The BESO/T'igmy Case Study
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The BESO/T'igmy Case Study .............> i.:.:.:.*:.' :::::Fa........ Marc Sommers, Ph.D. v,...:..s&+;:, Support for Analysis and Research in Africa (SARA) Project Health & Human Resources Analysis for Africa (HHRAA) Project U.S. Agency for International Development, Africa Bureau, Office of Sustainable Development Decentralizing Education The BESO/Tigray Case Study by Marc Sommers, Ph.D. Afiican Studies Center, Boston University written for SARAIAED and AIDIAFRISD November 1996 Support for Analysis and Research in Afiica (SARA Project) Health and Human Resources Analysis for Africa (HHRAA) Project U.S. Agency for International Development, Africa Bureau, Office of Sustainable Development Acronyms BESO Basic Education Structural Overhaul EPRDF Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front MOE Ministry of Education PDC pedagogical center REB Regional Education Bureau SPC school pedagogical centers TGE Transitional Government of Ethiopia TPLF Tigrayan People's Liberation Front ?TI teacher training institute UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization USAID United States Agency for International Development WE0 woreda education officer ZEO zonal education offices Table of Contents I. CONTEXT ............................................................ 1 A . Tigray in Recent Ethiopian History .................................... 1 B . Regionalization and the Center .......................................2 C . Education Sector Reforms and Tigray's Ascendancy ......................3 I1. THE RESEARCH OBJECTIVE ............................................ 8 A . Background: Studying How to Decentralize an Education System ............8 B . The Tigray Case: Objectives to Advance the Decentralization Process .......10 C . Rationale: A New Approach to the Decentralization Problem ..............14 111. METHODOLOGIES .................................................... 22 A . Guiding Principles ................................................22 B . Key Components .................................................33 C . Using Workshops as a Research Method ...............................42 D . Constmints ......................................................47 E. Putting It Together: The Research Process .............................48 N . FINDINGS ............................................................50 A . Tradition and Change: Four Key Themes .............................. 50 B. Primary Education in Tigray ........................................54 C . The Workshop Dramas ...........................................-72 D. Learning About a New Methodology .................................93 RECOMMENDATIONS ................................................. 96 A . Is "Research-and-Discussion" Portable? Recommendations for Adaptation . -96 B. Recommendations for Tigray Region .................................97 REFERENCES .............................................................101 ANNEXES: Annex A: Work Schedule Annex B: Research Questionnaires Annex C: List of Woredas and Schools Visited by the Baseline Annex D: Final Workshop Program I. CONTEXT The context of decentralization is a critical feature in this case study. Context plays a significant role in the formulation of this study's objectives and approach. It also has helped to guide its methodological procedures, data analysis, and recommendations. The following section contains several important contextual themes that will resurface in subsequent sections, including the place of Tigray in recent and current Ethiopian history, the creation of decentralization concepts from within the context of centralization, the significance of language to regional difference, and the significance of regionalization to the development of decentralization. A. Tigray in Recent Ethiopian History In 1889, an Amhara from Shoa, Menelik 11, succeeded Yohannes IVYa Tigrayan, as king of the Ethiopian empire. Menelik quickly established a new. capital on recently conquered Oromo land. The creation of Addis Ababa immediately alienated not only Oromos, but Tigrayans as well, who (accurately) interpreted this as a signal of their own marginalization. For the next century, until another Tigrayan, Meles Zenawi, assumed the reins of power in Ethiopia in 1991, Tigray's situation within Ethiopia became increasingly difficult. In 1896, when Menelik led 100,000 soldiers to his famous victory over the Italians at Adwa, located in the heart of Tigray, he left the region devastated. Feeding his enormous mydepleted local food supplies and livestock. The first of a sequence of famines in Tigray over the last hundred years followed. In 1943, a peasant revolt in Tigray against feudal rulers and Menelik's eventual successor, Emperor Haile Selassie, led to harsh reprisals. Peasants lost their rights to land ownership while taxation rates climbed dramatically. Money and local capital investment drifted away from Tigray. Peasants had few alternatives to farming on land that had been worked for more than two millennia. In the last 35 years them have been five famines in Tigray, the last of which, in 1984-86, led to as many as one million deaths. Yet this last and most devastating famine occurred within the context of civil war. The Tigrayan People's Liberation Front (TPLF) was formed in early 1975, less than a year after Major Mengistu Haile Mariam assumed power over the coordinating committee (or Derg, meaning "a group of equalsy'), which ruled Ethiopia following the military's overthrow of Haile Selassie. The TPLF quickly evolved into a rural-based organization that fought against Derg forces in what Tigrayans call "The Struggle." While both the Derg and the TPLF espoused Marxist ideology, the TPLF became a popular organization among the Tigrayan peasantry, while the Derg's repressive policies made it increasingly unpopular. The TPLF initiated land reform, peasant participation, and women's rights programs in the rural Tigrayan areas they eventually controlled. Tigray finally fell to the TPLF in 1989, and the remnants of Mengistu's demoralized army were overwhelmed in Addis Ababa in May 1991. The TPLF leader, Meles Zenawi, subsequently became the leader of the Transitional Government of Ethiopia (TGE), and recently assumed the role of Prime Minister of a newly elected national government. B. Regionalization and the Center One of the ironies of Ethiopia's long and arduous civil war is that the TPLF, which originally had sought to fiee itself fiom Ethiopia, now dominates Ethiopia's government. At the same time, Meles has created a national system that delineates ethnic distinctions and emphasizes regional control. In Tigray, this has meant that the TPLF still wields control at the regional level, while Meles heads a national coalition (albeit dominated by the TPLF) called the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) fiom Ethiopia's capital, Addis Ababa. The departure fiom centralized control is far fiom complete, however. What has been called the "Ethiopian Bureaucratic Empire" began more than a century ago.' It established the tradition of centralized authority (as opposed to a more localized feudalism) and an immense bureaucratic structure that fanned out into distant areas of the empire and carried out policies determined by the center. The Derg's "revolutionaryy'policies were adopted "more because of what they enabled the regime to do or to justify than because of a blind faith in Marxist-Leninist doctrine" (Keller 1988: 245), and their policies always retained the centralizing tendencies of their predecessors. Many of these centralizing tendencies have been retained by the current government. In many ways, this should not be surprising. Most salaried professionals who populate Ethiopia's bureaucracy learned about bureaucratic function and routine as members of highly centralized systems, regardless of whether they worked under the Derg or an opposition party such as the TPLF. More important, however, is the fact that "political culture in Ethiopia has long rested on asserting a consensus around a predetermined party line rather than on open debate and then compromise" (Em,Second Quarter, 1995: 6). Regardless of the many changes that have occurred in Ethiopia since 1991, it should be recalled that, during the civil war, the TPLF and the Derg were separated by "language and group loyalty, not ideology" (Kaplan 1988: 97). The locus of power in Ethiopia still rests within a "centralized command structure," which "means that candid debate, dissent or parliamentary opposition to policies are likely to be minimal at both federal and regional levels" (EIU,Second Quarter, 1995: 6). It is within the context of Ethiopian centralization that the recent national emphasis on decentralization and regionalization should be examined. Regional administrations existed in Ethiopia long before recent movement toward regionalization began. And initiatives designed to decentralize control and authority have begun, even while centralizing tendencies remain strong. Nevertheless, profound shifts have occurred. The regionally based liberation movements against See Edrnond J. Keller's Revolutionary Ethiopia: From Empire to People's Republic (1988) for more information. 2 the Ethiopian center "recognized the oppressiveness of centralized planning" (Hoben 1994: 6), and have inspired a reorganization of Ethiopia that is guided by "the fact that 'nationality' is the defining characteristic of regional (or state) boundaries" (World Bank 1995: 2). The major groups that opposed the Derg were ethnically