The EPRDF vis‐à‐vis Ethiopia's development challenges

Abstract

This article is about the major development challenges that Ethiopia faces. It also provides a critique of the policies that the government of the Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) follows to ‘mitigate’ them. It highlights the magnitude of these problems that have accumulated throughout the reigns of the three post‐war governments and shows how bottlenecks have arisen in the transition process from unfreedom to democracy, and from poverty to prosperity. I have identified five major challenges, namely: lack of political democracy, gender inequality, environmental degradation, unchecked population growth, and the crisis of rural development. I argue that in as far as Ethiopia is unable to surmount these challenges, it will be impossible to do away with poverty and there can be no development. I see political democracy and freedom as key to surmount poverty and I therefore argue that as long as the EPRDF government suppresses freedom and rejects political democracy, it is unlikely that Ethiopia's ongoing situation of poverty and under‐development will be resolved.