I. Economy

• For the last five years the average economic growth has been 10%. It is double the African average.
• Total export has grown by 30%-40% each year for the last five years.
• Ethiopia’s recent economic miracle is predominantly agricultural. It has benefited the majority of the rural poor. More than 85% of the Ethiopian people live in the rural area.
• The decline in rural poverty over the last ten years is documented by independent studies including by Oxford University and International Food Policy Research Institute.
• Emergency food aid is largely limited to the pastoral areas of south eastern and eastern Ethiopia.
• The Ethiopian Government has launched a five year urban development plan to address the economic, social, infrastructural and governance problems in the urban areas.
• The vision of the government is to enable the country reach a middle income level in two to three decades.

II. Public Services

a) Education

• More than 90% of school age children go to school. Before ten years only 26% of school age children went to school.
• Ethiopia will meet the millennium development goal of universal education in 2008, seven years ahead of the time line.
• Nearly 20% of our budget goes to education.

b) Health

• Primary health care service has reached more than 92%.
• More than 17,500 health extension workers are deployed all over the country
• Maternal health service has increased from 4% to 36% in ten years time

c) Water

• Clean water coverage has reached 47.35% by 2006. It was 34.13% in 2003. Clean water supply will be expanded to 85% of the population in the coming four years.

d) Electricity

• Access to electricity is about 22%. Much of the population lives in energy insecurity.
• The government has launched a universal electricity access programme with the view to enhance the access to 50% within five years.
• Due to fast economic growth annual growth rate of electrical demand has reached 17%.

III. Form of Government

• A Federal system of government is constituted where nations and nationalities administer themselves, use their language and develop their Cultures.
• If at one point the states are not comfortable with the Ethiopian nation State, there are provisions in the Constitution that enable them to form an independence nation state.
• There are 9 Federated nation states in Ethiopia.
• Every nation and nationality is represented in the house of Federations.
• Ethiopia has a secular form of government. Freedom of worship is protected by the constitution.
• Historically Ethiopia is a country where different religions peacefully co-exist.
• More than 20% of members of Ethiopian Parliament are women (116 out of the 526 existing members).

IV. Human Rights

• There is a widely held misperception about Ethiopia’s human rights situation
• Individual rights, i.e. freedom of expression, freedom of conscience and association are constitutionally respected:
  o There are more than 50 private publication
  o There are more than 70 registered political parties
  o The government is secular
• Like any other democracy, the government has responsibility to protect the constitutional order. That is what it did in the aftermath of the last election.
• The Judiciary is independent from the executive but still under stuffer and inexperienced,
• There is an independent human rights commission and ombudsman established to address human rights violations.
• There are NGOs which work for human rights protection.

V. The 2005 Elections

• The Carter Center describes the 2005 election as follows: “The majority of the constituency results based on the May 15 polling and tabulation are credible and reflect competitive conditions”.
• According to the U.S. Department of State “these elections stand out as a milestone in creating, more competitive multiparty political system in one of Africa’s largest and most important countries”
• Opposition party candidates constitute more than 1/3 of all seats in parliament, increasing the strength of the opposition from less than 3% in the preceding parliament.

VI. External Relations

• Ethiopia hosts the Headquarters of the African union and the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA).
• Ethiopia has a cordial relationship with all its neighbors (Kenya, the Sudan, Djibouti and Somali) except with Eritrea, which is at logger heals with all its neighbors.
• The instability in Somali and the destabilizing role of Eritrea in the region are the two most crucial Foreign Policy challenges to Ethiopia
• With the invitation of the Somali Transitional Government and the endorsement of IGAD, AU and the United Nations, Ethiopia has sent troops to Somalia. Ethiopia will immediately withdraw from Somalia as soon as its forces are replaced by AU peace keeping forces.
• Ethiopia supports peace efforts in other African countries among other things by sending peace keeping forces. In the last fifteen years, Ethiopia has sent peace keeping forces to Rwanda, Burundi and Liberia. And now it has pledged to send 5,000 strong peace keeping forces to Darfur.