1 Approach Paper Ethiopia Country Program Evaluation November 30, 2023 1. Background and Context 1.1 The objective of this Country Program Evaluation (CPE) is to assess how well the World Bank Group supported Ethiopia in addressing key challenges that constrained its development and how that support adapted over time to respond to changing circumstances, an evolving relationship, and lessons from experience. The evaluation will cover fiscal years (FY)13–23. The time period is selected to include the last two Bank Group strategies to support Ethiopia and coincides with the period of the previous two political administrations. The evaluation aims to inform the next Bank Group–supported Country Partnership Framework (CPF) for Ethiopia, expected in FY25. 2. Political, Economic, and Social Context 2.1 With a population of over 115 million people as of 2020, Ethiopia is the second most populous nation in Africa and one of the most diverse. It hosts about 86 ethnic groups and 90 spoken languages and is religiously and geographically diverse. More than 80 percent of the population lives in rural areas. A landlocked country at the center of the Horn of Africa, it borders on six mostly fragile countries: Djibouti, Eritrea, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, and Sudan. 2.2 Following the overthrow of the military regime in 1991, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, a coalition of ethnic-based parties (dominated by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front) introduced a federal structure primarily on ethnic lines. The system devolved powers and mandates to regional states and to the woreda (district) and kebele (village) levels. The Economist Intelligence Unit Democracy Index has classified Ethiopia as an authoritarian regime throughout the evaluation period. Elections results in 2005 and 2015 were contested. Between 2014 and 2018, protests multiplied throughout the country, which led to the resignation of Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn in 2018. Abiy Ahmed Ali subsequently emerged as the prime minister, marking a shift in power within the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front toward the Oromo ethnic group. Since 2018, the administration implemented a wave of domestically and internationally popular reforms liberalizing political, civil, and press rights. Abiy Ahmed Ali also negotiated a peace accord with Eritrea after a decades-long border conflict, earning him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019. 2.3 Ethiopia faces multiple drivers of fragility that resurfaced in recent years as violent conflict episodes have increased since 2017 (World Bank 2022b). These include Public Disclosure AuthorizedPublic Disclosure AuthorizedPublic Disclosure AuthorizedPublic Disclosure Authorized 2 disagreement over the most appropriate federal arrangement; competition for land, territory, and resources; fragmentation in the security sector that has led to the emer...
