Issue No. 214

Education in crisis

Ethiopia's education system is in a state of near collapse. Staggering government figures in October revealed that 96% of students failed to pass their final year exams in 2022, disqualifying them from the chance of a university education. Of the 3,106 schools conducting the exams, 43% reported no students passing. Ethiopia's education minister, Berhanu Nega, has blamed years of "corrupt practices" for the breakdown of the country's education system and inflated grades. The rot is deep, and the continuing slide in human development and armed conflict is undermining marginal advances in the country's education system.
 
Throughout the 20th century, education in Ethiopia veered from one education style to another, never truly reflecting the country's rich ethnic and cultural diversity. Curricula were instead based on foreign nations' systems, including Italy during its occupation of Ethiopia between 1936-41 and communist nations during the Derg regime between 1971-1991. Ideology and indoctrination often took precedence, rather than effective schooling.
 
The famine and civil war of the Derg years also took a heavy toll on education in Ethiopia, particularly in rural areas neglected by the regime. By its overthrow in 1991, poverty was endemic and education marginal. The decentralisation of Ethiopia's education system to regional governments was intended to develop marginalised regions. But while general access has markedly improved since the 1990s, equal opportunity to quality education remains elusive. Properly qualified teachers are scarce in swathes of the country, and teacher-to-student ratios remain doggedly high.
 
Pre-primary education was prioritised in the 2010s, and the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) administration sought to give every child access. Significant leaps were made on paper, particularly in long-marginalised regions, including Afar and Somali. Though primary enrollment rose to 88.7% in 2021/22, many leave without learning basic literacy and numeracy skills. Rote memorisation remains a cornerstone of Ethiopian education, with schools often preparing students to memorise and imitate– rather than critically think for themselves. This is partly a legacy of instruction from the Orthodox Church that remains engrained in much of the country.
 
With this rise in primary education, however, has come increased pressure on the secondary school system, which investment has not matched. Though an impressive 24% of the country's total budget was allocated to education in 2020/21, just 44% was directed towards general education, below the 46% allocated for tertiary education in Ethiopia.
 
The education minister's recent comments have some truth in them. Corruption and exam rigging were clearly inflating grades before the current administration's exam reform. Still, Berhanu Nega's observations ignore the glaring reality that Ethiopia's numerous internal conflicts have also taken a heavy toll on the fragile education system. Credible reports indicate that 85% of schools in Tigray are 'seriously or partially' damaged, having been systematically targeted by invading forces between 2020-22. Many of the school buildings still standing in non-occupied Tigray now serve as internally displaced person (IDP) shelters. Over a year has passed since the signing of the Pretoria agreement, yet just 23% of children in Tigray are in school. And for children living in areas under the Eritrean army and Amhara militia control, school is still a distant dream.
 
Schooling suffered across northern Ethiopia during the devastating war, and Amhara's schools had also barely begun to recover before the escalation of violence in the region in August 2023. Over 7,000 schools were closed during the Tigray War, and almost 2.3 million children were denied access to education.
 
Today, escalating conflict in the Oromia and Amhara regions continues to deny many full access to education. On 28 November, Fano militia in Bahir Dar bombed 5 private high schools, including two Catholic schools. The schools were targeted as a clear warning to Prosperity Party officials whose children attended them. A UN report in November also documented government air strikes on schools in the region. On 6 November, a drone targeted a primary school in Wadera, killing 7 people, including teachers. Meanwhile, in Oromia, since the collapse of talks between the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) and the federal government, armed conflict has escalated once again. Years of violence have left more than 1,200 schools damaged, and yet more children robbed of a stable childhood.
 
Today, with Ethiopia's economy struggling amid persistently high inflation and costly internal wars, significant investment in education and reconstruction is unlikely to materialise in the near future. While the national education budget swelled from ETB 95.7bn in 2017/18 to ETB 162.2bn in 2021/22, the budget's value actually dropped by 20% in real terms. Ethiopian universities in the 1960s and 70s were an incubator of radical ideas, from the calls for land redistribution encapsulated in the 'land to the tiller' slogan to advocating for greater representation of excluded ethnic groups. With Ethiopia adrift, the country should turn again to its youth to steer its direction and provide them with the necessary tools to do so.

By the Ethiopian Cable team