Ethiopia Unveils 10-Year Development Plan

ADDIS ABABA – The government of Ethiopia has unveiled on Friday its 10-year economic development plan under the theme ‘Ethiopia: An African Beacon of Prosperity’.

The ten-year plan will target “to bring quality based economic growth”, said Prime Minister Abiy, after he attended a meeting that discussed the document.

The Planning and Development Commission of Ethiopia has been preparing the document for months with each ministry tasked to come up with its own ten-year plan.

The plan also targets to increase production and competitiveness; build a green and climate-resilient economy as well as bringing about institutional transformation, according to the Prime Minister.

The Commission could still add inputs in the document but targets to start using it in the coming year of 2013 Ethiopian calendar, according to the commission.

Fitsum Asefa, head of the Commission, said, during the life span of the new plan, Ethiopia’s economy will experience a 10.2 percent average growth annually.

Agriculture, Manufacturing Industries, Mining, Tourism, Urban Development, Innovation and Technology are the key development sectors of the plan, according to the Commissioner.

– Pillars –

Abiy said the development plan, the first for his administration, will be “women and youth” centered and guarantees private sector-led growth.

“With a five-pillar focus area serving as foundation for the effective development of other sectors the plan sets out to capitalize on our existing strengths & abundant resources,” he said in a Twitter post.

The energy sector plan is in particular quite ambitious given many of our development needs are heavily reliant on it and energy is a crosscutting need, he said without delving much into it.

The Prime minister, however, stated three key factors for success during the life span of the development plan.

It strives to ensure the impact of projects and investments are undertaken to add value to GDP; focuses on quality of projects so that expenditures are effective; and transform attitudes from ‘battling poverty’ narrative towards building multidimensional prosperity, according to the PM.

The plan will replace the current five-year growth transformation plan or GTP

Unlike the GTP, planning commission this one “is highly researched in all the different sectors”, and aims to fill in the gaps in the previous one.

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Featured Image: Fitsum Assefa – the Minister in Charge of Planning and Development Commission – presenting the plan to various government officials on Friday afternoon [Image PMoE]