Foreign Aid and Its Impact on Democracy in Post-1991 Ethiopia

Ethiopia is an aid-dependent Horn of African country that is known to have received various forms of assistance, especially the humanitarian one. With the Cold War getting over, the country started receiving democracy assistance being pledged to realize democratic ideals. This article is concerned with foreign aid and its impact on democracy in Ethiopia in the post-1991 period. Its overall objective is thus to explore issues pertaining to the impact of foreign aid on Ethiopia’s democratization drive in the stated period. To substantiate my explanations and analyses, both primary and secondary data are used once generated through key informant interviews and document analysis. In this article I argue that issues of ideology, sovereignty, national interest, and geopolitics have significantly challenged democracy assistance in Ethiopia in the post-1991 period. I also contend that weak rules and laws, corruption, and weak mechanisms that govern relations between the Ethiopian government and donors have had a negative impact on foreign aid in the country. The study concludes that the contribution of foreign aid in fostering democracy in Ethiopia in the post-1991 period has been negligible in spite of the fact that an institutionalized form of democracy assistance, which is currently provided by the Democratic Institutions Program (DIP) to some governmentally established institutions, underscores the evolving face of democracy assistance in Ethiopia, albeit it is criticized by some for favoring governmental institutions at the expense of non-governmental organizations.