Ethiopia Strives to Develop Human Resource
for the Expansion of Private Investment
It is known that in any given country the most fundamental aim of
social services is to develop and invest in human beings themselves.
This is the only way especially in most of developing countries including
Ethiopia to break the vicious circle of poverty and attack the underlying
factors, which cause poverty to be transmitted from one generation
to the next. At the same time, efforts to develop and invest in human
resources are also necessary prerequisites for growth and the expansion
of private investment.
To attract and expand investment requires trained human resources
able to adapt to the rapidly changing conditions of modern society,
and especially of modern industry. This, therefore, necessitates
pursuing social policies that benefit the people and finally create
favorable condition for attraction and expansion of private investment.
To be able to effectively develop the human resources which would
be needed along the path toward development, and which would be
intimately linked to the country's prospects for private sector
investment and growth, the social service delivery system must be
reformed.
One of the vital social service systems is education system. Countries
need to make significant investment in education, job training,
and technical training for the citizens at large to compete in a
rapidly changing world economy. Expanding opportunity for elementary
education and improving the quality of the education so that children
acquire the basic skills they require to enter the work force capably
and creatively are crucial.
In Ethiopia, though the country was in dire need of skilled man
power that helps the country register swift economic growth, the
education policy in the past was not designed in such a way that
it could address this need. As a result the country had been unable
to bring a change in the life of its citizens by disentangling itself
from the grip of poverty and backwardness.
It became evident from Ethiopia's situation that on one hand adopting
correct policy directives being an indispensable primary task to
achieve the desired goal and on the other hand achieving the set
of objectives of rapid sustainable development, good governance
and a democratic system mainly hinges on the availability of adequate
execution capacity. The incumbent government therefore started striving
to have a properly trained manpower that could help for the overall
development priorities of the nation.
With the aim of tackling the serious impediment caused by lack
of effective execution capacity to the Socio-economic transformation
of the country, great attention has been given to reform the education
and training system as a crucial tool for capacity building. Accordingly,
a comprehensive education and training policy was adopted in 1994.
The policy encompasses overall and specific objectives, implementation
strategies, including formal and non-formal education, from kindergarten
to higher education and special education.
In the last decade priority has been given to the primary education
in terms of expansion and equitable distribution of education. Great
emphasis is given to rural areas, as rural development is needed
to bring about poverty alleviation. Education is crucial in achieving
this. Students in rural areas can significantly contribute to the
national endeavors being undertaken to change the lives of rural
population for better as they could develop sufficient knowledge
and skills in primary education that enable them transform the mode
of production to register high productivity.
The expansion of primary education particularly in rural areas
has positive impact on the success of Agriculture Development Led
Industrialization (ADLI) strategy of the country. This is so because
the vision of rural development requires, among other things, systematically
linking educational elements in an integrated approach to sustainable
rural development through creating access to quality education,
better vocational training opportunities and other similar measures.
Efforts have been deployed to promote technical and vocational
schools in order to produce skilled manpower in line with the demand
of the industry in the country. As there is also a direct relationship
between vocational education and economic development in rural areas,
more focus is given for the technical and vocational training in
order to produce skilled and competent manpower at the grass root
level that can do the job that would create wealth.
In the course of these efforts, encouraging results have been registered
in the education sector since the new education policy was implemented.
Currently, 9.6 million people have got education opportunity which
is three fold of the number before the implementation of the policy.
The primary school enrollment, which was 20% prior to the launching
of the policy, has been raised to 65%, and the coverage is expected
to reach to 70% in the coming two years time. While the number of
higher learning institutes is gradually increase and expanding to
various areas of the country, the admission capacity of institutions
of these higher learning's has also been dramatically raised by
more than 70% per year. And maximum effort is being launched to
raise this percentage to more than 80% increase per year.
Encouraging results were also scored in improving and extending
technical and vocational education. With the view to nurturing the
country's agriculture-led development strategy, the education policy
too has attached strong importance to the technical and vocational
training. Over 100,000 students have now become beneficiaries of
such training programs.
The Technical and Vocational Training is aimed at rural transformation
by improving access to relevant and practical training of young
people in agriculture and non-agriculture areas. The graduates would
be engaged among others in commercial farms, and non-agricultural
enterprises and small-scale industries for the ultimate benefit
of the community and the nation at large.
This ultimate aim of capacity development strategy of the country
is to create conductive environment for private entrepreneurs to
contribute to the development of the country and competently provide
economic and social services to communities. The satisfactory results,
so far achieved in Ethiopia's thriving educational sector, are vivid
testimonies that hint at the success of the desired objectives in
the future.
Given the existing favorable conditions for private investment,
investment protection and guarantee provided through bilateral and
multilateral investment agreements and vast untapped natural resources,
Ethiopia with a population of about 70 million is not only a big
market for private investors, but also is a country of comparative
advantage with abundant and cheap labor.
The Ethiopian government, being determined to make the most efficient
use of its productive elements and to exploit the country's comparative
advantage principally the abundant supply of labor, is also committed
to make investment in the country quite rewarding.
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