HARAMAYA UNIVERSITY

College of Educational and Behavioural Science

Department Psychology

MA Program in Social Psychology

Course Title: Social Policy and Program Evaluation

Course Code: Spsy6042

Individual Assignment (2)

By
Jafer Aliyi Abdurahman
(ID: K/PGP/417/11)

Submitted To: Bahar Adam (PhD)

 Individual Assignment (2)

Policy analysis

I) Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction Program (SDPRP)

A. After completing the first draft Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP), it was circulated to
key stakeholders i.e., private sector, NGOs, and DAG- for comments who provided feedbacks
and was used to strengthen the final SDPRP.

Contributions of the Consultations Process: The consultations conducted at the various levels
contributed to the preparation of the strategy in the following ways:

 Confirming the broad development strategy, sectoral and cross-sectoral priority actions
followed by the government
 Emphasizing decentralization and community empowerment
 Highlighting the significance of capacity building and cooperative effort of public,
private, NGOs and communities
 Emphasizing the significance of efficient, effective, transparent and accountable public
service
 Highlighting the negative effects of harmful traditional practices, in the struggle against
poverty by households, communities and the country.

Accordingly, Ethiopia's Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction Program (SDPRP) has
provided core treatment to agriculture, food security, education, health, water (including
irrigation) and roads measures to strengthen agricultural marketing (crops, livestock) and access
to finance through micro finance institutions have also been included in the paper. These were
principal concerns raised at all levels of consultations.

In preparing Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction Strategy Program (SDPRP), the
government has conducted extensive reviews of its agriculture and rural development policies;
the performance and constraints of key sector programs on education, health, and roads; issuance
of new water resource development policy and strategy and formulation of sector development
programme for HIV/AIDS and conducted technical analysis on the nature, dimension and causes
of poverty; study on growth and poverty linkage as well as its good governance, decentralization
and empowerment process.

The main strategy document entitled “Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction
Program (SDPRP)”:

 Socioeconomic Performance and Poverty Profile of Ethiopia, and Poverty Linkage,

Major Outcomes of the Consultation Process, Overview of Ethiopia’s Development
Challenges, respectively, and the practical experiences and lessons learnt over the past
ten years, and an assessment of the development experiences of countries that have
attained rapid economic development; the FDRE has formulated policies and strategies
to guide over all development with focus on rural and agricultural development.

The fundamental development objectives of the FDRE are to build a free-market economic
system in the country.

For some countries, economic growth the primary policy goal, and poverty reduction is to be
achieved through measures complementary to growth. This is not the approach of the Ethiopian
government. Poverty reduction is the core objective of the Ethiopian government. Economic
growth is the principal, but not only, means to this objective.

The broad thrust of Ethiopia’s strategy during the Sustainable Development and Poverty
Reduction Program (SDPRP) period thus consists of:

 Overriding and intentional focus on agriculture as the sector is the source of livelihood
for 85% of the population where the bulk of the poor live. The government gives
overriding primacy to the welfare of rural populace;
 Strengthening private sector growth and development especially in industry as means
of achieving off-farm employment and output growth;
 Rapid export growth through production of high value agricultural products and
increased support to export oriented manufacturing sectors particularly intensified
processing of high quality skins/leather and textile garment;
  Undertake major investment in education and strengthen the ongoing effort on capacity
building to overcome critical constraints to implementation of development programs;
 Deepen and strengthen the decentralization process to shift decision-making closer to
the grass root population, to improve responsiveness and service delivery;
 Improvements in governance to move forward in the transformation society, improve
empowerment of the poor and set framework/provide-enabling environment for private
sector growth and development;
 Agricultural research, water harvesting and small scale irrigation;
 Focus on increased water resource utilization to ensure food security.
 ADLI is seen as a long-term strategy to achieve faster growth and economic
development by making use of technologies that are labour using, but land augmenting,
such as fertiliser and improved seeds other cultural practices.

Nevertheless, achieving the objectives of halving hunger and poverty requires a greater
understanding of which agricultural subsectors can best drive growth and slash poverty. The
degree to which agricultural subsectors contribute to growth and poverty reduction will differ.
Combining stable crop and livestock growth to maximize the poverty alleviation effect.

 This policy addressed social problem that may take into account include: food
crisis, unemployment, gender inequality, lack of proper sanitation and clean
water, child and family health care, homelessness and illiteracy.

B) The Ethiopian government believed the approach to be in a fight against poverty and ensure
sustainable development strategy is built on four pillars. These are:

 Agricultural Development Led Industrialization (ADLI),

 Justice system and civil service reform,
 Decentralization and empowerment, and
 Capacity building in public and private sectors.

C) One of the key objectives of the policy is "Facilitating conditions conducive to the
speeding of equality between men and women so that women can participate in the
political, social and economic life of their country on equal terms with men and ensuring
that their right to own property as well as their other human rights are respected and that
they are not excluded from the enjoyment of the fruits of their labour and from performing
public functions and being decision makers".

D) The objective of first phase of the Road Sector Development Program (RSDP I) was mainly
aimed at upgrading and rehabilitating the existing road network. The RSDP II has given attention
to the expansion of the existing network in order to enable the road infrastructure support the
country's endeavor to attain economic development and poverty reduction. The first three years
(2002/03-2004/05) of RSDP II target is to:

• Increase the rate of acceptable roads from an average 57% for all road types to 82% by the end
of 2004/05;

• Increase the road density from the current 29-km/1000 km2 and 0.48-km/1000 people to 47-
km/1000 km2 and 0.70-km/1000 people by the end of 2004/05 (including low class roads).

The Ethiopian Rural Travel and Transport Sub-Program (ERTTP) is an integrated rural
development initiative that revolves around rural travel and transport and it envisages the
following activities during RSDP II:

• Construction of substantial amount of low level rural roads,

• Provision and expansion of a conventional and intermediate means of transport,

• Expansion of facilities and optimization of facility, and schemes that raise the rural household
income level.

Water and Sanitation Strategy:

During 2002/03-2004/05 water supply coverage of urban, rural and country level is expected to
reach at 82.5%, 31.4% and 39.4% respectively. With respect to the urban sewerage, coverage
will increase annually by 3.5% from its current level of 7%.

II) History of the Policy

A. Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction Program (SDPRP) were passed by FDRE
government in 2001. The FDRE recognizes that in the absence of proactive development
policies, it is impossible to create an enabling environment for accelerated development and
attainment of improvements in the standards of living of the people.
The other passed policies prior to Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction Program
(SDPRP) is a Plan for Accelerated and Sustained Development to End Poverty (PASDEP) was
launched in 2005 as a guiding framework.

Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP) also designed to narrow the gap between low
performing farmers and highly productive farmers through a scaling-up strategy.

B. The social group who are oppressed before the passage of this policy and the beneficiary one
is support it. Particularly women and the rural residents those whose lives are rely on farming
were the supporter of this policy.

The those who have been the owner of public property and exercising power are not enjoyed by
this policy, because the policies are come up with the fair distribution of resources and equal
access to public services.

C. The people are refuse to comply with a “Marxist-Leninist” system, and the “land to teller”
movements were mostly influenced the policy transformation.

III) Who Does Policy Affect?

A. These programs are primarily aimed at transferring resources aimed at both developing
capacity for self-provisioning and support vulnerable groups, who would not be capable of self-
provisioning during the short and medium term. The former scheme is aimed at provision of
inputs (seed and fertilizer) small agricultural tools and implements to resource poor farmers
(food insecure) extending small loans to destitute women to help them develop sustainable
livelihood. The latter scheme evolves cash transfers to orphans, the aged and handicapped or
self-targeting food subsidies for particular vulnerable groups.

One the main targets of sustainable development and poverty reduction programme is to improve
poverty rate through increasing agricultural activities, which are the backbone of its economy.
Poverty eradication and improvements in the well-being of people.

As a secondary targets of the policies the fundamental development objectives of the FDRE
governments are to build a free-market economic system in the country. The FDRE has
formulated policies and strategies to guide the overall development with focus on rural and
agricultural development.
B) The Women's Development Initiatives Project (WDIP) is an example of an initiative that
offers particularly poor women in rural settings critical economic opportunities to help fight their
desperate situation. In October 2001, the Government reorganized its structure to provide
effective guidance and support to the challenges of rapid economic growth and poverty
reduction. This is also underpinned by political commitment towards deepening of the
devolution process to Woredas and Kebeles facilitating the direct participation of the people in
growth and poverty reduction endeavors.

C) The Government has made a political choice to further deepen the democratization and
devolution process by transferring a number of responsibilities from regional governments to
Woredas and Kebles. This will be accompanied by fiscal empowerment. This is a fundamental
shift in the history of Ethiopia, which mandates communities through their elected councils to
plan, allocate budget and implement to address their socio-economic problems. This is a key
process that will unlock the energies of communities to face the challenge of poverty at its root.
They will be provided with budget grants to make their empowerment effective and complement
their local resources, which for sure they will mobilize to address their own problems, by
themselves.

IV) Effects of the Policy

A. The medium-to long-term target is to reduce the absolute size of the food insecure rural
population substantially and make them exit from food aid. In the short-run, the objective is to
rely on fiscal transfer of resources to support a relatively small numbers of food-deficit
households. For the country as a whole, tackling food insecurity at the household level is,
arguably, the most effective and direct way of poverty reduction being envisaged by the
government, and, no doubt, among the most important programs.

B. Agricultural Development Led Industrialization (ADLI) is seen as a long-term strategy to

achieve faster growth and economic development by making use of technologies that are labour
using, but land augmenting, such as fertiliser and improved seeds other cultural practices.

C. Irrigation would have to be introduced in a significant way for a sustainable attainment of

food security at the national level. However, food insecurity at the household level could still
persist despite growth of food and cash crops at national level. The solution would have to come
predominantly from within agriculture.
The medium-to long-term target is to reduce the absolute size of the food insecure rural
population substantially and make them exit from food aid. In the short-run, the objective is to
rely on fiscal transfer of resources to support a relatively small numbers of food-deficit
households. For the country as a whole, tackling food insecurity at the household level is,
arguably, the most effective and direct way of poverty reduction being envisaged by the
government, and, no doubt, among the most important programs.

V) Feasibility

A. Gender Inequality and Women Empowerment

In almost any country, women and men have different access to critical economic resources
and varying power to make choices that affect their lives, as a consequence of the state of gender
relations that exists in a given society. The direct result of this is seen in the unequal roles and
responsibilities of women and men. Core dimensions of poverty (opportunity, capability,
security/risk, and empowerment) differ along gender lines, and function to heighten the
vulnerability of women. For these reasons, the inclusion of gender in any effort to alleviate
poverty is nonnegotiable.

B. The government of Ethiopia is committed to eradicate poverty, particularly addressing its

gender dimension. Over the last decade, the government has renewed its commitment to address
gender inequalities that deter long-lasting change and equitable development. Apart from
endorsing the National Policy for Ethiopian Women, the government has created supportive
constitutional provisions to establish women's equality with men.

VI) Alternative Policies

A. Development Assistance Group (DAG) and Overseas Development Assistance (ODA)

B. The donor community is also important development force and partner in Ethiopia. Donors
have been and are assisting Ethiopia’s development effort and have been active in the PRSP
preparation.
Given the level of poverty and the low level of per capita Overseas Development Assistance
(ODA) Ethiopia currently receives (below the Sub Saharan average), there is expectation for
increased inflow of ODA resources to support the country’s strategy and priority programs for
broad-based development and poverty reduction. It is also expected that aid flows are not
impeded by traditional aid delivery mechanisms. There is a clear and strong preference for
budget support, which becomes an imperative with the ongoing decentralization from Regions to
woredas and kebles. The DAG has expressed its readiness to support SDPRP and some members
of DAG have decided to move towards budget support in their aid delivery and the government
will create conducive environment for its realization.
Development partners are also expected to facilitate market access, trade and foreign investment
flows to Ethiopia to contribute to the realization of development and poverty reduction objective
of Ethiopia. Support to capacity building for trade so that Ethiopia can effectively make use of
existing market access opportunities such as African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) and
Everything But Arms (EBA) becomes critically important.