The Role of the Agricultural Sector in the Ethiopian Economy

The research work attempted to look into the impact of the current political regime in Ethiopia on the agricultural development of the country to assess the responsiveness of the sector to the policies, strategies, programs and various reforms of the government and to address the challenges faced by the sector. Ethiopia as one of the poor countries is striving to ensure sustainable development. Hence, the current regime, EPRDF, by realizing the importance of agriculture in the national economy, has embraced the Agricultural Development Led-Industrialization (ADLI) strategy to promote the economic development of the country and Agriculture has been a central pillar of the successive development plans of the country. Various strategies and programs are introduced and implemented at different periodical intervals with the primary objective of agricultural sector development. It was therefore, necessary to examine the impact of the current political regime’s policies, strategies and programs to the economic development of the country focusing on the agricultural sector. To achieve the above objective, the study by large depended on secondary information and data collected from target institutions. It was found out that the contribution of the agricultural sector to the national GDP has been declining even though the strategies and programs formulated are channeled towards this sector. It was also realized that the various programs implemented since 1995/96 have failed to sustain the agricultural development let alone improve the sector. Moreover, the study indicates that the main development strategy ADLI and its main instruments PADET, SDPRP and PASDEP, which were implemented so far, were too little to affect the agricultural production or productivity at national level or in a sustainable manner.