Eucrise: Ethiopia Country Study

Ethiopia is one of the fastest growing economies in Africa. Its average growth in real GDP between 2003/04 and 2010/11 was 11.4% (MoA/ATA, 2012). In 2014, its GDP growth rate was 10.3%, which was much higher than other low-income countries. The peculiarity of the Ethiopian case lies in the fact that, unlike other emerging African countries, the process of economic growth is not driven by the extraction of natural resources, but mostly by public investments in infrastructure and the improvement of productivity in the agricultural and manufacturing sectors.

These processes have been promoted through emulating the Asian model of the developmental state, which implies a key direct role of the state in the economic development of the country (Chinigò and Fantini, 2015). Moreover, in terms of poverty indicators, the outcomes of Ethiopia are interesting when compared to other Sub-Saharan African countries (SSA) and other low-income countries: in 2010, the poverty headcount ratio at the 1.90 USD per day poverty line was 3.5% compared to 46.1% in the SSA developing countries and 52.4% in the low-income countries.