Beyond the "Developmental State" : Prosperity and Conflict after the EPRDF

Title data

Lavers, Tom ; Terrefe, Biruk ; Gebresenbet, Fana:
Beyond the "Developmental State" : Prosperity and Conflict after the EPRDF.
In: Lavers, Tom (ed.): Dams, Power, and the Politics of Ethiopia's Renaissance. - Oxford : Oxford University Press , 2024 . - pp. 210-243
ISBN 9780192871213
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192871213.003.0009

Official URL:

Abstract in another language

This chapter examines the unravelling of the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front’s (EPRDF’s) state-hydro model and the foreign policy that underpinned Ethiopia’s Nile ambitions. Popular protests gathered pace from 2015, eventually forcing the EPRDF into reform by 2018, while the failure of the EPRDF’s megaprojects to deliver economically led to an increasingly unsustainable debt burden. The result has been severe political instability within Ethiopia, leading to the outbreak of civil war in 2020, and a greatly weakened position from which to negotiate the operation of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). Construction of the final megaprojects of the EPRDF era—the GERD and Koysha—has continued, but at a slow pace as financial and capacity constraints have become apparent. Furthermore, the debt crisis and regime change led the new government to abandon the state-hydro model of the past, with Western donors instead pressing for private investment and renewable technologies to expand electricity generation.

Further data

Item Type:	Article in a book
Refereed:	Yes
Keywords:	Ethiopia; Prosperity Party; Abiy Ahmed; Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD); electricity; privatization; public–private partnerships; political economy; energy transitions; renewable energy
Subject classification:	Environmental Politics; International Relations
Institutions of the University:	Faculties Faculties > Faculty of Cultural Studies > Chair Sociology of Africa > Chair Sociology of Africa - Univ.-Prof. Dr. Jana Hönke Faculties > Faculty of Cultural Studies Faculties > Faculty of Cultural Studies > Chair Sociology of Africa
Result of work at the UBT:	No
DDC Subjects:	300 Social sciences > 300 Social sciences, sociology and anthropology 300 Social sciences > 320 Political science
Date Deposited:	29 Nov 2024 06:55
Last Modified:	02 Dec 2024 06:01
URI:	https://eref.uni-bayreuth.de/id/eprint/91283