Africa’s Social Policy Trajectories: Ethiopia

Abstract

This research is driven by a desire to better understand social policy formulation and execution in three East
African countries: Ethiopia, Sudan, and Djibouti. This case study examines gender equitable and
transformational social policy in Ethiopia, as well as the implications for post-COVID-19 policy responses. The
case focuses on four aspects of Ethiopian social policy: social security, education, health, and employment. The
study spans the late colonial era (1940s) to the present. In order to comprehend the historical development of
social policy in Ethiopia while taking gender relations into account, the study employs qualitative discourse
analysis and process tracing based on secondary (public and unpublished sources) and primary data from multiple
sources. The study shows that even if Ethiopia was not colonised, policy making and implementation were
indirectly influenced by colonists. It is also evident that the ideology in the political economy of successive regimes
has affected policy formulation and execution efforts. The dominating paradigm of capitalism and
industrialisation impacted policies during the imperial era. The socialist philosophy was the guiding principle
during the Derg era. The home-grown revolutionary democracy and developmental state paradigm dominated
policies during the EPRD era. The incumbent Prosperity Party’s social policies are shaped by another homegrown
ideology, pragmatism. There are clear lessons to be drawn from the Ethiopian example, which has a
number of distinctive characteristics. For the most part, policy and rhetoric are not backed by practice. Until the
1990s, the system was verifiably male-dominated. Gender issues, on the other hand, have been substantially
examined by policymakers since the 1990s, and social policies have been gender-focused. These efforts
notwithstanding, there are still gaps in implementing gender transformational social policy in Ethiopia. Some of
these gaps are institutional capacity, resource availability, and political ideology and leadership.

Keywords: Social policy, gender, health, education, social security, transformative policy, post-COVID-19