adminleader and the architect of the current economic success, the late Prime Minister His Excellency Meles Zenawi, who passed away unexpectedly in August last year, they take consolation on the continued fast-growing economy and the opportunities it brings to them.
The theme of this year’s celebration is “Expanding the May 28 people’s victories for the realisation of Ethiopia’s Renaissance”. This theme has come at the right time when Ethiopia needed to scale up the gains of the revolution.
The peoples of Ethiopia have made tremendous gains since the overthrow of the military junta led by Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam 22 years ago. Politically they have achieved the right to self determination.
Nations and nationalities are now governing themselves in a Federal Democratic State based on unity in diversity. They can now use and develop their culture and language, as well as develop their areas and choose, in a democratic election, who can govern them in their autonomous regional states and who can represent them in the central Federal Parliament. Moreover, they have the right to recall those elected officials who fail to discharge their mandate.
This is a key victory which has opened the door for socio-economic development.
The economy of the country was in decline during the previous regimes because of perpetual wars and conflicts connected with the democratic question of the broad masses.
This question was fully answered following the fall of the Dergue regime and the peace that followed had helped the country’s economy to turn around and register remarkable growth. Thanks to the late prime minister’s policies, which have continued under the current Prime Minister, His Excellency Hailemariam Desalegn, Ethiopia’s economy is now among the fastest growing in the world. A World Bank report of 2012 says the country’s economy grew at an average of 10,6 percent GDP from 2004 to 2011.
This doubles the Sub-Sahara African average of 5,2 percent at the same time. The growth over the five years spanning from 2004/5 to 2009/10 had lifted around 2,5 million citizens out of poverty, thereby bringing down the number of the people under the poverty line from 38,7 percent to 29,6 percent.
Also the Bank has predicted that Ethiopia is going to be among the 10 fastest-growing economies in the world in the next five years.
Besides agriculture and the export sector, investment on infrastructure has contributed immensely to the current growth. Ethiopia has made significant strides in building physical infrastructure such as roads, housing and power in the last decade.
When the military regime was deposed in 1991, Ethiopians had an average of five hours to reach an all-weather road. This has been reduced to three hours and the government is working to connect all Ethiopian villages to all-weather roads, a task that requires construction of 70 000km roads between 2010 and 2015.
To rectify the backlog of residential housing accumulated during the 17 years of the Dergue misrule, the country has embarked on construction of low-cost houses, with hundreds of thousands of them built in the last few years.
On power generation, when the military regime was deposed, Ethiopia’s power-generation capacity was only 350 MW. Now the power generation has reached 2 150 MW and is due to escalate to 10 000 MW when Gibe III and the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance dams are commissioned in 2014 and 2015 respectively.
On social sectors, there have been remarkable achievements too. Primary education enrolment has increased from 32 percent in 1990/91 to 91 percent by 2006/7. The number of public universities is now 30, up from two in 1991 and the gross enrolment has reached 300 000. There has been improvement on health sector, too, with reduction of HIV prevalence and child mortality rate. Democracy and good governance are also taking root in significant ways.
Dr Koang T. Dung is Ambassador of Ethiopia to Zimbabwe.
Online Reporter