Assessment of Ethiopia’s Economic Diplomacy: Post 1991

Abstract

Economic diplomacy is defined as the actions of both state and non-state actors aimed at promoting cross-border trade and investment flows. Economic interest is highly concerned with the foreign policy objectives of contemporary states. Because of increasing economic interdependence in the international level, the state has a role to stimulate the development of national economy through the foreign relations. Therefore, the launch of economic diplomacy to accomplish foreign policy objectives and adjusting the domestic environment for the success of such objectives is crucial. In Ethiopia, the launch of economic diplomacy under the three regimes were different.  The EPRDF’s launch of economic diplomacy is driven both by development in the international system and domestic realities such as underdevelopment and abject poverty. However, such policy objective has   faced   different constraints and challenges that have so far hinder its success and implementation.

Therefore, this paper aims at assessing Ethiopia’s Economic Diplomacy Since 1991. To realize the objective, the study used qualitative methodologies to assess opportunity and challenges of Ethiopia’s Economic diplomacy of since 1991. Data were also collected both from primary and secondary sources. The main primary data collection methods were in-depth interviews and the secondary data source was obtained from published materials, unpublished documentary materials and internet.  After critical analysis of the overall economic diplomacy of Ethiopia, this paper empirically proved that the current government has given due attention to economic diplomacy as major issue as indicated in the foreign policy objective to eradicate poverty. However, even though such attempts there were certain problems such as domestic and international problems that impede the Ethiopian economic diplomacy in the post 1991 periods. This paper also found that there were different opportunities to be exploited in both domestic and international environment in order to pursue the development activities of the country and dozen of challenges that face implementation activities. Therefore, in order to maximize benefit from economic diplomacy the domestic environment is very crucial determinant and the government should improve the problems to make the domestic condition more feasible for the implementation of the objective of economic diplomacy. In addition, the government need to used opportunities provided by on-going international system and search the way to avoid conditionality’s that are imposed by international system such as IMF and Multilateral rule