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112 Diagnosing Corruption in Ethiopia
become muddled. Although donors profess a desire, where possible, to
rely on official accountability mechanisms, they also find themselves
under demand-side pressure from their own taxpayers to undertake independent
checks, not least because of the apparent unreliability of some
official data flows.
• Independent Public Financial Management (PFM) studies conducted
in Ethiopia in 2007 19 noted satisfactory progress in recent years but
drew attention to scope for further improvement in public access to
fiscal information and control of nonsalary expenditures.
• A 2008 World Bank risk assessment related to Ethiopia’s education
sector (World Bank 2008) noted “high” or “substantial” preproject risks
related to financial management and a “high” risk related to procurement.
The education management information system was considered
to be weak, and PFM capacity at the woreda level was considered to
be low.
• At the local level, the lack of influence that school directors have over
school appointments (VSO 2009) can reduce both their authority and
their accountability, as does the perception that some director appointments
are political (CfBT 2008, 39).
Demand-side accountability. A prerequisite for demand-side accountability
is transparency, meaning that information must be clearly available (to
users, employees, and, where appropriate, to the public) as a basis for then
assessing performance. Accountability systems then serve to reward or
encourage good performance or behavior and to punish or discourage
poor performance or behavior.
The field surveys included some questions related to demand-side
accountability among employees. At the level of higher-education and
TTC staff, a striking feature of the responses was that 80 percent of
respondents disagreed with the statement that there were incentives to
improve their performance. This suggests a system in which accountability
mechanisms are extremely weak—meaning that good performance is
not rewarded and poor performance is tolerated.
There is also a marked perception of intimidation toward those who
complain. Survey responses indicate that 30 percent of central officials
and 24 percent of public officials had considered reporting a case of malpractice
in the past year but decided not to do so. The dominant underlying
reason for this was a strong sense that there is no protection to guard
against possible reprisals directed at those who report malpractice.