Capacity building for decentralised education service delivery in Ethiopia

A case study prepared for the project ‘Capacity, Change and Performance’ organised by ECDPM. Ethiopia is a low-income country with a GNP per capita of only $100 in 2002, and a Human Development Index ranking of 169 out of 175 countries. Almost 40% of the population are illiterate, and only 24% of pupils complete primary school education. For the present government, which came to power in 1991 after 16 years of bloody civil war, education is now a national development priority; nearly 14% of the government budget is allocated to it. The Education Sector Development Programme (ESDP) was introduced in 1997 as a vehicle for implementing the 1994 education policy, which envisaged universal primary education by 2015.