Ethiopia
THE external trappings of modernity transforming Addis Ababa today signify the beginnings of revolutionary change for Ethiopia. It is a revolution from the top. All the crucial decisions are made by Emperor Haile Selassie I. He has first of all made the decision that Ethiopia is to be of Africa as well as in it. By his order Africa Hall was built and presented to the United Nations as headquarters for the Economic Commission for Africa. Thus ECA is the hub of UN activity in Africa.
At his insistence UN and United States aid was used to build the four modern airports which welcome international traffic. Haile Selassie University, a chamber of commerce tower, imposing banks, hotels, and a tourist headquarters have changed the face of the city, which, until live years ago, had no building larger than the imperial palace. By making Addis an African capital, His Imperial Majesty appears to be deliberately setting the stage for Ethiopia’s survival and ascendancy in the coming period of African renaissance. The props are being put in place with imagination and style. Africa Hall itself combines the efficiency of Geneva with the dash and vivid color of Ethiopian art. But the lines and the cast of the future national drama remain in doubt.
Fully engaged
On the larger political issues in Africa today — on independence and the end of European privilege — His Imperial Majesty has spoken out unequivocally. He was host to the first meeting of the Organization of African Unity in May, 1963. Since then at Cairo and Accra he has played a leading moderate role, stressing common African needs and aspirations. He is fully engaged in the current attempt to establish a common market for East Africa.
In its approach to modernization Ethiopia has farther to go than do the ex-colonies of Africa, but it has a certain range of choices not open to many of them. Its great plateaus, separated by the Rift Valley and cut by deep river gorges, are extraordinarily fertile. Rainfall is generally adequate. So is food. There is no overwhelming pressure of population on the land. With some management and modernization of cultivation, combined with incentives to production, the country could feed itself and much of East Africa.
Coffee is, of course, the main crop. It provides more than half the country’s exports and is the main source of foreign exchange. Skins and hides come second. The freak of chance which has brought leopard skins into style in the Western world has given this side of Ethiopia’s economy an unexpected boost. Production of other crops beyond the subsistence level lags. Only about 15 percent of the cultivable land is being farmed. There are few incentives to peasants to exert themselves to engage in the cash economy. If they produce extra crops, they must share up to 75 percent with their landlords.
Because of a complicated mosaic of inherited land ownerships, large tracts belong to families with little interest in development. These include loyal military and tribal leaders, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, and the civil heirs of former generations of priests. A few foreign-owned land companies are producing cotton and sugar on a scientific, commercial basis. But thousands of acres remain untouched for lack of interest or tax incentive. There is a similar lag in commercial cattle raising. In some parts of the country the tribal view of livestock as capital to be hoarded inhibits change. Of an estimated 22 million head of cattle in the country, only a fraction, about half a million a year, find their way to market.
Foreign capital: welcome
In 1964 the first land reform legislation was enacted. It is designed to make agriculture a part of the cash economy. Yet it is recognized in Addis Ababa that rural changes will come slowly. Most landowners will stubbornly resist sharing with cultivators on a fifty-fifty basis. They will defend as well their traditional right to levy taxes directly on the peasants, as the Church has continued to do. The abolition of this ancient privilege and collection of all taxes by the government are predicted to be years away. But the pressures are mounting. These reforms are recognized as indispensable to economic progress. Other visible harbingers of change are tractors. In the last two years more have appeared in Ethiopia than in the previous twenty years.
So far, thanks to world coffee markets, Ethiopia has held its own economically. For the future its planners aim at diversity. Mineral resources, fish, and a textile industry are within relatively easy reach of attainment. In their approach toward such new enterprises the Ethiopians differ from most of their neighbors. They are not troubled by doctrinaire socialist theories about how to organize the economy. It appears natural to them to welcome foreign capital. Lacking an entrepreneurial class of their own, they aim at modernization with outside talent and investment.
Thus customs duties are waived on imports of equipment for industry. New foreign companies have a five-year tax holiday, and may repatriate capital in stages after that period. Ethiopian participation is encouraged. But the real problem is to entice the release of traditionbound capital from those who tend to hoard it. Potential Ethiopian investors are cautious. As a result there is more foreign than local business initiative in Addis Ababa. The business community includes Bulgarians, Japanese, Americans, and Belgians jostling Yugoslavs, Italians, and Russians in the competition to build new plants whose products will eventually be carried on a French railroad to the port of Djibouti in French Somaliland. A Yugoslav cement plant and a Russian oil refinery already mark the commercial landscape. An American oil company has put in bunkering facilities across the gulf from troubled Aden. Indian textiles still fill the great market in Addis, the mercato. Such Italianizations survive, along with many mixed ItaloEthiopian families.
Revolution from the top
Except for two brief periods of Italian occupation, Ethiopia has escaped the ministrations of the imperialists. But it has missed something too. It has not inherited, as its neighbors have, the basic structures and institutions which the colonialists left behind. Ethiopia is having to build its own road network, water system, and defense forces. It is in the early stages of creating a system to educate its population, and of setting civil service standards. Thus the discrepancy between the demands of twentieth-century life and the country’s readiness to compete is very great.
Again it is the Emperor who has decided that Ethiopia shall modernize. At the same time, he is determined to preserve the special pride, aloofness, and individual values which set Ethiopia apart. The result is tension, apparent to even casual observers. The attempt to impose revolution from the top is courageous. All the new structures set the tone. But the alteration of age-old attitudes is more difficult. Each new class of graduates returning from London or the United States adds impetus to the demands for sharing of decisions and power. One attempted revolt in 1960 collapsed, partly for lack of planning, partly because army and church defeated it.
The need for an outlet for responsible opposition, met elsewhere by political parties, is unmet in Ethiopia. The growing class of several thousand young intellectuals has so far been disarmed by shrewdly incorporating them into the existing bureaucracy, giving them jobs but no say in government. Ethiopia’s parliament is the only one anywhere without a party structure. The elected lower house represents population districts. It still includes illiterates. The upper house, appointed by the Emperor, retains veto power over any disturbing reforms. The press is governmentcontrolled. Thus organized movements for political action are practically impossible.
The American presence
In this situation of uneasy political stalemate the role of any foreign aider must be circumspect. Even so, much is being done by the United Nations and the United States to help bridge the more obvious gaps in Ethiopia. UN technical agencies provide assistance in manpower training in public health, public administration, telecommunications, and secondary education. An International Development Bank credit of some six to seven million dollars has been negotiated to speed the construction of new schools. The need for a crash approach is obvious in the light of the 5 percent literacy rate throughout the country.
The Ethiopian government realizes that primary and secondary education should have highest priority. Even so, it faces problems which call for heroic measures. One is the diversity of languages in widely scattered provinces separated by sharp geographical barriers.
Students at Haile Selassie University are dispatched between their third academic year and their fourth to teach or work for ten months in the provinces. Engineering students help construct schools. Agricultural students work at extension stations. Geology majors prospect under the direction of the Ministry of Mines. This Ethiopia University Service is an innovation being watched with interest in other African countries. Its possibilities for national development seem unusually promising.
United States aid to Ethiopia has developed significantly during the last fifteen years. Since 1953 some $68 million has gone there for technical assistance work —chiefly to education, public health, and a Blue Nile survey. Loans amounting to about $60 million have helped in airport and highway construction and in the creation of Ethiopian Airlines. Further grants for food brought the total amount of American assistance up to $141.8 million through 1964.
Ethiopia has attracted this scale of American aid because of its basic friendliness to the United States, its recognized economic potential, and its pivotal position in Africa. The presence of a vitally important U.S. communications relay station at Asmara for many years gives Ethiopia strategic value to the United States. Except for assistance to Ethiopian airline development and some training of police, American aid has focused on civil needs.
Today the emphasis in American aid is on accelerating directly productive enterprises. This practical approach has come to prevail over long-range or theoretical programs to redesign the economy. It has evolved during the tenure of an activist pragmatic-minded American ambassador whose philosophy permeates the American mission at Addis Ababa. Ambassador Edward Korry skillfully appeals to the new men, the young intelligentsia, and has also kept the confidence of the elder statesmen. Other Americans have influential roles as advisers in the Prime Minister’s office, particularly in drafting legislation and modernizing the legal code.
Aid to education continues to have a high priority. Haile Selassie University receives strong American support. The Public Health College at Gondar. a nurses training school at Asmara, and the Imperial College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts at Alemaya all receive help. In the latter two the object is to turn out more technicians to man an existing network of health centers and agricultural extension services.
Peace Corpsmen have had conspicuous success in Ethiopia. Six hundred of the seven hundred there now are teaching, mainly in secondary schools, where the need is greatest. They have won acceptance throughout the country.
The domestic drama
The internal dilemma for the aged Emperor remains in spite of all the bustle in the capital. Each planeload of conferees arriving at Africa Hall bring in fresh ideas and news. Each session of the OAU stirs the young educated Ethiopians to question the mores and inhibitions which differentiate them from their generation in the rest of Africa.
The Emperor is seventy-four this year and subject to the health hazards of age. His apparent heir and eldest son, Prince Asfa Wossen, is fifty. While almost unknown in the outside world, the Prince is regarded at home as a potential constitutional monarch who could command support from the army, the Church, and the young reformists. The power of the first two is already decisive in the country. The 30,000man army, plus another 30,000 territorial reserves and police, support but also constrain even the Emperor. They are vital to the integrity of the country, providing a protective force in the Somali border areas particularly. Chronic dissidents in that region threaten the authority of the crown. There is the classic tension between nomads and settled peoples, exacerbated by religious particularisms in the Muslim southeast. Eritrea to the north is a base for further possible dissident movement. Any ruler in Addis Ababa must maintain his authority. The army is his shield.
The Orthodox Church represents the conservative strength of tradition. Its 170,000 priests must be supported and heeded by any Ethiopian ruler. The Primate of the Church is a member of the Crown Council, which guides the Emperor in important policy decisions. In the crisis of 1960 a threat of excommunication helped to break up the palace revolt against the Emperor. Moreover, the Church helps to maintain Ethiopia’s unique position as a Christian outpost, even though the majority of the country’s population today is not Christian.
In any future change of regime the young reformists and the more farsighted elders are bound to exert new pressures on the palace. So far the Emperor has not been able to bring himself to designate his son formally as his heir to the throne, and the issue of succession remains open to a possible challenge. The result of this uncertainty is an atmosphere of suspicion and intrigue and of resentment against the Emperor. The young men in the ministries must continue the byzantine game of courting royal favor. No questioning or criticism is tolerated. Thus the air in the capital is heavy with suppressed impatience and embarrassment over vestigial obeisances to autocracy.
The Emperor, who has been one of the great figures of Africa, has opened the doors to the modern world. In his own role he is superb. What is missing is a strong supporting cast, empowered to speak with assurance. It is the public silence in Addis that is ominous.