BLOGGER/ADDIS

Reading that article from Economist.com about the current conditions of Ethiopia and our future, it certainly sent chills down my spine. It often needs a foreign assessment of the grim realities in Ethiopia to remind us where we are going. Most of us Ethiopians are faced with two extreme assessments and views. The opposition’s assessment is always to the negative extreme, claiming that the government is the devil, nothing is improving and Ethiopians are living in hell. In contrast the government’s assessment is always to the positive extreme, claiming that they are overachieving, everything is progressing well and Ethiopia will be utopia very soon. So it is nice to finally read an assessment in the middle.

 

Even though the Economist newspaper’s assessment on the politics aspect was flawed, all Ethiopians can agree on the newspaper’s assessment of the progress, the failures and challenges of the economy. (The newspaper should probably stick to its name and leave the political analysis task to the pros) Anyway, other than shortcomings of the private sector, the second most important message in that newspaper was about the overpopulation problem in Ethiopia. It said: 
   

“The number of jobs created by flowers is insignificant beside an increase in population of about 2m a year, one of the fastest rates in Africa. Since every mother has about seven children, it is conceivable that Ethiopia, with 75m-plus people today, could overtake Nigeria (now 140m-strong) as Africa's most populous country by mid-century. Just to stand still, let alone make inroads into poverty, the country must produce hundreds of thousands of jobs a year.”
 SOURCE: http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10062658


 
This is scary. Even worse, the progress made in Ethiopia indirectly contributes to the population problem in Ethiopia. Infant mortality, according to Economist.com, has dropped significantly. This is positive news in general, but it seems like it is one of the factors contributing to the fast population growth. Ironically, success in the health sector and the achievement of domestic & international health organizations, (unless unrealistically high amount of jobs are created soon), would add to the eventual collapse of the economy.

 

So what is the solution? For most people, China comes into mind when we think of population control. Despite Ethiopia’s GDP recently growing faster than other nations in Africa, our GDP per capita is worsening or at best stagnant. In contrast the Chinese improved their standard of living and GDP per capita by lowering the birth rates. So the one-child per a family policy is attractive but again for an agriculture run economy where many seek large families to assist in the farm, it can backfire. Also such one-child policy is done from inside out, where the locals monitor how their community is implementing the policy correctly using statistics. So the same way fertilizer is being used by the government and local officials for political purposes, this time faced with a less willing rural population, corruption and bribery would rise to an alarming scale. This one-child policy is done with economic incentives for families who successfully follow the policy. Thus as usual, local officials will try to hide the failures of their supporters and report the failures of political opposition. So both a federal and local government that can’t even distribute fertilizers fairly without corruption and bribery can not be expected to do any better with this new policy. In fact, it will be another reason for a rise in dissidents.

 

Before Ethiopia can implement the above policy, corruption must stop and urbanization must accelerate. If we still have a corrupt government that thinks it must exploit fertilizers to gain popular support, then nothing will work. 
 

Education is another way to solve this problem. First of all, increasing literacy levels would create a population aware of the problems; or citizens that knows about Birth control and other potential solutions. Also a young population more involved in higher education, (even better in life long education), would see early marriage or any responsibility that come with a large family very unattractive. So education is one of the best methods for population control. If the youth sees an incentive to finish college and even take on more education in research etc, the birth rate in Ethiopia can fall down significantly. Urbanization, creation of jobs contributes to the success of this policy. Otherwise, with no jobs after college and with an agriculture run economy, people would rather stay in the farms than go to college. So in the end, everything is interconnected. Corruption has to stop, the private sector has to develop and jobs must be created to even think about implementing any of the above policies. But for a country that doesn’t even have street labels in its capital city and for a country that is doing a national census only for the third time in 2000 years, even collecting the monthly data or registering all births is a daunting task. Meaning, if any government official is reading this article, you should not  wait another day to address this big population problem.



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The writer lives in America and he can be reached by ethiom842@ yahoo.com 
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