(Accredited to Singapore, Australia & Malaysia)
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Message from the Ambassador

I. Spotlight
* China - Africa Cooperation Forum: A Development Partnership Between Africa and China

* Ethiopia Strives to Develop Human Resource for the Expansion of Private Investment

II. Profile of the Textile Industry in Ethiopia

III- Visit Ethiopia
* A Glimpse on Rich Ethiopian Culture
* The Oldest Park in Africa

IV- Press Brief
* Diplomacy
* Economy and Development
* Social and Cultural

V- Business Cooperation - Announcement for Partners

Useful Addresses

Contact Us
No.3 Xiu Shui Nan Jie
Jan Guo Men Wai
Beijing 100600
P. R. China
Tel: 0086-10-65325258
Fax:0086-10-65325591
E-mail:
[email protected]

 

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.