The Impact of Development Interventions in Ethiopia

Download or read book The Impact of Development Interventions in Ethiopia written by Jonathan Pycroft and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It has proved a persistent challenge to identify the optimal form of interventions into any developing economy, especially when those interventions come from abroad. The papers in this thesis explore different aspects of intervention in Ethiopia, a poor nation that is highly dependent on foreign aid. The first paper (Chapter 3) investigates the perceptions of aid actors in Ethiopia, with possible aid narratives being assessed against evidence from a series of key informant interviews. It emerges that there is a clear support for programme over project aid, a belief that the Ethiopian government has strong ownership of the aid agenda, active support for greater harmonisation and alignment and controversy over food aid, all of which are compared to other possible narratives that donors could support. The second paper (Chapter 4) addresses the interaction of aid and trade. Aid flows can damage trade through appreciation of the exchange rate. However, if aid benefits the supply-side of the economy, the impact of the appreciated exchange rate on exports is lessened or reversed. Using both static and dynamic CGE models for Ethiopia, the impact of supply-side benefits is estimated. The model is also used to measure the magnitude of the supply-side benefits required to maintain real exports at their initial level following an aid inflow. The third paper (Chapter 5) uses agricultural census data to investigate the determinants of improved seed adoption, and secondly, if farmers do adopt, how much more productive they become. The government's Agricultural-Development Led Industrialisation (ADLI) strategy particularly encourages the adoption of modern technologies, though with only modest success thus far. The productivity of improved seeds on rural farms is far below that on government extension plots and the econometric analysis suggests that were non-users to adopt improved seeds they would still be less productive than current improved seed users.