The Engineering Capacity Building Programme

During most of my field research in Ethiopia the country also had one additional ministry, the Ministry of Capacity Building (MOCB). It was established in 2005 as a supra-ministry that was mandated to intervene in other ministries’ work on behalf of the government. The attention given to the founding of MOCB clearly situated capacity development within the developmental narrative of the EPRDF party-state.

The assignment of Tefera Walwa – a civil-war veteran and a founding member of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF – one of the predecessor organisation of the EPRDF]) – as the Minister of Capacity Building also underlined the importance of the ministry (Tigabu 2014). Tefera had held several important political positions since 1991 – including as mayor of Addis Ababa and as Minister of Defence. Tefera was renowned for his “bush fighting” mentality – a reference to his role in the insurgency against the Derg regime. After the elections in 2010, the MOCB was merged into the Ministry of Civil Service. The new minister, Junedin Sado, a Muslim and ethnic Oromo EPRFD cadre, was, however, soon publicly blackmailed for his family’s alleged ties to an underground Islamist organisation and fled the country in 2013. He was shot at the border with Kenya. I worked with both ministers during my research and the opportunity to observe their career paths and that of their clientele, provided important insights about the arbitrariness and sometimes cruel logics of the party-state.

Most of my research was carried out within the domain of the MOCB. The Ethiopian Engineering Capacity Building Programme (ECBP) was a development programme of the MOCB supported by the GTZ. The main scope of MOCB’s work was administrative reform; however, it also managed all major ICT programmes of

the government. The Ethiopian Information and Communication Development Agency (EICTDA) was also supervised by the MOCB.

During my four years in Ethiopia (2008–11), I worked as a GTZ/GIZ employee in the Engineering Capacity Building Programme (ECBP). As an Ethiopian-German bilateral aid programme, it was established as an exemplary effort to symbolise the importance as well as the effectiveness of the Paris Declaration. The programme was fully Ethiopian owned and completely aligned with the country’s development strategy at the time (PASDEP). The programme was originally scheduled to last almost ten years (November 2005 to June 2015) to provide mid-term support to the Ethiopian government’s private sector development reform. In order to highlight the importance of the programme, the Ministry of Capacity Building was put in charge of overseeing it. ECBP was headquartered at the Blue Building, a newly-built high-rise in the business district of Addis Ababa. The name of the building quickly became synonymous with the programme and was often used interchangeably.

While the Ethiopian and German partners showed that the programme had an enormous impact, its administration was increasingly hampered by management conflicts. It was terminated in 2012, three years before the planned end of the programme. As a technical co-operation programme, it was also the largest GTZ had ever executed on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Co-operation and Development (BMZ), with an approximate budget of € 13 million per year. The Ethiopian government contributed the same amount of funds, however, mainly in kind.

ECBP was originally designed with four major components that operated nationwide. In 2006, however, a fifth, cross-cutting component named eCapacity Development was added to tackle the implementation of ICTs in the main components. I joined this component in 2008 as a junior programme officer. Due to the MOCB’s interest in ICTs, the component grew to a team of 15 employees by 2009. It was responsible for the roll-out of nine e-Learning Competence Centres for the Ethiopian universities and for the implementation of business software solutions in the private sector. In 2008 and 2009, I mainly coordinated the implementation of these two activities. This allowed me unparalleled access to university as well as company sites across the country. In 2010, I took over the management of the

component (Figure 4.1). Through my new position, I had the opportunity to directly work together with decision makers in the MOCB and MOE. This involved regular meetings with various secretaries of state and ministers. This unprecedented level of access to the inner circles of political power enabled me to reflect more critically on the deployment of ICTs in Ethiopia. ECBP was housed at a new office building commonly known as the Blue Building in the capital’s Bole district (Figure 4.2).

Figure 4.1 – My team at ECBP, 2010 (Source: author 2010)

Nevertheless, it also increased my exposure to the intricate power struggles of the EPRDF regime. The scramble for power within the establishment was further revealed by the parliamentary elections in 2010. Even though the heightened political activity of 2010 and 2011 permitted me to glimpse the capriciousness and arbitrariness of power-grabbing within the EPRDF regime, it also rendered my workplace an auxiliary operating theatre. The apparent strife within the EPRDF structure disabled vital decision-making processes within the partner ministries.

In late 2010, I co-founded a business incubator together with my team at ECBP, ICEADDIS (innovation, collaboration, entrepreneurship) at the Addis Ababa University. ICEADDIS was conceived as a grassroots innovation hub for

home-grown innovations with a strong social and environmental commitment. Its main aim is to create a physical nexus point for students, young academics and young entrepreneurs from various technology and business backgrounds to develop entrepreneurial and leadership skills as well as turn business ideas into viable start-up companies. It provides a springboard for youth to become successful in the job market, turn their ideas into viable businesses, and easily connect to higher-level innovation and incubation networks in the region.

By championing technological creativity and social and business ingenuity, ICEADDIS enhances the common business incubator approach to develop a more entrepreneurial driven and self-sustaining concept using training and ICTs to create appropriate, environmentally beneficial and long lasting solutions that fit into the local and regional context.

Figure 4.2 – The Blue Building in Bole, Addis Ababa (Source: GoogleMaps)