Transforming Ethiopia’s Developmental State Model for the Future

Abstract

Inspired by the miraculous transformation achievement of Taiwan and South Korea’s developmental state model, in 2001, Ethiopia adopted and thrived by adjusting the East Asian state-led Developmental State Model to reflect its own historical conditions and enhance economic growth and wipe out poverty. As a result, Ethiopia’s Developmental State Model has created miraculous economic growth for the last fifteen years. In 2015, however, an increasingly lazy and inept EPRDF began to drag the country into political unrest. Currently, Ethiopia is faced with an abysmal economic, political upheaval, and ethnic strife because the country’s chief engine of growth—Ethiopia’s Developmental State Model—has been cracking due to administrative obsolescence. If the recent wide-scale economic crisis is not addressed immediately, it could ultimately disrupt Ethiopia’s political legitimacy. Therefore, as other developmental countries  have done, Ethiopia needs to form a hybrid paradigm where some developmentalist practices coexist with the prevalence of privatization policies to harness a free market operation.