Why Ethiopia outperforms Africa's democracies

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia now has a light rail system. It was constructed on schedule, and largely within budget. Lagos, Nigeria has been trying to build a light rail system for the better part of a decade. It is over-budget and has been marred by allegations of corruption. Talking large infrastructure projects, the Nigerian capital, Abuja, is even worse. For a tidy sum of $470m Abuja had planned to install CCTV cameras to boost security. The project ran over-budget and all Nigerians had to show for it were toy CCTV installations that did not work. Sounds familiar? It should, it is pretty close to what happened to our own attempts to install security cameras in Nairobi. What do these comparisons illustrate? They illustrate what happens when you have a focused and serious elite class. It is not about democracy or accountability. Ethiopia is a paragon of neither. Ethiopia’s economic performance, and specifically its ability to manage large scale infrastructure projects, is a function of having an elite class that is disciplined and knows where they want to take their country.

Of course Ethiopia is also autocratic. The EPRDF government tops the charts of countries that have jailed the most journalists. The EPRDF also rigs elections. Their overall human rights record is nothing to sing about. But you see, state capacity and ability to deliver on projects has little to do with democracy. Stateness, or state capacity, is a tool. It is the ability to get stuff done. It is a tool that has to be sharpened purposefully. It does not magically arise. That is why the only countries that have developed are those that had an elite class that purposefully set about creating state capacity – to record births and deaths, to impersonalise their bureaucratic systems, to ensure that government was not completely captured by a set of special interests. If you consider Europe, these developments occurred well before the era of mass suffrage and popular democratic elections. State-building preceded democracy.