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Corruption in the Telecommunications Sector in Ethiopia: A Preliminary Overview 343
• Pricing principles for providing telecommunications services to the
public
• Technical standards.
A significant implementation blockage emerges in relation to procurement.
By law, public sector bodies in Ethiopia are governed by the public
procurement law, which specifies how procurement should be controlled
and addresses various offenses that might be committed by a person
appointed or employed by a procuring entity. 11 In particular, it is an
offense to participate in bribery or to breach procurement procedures
(resulting, if convicted, in imprisonment for a term of not less than
10 years). In addition, any person who commits theft or intentional
destruction of telecommunications networks—which threatens the
national security and economy of the country—can be sentenced to
between 5 and 20 years’ imprisonment. 12 However, because the ETC is a
public enterprise established under the Public Enterprises Proclamation, it
is not subject to the public procurement law.
In 2004, ETC published its own Procurement Policy Directives and
Procurement Procedure Manual governing ETC procurement, which the
next section examines in more detail.
Corruption in the Ethiopian Telecoms Sector
Risk Factors Identified in Initial Document Analysis
In the light of the overview of typical corruption risks in any country’s
telecoms sector (as identified in the initial document analysis), some features
of Ethiopia’s telecoms sector give cause for concern:
• The combination of exceptionally high investment costs and poor service
delivery
• The ETC’s apparent lack of accountability as the sole service provider
• The study suggesting that anticompetitive practices may be occurring
within the market
• Media reports suggesting serious mismanagement within the sector
• Recent and current corruption investigations being conducted by the
FEACC.
None of these “red flags” necessarily means there is corruption within
the sector because each may, at least in part, be the result of acknowledged
past weaknesses in institutional capacity. Such a conclusion is unsatisfactory,
however, both because it disregards strong anecdotal evidence of