One of the problems is that the modern economic and military state have a lot of non-obvious interlocking parts. You pointed out the problem of base level literacy, but there’s a lot that goes with it. The Russian tsar freed the serfs because he needed citizen soldiers, not serfs, to win modern wars. The full package includes education, machine culture, transportation, social welfare, communications, research and research liaison and so on. The current US administration doesn’t realize this, so they’re trashing expensively built system components in pursuit of an economic fantasy out of Defoe or Verne. Ethiopia at least had an excuse.
Sometimes a lack of formal education can be a huge boost to both a nation's economic and scientific development, well there was at least one time, about 200 years ago a still young USA came to one of the the biggest, maybe even the biggest, forks in the road in history, one path was the same economic development path that Africa has had in recent decades, with similar designs for the things you mentioned: "education, machine culture, transportation, social welfare, communications, research", but a massive group of groups, with many uneducated, defeated it politically and took an extremely different route, the whole country paid attention to the grand intellectual debate, since most all had no formal ed, they could be opened minded, after all, the same arguments the good guys defeated are currently taught in schools
The gen 1.0 Democratic Party (the Jacksonians) intellectually, and then structurally, beat a sophisticated elite designed system and built a far better one for real development. Most had never been to formal schools (though literacy rates were high, at like ~97%) but they understood education, machine culture, transportation, social welfare, communications, and research as a full package, and they designed their own way of doing them from scratch, they did it decentralized, real mass participatory lower case "d" democratic, locally controlled. They proved mass and rapid training of skilled, and even high skilled occupations, can be done with the right program and a lot of hard work
California was originally meant to receive the same kind of externally imposed development model that the neoliberal West has pushed onto places like the Congo for decades. But the Jacksonians defeated that vision, intellectually and practically, and then built something far more effective and based in local semi-sovereignty.
I suggest you read up on some early American history. The US had a high literacy rate and as the 19th century progressed built out its educational establishment. There were limits. The US educated elite studied in Europe and the nation benefited from a stream of educated immigrants. The lack of education was never a plus. The areas that deprecated education are still catching up. The need for higher education increased later in the century as industrial and agricultural technology advanced.
Political power doesn’t flow from education the way economic development does. The big red state - blue state divide shows that education drives development. The current red state administration wants to bring down the blue states to a red state impoverished, non-dynamic level. Yes, the Khmer Rouge and the Taliban defeated more liberal regimes, but that is not a good argument for the uselessness of education.
Eritrea is far more backward than Ethiopia, but I assure you that Ethiopia holds more promise, flawed development strategies and all. When I was there, shortly before the war, the big news was GERD, hydropower. The road system was basic, though buses were running. Communications were enabled by well guarded cellular towers with on site generation. There was a lot of small field teff growing, threshed with a flail. Our guide’s daughter was a student at one of the new medical schools.
Eritrea is an effective war machine as recently demonstrated. For Ethiopia, top down development as in the US and Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries is the best bet.
With respect, and this isnt your fault as African curriculums, which were assigned by international forces typically lie about this matter (as does US schools!!) America have high literacy, but its strength at the Great Fork IN The Road in the 19th century wasn’t drawn by formal higher education or imported European elites. NOT AT ALL!!! (we literally rejected the European Elites AND The High Universities!!!!!!) The educational establishment you mention, well at least the very strong one that actually did exist, was largely decentralized, locally funded, and embedded in civic institutions, not top down elite controlled.
The Jacksonians absolutely didn’t deprecate education (and this is super provable with practically infinite official records, they were among the biggest expanders of education in history!!!!!!) they democratized it. (Outside large parts of the South, large parts of the South, for two different big reasons, one before the Civil War, and one after it, didnt fully participate) They created a variety of kinds of local schools, public libraries with extra ed functions, mechanics’ institutes, regional technical colleges, people oriented study orgs that extended across and down the land, scientific societies tied to practical life, not elite abstraction. Political power did flow from this kind of education, but in the opposite direction, because it was generated and designed by semi-sovereign local governance that was decided by local social-political civic spaces. Not managerial credentialism.
And red states aren’t poor today because they rejected education, but because the national system stripped them of capital, institutional autonomy, and the ability to integrate education with their own economies. And engaged in planetary central planning that screwed places over all over the word. And BTW, most "red" places are not poor, look at the actual components of GDP and I think you may be surprised
Two events crippled the Ethiopian state and which I think deserve a mention.
1. The Spanish Flu (Hidar baiita) wiped out the leadership of the Ethiopian state and the civil service. It was a catastrophe worse than colonisation in terms of state capacity destruction. My own ancestor who pacified southern Ethiopia with the sword and brought it under the emperor's dominions died from this flu and his next mission (occupation of current northern Kenya) died with him.
2. Emperor Menelik's lack of an heir created too much room for intrigue, factionalism, and the emergence of weak leaders like Ras Teferi, who was a non-leader and too small-souled to occupy the throne. You will remember he fled like a coward rather than fight and die when Italy invaded again. When he returned, he jailed my grandfather who never ceased hinting the the exile as the worst thing a leader could ever have done.
I do expect that Ethiopia will be a monarchy again within the next several decades. It is certainly tending towards the re-emergence of the traditional forces able to impose their wil (Amhara forces + Tigray factions)
Interestingly enough given your Spanish flu comment, I do think that a clash between Kenya & Ethiopia is very possible in the future
Both are currently internally focused but if they continue to grow economically, they likely will turn attention outward given how differently they instinctively do things, a clash over visions of the region would be hard to avoid
I’ve been asking myself this question for a while now and this article just clarified a lot for me. Keep up with the good work, truly grateful for this.
So many interesting threads in this post, I realized how little I know of Ethiopia's history and how much there is. These are some areas that I want to think about more.
1. What is the current state of elite formation in Africa especially the pivotal countries in sub-saharan Africa like Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, DRC.
2. Why do we Africans outsource our thinking to others, everything I see is rooted in western thought, our elites do not actually take time to think about things from first principles and come up with a coherent ideology. Reading about how the Chinese elite in the communist party go through extensive reading and study sessions to understand a myriad of ideas from the west and customize them for their own needs is fascinating and at the same time makes me sad that we as African do not do that.
3. What makes elites ambitious? Is it external threats only, do we need a war in order for elites to stop with their tribal bickering and chauvinistic thinking? I don't see any other way that a state like Kenya can gain internal cohesion without external force/pressure.
4. What can we learn about how China handled it's own humiliations and then subsequently managed to get itself from the bottom of the barrel.
This was a fascinating post as always and I will use this as a way to learn more about Ethiopias rich history.
I dont know very little about Emperor Selassie so I dont say this with any kind of confidence, but rather as a speculative possibility that I wonder-searched for since I know some good and wise Ethiopians who swear by him, but what I wonder is that, well, sice it was the case that during the 1950s, which you mentions, the USA was in its transition phase space away from the USA Old Republic (OR) and institutions like the University of Oklahoma, despite deep into the their forced and coerced centralization and de-democratization, were still in some deep senses of the Old Republic. Well, the Emperor did not summon Harvard or the RAND Corporation. He did not call forth the IMF, nor hand his ministries over to Ford Foundation technocrats. he invited the University of Oklahoma, a land-grant school which at the time was still carrying the operational DNA of my Old Republic, spiritually derived from technical uplift, popular civic integration, and regional development.
This may have been no accident.
He may have knowingly chose schools and programs in the 1950s that were still transitional artifacts, partially de-democratized, yes, but still driven by missions of localized, practical service, democratic economic advancement, and true community uplift
And let us not forget that in 1953, the Neoliberal Era's international orgs, like the future McNamara-fied World Bank did not yet exist.
The full bureaucratization of American development institutions was stared earnest yet and was not complete until the late 1960s to late 1970s.
And he was not so influential past the 1960 coup? or is that wrong?
A thoughtful and insightful read across the sweep of Ethiopian history.
How do you frame and characterise the era of ethnic federalism; the impressive economic growth (at a cost of social/political freedoms); Meles' untimely passing; latent internal conflict; and the subsequent lurch towards more liberal capitalism? How much of the current context stems from Meles' unfinished project vs the longer term trajectory that you describe here?
I still believe in Ethiopia's ability to have a place on the world stage on its own terms and to chart its own economic pathway, but the politics remain fragile and ideological gaps large.
One of the problems is that the modern economic and military state have a lot of non-obvious interlocking parts. You pointed out the problem of base level literacy, but there’s a lot that goes with it. The Russian tsar freed the serfs because he needed citizen soldiers, not serfs, to win modern wars. The full package includes education, machine culture, transportation, social welfare, communications, research and research liaison and so on. The current US administration doesn’t realize this, so they’re trashing expensively built system components in pursuit of an economic fantasy out of Defoe or Verne. Ethiopia at least had an excuse.
Sometimes a lack of formal education can be a huge boost to both a nation's economic and scientific development, well there was at least one time, about 200 years ago a still young USA came to one of the the biggest, maybe even the biggest, forks in the road in history, one path was the same economic development path that Africa has had in recent decades, with similar designs for the things you mentioned: "education, machine culture, transportation, social welfare, communications, research", but a massive group of groups, with many uneducated, defeated it politically and took an extremely different route, the whole country paid attention to the grand intellectual debate, since most all had no formal ed, they could be opened minded, after all, the same arguments the good guys defeated are currently taught in schools
The gen 1.0 Democratic Party (the Jacksonians) intellectually, and then structurally, beat a sophisticated elite designed system and built a far better one for real development. Most had never been to formal schools (though literacy rates were high, at like ~97%) but they understood education, machine culture, transportation, social welfare, communications, and research as a full package, and they designed their own way of doing them from scratch, they did it decentralized, real mass participatory lower case "d" democratic, locally controlled. They proved mass and rapid training of skilled, and even high skilled occupations, can be done with the right program and a lot of hard work
California was originally meant to receive the same kind of externally imposed development model that the neoliberal West has pushed onto places like the Congo for decades. But the Jacksonians defeated that vision, intellectually and practically, and then built something far more effective and based in local semi-sovereignty.
I suggest you read up on some early American history. The US had a high literacy rate and as the 19th century progressed built out its educational establishment. There were limits. The US educated elite studied in Europe and the nation benefited from a stream of educated immigrants. The lack of education was never a plus. The areas that deprecated education are still catching up. The need for higher education increased later in the century as industrial and agricultural technology advanced.
Political power doesn’t flow from education the way economic development does. The big red state - blue state divide shows that education drives development. The current red state administration wants to bring down the blue states to a red state impoverished, non-dynamic level. Yes, the Khmer Rouge and the Taliban defeated more liberal regimes, but that is not a good argument for the uselessness of education.
Eritrea is far more backward than Ethiopia, but I assure you that Ethiopia holds more promise, flawed development strategies and all. When I was there, shortly before the war, the big news was GERD, hydropower. The road system was basic, though buses were running. Communications were enabled by well guarded cellular towers with on site generation. There was a lot of small field teff growing, threshed with a flail. Our guide’s daughter was a student at one of the new medical schools.
Eritrea is an effective war machine as recently demonstrated. For Ethiopia, top down development as in the US and Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries is the best bet.
With respect, and this isnt your fault as African curriculums, which were assigned by international forces typically lie about this matter (as does US schools!!) America have high literacy, but its strength at the Great Fork IN The Road in the 19th century wasn’t drawn by formal higher education or imported European elites. NOT AT ALL!!! (we literally rejected the European Elites AND The High Universities!!!!!!) The educational establishment you mention, well at least the very strong one that actually did exist, was largely decentralized, locally funded, and embedded in civic institutions, not top down elite controlled.
The Jacksonians absolutely didn’t deprecate education (and this is super provable with practically infinite official records, they were among the biggest expanders of education in history!!!!!!) they democratized it. (Outside large parts of the South, large parts of the South, for two different big reasons, one before the Civil War, and one after it, didnt fully participate) They created a variety of kinds of local schools, public libraries with extra ed functions, mechanics’ institutes, regional technical colleges, people oriented study orgs that extended across and down the land, scientific societies tied to practical life, not elite abstraction. Political power did flow from this kind of education, but in the opposite direction, because it was generated and designed by semi-sovereign local governance that was decided by local social-political civic spaces. Not managerial credentialism.
And red states aren’t poor today because they rejected education, but because the national system stripped them of capital, institutional autonomy, and the ability to integrate education with their own economies. And engaged in planetary central planning that screwed places over all over the word. And BTW, most "red" places are not poor, look at the actual components of GDP and I think you may be surprised
"We the miners" Is a book I read some time back that has a very similar take to yours
Looks interesting, thanks for sharing, I’ll check it out
Great article, I learned a lot.
Typo:
"In may ways, Emperor Selassie’s developmentalist strategies"
Should be "In many ways"
Two events crippled the Ethiopian state and which I think deserve a mention.
1. The Spanish Flu (Hidar baiita) wiped out the leadership of the Ethiopian state and the civil service. It was a catastrophe worse than colonisation in terms of state capacity destruction. My own ancestor who pacified southern Ethiopia with the sword and brought it under the emperor's dominions died from this flu and his next mission (occupation of current northern Kenya) died with him.
2. Emperor Menelik's lack of an heir created too much room for intrigue, factionalism, and the emergence of weak leaders like Ras Teferi, who was a non-leader and too small-souled to occupy the throne. You will remember he fled like a coward rather than fight and die when Italy invaded again. When he returned, he jailed my grandfather who never ceased hinting the the exile as the worst thing a leader could ever have done.
I do expect that Ethiopia will be a monarchy again within the next several decades. It is certainly tending towards the re-emergence of the traditional forces able to impose their wil (Amhara forces + Tigray factions)
Interestingly enough given your Spanish flu comment, I do think that a clash between Kenya & Ethiopia is very possible in the future
Both are currently internally focused but if they continue to grow economically, they likely will turn attention outward given how differently they instinctively do things, a clash over visions of the region would be hard to avoid
I’ve been asking myself this question for a while now and this article just clarified a lot for me. Keep up with the good work, truly grateful for this.
Brilliant read.
So many interesting threads in this post, I realized how little I know of Ethiopia's history and how much there is. These are some areas that I want to think about more.
1. What is the current state of elite formation in Africa especially the pivotal countries in sub-saharan Africa like Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, DRC.
2. Why do we Africans outsource our thinking to others, everything I see is rooted in western thought, our elites do not actually take time to think about things from first principles and come up with a coherent ideology. Reading about how the Chinese elite in the communist party go through extensive reading and study sessions to understand a myriad of ideas from the west and customize them for their own needs is fascinating and at the same time makes me sad that we as African do not do that.
3. What makes elites ambitious? Is it external threats only, do we need a war in order for elites to stop with their tribal bickering and chauvinistic thinking? I don't see any other way that a state like Kenya can gain internal cohesion without external force/pressure.
4. What can we learn about how China handled it's own humiliations and then subsequently managed to get itself from the bottom of the barrel.
This was a fascinating post as always and I will use this as a way to learn more about Ethiopias rich history.
Thank you.
How should Africa go about replacing it's elite class?
I dont know very little about Emperor Selassie so I dont say this with any kind of confidence, but rather as a speculative possibility that I wonder-searched for since I know some good and wise Ethiopians who swear by him, but what I wonder is that, well, sice it was the case that during the 1950s, which you mentions, the USA was in its transition phase space away from the USA Old Republic (OR) and institutions like the University of Oklahoma, despite deep into the their forced and coerced centralization and de-democratization, were still in some deep senses of the Old Republic. Well, the Emperor did not summon Harvard or the RAND Corporation. He did not call forth the IMF, nor hand his ministries over to Ford Foundation technocrats. he invited the University of Oklahoma, a land-grant school which at the time was still carrying the operational DNA of my Old Republic, spiritually derived from technical uplift, popular civic integration, and regional development.
This may have been no accident.
He may have knowingly chose schools and programs in the 1950s that were still transitional artifacts, partially de-democratized, yes, but still driven by missions of localized, practical service, democratic economic advancement, and true community uplift
And let us not forget that in 1953, the Neoliberal Era's international orgs, like the future McNamara-fied World Bank did not yet exist.
The full bureaucratization of American development institutions was stared earnest yet and was not complete until the late 1960s to late 1970s.
And he was not so influential past the 1960 coup? or is that wrong?
A thoughtful and insightful read across the sweep of Ethiopian history.
How do you frame and characterise the era of ethnic federalism; the impressive economic growth (at a cost of social/political freedoms); Meles' untimely passing; latent internal conflict; and the subsequent lurch towards more liberal capitalism? How much of the current context stems from Meles' unfinished project vs the longer term trajectory that you describe here?
I still believe in Ethiopia's ability to have a place on the world stage on its own terms and to chart its own economic pathway, but the politics remain fragile and ideological gaps large.