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80 Diagnosing Corruption in Ethiopia
allies. One indication of an education policy captured by an elite could be
the neglect of basic education in favor of maintaining and developing
private school interests and tertiary education for the few.
The federal government sets education policy in Ethiopia. Within the
framework of the ETP, the overarching policy since 1994 has been to
provide educational services for all. The details of this policy have been
refined through successive ESDPs, which have markedly expanded the
general provision of basic education.
The transparent and thorough nature of this policy development suggests
greatly limited scope for policy capture. Although some risks of
capture do exist—a concern raised by some stakeholders—they relate, in
the main, to the formulae used to calculate block grants to regions rather
than to the manner in which the formulae have been applied. Such concerns
have focused on an apparent bias against larger, less-developed
regions. Following a period of study and consultation, the House of
Federation recently proposed a new formula, which takes account of disability
factors and differences in tax base capacity. The new formula is
expected to ensure a more equitable resource distribution among regional
states (Addis Fortune 2009).
Ethiopia’s national budget has been described by a major donor (the
U.K. Department for International Development) as “the most pro-poor
budget of Africa” (Dom 2009). This view is reflected through householdlevel
survey responses suggesting a high degree of user satisfaction with
the provision of basic education. Nevertheless, survey responses also indicate
that central officials are significantly less likely than higher-education
officials to consider that education services are accessible to the poor.
One general area of perceived policy capture lies in what for some
stakeholders is an apparent general absence of a level playing field in
terms of access to decision making and markets. 8 This upstream risk is
difficult to disengage from political considerations that are beyond the
scope of this study, but it does find practical expression in several of the
downstream risks.
Regulatory capture—risk: low. Regulatory capture is similar to policy capture
but refers to situations where regulatory or licensing agencies created
to act in the public interest instead act in favor of commercial or special
interests. In the education sector, such agencies would typically be
responsible for developing and approving education programs, issuing
school leaving certificates, determining scoring systems, and monitoring
assessments. A theoretical example of regulatory capture, for instance,