Ethiopian Development Studies Association
A Multidisciplinary Conference on
the Challenges & Opportunities for
Sustainable Development in Ethiopia
& the Greater Horn of Africa
November 12-14, 2009
Adama University, Adama, Ethiopia
Aba Geda Hall, Adama City, Oromia State, Ethiopia
SELECTED ABSTRACTS OF C0NTRIBUTED PAPERS
(October 28, 2009)
Climate change impacts and responses in the Southern lowlands of Ethiopia
Alebachew Adem & Aklilu Amsalu, Forum for Social Sciences & Department of Geography, Addis Ababa University
ABSTRACT: Climate change is rapidly emerging as one of the most serious threats that humanity may ever face. Although no country is immune from climate change, poor countries which contributed least to the problem are the most vulnerable and least adaptive to its impacts. In Ethiopia, global climate change poses particular risks to poor farmers and pastoralists who have an immediate daily dependence on climate sensitive livelihoods and natural resources. The limited economic, institutional and logistical capacity to mitigate and adapt to climate change exacerbates the vulnerability of millions of farmers and herders to climate change-induced hazards. The impacts range from recurrent drought and loss of biodiversity, rangelands and soil nutrients, to catastrophic floods and declining livestock and food production. Some of the challenges of this environmental change such as local and regional food insecurity and hunger are still high on the agenda of Ethiopia’s development goals. Despite the vulnerability of Ethiopia to the impacts of global climate change and weather extremes, and the recognition of this by the Ethiopian government, research-generated knowledge on regional and local impacts of climate change, locally available adaptation and mitigation measures and other community responses are seriously inadequate. Although an enormous amount of resource, time, and energy have gone into reactive disaster response measures, poverty reducing and agricultural production boosting strategies, poverty, food insecurity, and catastrophic environmental hazards such as droughts, floods, diseases and pests remained the major threats to the overwhelming majority of the country’s populations and regions. Very little attention has still been given to empirically analyze the root causes of the complex and multifaceted developmental challenges of the country posed by the threat of climate change. In the absence of such empirical research generated knowledge, however, attempts to improve the quality of poor households and bring about development through attaining food self-sufficiency would be unrealistic especially in the hazard-prone areas of the country. This paper is tries to identify major climate change induced hazards, impacts and local level responses in the southern lowlands of Ethiopia and provide inputs for “climate proof” development interventions and policy formulation.
Linking Urban Planning with Ecologically Sensitive areas in Kamwenge town, Uganda: Lessons for the Greater Horn of Africa
Juliet Akola, Tendayi Gondo. Dafuleya Gift, Zibagwe Scelo, Ethiopian Civil Service College, Addis Ababa
ABSTRACT: The unrestricted growth and development of many cities around the world has habitually posed a threat to ecologically sensitive areas in many countries. Effective management of such fragile areas in urban centers has to begin with sound environmental plans. The paper discusses the latent function of urban planning in managing the urban environment of Kamwenge town in western Uganda. An exploratory case study approach was employed in which questionnaires and interviews with key informants were used to generate empirical data. Results reveal that Kamwenge’s ecologically sensitive areas including wetlands, forests and hilltops are under threat.
There is an unprecedented encroachment of human activities into ecologically sensitive areas, owing to lack of development control enforcement. The result has been a complex amalgam of human induced environmental challenges such as pollution, deforestation and wetland destruction. Achieving sustainability in fragile ecosystems has been hampered by such limitations as limited financial resources by the town council, including a weak institutional capacity to manage and protect such environments. Where land use plans exist, proper implementation has often been difficult. There also exist a number of urban planning tools, which however have not been synchronized into the management of environmentally sensitive areas. The current institutional setup for the management of fragile areas points to the dichotomy that exists between environmental management agencies and urban planning. We have proposed an integrated approach towards solving encroachment related complexities so as to attain sustainable management of fragile environments for the greater horn of Africa.
Exploring the Challenges and Prospects of Transforming Higher Education Institutions in Ethiopia
Elizabeth Ayalew, Addis Ababa University and Sisay Asefa Western Michigan University
ABSTRACT: The African Public University has declined from its glory days of its inception in 1950s and 1960s for various reasons. The changes observed in the international Higher Education landscape along with many other social and economic factors in general have contributed to this decline in status. This calls for reform in local Higher Education Institutions to overcome the challenges and improve academic quality. One of the alternatives of such a potential transformation in Higher Education that this paper proposes is through academic linkages and constructive engagements with international academic communities. It recommends that such an engagement be driven by the intellectual Diaspora in the international arena. With the general objective of stimulating reflection on several major issues related to changes and the subsequent challenges in HE, this paper examines the developments that the Ethiopian Higher Education system has undergone in light of the global demands that continue to impose changes on the system. It discusses internationalization of Higher Education as a means of coping with these changes and suggests particular actions that can be employed to engage the Diaspora and promote internationalization within Higher Education Institutions in Ethiopia.
Preference To Forms Of Land Conservation Investments: The Role Of Poverty, Land Tenure Security, And Market Incentives: An Example From The Highlands of Amhara Region, Ethiopia
Genanew Bekele,Genanew Bekele & Fredrich Schneider, University of Dubai & University of Linz, Austria
ABSTRACT: Building its framework from the random utility model, this article used the multinomial logistic model to examine the factors leading to differences in the farm-household’s preference among the various forms of land conservation investment measures. Using the recent (third round,(2004/2005) rural household survey (of 4,795 household-plot level observations) on the farm-household behavior regarding sustainable land conservation use in the Ethiopian highlands of East Gojam and South Wello zones of the Amhara region, this article demonstrates the inappropriateness of pooling the different forms of land conservation investments in preference studies. The empirical result suggests that poverty seams to drive farm-households towards short-term land conservation measures (such as grass covers, contour farming and forestation) that are less expensive (in terms of time, labor and money) and less skill entailing than long-term land conservation measures (such as rock or soil terracing, ditch digging and ’kitir’ works). While land tenure security has mixed effect on farm-household’s preference, their access to market in general seems not to matter for the household’s decision as to which form of land conservation investment to prefer. Moreover, farm-households also consider the characteristics of the plot when deciding which land conservation investment to prefer for its particular plot, and their preference various across villages. All in all, this article exhibited that farm-household’s preference as to which form of land conservation investment to undertake on its particular plot is a complex choice decision. And the major
Changes in land conservation investments will require attention to many factors as no single factor is controlling enough to be used single-handedly as a major policy leverage instrument.
Food Aid and Adult Nutrition in Rural Ethiopia
Nzinga H. Broussard Robert Day School of Economics and Finance, Claremont McKenna College, Claremont, California, USA
ABSTRACT: Understanding the role that safety nets play in adult nutrition is an important contribution to understanding the dynamics of poverty in developing countries. In this paper, I use panel data from rural Ethiopia on individual nutritional status to test whether there is an effect of public transfers on nutritional levels for adults. I run individual fixed effects regressions of nutritional status, measured by adult body mass index, on aid receipts. Results show that among adult household members, male adult members are the primary beneficiaries of food aid. Results also show that it is the male recipients who tend to invest aid receipts in adult household members. For low-asset households, male and female recipients tend to invest aid receipts in male household members. These results are consistent with a theory in which additional resources are allocated to members of the household whose market returns are higher or engage in activities that expend higher levels of energy.
Ethiopia and the Greater Horn of Africa: Human Security Strategic Trajectories for Achieving Middle Income Status in 2020
BT Costantinos, Faculty of Business and Economics, Addis Ababa University
ABSTRACT: Issues: From Darfur to the jungles of the River Zaire, from the Eritrean plateau to South Sudan, from trouble Somalia to the genocidal communities of Rwanda and Burundi, from the violent cities and borders of Kenya to Northern Uganda; new faces and forces of vulnerability and poverty haunt the Greater Horn of Africa sub-region. Conflicts, corruption, disasters, poverty, and pandemics now threaten the sub-region with a calamity unforeseen even during the Great African Famine of the 1980s, so much so that the G8 has made this a basket case for international action. The world is united in its belief that famine is preventable in the 21" century. Famine, food insecurity, and malnutrition, where more than 20 million people remain threatened, have many complex causes, and defeating them will require a global partnership with the private sector. The research primarily depended on empirical research and secondary findings.
Conclusion: After the G20 meeting in the UK, the IMF response to the current crisis and recent food/fuel shocks been has not been effective, because the IMF has not reacted in a timely manner with its heavy bureaucratic juggernaut in addressing in an effective and timely manner the challenges facing LICs in program design, review and available finance financing. In a similar manner, the WB’s response to the current crisis and food/fuel shocks has been ineffective, due to the lack of direction on how to deal with the crises more flexibly as their existing instruments are designed to react and not to respond in a flexible and timely manner provided appropriate in its support to LICs, let alone protecting the most vulnerable. Breaking the Cycle of Famine in the Greater Horn of Africa requires a viable human security and human development framework. Human security, a post-Cold War concept, is a multi-disciplinary understanding of security involving a number of research fields, which equates security with people’s wellness; ensuring freedom from want, freedom from fear and addressing national and the global concerns of human security through a new paradigm of SHD, capturing the potential peace dividend, a new form of development co-operation and a restructured system of global institutions; with the scope of global security expanded to include threats in economic, food, health, environmental, personal and community securities. This entails supporting peace and security strategies, education and training, land use planning and land reform, rural infrastructure development and working in a coordinated fashion to develop agricultural markets. It also entails facilitation of regional economic integration, improving emergency assessment and response systems, raising agricultural productivity in food insecure countries and promoting rural development, boosting agricultural productivity and rural development through the private sector focusing on institutional capacity.
Leveraging Diasporas’ Remittances through Microfinance Institutions for Effective Ethiopian Development Finance
Gift Dafuleya, Ethiopian Civil Service College, Addis Ababa
ABSTRACT: Remittances received from the Ethiopian Diaspora have been on an upward trend for the past decade and have shown resilience towards the current financial crises that has slowed down the global economy. Reviewing empirical literature show the importance of remittances in enabling investment in education, health and entrepreneurship, causing currency appreciation, counter cycling economic depressions and reducing poverty. The remittance figures, however, exclude informal remittances, which reduce reliability of Balance of Payment statistics, indirectly lessen the impact of monetary policies and directly influence exchange rates in the underground market. Official data shows that the impact of remittance flows on the Ethiopian economy is statistically insignificant. However, given that over the last four years remittances have been increasing at a pace different from the previous, leveraging of both formal and informal remittances need to be an important financial development goal. I show that Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) are better placed to bring about this development because of their proximity to remittance-receiving families, ability to easily integrate both the formal and the informal sectors and deal with small transaction where personal relations matter. Policy should operate both by removing restriction on financial products that can be available for MFIs and by availing access of MFIs to the clearing and settlement system to improve competition and reduce remittance costs.
Keywords: Diaspora, remittances, microfinance institutions, development finance
Analysis of Behavior of Private Investment in Response to Fiscal Policy Changes in SSA
Fikru Debele, Department of Economics Arba Minch University, Ethiopia
ABSTRACT: Despite the belief that fiscal policy measures can influence both economic growth and private investment attempts like the Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) and Poverty Reduction Strategic Papers (PRSP) have not brought that much promising results in Sub‐ Saharan Africa(SSA). If so, Can policy makers help enhance the performance of private investment in the region through fiscal policy changes? In an attempt to answer this question, annual panel data for the period 1986‐ 2003 for twenty-three countries in the region was employed.
The data set depicted the persistence of heterogeneity among the countries. The fixed effects model was applied based on specification tests. The regression output indicated that private investment is positively responsive to previous period fiscal policy measures, per capita GDP and its growth rate. However, current period fiscal policy measures, domestic credit to the private sector, real exchange rate, inflation, and the size of government control in the exchange rate market appeared insignificant in affecting private investment in the region. Debt servicing significantly and negatively encouraged private investment, while debt stock was not found doing so. The conclusion is that previous period policy measures are more influential in promoting private investment in SSA. Besides, high debt servicing reduces resource availability for domestic investment immediately than huge external debt stock, whose repayment may be cancelled, at least based on conditions, as observed in HIPCs case.