State Capacity Erosion in Ethiopia

This is from Maggie Fick, reporting for Reuters:

Rahmat Hussein once inspired fear and respect for the watchful eye she cast over her Ethiopian neighborhood, keeping files on residents and recommending who should get a loan or be arrested.

Now she is mocked and ignored.

Her fall – from being the eyes and ears of one of Africa’s most repressive governments to a neighborhood punchline – illustrates how Ethiopia’s once ubiquitous surveillance network has crumbled.

… Stacked on top of Rahmat’s kitchen cabinet in the town of Debark, 470 km (290 miles) north of Addis Ababa, are a dozen bulging folders detailing the lives of 150 neighbors: who has money troubles, who has HIV, who is caring for an orphan and who is hosting a stranger.

One of the consequences of the recent democratic opening in Ethiopia under Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali has been the curtailment of the state’s surveillance apparatus.

selassie.jpg

Emperor Haile Selassie (Credit, CNN)

While this is certainly welcome (there is a reason agents like Ms Hussein inspired fear and respect), it still raises the question of what will replace the state’s reach in Ethiopian society. While oppressive and at times murderous, the autocratic surveillance system was also an important source of the state’s infrastructural power. The EPRDF used it to mobilize Ethiopians for agricultural extension services, registration of births and deaths, immunization campaigns, etc. Throwing the baby out with the birth water could mean that, in the interim, the Ethiopian state will get weaker as it democratizes.

This is already apparent. The weakening of the federal government’s local reach that began in 2015 has over the last two years made it very difficult for the federal government to contain violence in the country’s ethno-states. Beyond the potential rise in violence, continued erosion of state capacity may handicap Ethiopia’s ability to implement its ambitious development agenda.

Can the EPRDF/TPLF state and administrative structure be democratized and turned into a system of developmentalist “revolutionary” self-government? Perhaps.

But all indications are that the centre will respond to the increasingly centrifugal forces in the states with more centralization and top-down imposition of order. Any calm in Oromia will likely be replaced with disquiet in Tigrinya and Somali. Adding to the centre’s challenge is the fact that it will be impossible to reverse the entrenchment of Ethiopia’s federal character (to borrow a Nigerian phrase).

The silver lining in all this is that the nature federation in Ethiopia, including the existence of state-level security forces, provides a structural barrier to a return to extreme forms of top-down autocratic rule like existed under the Derg or the Emperor.

 

A look into Kenyatta’s new cabinet

President Kenyatta has announced 16 of 18 cabinet secretaries in his administration. The list of names has elicited mixed reactions. On the one hand the manner of the announcement – on the steps of State House – was different, and dignified. It was much less pedestrian than what Kenyans had become used to – presidential cabinet appointments via press releases to newsrooms. Six women made the list, including in the powerful Defense and Foreign Affairs dockets. With the exception of Balala and Ngilu, all the nominees so far are not politicians.

But on the other other hand grumblings emerged on the lack of regional (read ethnic) balance in the appointments. Kenya is an ethnically fragmented country, with 11 (out of 42) ethnic groups with populations over 1 million (Kikuyu/GEMA, Luhya, Kalenjin, Luo, Kamba, Somali, Kisii, Meru (part of GEMA), Mijikenda, Turkana, Maasai). For most of the country’s history ethnicity has been a key organizing principle of politics, with people largely voting along ethnic lines for various instrumental reasons.

So what is the ethnic breakdown of Kenyatta’s cabinet so far? Here is my guestimation based on their last names: Kikuyu (3), Kalenjin (4), Somali (3), Luo (1), Meru (1), Kisii (1), Kamba (1), Luhya (1), Arab (1). Two slots remain unoccupied.

Only two groups (Kalenjins and Somalis) are clearly overrepresented in the cabinet appointments in proportion to their relative ethnic group size in the country (Kalenjin 25% vs 13.2%; Somalis 18.75 vs 6.3%). Those groups in the top ten that are underrepresented missed their “objective proportion” of the cabinet by about one slot, on average.

On an aside, historically African presidents have actually been pretty good at ethnic balancing in the appointment of cabinet ministers – as Francois, Rainer and Trebbi show in this paper. They claim to “show that African ruling coalitions are large and that political power is allocated proportionally to population shares across ethnic groups. This holds true even restricting the analysis to the subsample of the most powerful ministerial posts. We argue that the likelihood of revolutions from outsiders and the threat of coups from insiders are major forces explaining such allocations.

If the ethnic composition of the cabinet is anything to go by, it shows the extent to which deputy president William Ruto is more of an equal than deputy to President Kenyatta. His part of the Jubilee coalition dominates the list of cabinet nominees. Or it might just be a case of Mr. Kenyatta, being president, having opted to have his half of the cabinet “represent the face of Kenya” (Kenyatta and Ruto had a 50-50 pre-election appointments sharing agreement at the formation of the Jubilee coalition).

Despite Kenyans’ relief at the end of Odinga and Kibaki’s coalition government, the era of nusu mkate might still be among us.

In related news, president Kenyatta broke one of his campaign promises by not appointing an ethnic Turkana as secretary in charge of Energy and Petroleum. Kenya’s oil discoveries have been mostly in Turkana County. The Standard reports:

Uhuru [President Kenyatta] repeated he will appoint a Turkana to head the Ministry of Energy portfolio should he take over the next Government.

Kenyatta said his Government would give first priority to locals to manage the oil resources that were discovered in the area.

“Our mandate is to ensure that every Kenyan gets equal share of national cake. But locals where such resources are found should benefit more as a right stipulated in the Constitution,” he said.

Deputy President William Ruto also broke a promise he made yesterday. He said at a presser that the cabinet will not have any politicians, yet Charity Ngilu and Najib Balala have been nominated.

Kenyatta’s Cabinet Nominees:

  1. Fred Matiang’i (Information, Communication and Technology) – Kisii
  2. Henry K. Rotich (The National Treasury) – Kalenjin
  3. James Wainaina Macharia (Health) – Kikuyu
  4. Amb Amina Mohamed (Foreign Affairs) – Somali
  5. Adan Mohammed (Industrialisation) – Somali
  6. Ann Waiguru (Devolution and Planning) – Kikuyu
  7. Davis Chirchir (Energy and Petroleum) – Kalenjin
  8. Amb Raychelle Omamo (Defence) – Luo
  9. Eng Michael Kamau (Transport and Infrastructure) – Kikuyu
  10. Phyllis Chepkosgey (East African affairs, Commerce and Tourism) – Kalenjin
  11. Prof Jacob Kaimenyi (Education) – Meru
  12. Felix Kosgey (Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries) – Kalenjin
  13. Prof Judy Wakhungu (Environment Water and Natural Resources) – Luhya
  14. Dr Hassan Wario (Sports, Culture and Arts) – Somali
  15. Najib Balala (Mining) – Arab
  16. Charity Ngilu (Lands, Housing and Urban Development) – Kamba
  17. Ministry of Labour, Social Security and Services (Vacant)
  18. Ministry of Interior and Coordination of National Government (Vacant)

piracy off the somali coast

If you thought piracy belonged to the 19th century, think again. This year alone there have been at least 26 attacks by pirates off the coast of Somalia. The latest incident involves a Japanese ship (the Golden Nori) that had 23 crew and tens of thousands of tons of inflammable benzene.

The pirates are demanding a $ 1 million ransom or else they will kill the crew of the ship.The situation has been further complicated by the fact that according to a 1992 UN resolution establishing an arms embargo, foreign troops are not allowed to enter Somali waters.The UN regulations have made it difficult for the US navy and Kenyan authorities to fully police this region of the Indian ocean and end the piracy.

Keeping Somalia’s lawlessness within its borders has always been tricky. In the past the many fundamentalist thugs running around in the country mainly dealt in illegal arms and smuggled goods across the region but lately they seem have found a new lucrative business – piracy and kidnapping of foreigners for ransom.

As negotiations go on for the release of the hostages it has become apparent that the Somali problem cannot be ignored for long if peace and stability is to be achieved in the horn of Africa. And with the US keen to win the global assault on terror, the last thing it needs is a failed stage occupied by these extremist thugs.