Ethiopia’s Youth between Desperation and Rebelliousness

Mukerrem Miftah (Ph.D.)*

In a piece I wrote some two years ago[i], I cautioned the contradictions and challenges Ethiopia, the “transitional” government, and Ethiopians were facing. Of these critical conundrums, the issue of sociological unpredictability in Ethiopia was the fundamental part of the piece. Despite some progresses in these two years, unpredictability, in almost all possible fathomable ways, remains as the single most powerful threat Ethiopia faces. Whilst this may characterize the overall condition of Ethiopia, there is hardly any contribution that asked how this critical condition has specifically and squarely confronted Ethiopia’s youth in many and different fronts and levels, not only in these two years but also throughout the last three decades in Ethiopia. The nature of this unpredictability has long been wrapped up with such hurdles as unemployment, emigration, juvenile delinquency and violence, drug addiction, and reproductive health issues. In the following paragraphs, an attempt has been made, first, to deal with some of the major challenges facing Ethiopia’s youth, and second, outline the underlying structural conditions behind almost all youth related crisis in Ethiopia.

The Unemployed Youth

Undoubtedly, the extent of youth unemployment, particularly educated youth unemployment in Ethiopia is beyond a serious cause of concern. Arguably, the country’s ill-equipped and heedlessly planted thirty-plus universities are now the breeding grounds for “educated” youth job seekers in Ethiopia’s increasingly dwindling labor market. As per Ethiopia’s Ministry of Education’s annual report (2009 E.C.), university graduates (public and private) from bachelors to PhD programs increased from 85, 560 in 2005 E.C. to 159, 716 in 2009 E.C. This shows that the number of university graduates almost doubled in the span of four years. Now, it is a reasonable question to ask whether and, if so, to what extent, even half of these universities are actually capable enough to produce competent, productive, and well-rounded graduates that can be easily observed by-and-integrate into the market. From macro-level, policy relevant concerns all the way through human resources related issues, education financing, and teaching amenities, almost half of Ethiopia’s state-run universities simply represent maxims incapable of real additions.

Now, it is a reasonable question to ask whether and, if so, to what extent, even half of these universities are actually capable enough to produce competent, productive, and well-rounded graduates that can be easily observed by-and-integrate into the market.

Well, in such countries as Turkey, the ultimate purpose of university-level education is not necessarily producing consumable “goods” for the labor market, which, unfortunately, has been the major obsession of Ethiopia’s education policy for decades. Apart from policy-level emphasis on nurturing well-rounded citizens, they expect presidents and professors to focus on specifically achieving this goal. I remember that in a number of occasions, including meetings with lecturers and professors (at the university where I was an academic staff for a while), what the university’s rector used to say. Our major responsibility in the university was to help prepare Turkish citizens who are, first and foremost, human beings having sociocultural identities, responsibilities, and future aspirations, and secondly, productive citizens who contribute to the wider society as much as possible. In other words, for them, the question of well-rounded citizenship is essentially a matter of preparing the next generation with all the possible knowledge, values, and skills that make them human first and productive citizens second. Relatively speaking, however, I doubt that Ethiopia’s education policy succeeded in achieving either of these in the last three decades. Furthermore, of the two aspects, the human dimension seemed to have been completely ignored both in theory and in practice.

The Uncharted Emigration

Another major problem Ethiopia’s youth face is the staggering number of youth leaving Ethiopia for a better future anywhere but Ethiopia. A national disgrace it may sound, the youth, the educated ones included, unable to feed themselves and support their families, they could not see any hope in Ethiopia’s increasingly unfathomable unpredictability in virtually all spheres of life, and so, they had to risk everything. Many Ethiopians, primarily the youth, have been leaving Ethiopia for countries in Africa, the Middle East, and Europe. Although some manage to escape Ethiopia for such countries as Sudan, Yemen, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Western Europe, many could not. In fact, if it had not been for the reliability of data gathered from here and there, it would have been claimed thousands have died on the road to these destination points. However, we certainly know many, possibly hundreds, have died in both the Mediterranean[i] and Red Seas[ii]. I personally know of some seven young Ethiopians with whom I grew up in Addis Ababa who lost their lives while crossing the Mediterranean Sea. Apart from these, there were reports of enslavement in Libya[iii]; ISS-led slaughtering of Ethiopians[iv]; and forceful detention and stranded Ethiopians in neighboring countries and the Middle East[v].

Another major problem Ethiopia’s youth face is the staggering number of youth leaving Ethiopia for a better future anywhere but Ethiopia.

The Youth in Violence

Similarly, another fundamental challenge to Ethiopia’s youth concerns violence. With a growing value for the currency of identity politics in the recent years, interethnic violence spearheaded and orchestrated by political elites and activists made the youth the principal instigators of violence as well as receivers of the cost of violence. Undoubtedly, this has left Ethiopia deeply wounded, and unfortunately, it does not seem to stop anytime soon.

Accounting for the Cost: Failed Social Policies

Then, what may account for this state of the youth in Ethiopia? In the first place, given what has been happening in the last approximately ten years, no one would question the fact that if it had not been for the weak law and political order playing fundamental roles in the growing youth dissatisfaction and rebelliousness in Ethiopia, the condition could have reasonably been less confrontational and anomic for the youth. Under the TPLF-led EPRDF rule, the increasingly shrinking political space, the move towards a police state, massive state-government corruptions, ethnocentric barriers to social mobility, and most importantly, state elites’ deranged and often hostile attitude towards the needs, questions, and challenges of the youth were clearly observable signals of state collapse and social chaos in the country.

Second, although there is a growing consensus that the education policy under the TPLF-led EPRDF rule had largely failed to meet the needs and challenges of the youth and the Ethiopian society, the failure was far more complex and prevalent among other policies as well. Essentially, it would be more than meaningful to argue that what went wrong under the TPLF-led EPRDF rule were the disastrous failures of Ethiopia’s social policies at many levels.

It is interesting to note that while the country was undergoing massive sociological crisis from root-to-branch, it seemed like no one realized or knew the TPLF-led rule had a cultural policy. This was a policy endorsed by the council of ministers of the TPLF-led rule on October 1997 and was then put into effect. It aimed at achieving two major goals. It planned, on the one hand, to recognize and nurture Ethiopia’s sociocultural diversity, and on the other hand, to develop infrastructures for research, institution building, community engagement, and generating incomes. It was supposed to compliment the regime’s ill-conceived ethnic-based federalism. Despite some degree of rhetorical pep talks, it had failed to institutionalize Ethiopia’s cultural diversity, many ethnic groups’ cultural presence in Ethiopia were already beyond the aspired political ends of the policy adopted. While significant dose of ethno-cultural diversity received the regime’s attention, Ethiopia as a country with certain shared developmental and cultural values and collective aspirations was deliberately brushed off.

Beyond this, the cultural policy, albeit I doubt it was implemented at all, could not help develop the necessary compliments to difference and diversity. Under this policy, while citizens, primarily the youth though, were made to realize their sociocultural peculiarities and distinctiveness, they were denied access to necessary conditions that facilitate the road to meaningful cultural diversity in Ethiopia. In yet other words, as much as difference and diversity, citizens were not encouraged and prepared for the critical and fundamental role and importance of the culture of acceptance, tolerance, and accommodation. Arguably, this is where the entire enterprise squarely fails, possibly leading to “unintended” and dysfunctional consequences. Many Ethiopian citizens, possibly in thousands have died, displacement in millions has become the new normal, and frankly speaking, no one knows when and how this will stop.

Finally, another social policy that has relatively failed to address the needs and challenges of the youth in Ethiopia is the National Youth Policy (2004). There were also rural and urban youth development packages prepared to the same ends. Among other things, although micro and medium level enterprises were important platforms to engage the youth in Ethiopia’s developmental ventures, they had primarily served direct political purposes than addressing the actual socioeconomic challenges of the youth. There were evidence of nepotism, ethnocentrism, and party membership and affiliation directly conditioning youth participation for about three decades in Ethiopia. Both university educated and those who were not were required to be a member of a certain ethnic group, be part of youth arrangements created under the TPLF-led EPRDF as youth leagues and forums, and party membership to one of the four elements of the TPLF-led EPRDF rule. These were, on the one hand, important instruments of effective political control for the state, and on the other hand, the only option for the desperate unemployed youth. Beyond this, the policy’s emphasis on youth-focused initiatives in the area of employment creation, fighting HIV/AIDS and drug addiction, and others largely remained bold on the policy document.

Overall, these systemic and structural challenges have long been squeezing the Ethiopian youth between the actions of desperation and rebelliousness, leading to chains of events causing significant crisis in Ethiopia and subsequently affecting others elsewhere.

*Assistant Professor of Social Policies, School of Policy Studies, Ethiopian Civil Service University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. His publications revolve around the sociological study of religion, identity politics, social movement, and the notion of civilization in the Horn of Africa. Email Address: mukerrem@cssethiopia.org / mukerremmiftah@gmail.com.