In Depth Inefficiency, cronyism, corruption spell disaster in newfound southern autonomy
September 21, 2024
When the people and communities that made up the 56 ethnic groups under the former Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples’ Region (SNNPR) embarked on a series of referendums five years ago, their focus was on greater autonomy and self-determination.
The first of these referendums took place in 2019, when the people of Sidama voted overwhelmingly for the creation of the country’s 10th regional state. Another landslide vote two years later saw the establishment of the South West region. The most recent referendum in 2023 gave rise to the South Ethiopia and Central Ethiopia regional states.
With federal approval, these four new regional states consequently inaugurated new administrations with ostentatious and celebratory ceremonies. The developments mean that the Ethiopian federation now constitutes 12 regional states and two chartered cities.
The burning agenda that led to the eventual dissolution of the former SNNPR was rhetoric based on freedom of identity, good governance, and equitable development.
The individuals who led campaigns and organized the referendums, and have incidentally assumed senior positions in the new administrations, promised much in the way of realizing those public demands.
For instance, during a ceremony last year inaugurating the administration of the South Ethiopia Regional State, founding President Tilahun Kebede told constituents that love and internal unity would be all they needed in order to succeed as a newly-constituted region.
“This region has immense potential, be it in agriculture, natural resources, or other intangible things. If we work with commitment and love one another, we can put the region on the path to development and prosperity. But internal unity is what matters most. We united to birth this new region, we must unite to develop it,” Tilahun said to a chanting audience in Sodo town, where he holds his seat in the Wolaita Zone.
However, a few years down the road from the first of the referendums and inauguration ceremonies, the fruits promised by the likes of Tilahun remain far out of reach.
Today, the new regional administrations are unable to pay salaries to teachers and civil servants, let alone pursue pricey development projects. Reports from the Ministry of Finance reveal that, last year, most of these administrations took advances from their 2024/25 federal budget subsidies to cover mounting costs.
Pending issues related to the division of assets and debts inherited from the former SNNPR also plague the nascent administrations.
“They pushed and demanded to become regional states. They were permitted to do so. But now they’re facing problems. They buy expensive cars like [Toyota Land Cruiser] V8s, and are asking for budgets,” Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (PhD) said recently.
When The Reporter visited West Omo Zone in the South West region a few months ago, the administration’s financial woes were evident.
Teachers and health workers sat idle, awaiting long-overdue salaries. There were hardly any development projects to speak of, and local administrators had run out of options and funding in a desperate fight against malaria, measles, and cholera outbreaks.
Meanwhile, on the roads, trucks laden with high-quality coffee from farms near Jimma were moving their loads to the central market in Addis Ababa. Locals there complained those in the lucrative coffee trade hardly gave anything back to their communities.
Today, the region remains in the chokehold of a health crisis as people suffer and die due to the lack of vaccines. And even what little NGOs manage to provide often goes to waste as a lack of electricity and refrigeration spoils the shots.
“In less than five months, 11 individuals have died from measles after arriving at this hospital,” said a frustrated Demisse Sapi, general manager of West Omo’s Bachuma Primary Hospital. “Over 40 people lost their lives to malaria last year. This doesn’t include those who perished without ever setting foot in the hospital.”
The root of the problem is a lack of financing for basic needs such as vaccines and medicine, according to local officials.
In an effort to draw attention to the dire situation in the West Omo zone, local authorities recently invited members of Parliament to witness the unfortunate conditions firsthand.
“They came, they saw, but no change is forthcoming,” said Demisse. “We have submitted our requests in writing to the Parliament, emphasizing the urgent need for support in this newly established region. The outbreak situation has reached alarming levels, surpassing the capacity of our hospital. Malaria, measles, and malnutrition have overwhelmed the regional administration.”
The calls have yet to garner any meaningful response as the regional administration struggles with its crippling financial constraints.
The problems go beyond healthcare, with teachers reporting they have not received pay in months while civil servants say three-week delays are common when it comes to salaries. Neither are the issues limited to the South West region.
In June, Tilahun, president of the South Ethiopia region, convened a meeting with his deputies in Arba Minch. Together, they administer a dozen zones under six clusters in the newly-established region.
“We must focus on and exploit every resource mobilization potential we have available at every level of the regional structure. We must do everything it takes to generate revenue internally. We must create our own sources, apart from the budget subsidy from the federal government. We also need to ensure the federal government is using transparent and equitable budget allocation systems for the region,” said Tilahun.
It is easier said than done, however, as the new regional states, and many of the older ones, depend heavily on budget subsidies from the federal government to function. Internal revenue streams are meager and far between, according to local officials.
The creation of new regional administrations also poses new financial problems as it comes with the need to fund and maintain functional local governance at the woreda, zonal, and regional levels.
Each of the new regional administrations has established several new offices and bureaus, bringing with them bills for office lease, construction, and maintenance costs, not to mention payroll for staff. These expenditures consume a significant chunk of the administrations’ budgets.
“On top of all these costs, the level of corruption among regional officials is beyond imagination. Officials in the new administrations have severely abused the resources,” said a local official in the employ of the South West regional administration.
The new administrations have also adopted an unconventional multi-capital approach.
Under this system, each of the new regional states have designated more than one town as the seat of the administration. For instance, the seat of the South West regional administration is split between Bonga, Mizan Aman, Sheka, Masha, Tercha, and Jemo.
Each of these hosts regional bureaus and offices, each holding a designation as the center of regional clusters (social, economic, etc.).
This approach has created an environment of political contestation within the regions, with each town quick to claim regional seat status. The administrations of these towns have been known to snatch bureaus from one another.
The approach has deep implications for costs and expenditures as well as service provision.
The dispersed nature of the various arms of the regional administrations mean that members of the public, as well as officials, are forced to move from town to town to access government services, enact policies, or even attend routine meetings.
The associated travel and mobility costs are a heavy burden for the administration and the public. Officials in these regions reportedly have a disproportionately high per diem.
“In general, all these cases have huge costs. Very quickly, the new regional states have become unable to pay even salaries for civil servants. In these regions, it is common for salaries to be delayed by at least three weeks. Especially for teachers, they get paid after months of delay. Regional officials have also procured unnecessarily expensive vehicles,” said the official.
He told The Reporter that a recent decision to relocate the region’s head Red Cross office from Bonga to Tercha resulted in “chaos” as the officials from the two towns engaged in a quarrel over the right to host the NGO’s regional bureau.
Yeshtila Wondemeneh (PhD) is an assistant professor at Addis Ababa University’s Center for Regional and Local Development Studies (RLDS).
He has been keeping a close eye on the developments in the new regional states following the referendums. Yeshitla observes the regional administrations are plagued by chronic problems that he fears could even reverse developmental gains unless urgent measures are taken.
“The decentralization of administration, and bringing the administration closer to the public and local governance, is highly useful for development. This is because the more the administration is closer to the public and local governance, the more the government understands its people and is able to plan and problem-solve practically in the pursuit of development,” said the expert.
From this perspective, Yeshitla says, the decentralization of the former SNNPR into four new regional states is commendable.
“However, decentralization alone is not a guarantee for the development and success of the new regions,” he warns. “This is determined by the type of civil service the new regions established and their agility in addressing governance and development issues at the same time.”
He worries that the new regions have been introducing heaps of new legislation without the manpower and institutional capacity necessary to implement the laws.
“In each of the four regional states, new zones, woredas and new offices and bureaus are created. Do these localized government institutions have the capability and efficient civil service needed to discharge governance and development?” asks Yeshitla.
He observes the first major problem lies in the structure of the civil service in the regions. He contends the regional administrations have failed to create a civil service that is fit to meet the public demand for development and good governance.
“The civil service is much larger than the work. The system in the new regional states must be reconfigured. This is the responsibility of the leaders of the new regional states,” said the expert.
He argues that politicians’ vested interest in maintaining positions of power is exacerbating problems in the new region, while a public tendency to ethnicize and politicize even minor issues is also making things worse.
“For instance, each of the zones and woredas in the four new regions have their own demands. The villages want to become woredas, the woredas want to become zones, and the zones want to become regions. When public and local demands are unmet, then the issues are politicized and ethnicized,” said Yeshitla.
He notes the issues are especially pronounced given that southern Ethiopia is home to a large number of ethnic groups.
“This diversity is difficult for politicians to manage. The cadres in the regions do not want to lose their positions of power. They lose power if things are ethnicized or politicized. Therefore when the public asks to become a woreda or zone, the cadres immediately grant it. Then they have to allocate budgets and resources for all,” said Yeshitla.
The deadlock has curtailed virtually all development projects and activities in the new regions.
“Almost all development activities have stopped because of a lack of finance. The regions are struggling to pay salaries for the civil servants. The regional administrations are only struggling to maintain the government’s structure there. The question is, what will happen if things continue like this?” said Yeshitla.
He foresees the situation will culminate in a crisis if public demands for development and progress are not met.
Yeshitla urges regional officials to start by reconfiguring civil service structures and eliminating redundancies and unnecessary offices, which he argues are consuming resources that should be used for development projects.
“For instance, take the South Ethiopia Regional State. There are many people assigned to the position of presidential advisor. Most of these individuals were senior officials in the former SNNPR, some were zonal administrators. The new administration granted them positions out of fear that if they hadn’t, they might instigate political instability in the region,” said Yeshitla.
He blasted the regional administration for using the advisor position as a “daycare” for former officials.
These former officials receive salaries, vehicles, allowances, per diems, and other resources despite having no real role in the day-to-day administrative work.
“These costs have driven up the cost of running the new regional states. The states must reconfigure their civil service so that it is fit only for productive work. They must build a civil service that can provide more efficient services with less manpower,” says Yeshitla.
An official who used to serve in the federal government before assuming a post in the South Ethiopia regional administration argued the need for time.
“We are new regional states and we are under transition. We cannot solve the problems immediately. If we downsize the civil service, it could create a social crisis. We are afraid of taking such responsibility. We cannot undertake reform measures before installing full administrative structures, finalizing legislations and fulfilling the transition,” said the official, speaking anonymously.
But while officials wait, civil servants lower in the chain, particularly teachers, continue to suffer.
“The downsize is not only about laying off unnecessary and unproductive political appointees, but in all sectors. In general, the regions must rebuild a merit-based civil service. Most civil servants in these regions, including in the education sector, do not fulfill standards,” said Yeshitla.
He also called for a reconsideration of the multi-center approach adopted by the new administrations.
The South Ethiopia region has five capital seats. Wolaita is the political seat hosting the presidential office, Arba Minch hosts the regional council as well as serving as the economic and industry cluster seat, Konso is the cultural cluster seat, in addition to Dila and Jinka.
Yeshitla explains the multi-center approach was devised following lessons from Hawassa, which enjoyed relatively unparalleled development as the capital of the former SNNPR at the expense of other urban centers in the region.
“The multiple-seat approach has both positive and negative sides. It is good because it enables all the major towns in the region to grow together, equally. The negative side is, the growth will be very sluggish,” he said. “Even urbanization distribution might happen in the long term. But as of now, the regions cannot achieve that, since they are struggling with overstretched administrative costs.”
Yeshitla says there is a need to consider alternative solutions. He suggests cutting costs through e-governance, eliminating the need to travel between multiple capital seats in addition to ensuring the creation of a merit-based civil service.
“The big question is, do these regional states have the capacity?” he asked.
Ethiopia’s fiscal decentralization policy is also another serious problem. Regional states remain heavily dependent on the federal government for budget subsidies, and struggle to mobilize their own sources of revenue.
“The country’s laws do not grant leverage for regional states to do so,” said Yeshitla. “Most of the power in collecting taxes and using the revenues is bestowed upon the federal government. The regional states are allowed to raise their own financing from local sources and take bank credit but they are not empowered to deal with different finance sources and pursue their own development plans. They do not have the mandate or the ability.”
The expert observes that even if the federal government revises legislation to permit regional administrations to mobilize resources independently, they likely would not have the capacity to do so efficiently.
“What regions always do is wait for the federal budget and consume it. They lack the capacity and orientation to identify the resources in their region and capitalize on them,” said the expert.
He points out that while a number of coal mining operations are ongoing in the South Ethiopia region, the regional administration is unable to levy taxes on production and reinvest the proceeds in other development projects.
“The new administration is not capitalizing on its immense natural resources. The administration simply sits and waits for the federal subsidy. So the problems continue. If the new regions continue on their current path, they cannot break out of the vicious cycle,” said Yeshitla.
Other experts urge the constituents of these regions to move to replace the heads of their regional administrations. The law states that regional council members can replace the president with two thirds of a no-confidence vote.