is needed where higher education institutions have to transform themselves in to "networked, differentiated, and responsive institutions focused on the production of strategically needed human skills and applied problem-solving research" (p. 103). Higher education institutions, according to this document, are national assets that can be enabled and steered through national policy instruments to serve national development agendas. Therefore, it is essential that governments, with other concerned stakeholders, shall integrate human capital development in to their economic growth strategies. In the developmental state paradigm, the role of higher education in supplying the required skilled man power, improving productivity through learning from others, adopting technologies to local contexts, creating new ideas, etc. (Holmes, 2013; Aghion et al, 2009; World Bank, 2009) is at the center of the national development strategy. By the same token, Ethiopia's ambition of becoming a middle income state by 2025 requires a well thought out integration of its higher education and human capital development strategy in to the overall growth and development plan.
Education in Ethiopia: From Crisis to the Brink of Collapse
2006
The main focus of the study is the deepening crisis of the Ethiopian education system. This study reconstructs the growth of the crisis of the sector during the last four decades. It then discusses the implications of the crisis in terms of communication breakdown; absence of analytical capacity at system level; the fragmentation of society; loss of political legitimacy and perpetuation of authoritarian power. Although the education sector has greatly expanded its mpact on poverty alleviation has so far been insignificant. The poverty landscape has changed to the worse during the last fifty years. This is largely due to the fact that the Ethiopian education system is based on false premises. At the centre of the crisis is the use of English as medium of instruction. The proficiency in English is so low that its continued use as a medium of instruction can only lead to the collapse of the education system. The study argues that it is only through language (readily understood and practised) that collective life and the world can be interpreted in an integrated manner. The replacement of English by Ethiopian languages all the way from the primary to tertiary levels is one of the factors that could strengthen the survival potential of the Ethiopian political community. The study is relevant for policy makers and students of development studies on the role of education in social change in Africa south of the Sahara. ISSN: 1104-8417 ISBN: 91-7106-576-8 (print) ISBN: 91-7106-577-6 (electronic)
Development of, by and for the People: The Missing Link in the Development Trajectory of Ethiopia
The paper explores the place of the 'people' in the development trajectory of Ethiopia and if and how a human development could be realised. By inquiring into the place of the 'people', the paper attempts to show whether the people are at the centre or at the periphery, beneficiary or victims of the ongoing development. By asking if and how a human development approach to development could bridge the gap, the paper shows how this approach could translate 'people's' need into right, and recognise them as active subjects and stakeholders of the process of development. To substantiate the doctrinal analysis, the paper uses empirical evidence and the Lower Omo Valley (LOV) sugar plantation project as a case in point. Through analysis, the paper demonstrates that the development trajectory being followed by Ethiopia falls short of satisfying the human development discourse of UN Declaration on the Right to Development (DRD), the African Charter on Human and People Rights (the African Charter) and the Ethiopian constitution. The paper argues that Ethiopia's development efforts must take account of both the constitutive and prescriptive nature of the RTD if social equity is to be met.
2014
The idea to write this forthcoming book which is in the process of being published by Africa World Press is dedicated to my friend and classmate, Subhatu Webneh, my brother Yemena Asayehgn, and my sister in law Saba Berhe. The idea to write this book arose in 1977, when I was working at the International Institute of Educational Planning, the United Nations Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Based on the theoretical framework, "Correspondence and Contradiction", developed by two of my professors at Stanford University, Martin Carnoy, and Henry Levin, I documented a historical account of the nature of the socioeconomic formation and the dependent and subordinate relations of Ethiopia to the hegemony of the United States up to the early part of the 1970s. Further, attempts were made to examine dialectically how some unintended schooling outcomes contradict the stagnant economic situation in Ethiopia. That is, in order to analyze the development of modern education in Ethiopia, an analytical framework based on the principles of correspondence and contradiction was adopted.