A trillion-dollar industry comprising some of the world’s most critical infrastructure, telecommunications is arguably the single most important enterprise that anchors the grand architecture of mediated communication today. The current iteration of telecommunications as a profit-driven industry was a direct upshot of the changing tide of Western economic thought in the 1980s that abandoned the Keynesian doctrine. The global drift toward market fundamentalism coupled with the American experiment on telecommunication deregulation has set the stage for the diminishing role of states’ proprietorship of telecommunications, a sector that for long has been seen as a ‘natural monopoly’.1 The Telecommunications Act of 1996 in the United States particularly had long-lasting implications to the industry as it became a litmus test for an impending privatisation and liberalisation of telecommunications operations internationally. As Shaw (2001, 155) writes, a positive outcome in a form of robust economic growth and expansive employment would establish a ‘decisive deregulatory experimentation elsewhere’. Sure enough, it did not take long before the American model was adopted by the United Kingdom where state-owned British Telecom was privatised in 1984. The American and British experiences soon trickled down to Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America, making liberalisation and privatisation the governing telecommunications policy frameworks of various countries.
Since the beginning of the 1990s when the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (‘EPRDF’ or ‘the Front’ hereafter) seized power in Ethiopia, the issue of telecommunications liberalisation has been an ongoing theme of contention involving different actors internally and externally. Until recently, leading officials of EPRDF have ruled out the privatisation of Ethio-Telecom, the only state-owned telecommunications provider for Ethiopia’s 102 million people. Amidst continuous push by global financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for the sector to be liberalised, EPRDF has for long remained unfazed by repercussions of financing denial.
The aim of this article is to examine the external push to deregulate the Ethiopian telecommunications sector, and, more importantly, discuss the underlying rationales for the Ethiopian state’s historical insistence on the state monopoly model. First, I will provide a review of perspectives on information communication technologies (ICTs) and development by focusing on the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). Next, I will contextualise the political and economic underpinnings of EPRDF as Ethiopia’s ruling elite through a dialectic discussion of development statism and neopatrimonialism. This will be followed by a discussion on the external push for telecommunications deregulation in Ethiopia. I will then examine the causes and consequences of the existing monopolistic arrangement. Finally, I will conclude by outlining alternative models of telecommunications ownership at stake as EPRDF, in a quick turn of events, embraces an uncharacteristic change of heart toward deregulation.
Perspectives on development, ICTs, and access
Despite neoliberalism’s antipathy of state intervention in telecommunications, major policy groups such as WSIS contend the nation state should play an active role in the development of ICTs (WSIS 2005). While this view is shared by subsequent scholarship (Carmel and Tjia 2005; Heeks and Nicholson 2004), debates about the scope and nature of the role of the nation state in an increasingly globalising world are, to say the least, diverse (Brenner 1999; Ó’Riain 2004; Walsham 2001; Weiss 1998). Nonetheless, many scholars and policy makers generally agree ICTs today are the fulcrum of globalisation, and that they have become quintessential tools of economic development (Castells 1999). In this sense, non-participation in ICTs-enabled networks leads to what Castells (1999, 12) refers to as ‘fourth world’, a state of social exclusion and economic stagnation. However, a look at global distribution of networks demonstrates how ICTs – when driven by the capitalistic affordability logic – can be agents that exacerbate existing inequalities marked by uneven distribution within and between countries.
Today, discourses of ICTs for development globally not only emphasise the critical matter of addressing information/communication inequality but also the need to create an inclusive information and knowledge society. Recently, the United Nations General Assembly endorsed the WSIS agenda on creating ‘a people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented information society’ (United Nations 2015, 2). In line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the United Nations General Assembly has established access to ICTs is no longer a means of development but rather ‘a development indicator and aspiration in and of itself’ (United Nations 2015, 3). In this sense, access is seen as a means by which developing countries can participate in the growing digital economy, henceforth benefiting from increases in gross domestic product (Ibid.). In addition, WSIS underscores the potential of ICTs and digital connectivity to bring about higher levels of social benefit and inclusion which might have been inaccessible or unaffordable previously (WSIS 2003).
The case for universal access by WSIS is not only a matter of economic empowerment but that of social justice too. Noting, as of 2015, only 43% of the global population had Internet access and an estimated 80% of online content was available in only one of 10 languages, WSIS contends it is the world’s poorest and marginalised people that are most excluded from the information society (United Nations 2015). The intersection between gender divide and digital divide is yet another facet of existing concerns of access. The fact that women’s access to the Internet is limited to 41% means the gender digital divide undermines women’s access to and use of the digital economy, thereby putting them in a clear disadvantage in pursuing opportunities in education, employment and other areas of economic and social development (United Nations 2015; WSIS 2003). Even with access, other impediments such as lack of ICTs literacy withhold these groups making the leap from ‘information societies’ to ‘knowledge societies’ where ‘information is not only created and disseminated, but put to the benefit of human development’ (United Nations 2015, 6).
While the WSIS diagnosis of and remedy to global information (and knowledge) inequality continues to dominate policy discourses, there are a few concerns over potential gaps. Hamelink (2015) argues that WSIS debates frame the digital divide as an outcome of skewed distribution of information and communication resources rather than viewing it as a dimension of the overall global ‘development divide’. For Hamelink, this assumption isolates the digital divide from the bigger problem of worsening socio-economic inequalities. This perspective sees information/knowledge inequality as a subset of broader development divides, and asserts the challenge can only be meaningfully resolved if and when there is a political will to address ‘the unequal allocation of both material and immaterial resources in the world, both between and within societies’ (Hamelink 2015, 145). There is also scepticism over the recurring narrative of ‘inclusion’ in WSIS debates for lack of both clarity of meaning and a potential profit-driven undercurrent. The concern here is consistent with the critique of the modernisation paradigm where development is conceived as a transfer of value systems and capitalistic ethos through intervention by means of resources, capital or skillset. In this sense, development becomes a delivery from interventionists to the recipients of said intervention. For Hamelink (2015) and others (see Kaplan 1999; Mansell 1999), unless augmented by robust policies, diffusion of such resources as information, ICT, and knowledge per ‘development as delivery’ modus operandi will champion, more than access and justice imperatives, the integration of recipients into a global marketplace.
Framing development discourses in Ethiopia
Understanding the premises of telecommunications policy in Ethiopia is invariably related to development discourses pertinent to the Ethiopian state, and, more importantly, EPRDF’s original political doctrine. For EPRDF’s veterans, Ethiopia’s uncompromising stance on state monopoly of telecommunications stems from the belief that the sector is too crucial for the country’s economic development programme to be run by a privatised, profit-driven model. This line of thinking, state officials for long contended, is a natural upshot of the developmental state model. Critics refute EPRDF’s self-characterisation as a developmental state vanguard by arguing Ethiopia’s bureaucratic design resembles that of a neopatrimonial state which uses public resources like communication systems to extend individual and party interests. For these critics, state monopoly of telecommunications permeates rent-seeking behaviour, expedites state-sponsored mass surveillance, and limits the right to free speech granted by the Ethiopian Constitution (Horne and Wong 2014; Marquis-Boire et al. 2013).
Scholarly interest in the notion of the developmental state gained significant traction in tandem with the economic success of the ‘Asian Tigers’ in the 1980s and 1990s (Chan et al. 1998; White 1988). ‘Developmental state’, Woo-Cummings (1999, 1) writes, is ‘a shorthand for the seamless web of political, bureaucratic, and moneyed influences that structures economic life in capitalist Northeast Asia’. For Johnson (1982, 19), the developmental state represents a ‘plan-rational’ state that is an active participant in the development process embracing ‘substantive social and economic goals’. In this sense, the developmental state proposition embodies a quintessential departure from a neoliberal economic thinking by drifting toward the direction of state intervention.
For EPRDF, the characterisation of Ethiopia as a developmental state is closely aligned with the party’s abiyotawi dimokrasi roots (Milkias 2011). Drawn from a Leninist interpretation of Marx’s Proletariat Dictatorship thesis, abiyotawi dimokrasi underscores the vitality of an enlightened elite in leading the unconscious masses to revolution (Bach 2011). The revolutionary elite, ‘the proletariat dictatorship’ as Marx calls it, was to be distinct and antithetical to ‘parliamentary bourgeois democracy’. Lenin’s ‘elitist’ approach envisions a vanguard party that circumvents internal factions, maximises ideological homogeneity, and adopts ‘democratic centralism’ (Bach 2011, 642).
The late Ethiopian Prime Minister and EPRDF Chairperson Meles Zenawi went further to refine his party’s ‘elitist mandate’ along the lines of ‘Bonapartism’ where the authority to rule is acquired by struggle not only between classes but also between elites. In this sense, the long-time superiority of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) within the EPRDF coalition ‘that not only oversees the public bureaucracy but also guides and gives orders to all governing political factions’ is not surprising (Milkias 2011, 91–92). For Meles, abyotawi dimokrasi has become a doctrine to be inculcated in the minds of the masses ‘if Ethiopia was to embark on sustainable economic development’ (Bach 2011, 643). For an enduring developmental state to be created in the African context, Meles argued that states should be resolute in ‘value creation, making accelerated and broad-based growth a matter of national survival’ as well as stamping out money generation through rent-seeking mechanisms (De Waal 2013, 153).
Although Meles Zenawi’s political and economic philosophy was highly influenced by Marxist-Leninist scholarship, his development discourse was pragmatic. For him, De Waal (2013) notes, the end goal was to build a capitalist state. Marxism-Leninism was ‘not a dogma but a rigorous method for assembling evidence and argument’ that rationalises EPRDF’s trajectory from being an armed fighter to ruling party (151–152). This distinction is particularly important for the case of Ethiopia as a developmental state since the latter is anchored on disciplined capital advancement (Amsden 1989). In this sense, abyotawi dimokrasi renders, at least in principle, a consistent framework to cultivate propositions of the developmental state model. In considering abyotawi dimokrasi as a deliberate and conscious effort on the part of EPRDF – as Vaughan (2011) notes – to promote political choices that are ideologically and socially reinforced, the developmental state model’s hegemonic appeal to Ethiopia’s ruling elite is unsurprising.
The problem with the developmental state model, for some critics, is not necessarily in its theoretical raison d’être but rather in its execution. While EPRDF argues that the notion of development trumps all other priorities, critics contend the party’s adoption of the developmental state proposition into a political programme is nothing more than an attempt to institutionalise rent-seeking interests of the ruling elite. To some extent, there was a recognition on the part of Meles Zenawi himself that EPRDF was regressing to clientelist tendencies when he shared his opinion that the latter may be superficially rehearsing the development rhetoric but indulged in ‘socially wasteful rent seeking’ (De Waal 2013, 152). Consequently, for EPRDF’s critics, what we have in Ethiopia is not a developmental state per se, but rather a neopatrimonial state that lodged a complex legal-rational bureaucracy to appropriate public resources into the group and individual interests of the ruling elite.
The concept of neopatrimonialism essentially encompasses a dualistic nature where the state is characterised by patrimonialisation and bureaucratisation (Bach 2011). Neopatrimonialism, in this sense, is a modern, sophisticated form of patrimonialism in which ‘patrimonial logic coexists with the development of bureaucratic administration and at least the pretense of legal-rational forms of state legitimacy’ (Van de Walle 1994, 131). The emphasis on the coalescence between ‘patrimonial logic’ and ‘legal-rational forms’ is also shared by Clapham (1985, 48), who describes neopatrimonialism as a form of organisations in which ‘relationships of a broadly patrimonial type pervade a political and administrative system which is formally constructed on rational-legal lines’. Clapham further contends that officials in a neopatrimonial mould ‘hold positions in bureaucratic organisations with powers which are formally defined, but exercise those powers … as a form … of private property’ (Ibid.). Under a neopatrimonial arrangement, the ruling elite appropriate and condition what seems to be a legal bureaucratic system to their own ends.
In situating development discourses in Ethiopia along developmentalism vs neopatrimonialism frames, caution should be taken not to fall in the trap of either-or proposition. The work of Booth and Golooba-Mutebi (2012) on the Rwandan Patriotic Front’s political involvement in the private sector of the Rwandan economy is particularly enlightening in theorising the possibility of a dualistic existence of developmental and patrimonial ensemble. By adopting a cross-national study, Booth and Golooba-Mutebi discuss the defining characteristics of Rwanda as a ‘developmental patrimonial state’ where they assert RPF’s operation as a governing body of Rwanda and a private-sector business participant is clearly demarcated. Fisher and Anderson (2015) critically examine the coalescence of securitisation and development in post-guerrilla regimes in Africa such as Chad, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Uganda, and how Western support for counter-terrorism efforts is enabling the rise to illiberal states that divert military resources to stifle dissent internally. More recently, and particularly relevant to the concerns the current discussion, Clapham (2018) describes Ethiopia as a clear example of an Africa developmental state that relies on domestic capture of ‘rents’ to finance bedrock infrastructure in communications, education, and hydroelectricity. However, Clapham warns ‘developmental patrimonialism’ faces an uncertain future unless the private sector is allowed to become the driver of the economy. More importantly, he argues that a political reform making the state liable to accountability is profoundly needed (12).
Methodological considerations
Most of my data are generated from in-depth interviews. Interviewing policymakers and government officials was useful in gaining insight into the rationale behind the measured, often ‘polite’, demeanour of policy documents. Policy documents show end products; interviews illuminate the processes leading to the end product. While the strength of documents lies in their richness and resourcefulness of providing information (Lincoln and Guba 1985), interviews offer opportunities to explore the thinking process behind carefully worded, filtered and ‘politically correct’ institutional/ideological records (Seidman 2006). As Murray et al. (2003, 153) comment, the interview may be ‘the best choice for a researcher who wishes to illuminate a sensitive issue, located beyond the discursive range of the socially acceptable or the politically correct’. While policies shape people’s attitudes, it is important to note that people and their political, social and economic predispositions formulate policies as well. To this end, I conducted seven individual in-depth interviews at different intervals between December 2012 and January 2017 mainly with high-ranking Ethiopian government officials, telecommunications infrastructure development advisors and consultants to the Ethiopian government, IMF country representatives, and Ethio-Telecom branch managers and marketing officers.2 The interviews – most of which needed to be transcribed and translated into English from Amharic – were categorised and labelled thematically. When reporting the interviews, I had to maintain a balance between ‘letting the data speak for itself’ and analysing the material in the context of critical political economy. In using interviewees’ responses, my approach is to limit excerpts to the most relevant verbatim quotes.
Making sense of state monopoly of telecommunications in Ethiopia
Although the push to deregulate the Ethiopian telecommunications sector involved both internal and external actors in the past two decades, the IMF has arguably been one of the most vocal proponents of telecommunication liberalisation in Ethiopia. Since EPRDF’s rise to power nearly three decades ago, IMF’s recommendations for the liberalisation of the Ethiopian telecom sector have been ubiquitous in many of its Ethiopia Country Reports, Article IV Consultations and Staff Appraisal Reports (International Monetary Fund 2002, 2004, 2005). In spite of these recommendations, the Ethiopian government remained apathetic to the Fund’s persistent liberalisation push. Although the World Bank had financed telecommunication projects in Ethiopia between 1952 and 1994, loans were indefinitely suspended when the Bank’s short-lived optimism over the liberalisation of the telecommunications sector once the command economy was disbanded in 1991 did not materialise. Subsequently, when it comes to telecommunications projects, Ethiopia is blacklisted from receiving loans from traditional Western financial institutions.3 Before the influx of Chinese vendor financing in the past decade,4 the Ethiopian government was forced to look internally for local borrowing. For the IMF, state monopoly of the telecommunications sector fed by depleted foreign currency resources could potentially add stress to local borrowing. Because other public enterprises like the Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation and Ethiopian Airlines have also been engaged in local borrowing, the IMF has repeatedly warned against commercial loans to public enterprises that could dry up financial resources for the private sector (International Monetary Fund 2006, 2007, 2009).
EPRDF’s defence of state monopoly of telecommunications in Ethiopia revolves around three rhetorical categories. First, the Front historically held the position that market forces work contrary to the government’s direction toward achieving universal access and universal service in telecommunications services. Meles Zenawi has been particularly bullish in his characterisation of market forces for inhibiting ‘imperfections’ that must be patched by state intervention so that equitable distribution of resources can be realised. Second, EPRDF officials have repeatedly characterised the telecommunications sector as a ‘cash cow’ that generates huge amounts of revenue for the state, which, in turn, is used to finance the expansion of the sector and other infrastructure projects. Third, EPRDF, while resolutely dismissing foreign proprietorship, believes the telecommunications sector in Ethiopia cannot be privatised because of the absence of a potent local private sector that can successfully run the industry. I will discuss each of these in the following sections.
Telecommunications as universal service
The Ethiopian government’s self-characterisation of being a developmental state puts the notions of universal access and universal service at the centre of its telecommunications policy. Prominent EPRDF officials have reiterated that it is only through the intervention of the state that communication services can be indiscriminately accessible. EPRDF has argued that market forces, by their very nature, cannot bring about universal service and universal access since they are not obliged to set prices at a level that a large part of the population can afford. These market forces are therefore prone to ‘imperfections’ that are discriminatory by design and are bound to serve only sections of the population where capital is accumulated. This line of thinking is reflected in one of EPRDF’s earliest economic programme documents entitled Yä Industri Limat Strateji Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (2001) which is rumoured to have been authored by Meles Zenawi himself. This document, although available only in Amharic, is enormously influential in terms of diffusing the role of industries in EPRDF’s developmental state proposition. Adapted as a mandatory training material originally to EPRDF cadres and eventually to all civil servants and higher institution students, the document rebukes the privatisation argument, and unequivocally asserts that universal access to communication services is impossible to achieve without direct government intervention in the telecommunications sector:
When a private investor engages in any kind of sector, the motive is to get profit from every dollar it spends; and it should. In order to do this, the simplest method is to provide service to major cities and customers that have a relatively higher income. This arrangement cannot deliver a telecom service that puts all Ethiopians, including those in small cities and rural areas, at the core of our development agenda … . The state can uphold this objective by being profitable from operations in big cities with customers who have a higher threshold of income, and redistributing the profit generated to expand services all over the country. Private investors cannot advance this cause (146–147).
For the Ethiopian government, it seems the question of access is treated in a manner that is mutually exclusive from quality of service. The criticisms related to the poor quality of Internet connectivity and mobile-based wireless services (see Workneh 2015) do not warrant a sense of urgency as much as access does. In this sense, the Ethiopian government, until recently, considered liberalisation and privatisation to be more effective in vertical efficiency (quality services but limited coverage) and poor in horizontal growth (large coverage but basic capabilities). Subsequently, deregulation is viewed as a betrayal to the principles of universal access, and, henceforth, equitable development:
We do not open the telecommunications sector because we understand what is at stake. We believe telecommunications, just like roads, is an instrument and accelerator to development as much as it is an indicator of development. Because we view telecommunication as a public good, it should be structured along universal access principles. When we invest on telecommunications, our calculation is not based on how much profit we make from it but how soon it can help us get out of poverty. We have no illusion the quality of our service is a work in progress; our penetration is low; and our capacity is yet to reach a satisfactory level. When it comes to access, however, we have got the entire country covered including border areas. The only exceptions in this regard are the deserts in the Afar and Somali regions. (Personal communication, Debretsion Gebremichael)
In EPRDF’s view, the participation of the private sector in the Ethiopian telecommunications services at a major level will be conditioned by how soon the universal access/service challenge will be met. The Front’s façade of the state as a vanguard of equitable development assumes markets facilitate concentration and centralisation of resources in areas where capital is accumulated. This ‘market failure’ can thus only be corrected by the strategic intervention of the state. The private sector will be allowed to partake in the provision of telecommunications services once infrastructure is spread out and resources are decentralised to the least developed peripheries of the country:
We want telecommunication in every school and in every village, and we want it cheap. That is why we have not yet opened up the telecommunications sector to private investment. Is that going to be the permanent future? No. Once the market failure is overcome, we move out. There were times we owned breweries in this country. Now we have privatized all of our breweries because that is not our business. Private sector can do an excellent job there. (Excerpt from Meles Zenawi, World Economic Forum 2008)
Telecommunications as a ‘cash cow’
Perhaps the most widely publicised opinion among senior EPRDF officials in relation to the state monopoly of the telecommunications sector is related to revenues. EPRDF believes the telecommunications sector is too lucrative to be transferred to private proprietorship. In 2007, ex-Prime Minister Meles Zenawi was quoted saying: ‘Privatizing cell phone service is equal to issuing license to print money’ (Tessema 2007). In 2013, Meles Zenawi’s successor Hailemariam Dessalegn reiterated the Ethiopian government’s resolve to keep privatisation and liberalisation at bay by alluding to the ‘cash cow’ narrative (Manson 2013).
Ethiopian officials are well aware of the recommendations made by the likes of the International Monetary Fund for the liberalisation of the telecommunication sector including the estimated $3 billion the state could earn if it decides to sell licences. The Ethiopian government’s ‘cash cow’ logic considers this arrangement as an inadmissible deal compared to the more than $1 billion in revenue Ethio-Telecom generates annually. The predominant thinking among Ethiopian officials in this regard is to sustain the profitability of Ethio-Telecom by protecting the sector from competitors. The rationale here is to ‘reinvest and recycle’ revenues for further telecommunication infrastructure development, thereby ‘enabling the sector to feed itself, become financially independent, and withstand the privatization pressure’ (personal communication, Debretsion Gebremichael).
The defence for the ‘cash cow’ argument is also related to the issue of currency. Privatisation implies the likely scenario of foreign companies taking over the telecommunications sector. Inevitably, this results in a massive amount of capital flight abroad and the haemorrhaging of the already depleted foreign currency reserve:
I do not have a religious view about privatization as some do. I am not against privatization per se if the person or the group that is going to own [Ethio-Telecom] is going to be Ethiopian. The reason is simple. Telecom is nothing but a service for talking and conversation. Of course, this is not to say it doesn’t have an impact on industrialization. This doesn’t change the fact that billions of dollars are spent by people simply chitchatting. It is in this sense that I cannot imagine giving it [telecom] to MTN or Orange and shipping out dollars overseas at this time when the country is massively struggling with its foreign currency reserve. In my view giving the sector to foreign companies is like going back to the colonial era. (Ibid.)
An ‘unready’ local private sector
In defending its vehement resistance to the liberalisation of the Ethiopian telecommunications sector or the privatisation of Ethio-Telecom, the Ethiopian government occasionally laments the absence of an able and competitive local private sector. In principle, EPRDF officials are of the opinion that the government should only intervene in the economy when the market and the private sector are not able to deliver services at the desired level. Officials have, at least in principle, declared the irrationality for the state to operate parallel to market forces and waste its limited financial and managerial capacity when the private sector is in a condition to deliver services reasonably well. When looking at telecommunications services, however, they argue that the private sector has not matured enough to rise up to the challenge, thereby necessitating the state to intervene in the sector (personal communication, Debretsion Gebremichael).
EPRDF’s view on the ‘incapacity’ of the domestic private sector could imply a justification for seeing telecommunications as a natural monopoly in the local context. If the proposition of the Ethiopian government’s treatment of telecommunications as a natural monopoly is valid, this means that state ownership of telecommunications in Ethiopia is not a result of a deliberate protectionist policy but rather a natural course of action that assumes the absence of a capable actor (in this case the domestic private sector). However, while the state contends that it remains the only viable actor with the capacity to carry out telecommunications operations along universal access/service principles, experience thus far locally and globally indicates quality will suffer under such arrangements. A long-term, sustainable, solution should involve the private sector in some capacity:
I think it is a good strategy and very brave of this government if they meet the universal access and universal service goal to reach to the smallest administrative regions of the country. Once they do that the market will probably be mature and hopefully some private company of Ethiopian origin will take over. Alternatively they may partner with foreigners as long as they [non-Ethiopian owners] do not put the dollar in the bag and go. It is not a good deal if I give away a dollar every time I talk. The problem in this country is there is no individual or group that is capable of investing on this sector. In the absence of it, I have no problem if the state continues to run it because they will have to liberalize it eventually anyway. Any government operator by its very nature is inefficient whether it is in Ethiopia, the United States or Canada. (Personal communication, Woldeloul Kassa)
Concluding remarks: toward public-private partnerships?
While the contested perspectives in telecommunications deregulation between the Ethiopian state and the IMF demonstrate the continued salience of the states vs markets debate in development discourse, notable in the exchange is a marked absence of nuance. The external push for liberalisation continues to uphold the rather tired one-size-fits-all prescription of trickle-down economics that puts faith in the self-correcting elixir of the free market. To be fair, the blatantly prescriptive approaches of deregulation and privatisation by the likes of the IMF have slowly faded away – partly due to the emergence of other players in the African development dynamics such as China – although loans are still strictly tied to compliance of conditionalities.
It is also worthwhile considering that the Ethiopian government’s insistence on state monopoly of telecommunications hardly comes from a strict matter of ‘developmentalism’. In several instances, the Ethiopian government has limited or shut down telecommunication services to curb critical speech. In 2000, for example, the Ethiopian government ordered its sole telecom provider to shut down short messaging service (SMS) in order to thwart opposition groups’ mobile-based election campaigns. As recently as October 2016, the EPRDF-led government cut mobile Internet across the country as part of a six-month, nationwide state of emergency instituted to contain a widespread public protest in the Amhara and Oromia regions.
The crucial question here is: is it possible to envisage a model whereby the Ethiopian state can execute its universal access for equitable development agenda in the telecommunications sector while being accountable? In the view of the writer, the answer is affirmative. There is compelling evidence that indicates universal access and universal service can be achieved in a non-monopolistic arrangement involving public-private partnerships (PPPs). In making a case for PPP as a viable alternative, it is worthwhile noting that such arrangement is consistent with what Westrup and Al-Jaghoub (2008) refer to as a ‘developmental network state’ that provides a dialectic framework of domestic policy making in the context of globalism. The developmental network state proposes the idea of rescaling the state where there is a recognition of the role played by external actors while, internally, PPPs are emphasised (Holliday 2000). This arrangement, according to Ansell (2000, 311), ‘emphasizes the bringing together of unique configurations of actors around specific projects’.
The case for PPP in the Ethiopian context is particularly attractive given emerging scholarship that links citizen empowerment and ICTs participation. Heeks (2017b) describes the digital gig economy as an ‘economic phenomenon’ with substantial implications for the future of the global south workforce. The hugely successful case of the mobile finance platform m-pesa in Kenya that not only has brought economic empowerment to many Kenyans but also information justice in a form of financial inclusion is a result of PPPs as well as collaboration of external-internal actors (Martin and Duncombe 2017). Emerging scholarship in the area of developmental informatics including ‘digital development’ (Heeks 2016), ‘data justice for development’ (Heeks and Renken 2016; Heeks 2017a), and ‘big data for development’ (Gómez and Heeks 2016) also provides substantial scholastic validity to the PPP argument.
PPPs in telecommunications are neither uncommon, nor impractical. For example, when Spain joined the European Union in 1996, it was forced to divest all of its shares from telecom giant Telefónica de España. Nevertheless, the Spanish state managed to hold what came to be known as acción de oro [a golden share] which ‘allows the government to veto the purchase of large percentages of the company by new investors or current shareholders’ in order to ‘prevent “hostile purchasing” of shares by other large corporations, particularly foreign ones’ (Martínez 2017, 192).
Although there is theoretical merit in the Ethiopian state’s approach toward telecommunication for development, it would be a welcome exercise to critically reflect on the monopolistic arrangement in terms of its potential to incubate patrimonial behaviour. The extent to which widespread Internet blackout and surveillance occurred in the past few years has resurfaced scepticism over EPRDF’s developmentalism rationale for state monopoly of telecommunications (Horne and Wong 2014; Marquis-Boire et al. 2013; Workneh 2015). In this sense, it is opportune to re-examine the monopolistic arrangement of telecommunication – not as a response to profit-driven external deregulation pressure but as an act of nurturing possibilities of multi-stakeholder ICTs ecosystem involving the state, the private sector and end users for a sustainable, inclusive development agenda consistent with WSIS recommendations (see United Nations General Assembly 2015; WSIS 2005). Failing to do so may arrest the ‘ICTs-for-development’ agenda altogether, resulting in the creation of a slippery slope scenario of loosely adopting the developmental state model where vanguard elite fail to unpack self-serving political longevity from desired development ends.
Finally, as Ethiopia undergoes unprecedented political reforms under the leadership of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed,10 it is safe to argue that the deregulation of the Ethiopian telecommunication sector is not any more unthinkable. In fact, the government has announced its intentions for the partial or full privatisation of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) (Stevis-Gridneff 2018) which drew immediate interest from South African telecom giants MTN and Vodafone, among others (Jalloh 2018). While I argue that majority stake privatisation of Ethio-Telecom at this time without rigorous deliberation is critically short-sighted, this move may create a conducive environment for considering the merits of multi-stakeholder partnership. However, I contend that caution should be taken to avoid the PPP model as a gateway to complete takeover of the Ethiopian telecommunication sector by foreign multinationals. For the Ethiopian government, the daunting task is to ensure institutional capacity of regulatory bodies before boarding the PPP wagon. As Ginsburg (2012) notes, it is imperative to carefully examine and define what each constituent in PPPs bring to the table to maximise developmental, technological, and equitable access efficacy. This, in turn, can mitigate unintended spillover effects of profit-driven partners that may undermine democratisation and equitable development goals without hampering the technological/logistic knowhow and foreign direct investment they offer.