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DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY A HISTORY OF MODERN CIVIL SERVICE

ADMINISTRATION IN ETHIOPIA, 1961-2021

Thesis · May 2024

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.34470.33606

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 ADDIS ABABA UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY

A HISTORY OF MODERN CIVIL SERVICE ADMINISTRATION IN

ETHIOPIA, 1961-2021

BY

MENGISTU NEGA MITIKU

ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA

NOVEMBER, 2023
 ADDIS ABABA UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY

A HISTORY OF MODERN CIVIL SERVICEADMINISTRATION IN

ETHIOPIA, 1961-2021

BY:

MENGISTU NEGA MITIKU

A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE SHCOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES OF

ADDIS ABABA UNIVERSITY, IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE

RQUIRMENTS FOR M.A DEGREE IN HISTORY

ADVISOR:

TECLEHAIMANOT GEBRESELASSIE (PhD.)

ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA

NOVEMBER, 2023
 Addis Ababa University

College of Social Sciences

Department of History

This is to certify that the MA thesis prepared by Mengistu Nega Mitiku , entitled: “ A History of
Modern Civil Service Administration in Ethiopia,1961-2021” submitted in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the Masters of Art Degree in History complies with the regulations of the
University and meets the accepted standards with respect to originality and quality.

Signed by the Examining Committee:

Examiner Name_______________________Signature_______________Date__________

Examiner Name_______________________Signature_______________Date__________

Advisor Name________________________Signature_______________Date__________

Chair of Department or Graduate Program Coordinator

 ABSTRACT
This thesis is an administrative history of Ethiopian modern civil service from 1961 to 2021. The
year 1961 is selected because this year forms an important watershed in the administration
history of modern civil service since it witnessed a significant structural and functional change
in the Ethiopian civil service institutions as the result of the issuance of the Public Services
Order No.23/1961. This order created the Imperial Central Personnel Agency as a principal
entity of government which formulated, regulated and controlled civil service administration in
Ethiopia. On the other hand in 2021, the Civil Service Commission was re-established as an
autonomous federal government organ having its own legal personality and being accountable
for the Prime Minister. In this year the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia Civil Service
Commission not only introduced its ten-year public service sector road-map (2021-2030), but
also has issued the revised Federal Employees' Employment, Promotion and Transfer Directive.
Beside this, in this year it lost its previous executive organs such as the Ethiopian Civil Service
University, Mäläs Zénawi Leadership Academy, and the Public Servants Social Security Agency.
The only executive organ which continued as accountable to the Civil Service Commission was
the Ethiopian Management Institute. Hence this study investigates the change and continuities in
the Ethiopian Civil Service Administration in the last six decades and above. In doing so, the
study used both primary and secondary sources. These sources were cross-checked and
triangulated. Meanwhile, the method of periodization was the important approaches used for
comprehending the analysis .The study found the following major findings. Firstly it found that
among the leaders who administered the Ethiopian Civil Service Administrative Organ,
“Commissioner Mammo Tadässä, Käbädä Gäbrä Mariyam, Minister Täfära Waluwa, and
Junädin Sado, were who made a great significant contribution for the structural changes in the
Ethiopian Civil Service Institutions. “Commissioner Mammo Tadässä, Käbädä Gäbrä Mariyam,
was often to be known for the establishment of a merit-based civil service as the answer to the
rampant nepotism, inefficiency, and incompetency that plagued the Ethiopian governance
whereas Minister Täfära Waluwa, and Junädin Sado were often known for building the capacity
of civil service organizations and in reforming government bureaucracies or framing and re-
framing tools that was used for service delivery. Secondly, efforts to make free the civil service
from political influence have been unsuccessful in Ethiopia from 1961-2021.This was because
the government was unable to mobilize qualified people for the civil service. The capacity
required for the job were not well developed and the institution was not in a position to work not
only freely, but also efficiently. These are all the valid lessons to be learned currently from that
period experience. Indeed, there is no a universal accepted model, which firmly demarcates the
two in terms of political and civil service, careers, and maintains firm boundaries around the
civil service. But the civil service should remain totally impartial and neutral and not linked to
any party; they work for the state and carry out the policies of whatever government that is
elected.
Keywords: Modern, Civil Service, Administrative, History.

I
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Many people, who in one or another contributed their share to the successful accomplishment of

my thesis, deserve special thanks. First and foremost, my heartfelt gratitude goes to my thesis

dvisor Dr. Teclehaimanot Gebreselassie, whose tireless guidance and very incentive comments

helped me to improve my thesis. For honestly speaking without him, this thesis would never

have been written.

Among the people who helped me, I would like to thank the devoted and hard -working

employees of the Ethiopian Civil Service Commission, IES, and NALA, for their support in

making the necessary documents accessible. Especially employees of the Ethiopian Civil Service

Commission deserve special thanks for introducing me to my major informants. I am also

indebted to my Instructors, friends and family members for their moral and material support

throughout my stay at the University.

II
 Table of Content
Content Page
Abstract I
Acknowledgment II
List of Graph V
Acronym VI
Glossary VII
Keys to the Translation System VIII
CHAPTER ONE........................................................................................................................................... 1
1. THE HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF MODERN CIVIL SERVICE INSTITUTION IN ETHIOPIA.... 1
1.1 The Civil Service Institution: A Global Context............................................................................ 16
1.2 The Evolution of Modern Civil Service Institutions in Ethiopia.................................................... 20
1.2.1 Civil Service Institutions during the Reign of Menilek II........................................................22
1.2.2 Ethiopian Civil Service Institutions from 1916 to 1960.......................................................... 32
CHAPTER TWO........................................................................................................................................ 37
2. ETHIOPIAN CIVIL SERVICE ADMINISTRATION AGENCY, 1961 - 1991..................................37
2.1 Introduction.....................................................................................................................................37
2.2 The Ethiopian Civil Service from 1961 to 1974............................................................................. 38
2.2.1 New Public Servant Recruitment.............................................................................................55
2.2.2 Job Evaluation, Grading, and Pay Structures...........................................................................56
2.2.3 Promotion................................................................................................................................ 60
2.3 The History of Ethiopian Civil Service from 1974- 1991...............................................................61
2.3.1 New Public Servant Recruitment.............................................................................................66
2.3.2 Recruitment In Terms of their Educational Background......................................................... 67
2.3.3 Recruitment In Terms of Age Distribution.............................................................................. 68
2.3.5 Promotion................................................................................................................................ 70
CHAPTER THREE....................................................................................................................................73
3. CIVIL SERVICE ADMINISTRATION IN ETHIOPIA, 1991 -2021.................................................. 73
3.1 Introduction.....................................................................................................................................73
3.2 Phases of Ethiopian Civil Service Reform......................................................................................75
3.2.1. Phase I: from 1991–1995........................................................................................................ 75
3.2.2 Phase II: from 1996–2002........................................................................................................78

II
III
I
 3.2.3 Phase III: 2003-2021................................................................................................................85
3.2.3.1 Business Process Re-engineering (BPR)...........................................................................89
3.2.3.2 Kaizen...............................................................................................................................91
3.2.3.3 Balanced Scorecard (BSc)................................................................................................ 92
3.2.3.4 Change Army....................................................................................................................93
3.2.3.5 Citizens Charter................................................................................................................ 94
3.3 Civil Service from 2017 - 2021.......................................................................................................... 96
BIBLIOGRAPHY.....................................................................................................................................112
LIST OF INFORMANT...........................................................................................................................122

IV
List of Graph Page

Graph No.1. Number of New Recruited Government Employee from 1963-1974--------56

Graph No. 2. Number of promoted Civil Servants from 1964-1974------------------------61

Graph No. 3. New Public Servant Recruitment from 1975-1983----------------------------66

Graph No. 5. Promotion from 1975-1983-------------------------------------------------------71

Graph No. 6. Number of additional civil servant per year 1992/93-2013/14--------------95

List of Photo

Photo No. 1. Photo No.4.1.1 Imperial Ethiopian Courts in 1955 G.C-----------------------44

Photo No.2. Ministers, and Commissioners, who administered the Ethiopian Civil

Service Administration Institution from 1991-2021 ----------------------------------50

List of Table

Table No. 1. Ethiopian Civil Service Institutions at Ministerial level through years-30-31

Table No 2. Services and Grades, and Salaries in Grades in 1972--------------------------58

Table No. 3. Recruitment in terms of their Educational Background in 1975--------------67

Table No. 4. Recruitment in terms of Age Distribution from 1975-1983-------------------68

Table No. 5. Provisional distribution and Sexual composition of Ethiopian Public Service

in 1982--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------69

Table No. 6. New civil service salary scales in 2019------------------------------------------98

V
 ACRONYMS

AD Administrative Service

BBR Business Process Re-engineering

BSc Balanced Scorecard

CF Clerical and Fiscal Service

CM Custodian and Manual Service

ECSRP Ethiopian Civil Service Reform Program

ECSU Ethiopia Civil Service University

EKI Ethiopia Kaizen Institute

EMI Ethiopia Management Institute

EPRDF Ethiopian People Revolutionary Democratic Front

ECSCL Ethiopian Civil Service Commission Library

GTP Growth and Transformation Plan

HRM Human Resource Management

ICPA Imperial Central Personnel Agency

IES Institute of Ethiopian Studies

JICA Japan International Cooperation Agency

NALA National Archives of Library Agency

NCBS The National Capacity Building Strategy

SP Sub Professional Service

TC Trades and Crafts Service

UNDP United Nation Development Program

VI
 GLOSSARY

Abunä Title the same as Bishop

Afä Negus Title equals to ‘Mouth of the King’, Chief of Justice
Ato Title the same as Mr.
Azazh Tittle the same as Commander, Chief of the Imperial Court
Balambaras- Military tittle: Head of Amba, Head of a fort
Bäjirond Title: Royal Treasurer, Guardian of Royal property
Däjazmač Military rank just below Ras, Commander of the Gate
Dergue Literary mean Council, officially mean Provisional Military Administrative
Council
Fitawrary Military rank just below Däjazmač, Commander of Vanguard
Gibbi Palace
Grazmač Military rank below Fitawrary, Commander of the Left Wing
Kentiba Title equivalent to the Mayor of the town or a city
Ligaba- Communicator of all imperial orders
Liqä Mäkuas Title given to officials serving as the double of the sovereign
Nägadras Title: The Head of the Merchant, Head of the Customs
Qäňazmač Military Rank below Fitawrary: Commander of the Right Wing
Ras Tittle roughly equivalent to Duke or Lord
Šaläqa Military title equivalent to Major
Šambäl Military title below Šaläqa
Șähafä Te’ezaz Tittle roughly equivalent to Head of Scribe, Ministry of the Pen
Woyzäro W/ro) Tittle the same as Mrs.
Yäţor Abägaz Tittle to the commander-in-chief of the army

VII
 KEYS TO THE TRANSLITERATION SYSTEM

(Institute of Ethiopian Studies System)

I have used the following IES transliteration system. With the consonant "B" as an example I

illustrate below how I have represented the seven forms of an Ethiopic letter.

i. The Seven Sounds of the Ethiopic alphabet are represented as follows.

Regarding the sixth form in the below list, it ought to be noted that the "e" will be

suffixed to the letter only if the letter is vocalized or stressed. Otherwise it won't

be required at all. As a general rule also the "e" is not required when the sixth

form is the last letter of a word.

For Example ------መምህር Mämher.

1. በ Bä
2. ቡ Bu
3. ቢ Bi
4. ባ Ba
5. ቤ Bé
6. ብ Be
7. ቦ Bo
ii. Palatalized sounds are represented as follows.
ሸ Šä
ቸ Čä
ኘ Ňä
ዠ Zhä
ጀ Jä
iii. Glottalized sounds are represented as follows.
ቀ Qä
ጠ Ţä
ጨ Chä
ጸ Șä
ጰ Ṕä

VIII
 CHAPTER ONE

1. THE HISTORICAL EVOLUTION OF MODERN CIVIL

SERVICE INSTITUTION IN ETHIOPIA
Conceptual and Contextual Background
This chapter tries to present the historical background of modern civil service institutions in

Ethiopia so that the reader can have a good understanding of the focus of the study. But before

venture into the historical background, the study needs to consider some conceptual and

contextual apparatus bequeathed by various authors whom one can never do without but must,

on the contrary use with profit if the study needs to be authentic and imperative.

This is because in order to understand the process of civil service institutional evolution, change

and continuity, one must first know something about what is meant by civil service and

institution, and determine in unambiguous language what civil service really means. This is

because the terms ‘civil service’ and ‘civil servant’ are mired in ambiguity; there is no universal

agreement about what constitutes ‘the’ civil service or who ‘a’ civil servant is.1 For instance,

some countries don’t make a distinction between public and civil services. Thus the terms public

service and civil service have been frequently used interchangeably in some countries.2

To understand a concept like civil service, one is required to explicate its meaning from the

perspective of such functions such concepts are appropriately used. Etymologically, the word

civil is derived from the Old French word ‘civilis’, which means civil (relating to ordinary

citizens and their concerns, as distinct from military matters), and Latin word ‘Civis’ means
1
William Robert Avis, Factors Important to the Establishment, Renewal or Rehabilitation of the
Civil Service: Rapid Literature Review (Birmingham: University of Birmingham, 2015), p. 1.
2
OECD, “Bench Marking Civil Service Reform from Kazakhstan” 2018. Available from
https://www.oecd.org/publications/benchmarking-civil-service-reform-in-kazakhstan-9789264288096-
en.htm
1
Citizen (i.e. literally, applies to one who fulfills the duty of a citizen). Similarly etymologically

the word service is derived from the Old French word Servise (a system or organization that

provides for a basic public needs), and two Latin words Servitium (meaning slavery), and Servus

(meaning slave).3

According to the UN 1966 report teachers, train drivers, pilots, nurses, and police are considered

civil servants in some countries but not in others.4 In Italy, Denmark, and Switzerland, all public

service given in central public administration are civil services. In England civil service is

denoting to the service specified to assist the decision makers whereas in Nigeria civil service

refers to the service of the federation (state) in a civil capacity, staff of the office of the President

(governor), the Vice President, (Deputy Governor), a ministry or department of the federation

(state), assigned with the responsibility for any works of the government of the state.5

But, according to the International Encyclopedia of Social Sciences civil service has

predominant features such as non-military public service, guided by certain rules and regulation

from recruitment to retirement, and political neutrality,6 non-partisan, and indispensable since it

3
Cambridge University press, Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary, https: //www.
Cambridge. Org/gb/ Cambridge English/ catalog/ dictionaries/ Cambridge- advanced- learners-
dictionary-3rd-edition; Oxford University Press, Concise Oxford English Dictionary: Main edition. With
Insert: 100 Years of the Concise Oxford Dictionary (Diccionario Oxford Concise)
https://www.amazon.de/Concise-Oxford-English-Dictionary.
4
Ishtiaq Jamil, Tek Nath Dhakal, and Narendra Raj Paudel, “ Introduction: Understanding Civil
Service in South Asia,”in Ishtiaq Jamil, Tek Nath Dhakal, and Narendra Raj Paudel, eds., Civil Service
Management and Administrative Systems in South Asia (Cham: Springer, 2019), pp.4-5.
5
Abdullahi Garba and Ibrahim Mohammed, “Civil Service and Sustainable Development in
Nigeria,” European Journal of Business and Management, 6, (2014), p. 41.
6
Jamil, Dhakal, and Paudel, “Introduction: Understanding Civil Service in South Asia,”pp. 4-5.

2
continues the traditional role of keeping the functions of government running no matter what

changes occur in the administration of the country.7

On the other hand a ‘public service’ can be defined as the totality of services and totality of the

administrative structures within which the work of government is carried out.8 Therefore, the

terms “civil service and the public service” are technically not the same, because the public

service comprises not only those who worked in the regular government ministries and

departments, but also statutory corporations, boards and the security forces. Thus, the civil

service is narrower in scope than the public service.9

Therefore, civil servants are professional staff employed by the state; possess the spirit of duty

towards the people; work on a contractual basis and therefore in a stable way receive from the

state defined relevant payments; fulfill the requirements of a special training; and within the

legally established structures.10 Thus public servants are public officials appointed by the

government and who are not necessarily skilled or qualified, whereas civil servants are

7
Olufemi Abifarin, and S.A Bello, “the Civil Service as an Engine of Good Governance in
Nigeria, Research on Humanities and Social Sciences, 5, (2015), p.78.
8
United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, “Innovations and Best Practices in Public
Sector Reforms: The Case of Civil Service in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa,” 2010, Available
from https://uclgafrica-alga.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Innovation-and-best-practices-in-Public-
Sector-Reform.
9
Adebayo Adedeji, “The Political Class, the Higher Civil Servants and the Challenge of Nation
Building: Effective Leadership,” Proceedings of the Ministerial Workshops on the Nigerian Civil Service
Reforms (1988), (United Nation Economic Commission for Africa: Addis Ababa, 1981), pp. 1-24.
10
Valentin, “The British Civil Service Reform and its Importance for Ukraine,” available from
https://www.nato.int/acad/fellow/96-98/yakushik.pdf.
3
employees of civil service hired by the government based on merit permanently and pensionable,

and are highly skilled individuals. 11

The civil service is also sometimes interchangeably used with the term bureaucracy. The term

Bureaucracy was apparently conceived in France in 1764.12 Similarly, Tierean said it was first

introduced by the French philosopher, Vincent de Gourmay. But the German sociologist and

political economist Max Weber (1864–1920) was the first to formalize the concept of

bureaucracy, and describes as it is characterized by the following distinguishing characteristics

that include a well- defined division of administrative labor among persons and offices; a

personnel system with consistent patterns of recruitment and stable linear careers; and a

hierarchy among offices, such that the authority and status are deferentially distributed among

actors.13

Beside this a lot of definitions can be found in literature, a few of which would be provided.

Martin Albrow developed his own concept of bureaucracy, characterized by rational organization,

organizational efficiency, and an administration by officials either private or public, an

organizational form by unique qualities such as hierarchy and rule.14 Eugene Kamenka (1928–95)

defined bureaucracy as centrally directed, methodically organized and hierarchically arranged

staff dedicated to the steady, routine and efficient carrying out of large-scale administrative tasks

11
ECSU, Training manual, Summer Young Civil Servants' Capacity Enhancement Training
Programme Second Batch (Addis Ababa: Civil Service University, 2022), p.4.
12
Martin Albrow, Bureaucracy (London: Macmillan Education UK, 1970), p. 16.
13
Max Weber, “Bureaucracy, in Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich, eds., Economy and Society: An
Outline of Interpretive Sociology (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978), p. 956.
14
Albrow, Bureaucracy, p.12.
4
according to policies verbalized by rulers or directors standing outside and above the

bureaucracy.15

To sum up, this study ends the aforementioned ideas by revealing McGregor (1991) conclusion

as it was presented in Bamidele Olowu’s article.

“There are three main approaches to defining the civil service. The first approach
conceives of the civil service as a system of employment, focusing on the size of civil
services, and rules of civil service employment as these relate to such issues as
recruitment, selection, job evaluation, training and development, performance appraisal,
and the role and composition of the higher civil service as against the rest of the service.
Second, civil services can also be conceived as instruments of governance, institutions
that serve as the bridge between the state and specific administrative organs. Finally, civil
services can be defined in terms of their role in the policy process: as 'policy authorizes,
implementer, fixers, payers, producers, arrangers, and clients and consumers.”16
Thus, this thesis used the institutional approach to define the civil service. It conceived as

instruments of governance, institutions that serve as the bridge between the state and specific

administrative organs in Ethiopia. Thus, contextually for the purposes of this thesis the title “A

History of Modern Civil Service Administration in Ethiopia, 1961-2021”is not only refers to a

history of a government department accountable for the execution of the policies and programs

of the Ethiopian civil service but also its’ well-established practice including those government

authorities created either by legislation (proclamations, decrees, laws, rules, regulations, orders,

and notices).

In addition to these though the usage is not completely true theoretically, the terms organization

and institution are often used interchangeably by many scholars. There is a distinct difference

between institution and organization. While the term organization refers to an organized group of

people or bodies (such as political parties, the senate, a city council, a regulatory agency, firms,

15
Eugene Kamenka, Bureaucracy (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989),p.157
16
Bamidele Olowu, “Redesigning African Civil Service Reforms,” The Journal of Modern
African Studies, 37(1999), pp. 2-3.
5
trade unions, family farms, cooperatives, churches, clubs, athletic associations, schools,

universities, vocational training centers) gathered together to achieve particular objectives,

whereas the term institutions are the rules of the game in a society or more formally, are the

humanly devised constraints that shape human interaction (such as rules that human beings

devise, conventions and codes of behavior). 17

In simple language organization firmly refers to a physical entity whereas institution refers to

both abstract and physical entity.18 Douglas C. North, a pioneer scholar attempting to bridge

institutional economics and economic history19 defined institution as the humanly devised

constraints that construct the political, economic and social interaction and consist of both

informal constraints and formal rules.20

To contextualize into Ethiopia, the definition of the word ‘Servant’ has changed over the

centuries in Ethiopia. Ethiopian used Amharic words like Aškär (አሽከር), Agälgay (አገልጋይ),

Säratäňa (ሰራተኛ) all refer Servant, and over the centuries it has been used to indicate various

meanings. In the imperial regime the word Aškär (አሽከር) was widely used which is not now

familiar replaced by Säratäňa (ሰራተኛ).

Käsaté Berhan Tässäma Amharic Dictionary defined Aškär (አሽከር) as: “በቤት ዉስጥ የሚላላክ፣

ወታደር፣ አገልጋይ፣ የእልፍኝ አሽከር፣ በመንግስት ቤት የሚላላክ፣ ባለመዋል፣ የሚስጥር ነገር የሚላላክ”21

17
Albrow, Bureaucracy, p. 16
18
Ibid.
19
Girma Negash, “The Economics of Khat Trade and its Dynamic Institutions: The Ethiopian
Context since the 1980s,” Ethiopian Journal of the Social Sciences and Humanities, 16(2020), p. 76.
20
Douglass C. North, “Institutions,” The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 5 (1991), p. 97.
21
Tässäma Häbtä Mika’el, Käsaté Berhan Tässäma Amharic Dictionary (Addis Ababa: 2010), p.
765.

6
Literary, applies to one who fulfills the duty of in House Message, Government Message, Soldier,

Secrete Messenger, Personal Servant, Guard of Palace. Similarly Agälgay (አገልጋይ) refers to a

person employed to perform duties for others. To sum up Agälgay (Servant) is a translation of

the Amharic word Aškär (አሽከር), which means more literally “a slave” someone who sets aside

all rights of his own to serve another. Because the word Aškär (አሽከር), carries such a negative

connotation to our modern sensitivities, we often choose the word Agälgay (አገልጋይ) and

Säratäňa (ሰራተኛ) instead.

According to the civil code of the Empire of Ethiopia (article 48) officers of civil servant denote

a person appointed by the governor of the province to carry out the duties of the office of civil

status.22 In addition to this civil servants referred to the employees below the rank of vice-

ministers including political leaders of the public service. 23

But, according to Public Servants’ Pension Proclamation No. 714/2011 “Civil service” means

service rendered by public servants other than members of the defense force and the police 24

including other employees governed by the regulation of the armed force and federal police

porce, the judicial personnel and prosecutors, government officials with a rank of state Minister,

Deputy Director General, Commissioner and their equivalent and above, members of the house

of people’s representatives and the house of the federation including their “speaker” or “deputy

speaker.25

22
Negarit Gazeta, Proclamation No. 165 of 1960.
23
Negarit Gazeta, Decree No .46/1960.
24
Negarit Gazeta, Proclamation No. 714/2011.
25
Negarit Gazeta: Proclamation No.1064/2017; Proclamation No. 262/2002; and Proclamation No.
515/200.
7
On the other hand “public servant” includes government appointees, members of parliament,

members of the defense force and the police as well as senior government officials including

minister, minister of state, deputy minister or any government official having an equivalent rank.

Thus public service means any government service rendered by institution or organ wholly or

partly run by government budget, and includes public institutions and enterprises run by their

own income like Ethiopian Telecommunication, Ethiopian Airline and so on.26

Objectives of the Study

The overall objective of this study is to provide a historical overview on the history of the

Ethiopian Modern Civil Service Institution from 1961-2021, where as the specific objectives of

were classified into four and they are the following.

1. To investigate change and continuity those which have been observed in the
administration of the Ethiopian Civil Service
2. To identify the Commissioners, Directors, and Minister who made significant
contribution for the incremental changes in the Ethiopian Civil Service Personnel and
Institutional Administration in the past six decades and above.
3. To explore when the institution of Ethiopian Civil Service did began a competitive,
merit-based recruitment as a defining characteristic of modern administration system.
4. To explore how bureaucrats and politicians came together in Ethiopian Civil Service
Institutions in general.
Statement of the Problem

Civil Service Institution as Personnel Administration Agency provided public services to citizens

in Ethiopia. But whoever undertakes research into the history of Ethiopian institutions quickly

realizes that, the history of Ethiopian modern civil service administration had attracted very little

26
Negarit Gazeta, Proclamation No. 714/2011.
8
scholarly attention, unlike other political, religious and economic institutional history. This might

lead one to think that Ethiopia did not have a tradition of modern civil service institutional

development, but that would be negating Ethiopian experience. Thus this study therefore fills

this historical literature gap through highlighting the silent and unspoken history of this

institution in Ethiopia.

Literature Review

Institutional history has enjoyed a renaissance in institutional studies by professionals since the

linguistic and cultural turns of the 1970s and 1980s.27 Thus a significant development in

institutional study over the past decades has been the emergence of Civil Service Institution

history as a prominent field of inquiry. For example, recently, academicians gave better

attention to the reconstruction and analysis of the history of the civil service institutions. This

change is evidently demonstrated, for example, by reviewing the literature written by various

authors such as Aylmer,28 Kelsal,29Fry,30 Pyper,31 Chapman,32, Paul,33Charles Cook,34

Üsdiken et.al, “Introduction: History in Organization Studies,” Journal of Business

27

History, (2004), p. 3.
28
G. E. Aylmer, The King’s Servants: The Civil Service of Charles I, 1625-1642, (Boston:
Routledge &Kegan Paul Ltd, 1961), pp.1-490; G.E. Aylmer, The Crown’s Servants: Government and Civil
Service under Charles II, 1660– 1685 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp.1-303.
Hi Kelsall, Higher Civil Servants in Britain: From 1870 to the Present (Oxon:
29

Routledge, 1955), pp.1-220.

30
Geoffrey Fry, Statesmen in Disguise: The Changing Role of the Administrative Class of the
British Home Civil Service, 1853-1966, (London: Macmillan And Co Ltd,1969): pp. 1-402.
31
Robert, Pyper, the Biritish Civil Service, (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf,1999):pp. 1-200.
32
Richard Chapman, The Civil Service Commission 1855–199: A bureau biography (London:
Routledge, 2004), pp. 1-243.
33
Van, Paul , History of the United States Civil Service (Evanston: Greenwood Pub Group, 1958),
pp. 1-220.
34
Charles Cooke, Biography of an Ideal: The Diamond Anniversary History of the Federal Civil
Service (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1959), pp.1-170.
9
Castellani,35Gupta,36 Edwin Hodgetts and his colleagues,37Richard White,38 Ahmed Huque,39

Ronald N. Johnson and Gary D. Libecap,40 Li Feng,41 etc.

The revolution in literature, however, does not seem to have affected historical scholarship about

Modern Civil Service Administration in Ethiopia as compared to the aforementioned countries.

This seems a paradox since the need to give more attention to institutional history was

recognized by professional historians at least some 50 years ago in Ethiopia. Since the 1950s,

when modern scholarship in Ethiopia started, the quantity of literature on institutional history has

increased significantly. This refers not just to the scope of the knowledge on this type of

historical writing but also to the methodology used, the frameworks employed, and the issues

covered.

Literature review can be used as one means of illustrating my argument. Addis Ababa

University Kennedy Library prepared an index which shows history B.A senior essays worked

between the 1970s and 2000. This index indicates that out of a total of 129 senior essays worked

from the 1970s to 2000; many articles appeared in the index assumed to be “institutional

history.” The majority of works dealt with such subjects were religious, educational, business,

and public administrative institutions. In addition to this in the Graduate Library of Addis Ababa

35
Lorenzo Castellani, The History of the United States Civil Service: From the Postwar Years to
the Twenty-First Century (New York: Routledge, 2021), pp. 1-212; Lorenzo Castellani, The Rise of
Managerial Bureaucracy: Reforming the British Civil Service (Cham: Springer, 2018), pp.1-229.
36
Amit Gupta, the Indian Civil Service and Indian Foreign Policy, 1923–196 (New York:
Routledge, 2021), pp.1-3014.
37
Edwin Hodgetts, et.al. The Biography of an Institution: The Civil Service Commission of
Canada 1908-196 (McGill-Queen's University Press, May 1, 1972), pp. 1-544.
38
Richard White, Roosevelt the Reformer: Theodore Roosevelt as Civil Service Commissioner,
1889–1895 (Alabama: The University of Alabama Press, 2003), pp.1-205.
39
Huque, Lee, and Cheung, The Civil Service in Hong Kong: Continuity and Change, pp.1-189.
40
Johnson, and Libecap, the Federal Civil Service System and the Problem of Bureaucracy the
Economics and Politics of Institutional Change, pp. 1-186.
41
Li Feng, Bureaucracy and the State in Early China: Governing the Western Zhou (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 1-304.
10
University index shows that out of a total of 84 senior essays worked from 2001 to 2011; and

many articles appear in the index assumed to be “institutional history”. But, as yet there are not

many works that mention, even in passing, the institutional roles exercised by Civil Service

Administration Agency in Ethiopian history after its foundation.

A few exceptions to this are the following. Henok Seyoum has examined meritocracy, career

development, and promotion in Ethiopian Civil Service, Alebachew Asfaw studied the strategic

contribution of middle managers in the Ethiopian Civil Service Organization, Adare Assefa and

Annie Hondeghem, examined the leadership roles of the Ethiopian Civil Service System, Kassa

Teshager and Zekarias Minota examined the determinants of public servants’ performance in

Ethiopian Federal public Service Sectors, Kefle Werku studied the public administration

education and professionalization trajectories in Ethiopia, Meskerem Legese and Andaftya

Ahmad analyzed the Ethiopian Civil Service Reform with special emphasis on the Failures of the

Ethiopian civil service reform,42 Worku M. Taddesse identified the challenges and gaps

observed in the post-implementation of Public service reform in Ethiopia;43 Teferi Haile Mickael

examined the policy capacity building in the Ethiopian Civil Service.44

42
Bacha Kebeda and others (eds.,) Public Administration in Ethiopia: Case Studies and Lessons for
Sustainable Development (Leuven: Leuven University Pres, 2020), pp. 1-699.
43
W0rku Tadesse, “Public service reform in Ethiopia: Challenges and gaps post-implementation,” Africa’s
Public Service Delivery & Performance Review 7, No 1 (2019), pp. 1-9.
44
Teferi Hailemichael , “Policy Capacity Building in the Ethiopian Civil Service” (PhD. Dissertation,
University of South Africa, 2015), 1-181.

11
A few of others studies seek to describe the Ethiopian civil service institutions in specific regions

(i.e. Amhara45, Tigray46, and Oromia47). To sum up the aforementioned scholars concentrate on

structures, functions and the role of the civil service in terms of its utility and ability to achieve

the desired objectives of the country. Such studies tend to explain strengths and weaknesses of

the civil service without conducting in-depth analyses of the structures and functions on the basis

of cultural and historical facts. Historical outlook was not enough and there has been a lack of

methodological inputs from history.

Bahru Zewde in his long account of the History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855-1991,48 analyzed the

state building process in parallel to the institution building process. His work seeks to place the

emergence of the civil service within its historical context, and highlight the role it has played in

state-building. The civil service has helped the state to penetrate peripheral territories, and

accommodate competing sources of power. Thus he saw state-building as a means of the

establishment of a bureaucratic infrastructure and governance. He gave overviews of the various

administrative reforms, but passed, for example, the revealing phenomenon of the Central

Personnel Agency and neglected changes in this institution.

John Markakis with other authors has produced two publications in the areas of political history

of Ethiopia which have made important and sometimes fundamental contributions to the field of

45
Abeje Tefera and E.A. Narayana, “Civil Service in Amhara National Regional State, Ethiopia,” Public
Policy and Administration Research 5, 2 (2015), pp. 51-58.
46
Melesse Asfaw, and Gebre Mirust, “The Implementation of Civil Service Reforms in Ethiopia: The
Promise for Civil Service De-Politicization of Tigray National Regional State,” Developing Country Studies 4
(2014),pp. 91-105.
47
Hirko Wakgari , “Institutional Change and Reform in Oromia’s Public Sector: Challenges and Prospects,”
in Bacha Kebede and others (eds.), Public Administration in Ethiopia: Case Studies and Lessons for Sustainable
Development (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2020),pp. 225-250; Kebede Debela, , Geert Bouckaert, and Steve
Troupin, “Continuities and Changes in Human Resource Management in Oromia National Regional State: The Post
1991,” in Kebede Debela and others (eds.), Public Administration in Ethiopia: Case Studies and Lessons for
Sustainable Development, (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2020),pp. 325-354.
48
Bahru Zewde, A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855-1991 (Addis Ababa: Addis Ababa University Press,
2002), pp.1-277.

12
bureaucracy, even from the standpoint of administrative history.49 His books showed very

different pictures. He viewed this institution as an instrument of the imperial administration. He

argued that the process of the Imperial Central Personnel Agency institution reflected the

ideological positions of the monarchical state. Thus he followed a Marxist interpretation which

looked at institutional relations in terms of a narrative of class conflict and movement through

stages of history. Hence his publications were Marxist, with an outspoken anti-monarchical

agenda and a militant advocacy of bureaucratic equality in Ethiopia.

The most searching and analytical study of the Imperial Ethiopian public institutional literature

in general was made by Christopher Clapham. He examined the institutions of the central

Ethiopian government through raising more important themes like recruitment and the political

class, appointments, the ministers, foreigners in the government, the constitution of 1931 and

1955, the imperial secretariat, the imperial majesty’s private cabinet, the crown council, the

council of ministers, the prime minister office, the parliament, the structure of the government

etc.50 Clapham has produced a well-documented and precisely argued study of Ethiopia's public

institutions. He has organized his thesis and articles in a logical fashion, appreciating the need

for chronology as well as thematic approach. .

49
John Markakis, Ethiopia: Anatomy of a traditional polity (London: Oxford University
press.1974), pp. 1-409; John Markakis and Nega Ayele, Class and Revolution in Ethiopia (Trenton: The
Red Sea Press, 1986), pp. 1-191.
50
Christopher Clapham, “The Institution of the Central Ethiopian Government” (Ph. D. Thesis,
University of Oxford, 1966, ),pp. 131-395; Christopher Clapham, Haile Selassie’s Government (New
York: Fredrick A. Prager, Inc., ,1969),pp. 28-155; Christopher Clapham, “State, Society and Political
Institutions in Revolutionary Ethiopia,” in James Manor, ed., Rethinking Third World Politics (London:
Routledge, 1991),pp. 35-45;Christopher Clapham, The Function and Development of Parliament in
Ethiopia ( Proceeding of the third international conference of Ethiopian Studies, 1966),pp. 167-174.
13
 Methodology

The study analyzed, taped and synthesized the available sources which were used for the

construction of the thesis. This study was qualitative in nature. Accordingly, the study

investigated different sources such as published secondary data, and archives which existed in

different organizations and interview.

Archive sources were of different kinds: Archives such as the letters, legislation, proclamations,

general notices, legal notices, orders or directives, and circulars, and policy documents from

from National Archive Library Agency (NALA), Ethiopian Civil Service Commission, and

Ethiopian Civil Service University were considered. One of these resourceful institutions for my

archival work was the National Archives and Library Agency (NALA). Archives are well

preserved and organized in this institution. They are categorized in to issues of subjects and

registered with coded numbers that refer to issues of subjects. It is from these master registers

that I selected folders related to my field of study and asked archivists for service. Archive Files

from Ethiopian Civil Service University also provided data about the role of the Ethiopian Civil

Service University as a training center after 1995.

However, the scarcity of sources from the institution itself (the Ethiopian Civil Service

Commission) was the major challenge for me. This was because the institution had/ have no

permanent office or fixed location for their operations or did not establish a long term presence

in a particular location. This resulted to lost the irreplaceable nature of the materials which

should to be permanently stored and preserved when they moved from one location to other

location.

14
There were other sources no less important, such as the Civil Service Commission annual report,

internal historical publications, journals and political and historical fiction books of the period.

The other instrument that was used for collecting data was interviews with informants.

Resembled to this I wanted to ask those officials who led the Ethiopian civil service either as

Commissioner or Minister who alive. But I was not able to meet some of those leaders through

my net-work. Some of them have become Ambassador, who lived abroad. Besides, potential

informants ignored my paper of being as other previous researches that couldn’t get out of

shelves and would not accept my request to undertake interviews with them. I did all my best and

showed all my credentials to convince them. More over, I could not get individuals who are

better memorize this institutional history. Hence it forced me to interview a small number of

informants. Such informants were selected because they possess information or ideas that can be

solicited by the investigator.

The documentary sources were analyzed using the “content analysis” recommended by Bowen,

involving “a first-pass document review, in which meaningful and relevant passages of text or

other data are identified.51 Oral information and archival materials were used, cross-checked and

triangulated.

Meanwhile, the method of periodization is one of the important approaches of comprehending

the nature of institutions. For the purposes of this study, from among a variety of periodization of

history of Ethiopian Civil Service, the study used one general approach: “defining ‘historical

landmarks’ as the boundaries between certain stages on the way of progress or regress. Thus the

51
Glenn Bowen, “Document Analysis as a Qualitative Research Method,” Qualitative Research
Journal, (2009), pp. 27-38.
15
study identified the following two stages of that institution’s evolution: the formative stage

(1961-1990); the second phase (1991-2021).

1.1 The Civil Service Institution: A Global Context

The Civil Service as an institution has to be conceived in its historical setting. From the present

vantage point, in our high technology, information-based society, it differs enormously from the

civil service established in ancient and medieval periods, and even the 20th century as well. Thus

it is useful to begin by reviewing its historical foundation at global level and continental level,

even though it is difficult to draw a holistic picture of civil service development across the globe

since countries have different contexts with regard to their legal and social traditions. Thus, the

study selects the historical evolution of modern civil service of a few countries, which are

confined to the written documents that have been available to me to date.

The practice of civil service has been in existence since time immemorial; it is not a recent

creation. Records show that a concept of civil service system was introduced for the

compensation of officials in ancient Greece52 and Chinese53, thus facilitating the continued

participation in public administration by citizens who worked daily for their living and

recognized the need to have a permanent body of officials to implement government decisions.

Generally, in most countries recruited officers by a patronage system, in which political and

social affiliations than competence to carry out the functions of the office before 1870. However,

52
William C. Beyer, “The Civil Service of the Ancient World,” Public Administration Review,
19(1959), pp. 243-249.
53
Usman Umaru, “The Collapse of the Civil Service in Nigeria: An Assessment of the 1972, 1988
and 2003-2007 Civil Service Reforms’’ (University Of Maiduguri, 2020),p.6; Hans Bielenstein, The
Bureaucracy Of Han Times (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press,1980),p.1; Brain E. McKnight,
Village and Bureaucracy in Sothern Sung China (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,1971), p.3;
Thomas Metzger, The Internal Organization of Ch'ing Bureaucracy: Legal, Normative, and
Communication Aspects ( Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1973),p.1.
16
the political scientist said that in Prussia in 1700 there had been provision for recruitment by

merit, through examinations or university qualifications even though there was only one

authoritative party in the state, the Crown. In Prussia there was a close connection between the

various educational grades, like the ‘Hochschule’ and university courses, and the stages at which

the civil service is entered. Thus the Prussia monarchs realized the eighteenth century that “a

centralized state, with a complex and extensive administrative system, required specially trained

civil servants.” 54

The rise of real professional, and salaried civil servants, is a prominent feature of modern

European history.55 And Britain is an ideal setting for studying the evolution of modern Civil

Service. In the 18th century in Britain, Economic changes and growth made the existing

institutions staff appointments by patronage and selection to no longer work. In 1806 the East

Indian Company College was established to train and examine administrators of the company's

territories in India. Moreover, the word “Civil Service” is commonly believed that firstly coined

from the British East India Company in the 1850s which was used so as to differentiate military

and non-military personnel in India. Since then the term has become popular.56

In the mid-19th century a Civil Service Commission was set up and became the key institution in

the development of the British civil service. Recently Britain improved the civil service by

54
Herman Finer, “The Civil Service in the Modern State,” The American Political Science Review,
19, 2 (1925), pp. 279-280.
55
Gerald Aylmer, The King’s Servants: The Civil Service of Charles I, 1625-1642, p. 6.
56
Encyclopedia, “Civil Service,” 2018. Available from https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-
sciences-and-law/political-science-and-government/political-science-terms-and-concepts/civil
service#:~:text=Civil%20service%20is%20a%20relatively,more%20than%20a%20century%20ago.
17
making it more citizen friendly, increasing transparency and taking measures to motivate civil

servants to work better and harder. 57

Throughout the nineteenth century, federal workers were a valuable political asset and Patronage

was the currency of political exchange in the U.S.A. Anyone with political connections could

obtain relatively high-paying federal government jobs. The president, who had the constitutional

power to staff executive branch positions, traded these positions to members of Congress,

members of the House of Representatives, local political bosses, and other politicians as well in

exchange for their support on legislation. However, the United States of American modern Civil

Service history begins with the Civil Service Act signed in 1883, ending the patronage system

and establishing the Civil Service Commission. The Commission, led by the energetic Teddy

Roosevelt, laid the foundations of an impartial, professional civil service based on the merit

principle – that employees should be judged only on how well they can do the job.58

Generally, the evolution of the ‘modern’ civil service have been traced back to the state and

nation building processes taking place across Europe and America between the seventeenth and

nineteenth centuries. The first civil service arrangements were closely associated with the decline

of feudalism and the growth of nation states. Scholars list several per-conditions for the

emergence of modern civil service such as population growth, complex administrative tasks, and

57
Richard Wills, Testing Times: A History of Vocational, Civil Service and Secondary
Examinations in England since 1850 (Boston: Sense Publisher, 2013), pp. 63-64; Geoffrey, Statesmen in
Disguise: The Changing Role of the Administrative Class of the British Home Civil Service, 1853-1966
(London: Macmillan And Co Ltd,1969), pp. 34-42; and Pyper, The Biritish Civil Service, pp. 6-9.
58
Ronald Johnson and Gary Libecap, The Federal Civil Service System and the Problem of
Bureaucracy: The Economics and Politics of Institutional Change (Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 1994), p.12.
18
a monetary economy requiring a more efficient administrative system and rising levels of

education.59

In Europe, modern bureaucracies expanded in conjunction with the rise of the state and the

emergence of state military forces. Given the often tenuous nature of central power and the many

countervailing sources of authority, states invested heavily in the establishment and maintenance

of military force that would buttress authority and solidify the state’s monopoly over the use of

violence. In France and Prussia, early state bureaucracies grew partly to provide training,

supervision and logistical support for the military force. As militarism expanded, areas under

state control were taxed to help meet the expanding costs. This in turn required the employment,

training and deployment of tax collectors, and the development of administrative systems for

monitoring tax collection60

A few African states like Egypt61 and Ethiopia62 survived earlier than most European states, and

they experienced traditional public administration from an early time. But in many African

countries state institutions including preexisting administration structures collapsed as a result of

colonialism. Many literature illustrate that African modern civil service systems were created in

the colonial period and patterned after the models of the colonizing powers.63

59
Avis, Factors important to the establishment, renewal or rehabilitation of the civil service, p.3.
60
Ibid.
61
Shariuda Manar Ahmad, El Tanany Salma, and Maraiyesa Yewanda, "Building Capacity of
Government Leaders in Egypt, "‫يناء قدرات القيادات الحكومية في مصر‬ available
https://fount.aucegypt.edu/studenttxt/60; Beyer, Public Administration Review, p.243.
62
K. Ram, “Diplomatic Practices of Ethiopia in the Nineteenth Century,” Trans African Journal
of History, 15 (1986), pp. 127-143.
63
Dele Olowu, “African Governance and Civil Service Reforms,” in Nicolas Walle, and Vijaya
Ramachandran, (eds.), Beyond Structural Adjustment: The Institutional context of African Development
(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), p. 101.
19
But there have been extensive reforms in the immediate post-independence period aimed at the

growth, expansion and dominance of the civil service sector within the continental economy.

Moreover, different waves of civil service reform in Anglophone Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA)

such as Ghana, Tanzania, and Zambia, Guinea came soon after independence in the 1980s and

1990s. Most countries developed training and localization programs, and the turnaround of

expatriate and local staff promotion for the first generation of graduates came rapidly.64

1.2 The Evolution of Modern Civil Service Institutions in Ethiopia

A cursory review of the ancient and medieval history of Ethiopia appears to provide some

background information for the emergence of the traditional early year’s bureaucratic system in

the Country.65 However there has been a gap in this country's civil service administration history

until the 20thc, except for occasional references to Ethiopia’s interest in establishing Gult system

during the medieval period. Gult right was given to state officials in return for their services to

the state. Thus it was a medieval substitute for salary and it lasted as far as the officials remained

loyal to the state.66

Ethiopian medieval society the throne was both the apex of social pyramid and the fountain-head

of all honor, titles, and offices. But offices and titles were granted for a period depending upon

the pleasure of the Crown. Land (Medieval wage) was attached to offices in the service of the

Crown, and was distributed and withdrawn by the emperor. Generally, during this period

governors were assigned to administer the various regions based on loyalty to the crown,

64
Mike Stevens and Stefanie Teggemann, “Comparative Experience with Public Service Reform
in Ghana, Tanzania, and Zambia”. Available from http://www.gsdrc.org/docs/open/cc72.pdf
65
Melesse Asfawu and Gebre Merust, Developing Country Studies, pp. 1-8
66
Temesgen Gebeyehu, “Power, Church and the Gult System in Gojjäm, Ethiopia,” Asian and
African Studies, 25 (2016), pp. 51-71; Harold Marcus, A History of Ethiopia (California: University of
California Press, 1994), p. 21.
20
efficiency in collecting tribute and taxes, and ability to raise a military force and lead it in

battle.67

Moreover, in the mid of the 19th century during the reign of Emperor Téwodros II a form of

reform on the soldiers was introduced in Ethiopia for the first time. Téwodros II sought to turn

the local soldiers into salaried officials responsible to the imperial power and introduced a

territorial police to serve the purpose of preserving public order and ensuring the observance and

application of imperial proclamations. Besides, he attempted to reconstitute the whole system of

administration by turning the chiefs into salaried officials dependent upon the imperial power. 68

Besides, a few scholars suggest that Menilek II also hired Europeans to finance a new bridge

project around Shäwa when he was a king of Shäwa.69 Evidences show that agricultural experts

and veterinary surgeons as well as medical doctors received "nominal pay from the Emperor" as

well as regular salaries from the French Government in 1908.70

The state traces its origins back for some of the above three-thousand-years71 in the horn of

African region.72 But, before the beginning of the 20th century, the country’s monarchs had failed

to build any kind of modern civil service administration framework through which they could

exercise their power. There was no a civil service system that served central and inevitable to

67
Mulatu Wubneh, “Ethnic Identity Politics and the Restructuring of Administrative Units in
Ethiopia,” International Journal of Ethiopian Studies, 11(2017), pp. 105-138.
68
Edmond Keller, “Making and Remaking State and Nation in Ethiopia,” in Laremont Rene
Ricardo, ed., Borders Nationalism and the African State (Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publisher, 2005), p.21;
Bahru Zewde, A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855-199,p. 33.
69
Șähafä Tezaz Gäbrä Selasé, Tarikä Nägäst Zä Dagmawi Menilek, (Addis Ababa, 2016.);
Richard Pankhurst, “Menilek and the Utilization of Foreign Skills in Ethiopia,” Journal of Ethiopian
Studies 5(1967), pp. 29-86; Asmelash Beyene, “Some notes on the Evolution of Regional Administration
in Ethiopia,” Ethiopian Journal of Development Research, 3 (1987), p.27.
70
Pankhurst, Journal of Ethiopian Studies, pp. 29-86.
71
Alemsged Abbay, “Diversity and State-Building in Ethiopia,” African Affairs, 103 (2004), p.
596.
72
Clapham,“The Institution of the Ethiopian Central Government”, p.29.
21
any government and good governance through policy formulation and implementation as well as

giving technical and professional advice to successive governments so as to guide the civil office

holders.73 However, during the last days of the reign of Emperor Menilek II (r. 1889-1913),

Ethiopians had been preoccupied with public institution building.74

Hence the focus of this theme will be on Menilek's reign during which time the foundation for

modern public administration was first laid down and the period under Haile Selassie when the

centralized bureaucratic state was consolidated and strengthened. Meanwhile, it would be absurd

to start discussing the civil service administrative agency without some notion of the Imperial

Public Service Institutions. Hence, the purpose of this chapter, then, is to provide a

comprehensive historical summary of developments leading to the formation Civil Service

Administration Agency.

All studies in history begin with a set of questions. Hence, the questions that will be

subsequently discussed in this chapter include the following: When did the permanent civil

service come into being in Ethiopia? What was the social and political reality in the imperial

regime that had conditioned the rise of the civil service way of government? Was it a strategy

adopted by Menilek II to cope with outside stress caused by the need for expansion through the

effective internal refinement of administration, or was it a process driven by internal new forces

emerging from structural changes in the imperial state?

1.2.1 Civil Service Institutions during the Reign of Menilek II

When did the permanent civil service come into being in Ethiopia?’ It sounds like a simple

question, but historians have not so far answered it. Their language implies that it has always
73
Selomon Markos, “Civil Service Reform in Ethiopia: Issues, Lessons, and Future Directions,”
International Journal of Public Administration, 36, 4 (2013), p. 237.
74
Ibid.

22
been. Thus it is hard to cite exactly when the modern civil service in Ethiopia started to carry out

the work of the government and deliver civil service.

However, most studies indicate that the emergence of modern civil service in Ethiopia was in

1907. This has already been indicated in various articles, theses, dissertations and books.75 In

spite of stating the sentence, there is no evidence which supports their arguments. It is the most

important gap that we have seen in most writers. In fact news about Menilek II’s intentions of

establishing a cabinet was circulating through the country as early as November, or October of

1907. 76

But January 26, 1908 was the exact day which the reform was made public and the functions of

each ministry were outlined in some detail, and thereby the practical establishment.77 The cabinet

was progressed (the first meeting of the cabinet was held in July 1908).78 The appointment of the

75
Henok Seyoum, “Meritocracy, Career Development, and Promotion in Ethiopian Civil Service,”
in Bacha Kebede Debela, (eds.), Public Administration in Ethiopia (Leuven University Press, 2020), p.
304; Henok Seyoum, “The Quest for Professional Civil Service in Ethiopia: Practices and Challenges,”
International Journal of Advance Research and Development, Vol,2, Issue, 7( 2017 ),p. 102; Henok
Seyoum, “Practices and Challenges of Institutionalizing the Ethiopian Civil Service in the Context of
Ethiopian Developmental State :The Case of Federal Institutions”(PhD. Dissertation, Addis Ababa
University , 2018),p.66; Solomon Markos, International Journal of Public Administration,p.237; Gebre
Miruts, “The Implementation of Civil Service Reforms in Ethiopia: The Promise for Civil Service De-
Politicization of Tigray National Regional State,” Developing Country studies, Vol.4, No.7 (2014),p.92;
Adare Assefa, “The Evolution And Current Features Of The Ethiopian Civil Service System:
Implications For Leadership Roles,” in Bacha Kebede, (eds.), Public Administration in Ethiopia (Leuven
University Press, 2020),p.390; Merga Mekuria & Frewoyni Hedgu, “Merit Based Human Resource
Management Practices: Case of Tigray National Regional State,” Journal of Resources Development and
Management, Vol.9(2015),p.48.
76
Selamu Bekele and J. Vender linden, ‘Introducing the Ethiopian Law Archives: Some
Documents on the First Ethiopian Cabinet,” http://ejol.aau.edu.et/index.php/JEL/article/view/4060/2920;
Public Servant and Public Office Administration Commission, Yätglena Genebata Tarik (Addis Ababa,
1984), p.1; Ministry of Ethiopian Civil Service, The Historical Evolution of Ethiopian Civil Service
(Addis Ababa, 2013), p.1.
77
Selamu Bekel and J. Vender linden, http://ejol.aau.edu.et/index.php/JEL/article/view/4060/2920.
78
Bahru Zewde, Pioneers of Change in Ethiopia: The Reformist Intellectuals of the Early the
Twentieth Century (Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2022), p. 177.
23
ministries by Menilek would be the beginning of a new era in the administrative development of

the country and the inception of the public administration and civil service system as well.79

These the first nine ministers and ministries were: Liqä Mäkuas Kätäma (Ministry of Interior),

Käntiba Wäldä Șadeq (Ministry of Agriculture and Industry), Qäň Azmač Mäkonnän Täwänd

Bälay (Ministry of Public Works), Nägadras Haylä-Giyorgis Wäldä-Mikael (Ministry of

Commerce and Foreign Affairs), Bäjirond Mulugéta Yegäzu (Ministry of Finance), Fitawurari

Häbtä-Giyorgis Dinägdé (Ministry of War), Azazh Mätafärya Mälkä- Tsadeq (Ministry of

Palace/Imperial Court), Șähäfä Tezaz Gäbrä-Sellasé Wäldä-Arägay (Ministry of Pen), and Afä

Negus Näsibu Mäsqälo (Ministry of Justice).80 Three years later in 191181 a ministry for Posts

and Telegraphs (led by Lej Bäyyänä Yemär82) was added and foreign affairs became a separate

ministry.83

Although the ministries of Education and Telecommunications were included in the 1908

proclamation, appointments were not made in the portfolios.84 Pawulos Milkias in his article

entitled “Traditional Institutions and Traditional Elites: The Role of Education in the Ethiopian

Body-Politic” said that in his decrees, Menilek II put the administration of all schools under the

jurisdiction of Abunä Qérlos. When Emperor Menilek created a modern public service system

and tried to appoint a secular minister of education for the first time in Ethiopian history, the

Orthodox Church successfully resisted his actions. Their resistance got acceptance by Menilek II

79
Ministry of Ethiopian Civil Service, The Historical Evolution of Ethiopian Civil Service, p. 1.
80
Selamu B. and J. Vender linden, http://ejol.aau.edu.et/index.php/JEL/article/view/4060/2920.
81
Pawulos Chane, “The Challenges Of The Civil Service Reform In Ethiopia: Initial
Observations,” Eastern Africa Social Science Research Review Vol. XVII (2001), pp. 79-102.
82
Bahru, Pioneers of Change in Ethiopia: The Reformist Intellectuals of the Early the Twentieth
Century, p. 177.
83
Ibid.
84
Ethiopian Civil Service University, “Ethiopian Public Administration, Governance and Ethics”
(Addis Ababa, 2016),p. 32.
24
due to the monopoly a church enjoyed over education, as a result of the church’s main agent of

political socialization, and the only custodian of the discourse of legitimation.85

A letter written by King Menilek II to Abunä Qérlos which is found in a book written by

Pawulos Ňoňo entitled “Așé Menilek Kähägär Wuch Yätäșașafut Däbdabéwoč” illustrates the

above argument. Here is this interesting letter Emperor Menilek wrote to unknown addresses of

officials:

“Hana Saleb is presenting the teachers coming to Ethiopia to Abune Qérlos, and he will
select them and examine their characteristics and send them to us. Hana Saleb is their
boss. But since he is the boss, he does not bring the teachers without showing them to
Abune Qérlos. Also, he does not dismiss the teachers voluntarily without indicating to us
when they disagree with the children they are teaching or with him after they come
here.”86
Generally, Menilek ordered the construction of a cabinet meeting-room near the main building of

the Gebbi.87 And then certain guidelines that were to be considered as the rules and regulations

were framed so as to define the jurisdiction of a minister by giving a list of powers and duties.

Some of the Ministries were responsible for more than one branch of public administration.88 In

his guideline, Menilek warned his ministers against taking bribes or committing any form of

corruption. In connection with this, he promised to give salary to the ministers and urged them to

employ people who are diligent and sympathetic to the poor.89

85
Pawulos Milkias, “Traditional Institutions and Traditional Elites: The Role of Education in the
Ethiopian Body-Politic,” African Studies Review 19 (1976), pp. 79-94.
86
Ṕäwulos Ňoňo, Așé Menilek Kähägär Wu Yätäșașafut Däbdabéwoč (Addis Ababa: Aster Nega
printing Press, 2011),p. 330.
87
Harold G. Marcus, “The End of the Reign of Menilek II,” The Journal of African History, Vol.
11, No. 4 (1970),p.572.
88
Selamu B. and J. Vender linden, http://ejol.aau.edu.et/index.php/JEL/article/view/4060/2920
89
Ethiopian Civil Service University, “Ethiopian Public Administration, Governance and Ethics,”
p.32.

25
To understand civil service administration history correctly, one has to know the forces which

shape it or the environment in which it functions. We have different means of telling what the

leader would have been motivated to do, for he had a chance to prove his leadership ability. The

events which lead to modern public administration foundation might come from the international

environment, and from the emperor.

Bahru said it was the second determinant which describes the Ethiopian experience. Public

administration in Ethiopia emanated from and depended upon one man, Emperor Menilek II, for

the reason that were at once personal (i.e. due to his sufferance in a series of paralytic strokes

between 1906 and 1907 and thereby clearly hoping that it would offset his own health

deterioration and part of his attempt to ease the problem of succession), and at the outset

intellectually presumptive (his desire to give the government an institutional basis and some

degree of continuity).90

These institutions were the products of the experiences of King Menilek. Some of the most

intractable problems facing his reign have involved attempts to eliminate the problem of

succession to the throne. Thus, considerable attention had been given to developing mechanisms

to deal with competition among groups for power and participation in decision-making. A

critical success factor in modernizing societies is their capacity to build institutions which can

promote consensus and reduce conflict, get things done. Thus this institutional resource was

committed to the survival of the state and strengthening of national political independence;

modernization of public service through institutionalizing increased participation, thereby

bringing about representative institutions.

90
Bahru, A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855-1991, p. 113.
26
It is difficult to speak of ideal types, and history rarely offers exact parallels, but shared some

basic similarities with modern public service institutions formation elsewhere in the world.

Certain historical processes may not be reproducible, and to be sure, the Ethiopian modern public

service institution is no mere duplication of others, but in its broad phases of development it

closely resembled those of Europe. 91

Above all there is literature that supports the above argument and show that the modern civil

service foundation in Ethiopia came up with the advice of European to change the nature of the

governmental tasks that helped to modify the condition of the country and the country’s relations

with other powers. This forced the methodology of operation of the traditional administration to

acquire a new direction and orientation. These provisions were designed for European

consumption, to give the impression that Ethiopia had adopted a European form of government.

More particularly Ministry departments, like Foreign Affairs and Post and Telegraphs, reflected

increased contacts with the outside world.92 The most important evidence which supports this

argument is the following statement of a circular letter to representatives of foreign governments

in Addis Ababa informing of his appointment.

"... It has been some time since we thought of introducing a European system into our
country. You have always said it would be good if we would adopt some of the European
system. I have now started to appoint a ministry, and, if it is the will of God, I will
complete it.” 93

This statement indicates that there was some sort of advice from Europeans. Moreover, even

though foreigners were denied the administrative role which they assimilated in colonial Africa;

91
Gebru , Ethiopia Power and Protest: Peasant Revolts in the Twentieth Century, p. 41.
92
Bahru , A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855-1991, p. 33.
93
Harold Marcus, A History of Ethiopia(California: University of California Press, 1994),
p. 572.

27
they were nonetheless required in a more humble of advisers, and experts (these included

agricultural experts and veterinary surgeons, engineers, medical surgeon, diplomats, etc.) who

received "nominal pay from the Emperor" as well as regular salaries from their respective

country during this period. For instance, the King utilized foreigners (French group of advisers

such as M. M. Roque, Mondon-Vidailhet, and Armand) in the foundation of postal service.

Moreover, the French men were known to have been employs of the telephone service in

Ethiopia.

The foreign envoys, however, exercised a significant influence on the course of events more or

less only where Menilek requested them to do so.94 He did neither simply act under pressure, nor

obediently follow advice. This implies that by themselves they were powerless to influence

policy in the country or he took independent and effective countermeasures.95 By any case

Menilek II utilized foreign skills in the foundation of the Ethiopian Public Service Institutions,

thereby giving his country a much more varied and international character than so much of

Africa which at that period was coming under colonial rule. His interest in utilizing foreign skills

had been brought up at the court of Téwodros II.96 But he differed from king Téwodros II

because he paid a salary to foreigners for their services. The following letter which was written

by Menilek II to Muse Ditngraf illustrates the above argument.

To Muse Ditngraf, Representative for German State

“-------According to your government's proposal, the doctors who came will receive six
thousand birr per year, the public teachers will receive five thousand birr, and they will
also receive a house to live in without rent and 1500 birr each of them when they
return.”97

94
Pankhurst, Journal of Ethiopian Studies, pp. 29-86.
95
Ibid
96
Ibid
97
Ṕäwulos, Așé Menilek Kähägär Wuch Yätäșașafut Däbdabéwoč, p. 285.
28
In addition to this H.G. Markus said that European observers foresaw doom for the Ethiopian

empire at the emperor's death. They imagined that the state was a kind of poltergeist that would

disappear when its immediate creator left the scene. They feared Ethiopia would fall into chaos

and that the country would be divided into warring factions, each supported by different

European powers. More than this, always fearing and anticipating the worst, the European

powers began to think seriously about protecting their legations and nationals in Addis Ababa,

should Menilek's possible death cause uprisings in the city.98

The diplomats showed complete ignorance about the effectiveness of the administration; they

grossly undervalued the strength of Ethiopian nationalism; and they failed to consider the

veneration which Menilek elicited from his people; and the transcendent vitality of the empire

which Menilek constructed. The reason for this conclusion was contrary to contemporary official

European expectations and calculations, Ethiopia's empire did not crack apart upon Menilek’s

removal from his reign.99

The civil service system in Ethiopia has been profoundly molded by the past. The origin and

structure of the contemporary civil service in Ethiopia is highly traceable to Menilek’s

administrative formation. For instance, the following institutional development has x-rayed the

genealogical administrative setting of Ethiopian Civil Service Institutions, from Menilek II to

date. Therefore, the beginning of the 20th century in Ethiopian history is imperative not only as a

memory on which to build a modern civil service institution, but also because the public

institutional forms derived from that period are still highly relevant today.

98
Marcus,A History of Ethiopia, p. 571.
99
Marcus, A History of Ethiopia, p. 589.

29
Table 1 Ethiopian Civil Service Institutions at Ministerial level in different periods

No List of List of Ministers List of List of List of Ministers List of

Ministries in 1966 Ministers in Ministers in in 2018 Ministers in
in 1911 1995 2015 2021

Ministry of Ministry of Ministry of Ministry of Ministry of Ministry of

1 Interior Interior Internal Affairs Federal Affairs Federal Affairs Peace
and Pastoral Area
Development
2 Agriculture Agriculture Agriculture Agriculture Farming and Agriculture
& Industry Natural Resources
3 Public Works & Transport & Transport Transport Transport and
Works Communication Communication Logistics
4 Trade Trade & Domestic Trade Trade Trade and
Industry Trade Regional
Integration
5 Finance Finance Finance Finance & Finance and Finance
Economy Economic
development Cooperation
6 War Defense Defense Defense Defense Defense
7 Palace Palace Culture & Culture Culture and Culture and
Sport Affair &Tourism Tourism Sport
8 Pen Pen External Trade Women, Child, Women's and Women and
& Youth Children's Affairs Social Affairs
Affairs
9 Justice Justice Justice Justice Attorney General Justice
10 Posts & Posts &Telecom Construction Civil Service Public Service and
telegraphs Human Resource
Development
11 Foreign Foreign Affair Foreign Affair Foreign Affairs Foreign Affairs Foreign
Affair Affairs
12 Pension Public Water & Water, Irrigation Water and
Agriculture Energy and Electricity Energy
Development
13 Health Health Health Health Health
14 Mines Mines & Mines Mines, Petroleum Mines
Energy and Natural
Resources
15 National Coffee & Tea Science and Science and Innovation
Community Development Technology Technology and
Development Technology
16 Communication Communication Communication Communication Revenues
& Information and Information
Technology Technology
17 Public Property Industry Industry Industry Industry

30
18 Education & Art Education Education Education Education
19 Labor & Social Labor & Social Labor and Social Planning and
Affair Affair Affairs Development
20 Urban Urban Urban Urban and
Development Development Development and infrastructural
& Housing & Construction Housing Development
21 Livestock and Irrigation and
Fishery Lowland
Development
Construction Job and Skills
22
23 Youth and Sports Tourism

Environmental,
24 Forest and
Climate Change
Government
25 Communication
Affairs Office
Public Enterprises
26

Source: The Ministry of Ethiopian Civil Service, The Historical Evolution of Ethiopian
Civil Service, 2; Nägarit Gazéţa, Order No. 20 of 1958; Nägarit Gazéţa, Proclamation No.
4 of 1995: Nägarit Gazéţa, Proclamation No. 916./2015; Nägarit Gazéţa, Proclamation
No.1097/2018; and Nägarit Gazéţa, Proclamation No. 1263/2021.
But the ‘Ethiopian civil service’ of that Menelik’s time differed from its present counterpart in

three significant ways. It was not permanent, it was not civil, and it was not a service. The civil

servants were also small in number and were primarily engaged in maintaining law and order.

Even the ministries were housed in buildings set up within the palace enclosure and were

appointed based on loyalty and ability. But one can understand from its conceptual meaning that

the expression ‘a civil service’ implies a body of full-time, salaried officers, systematically

recruited, with clear lines of authority, and uniform rules.

31
 1.2.2 Ethiopian Civil Service Institutions from 1916 to 1960

Moreover, there was hardly an attempt to improve the Ethiopian Civil Service Institutions for

some decades after the death of Menilek II.100 Haile Selassie I had done it through using the 1931

constitution, which empowered Haile Selassie I to decide on the organizational structure of the

ministries and agencies responsible to it.101

This civil service modernization effort of Emperor H/Selassie was interrupted by the Italian

invasion, which later continued after liberation. Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia was followed

by five years of Italian fascist occupation. Italy's colonial efforts in Ethiopia from 1935-1941

failed to establish competent colonial personnel.102 This brief period, a turning point in the

country's history, brought the prewar attempts at the introduction of the modern civil service

system to an end, and for this and other reasons constituted a fairly negative chapter in the

history of Ethiopian civil service institutions.

The civil service system and policies of this period (1935-41) were nonetheless of considerable

significance, and are not of interest in the wider history of Ethiopian Civil Service. The

employment of natives was also required as an auxiliary function of national manpower if and

only if they could assist the colonization process. The kind of work available to the Ethiopians

would, nevertheless, differ from area to area, and based on the magnitude of agricultural, mineral,

100
The rise and reign of Haile Selassie I (1916–74), https: // www. britannica. com/ place/
Ethiopia/ The-rise- and-reign –of –Haile –Selassie -I- 1916 -74.
101
Abysinia Law Collection, “Administrative Agencies in Ethiopia,”
https://www.abyssinialaw.com/study-on-line/365-administrative-law/7200-administrative-agencies-in-
ethiopia
102
Alberto Sbacchi, “Haile Selassie and the Italians 1941-1943,” African Studies Review, Vol. 22,
No. 1 (Apr., 1979): 25; Richard Pankhurst, “Education in Ethiopia during the Italian Fascist Occupation
(1936-1941),” The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 5, No. 3 (1972), pp. 361-396.
32
forestry, or other activities in any area, though the government would also need to hire them as

interpreters as well as teachers in primary schools.103

Similarly the modern forms of government could not be accomplished in Ethiopia in a short time

after the liberation. The time between 1941 and 1943 was a period of uncertainty not only for the

emperor and the nobility, but also for the public servants in all parts of Ethiopia. This was

because the Ethiopian political administration in general and civil service in particular was

controlled by British military officers. 104

However, it is believed that it was during the reign of Haile Selassie I that the civil service

expanded, modified, and consolidated Menelik's limited achievements in Ethiopian civil service

institutions. The emperor, during his power, created additional ministries. Towards this end, the

emperor modernized the civil service by hiring many civil servants and allocating budget and

building offices for each ministry and thereby establishing more and more administrative

apparatus of the country. More specifically, the emperor attempted to establish public institutions

that deliver a provision in public health, hygiene, water supply and sewerage services, electricity

and street lighting, land survey, building, cattle registration, fix and collect revenue from licenses

on trade and professions, and vehicles and driving license.105

Unlike during the period of Menilek, the ministries were housed outside the palace precincts.

Moreover, Haile Selassie I proclaimed the Administrative Regulation Decree No. 1 of 1942

which ended the strong power and autonomy of the provincial governors and instituted the

appointment by the center of Governors-General, Directors, Governors, Principal Secretaries,

103
Pankhurst,The International Journal of African Historical Studies , pp. 361-396.
104
Esubalew Belay, “The British on the Ethiopian Bench: 1942–1944,” Northeast African Studies ,
Vol. 16, No. 2 (2016), pp. 67-96.
105
Alene Agegnehu and Worku Dibu, “The Genesis of Decentralization in Ethiopia: An
Overview,” Journal of Law, Policy and Globalization, Vol.40 (2015), p. 23.
33
Meslänés, and Police to each province. The officers were attached directly to the central

government of Addis Ababa and received their salaries from the central treasury.106

On the other hand Haile Selassie I made an Order No. 43/1966 which enabled the Awraja or sub

province to have elected council that had the power to manage, build, maintain and identify the

areas where primary schools, road and health centers (local public institutions) were constructed.

However, this Awraja self- administration project remained on paper because it failed to pass the

bill.107

In 1942 a rule was issued regarding public servants’ work times and days with the name of the

Ministry of Pen. It was notified that government offices would be opened daily from 9 a.m. until

1 p.m. and 3 p.m. until 6 p.m. Resembling this government offices were forced to be closed from

1 p.m. on Saturday until 9 a.m. on Monday.108

Meanwhile, owing to these office hours as economical in many aspects the Provisional Military

Administrative Council repealed this rule in 1980. And it was notified that government offices

would be open daily from 8 a.m. to 12:00 and 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 from Monday to Friday and from

8:00 a.m. to 12:00 on Saturday. 109 These office hours and working days rules were repealed and

replaced as from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., and from 1:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. from Monday to

Thursday. On Friday it was notified that government offices would be open from 8:30 a.m. to 12

noon and from 2:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. 110

Mulatu Wubneh, “Ethnic Identity Politics and the Restructuring of Administrative Units in
106

Ethiopia,” International Journal of Ethiopian Studies, Vol. 11(2017), p. 110.

107
Ibid
108
Negarit Gazeta, General Notice No. 2 of 1942.
109
Negarit Gazeta, Proclamation No. 200 of 1980.
110
Negarit Gazeta, Proclamation No. 43/1993.
34
The other reform which happened in this period was a tax reform; taxes were collected by

salaried civil servants in the Ministry forwarded directly to the Treasury for the first time in the

history of Ethiopia. What was the significance of the theme was that it professionalized the

bureaucracy. This forced the district administrators to rely on their monthly salaries rather than

to command arbitrary amount of goods and services from the people in their jurisdictions.111

The Civil code of 1960 had shown the need for appointment of civil officers by governors

(central and provincial) and rules for commencement, and termination of duty, lasting

impediment, rules for termination of duties. This civil code has shown that the head of the

commune, personnel of the departmental office, consuls in Ethiopia, and commanding officers of

ships, as public servants in Ethiopia. These officers were responsible for the organization and

supervision, and to ensure the performance of the work incumbent in the office. A recording

related to the duties of an officer of civil status was carried out by the ministry of Pen.112

With consolidation of the central government starting from the last quarter of the nineteenth

century those who served in government office were given land grants. Menilek II allotted lands

for war veterans including their families those who lost their lives in the war. However, there

was no law to ensure its enforcement; it lacked uniformity in application and surely, it opened

room for favoritism.113 Not only this as it is cited in Ashenafi Belete (2016), during the reign of

Menelik II, if a military man gets old had the right to demand the authorities to replace his son in

his place so that the son would be able to take care of his old father. But the first legally

111
Edmond Keller, “The Revolutionary Transformation of Ethiopia's Twentieth-Century
Bureaucratic Empire,” The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 19, No. 2 (1981), pp. 320-321.
112
Eleni Gebre Hawarya, Beruk Alemayehu, and Genet Agegnehu, “Pension Fund Investment in
Ethiopia, Opportunities and Challenges: The Case of Ethiopia Social Security Agency,” (Proceedings of
the 11th Annual Student Research Forum, August 2017), p. 159.
113
Zengezger Abza, “Private Organization employees’ Pension Fund Administration in Ethiopia:
Current Challenges and Possible Reforms in Light of the Private Pension Proclamation, No
715/2011,”(M.A thesis, AAU, 2020),p. 18.
35
established pension system in Ethiopia was established in December 1933. This pension law

fixed the retirement age of old and incapable soldiers to seventy (70) years.114

Gradually the civil service was organized and grew and it was found necessary to provide the

civil servants with a better pension scheme. Consequently, in 1958, the Ministry of Pension was

established by Imperial Order.115 Resembling this, Haile Selassie made the following

appointments to the Board of Administration and Pension for the Civil service. These were:

Bitwodäd Mäkonnän Häbtä Wold, as president, Belata Zäwdé Bälaynäh vice President, Șähäfä

Tezaz Häylä Woldä Rufael, Qäň Azmač Dähné Woldä Mariam, Däj Azmač Amha Abära,

Colonel Käbädä Gäbré, Mr. Marien and Dr. A. P.Zhe, Hins as members. 116

With the expansion of government offices, the demand for statutory social insurance schemes

began to appear. The imperial regime made reforms intended to enhance main objectives of the

Social Protection Policy of Ethiopia (i.e. to protect poor and vulnerable public servants and their

households from the adverse effects of shocks and destitution. Hence the first Public Servants’

pension scheme by decree No .46/1960117 ((later renamed as Public Servants’ Pension

Proclamation No.209/1963118 amended several times yet) was issued in 1960. The pension

scheme covered all the public servants which include the Civil Servants, employees of public

enterprises, armed forces, and the police, and politicians as well. It was managed by the central

government.

114
Ashenafi Belete, “Policy And Practice Of Pension And Retirement Scheme: In Selected Private
Preparatory Schools of Kolfe Keranyo Sub City, Addis Ababa City Administration” (M.A Thesis, Addis
Ababa University, 2016),p. 20.
115
Negarit Gazeta, Order No. 20 of 1958
116
Negarit Gazeta, General Notice No. 163 0f 1958
117
Negarit Gazeta, Decree No .46/1960
118
Negarit Gazeta, Proclamation No.209/1963
36
 CHAPTER TWO
2. ETHIOPIAN CIVIL SERVICE ADMINISTRATION AGENCY, 1961 - 1991

2.1 Introduction

The personnel function was handled from a different direction by each ministry. Therefore, the

work was decentralized and chaotic. But, a book entitled as “The History of Struggle and

Building” (Yätglena Genebata Tarik) published by Commission for Public Servant and Office

Administration of Socialist Transitional Military government of Ethiopia stated that to some

extent the Ministry office called " Ministry of Pen" had the character and function of a central

office in terms of personnel administration during the reign of Haile Selassie I. The book

explained this issue as follows:

“To some extent the Ministry office called “Ministry of Pen" had the character and
function of a central office in terms of personnel administration. Therefore, young people
who had completed their education both in the country and abroad were given
employment letters after many knocks of doors, received a salary increase or promotion
and appointment and other appropriate letters from the king in this Ministry Office. Even
when individuals were revoked from their rank, fired or demoted, the decision was
received from this office called the Secretary of State. It was highly influential among all
Ministerial Offices. The main reason for this was that the Ministry of Pen was the king's
secretary office or transmitter of orders and decisions, and sometimes it had the authority
to give orders on behalf of the king.”1
In contrary to this, evidence which is found in NALA indicates that the Ministry of Interior

together with the other public administrative department complies with the responsibilities to

recruit, select, and advance employees.2 Besides, in 1943 an Order was issued that allowed

every Ministry to appoint the necessary staff for their office in respect of the appointments which

1
Public Servant and Public Office Administration Commission, Yätglena Genebata Tarik (Addis
Ababa, 1984),p. 13.
2
Meeting Notice of the Ministery of Interior, 1935 E.C, NALA, File No. 8.1.20.2.

43
were reserved for the central government. And each ministry was responsible to keep a separate

list of persons appointed by the central government and the ministry itself. 3

In addition to this during Haile Sellasie I the provincial administration was reorganized under the

control of the Ministry of Interior. This was done so as to reduce the power of the aristocrats. As

a result of this reorganization administrators at all levels were simply made public servants of the

state, and provided with the necessary support staff. 4

By 1961 one basic change had been made; one of the key problems in Ethiopian civil service

institutions (i.e. the establishment of a government organ responsible for administering personnel)

had been solved.5 Hence, the year 1961 has been selected as a benchmark to start this chapter

because it was during 1961 that Emperor Haile Selassie had brought significant structural and

functional change in the Ethiopian civil service institutions as the result of the issuance of the

Public Services Order No.23/1961. This order created the Imperial Central Personnel Agency as

a principal entity of government which formulated, regulated and controlled civil service

administration in Ethiopia.6 Thus it would be necessary to take 1961 as a benchmark for starting

this historical analysis.

2.2 The Ethiopian Civil Service from 1961 to 1974

Hence, the bulk of the theme focuses on changes in the Ethiopian Civil Service Institution within

the Imperial Central Personnel Agency after 1961 which was the most important single factor in

the development of a unified civil service. Generally, in this chapter the paper shall give answer:

3
Negarit Gazeta, Order No. 1 of 1943.
4
Edmond Keller, “The Revolutionary Transformation of Ethiopia's Twentieth-Century
Bureaucratic Empire,” The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Jun., 1981), pp. 320-321.
5
Negarit Gazeta, Order No. 23 of 1961
6
Negarit Gazeta, Order No.23/1961

38
  Who contributed for the formation of this Imperial Central Personnel Agency or who

were the individuals who did significantly contribute for the formation of the Imperial

Central Personnel Agency before 1961?

 What reasons led to the formation of the Imperial Central Personnel Agency

establishment in 1961? Was it the growth of competition to replace patronage? Was the

creature of the King to changes in recruitment? Was the influence from the external body

and the need to rectify administrative inefficiency? Was it aimed to dominate and control

the Ethiopian civil personnel through centralizing?

Although it is said that the structure of modern public administration in our country was started

in 1908, there was no government institution that could take responsibility for the employment of

civil employees, salary determination, promotion, disciplinary action and other rights and duties

of employees.7

Hence there was a problem of civil personnel administration. Moreover, it can be concluded by

reproducing the statements alluded to by the Public Servant and Office Administration

Commission books’ entitled as “Yätgelena Genebata Tarik”. Accordingly, the book commented:

“According to the ways of imperial government before 1961, government jobs were
accepted for princes and nobles even to transfer from father to son, and it was for the
benefit of a few individuals who were connected to the ruling class, such as through
marriage. It was not suitable for the children of the general public to compete for
employment based on their education and work skills. Therefore, the public service office
was not open to those who had the appropriate education and skills, but only to those who
had money and influence. Appointment or promotion and salary increases were not
based on work results and skills, but only through nocking on the door of the ruling class,
praise and abuse of power. The key positions and responsibilities in the civil service
administrations were chosen only from the nobles, advisers, princes and soldiers. Every
once in a while, some children of the general public somehow get ripped off and find a

7
Negarit Gazeta, Order No. 23 of 1961

39
 hole in the chain, even if they were given a chance to be in charge as a leader, they would
suffer a moral failure by being despised and humiliated.”8

Thus despite the successes registered during the period, several problems were observed. The

establishment of the modern civil service institutions was not accompanied by the promulgation

of personnel rules and regulations. There was no formal recruitment procedure before the 1960s.

As a result of this some scholars began to ask for a reform in the Ethiopian civil service in

general. Among these were the 1960 coup participants. There is a lot of literature regarding to

the abortive coup of the 1960. But most literature gave more emphasize for the militant than the

civil servant who architect-ed the coup and who sought not merely to displace the then national

leaders, but to reform the whole system of the government which was expected from civilians.9

This was because personal loyalty to the Emperor or one of his favored Ministers had been the

basis for government appointments. The civil servants who ventures to do something more

efficiently or imaginatively-in short, to carry out his responsibility to the people finds him

"promoted" to a lesser position. Anti- bureaucracy mood was directed at the Imperial

government since Civil Servants saw poor and ineffective bureaucracy issues. As a result of this

high ranked and long term Civil Servants like Germamé Neway and Gétačäw Bäkälä developed

a profound distrust of government and criticized the public administration system.10

8
Public Servant and Office Administration Commission, Yätglena Genebata Tarik (Addis Ababa,
1984), p.6.
9
Christopher Clapham, “The Ethiopian Coup d'Etat of December 1960,” The Journal of Modern
African Studies , Vol. 6, (1968), pp. 495-507.
10
Berhänu Asräs, Man Yenagär Yänäbärä: Yätähasasu Gergerna Mäzäzu (Addis Ababa: Addis
Ababa University,2013),pp.63-114.
40
Indeed, the years before the 1960s were characterized by failure to adhere to established rules,

unwarranted political interference affecting standard administrative procedures, wide-spread

nepotism in the administration, and an emphasis on political loyalty and relationships with the

ruling class (feudal lords) as the major criterion for appointments and promotions. The civil

servants’ prime objective during the imperial regime was to promote the personal interest of the

king.11 For instance, according to the 1958 revised constitution Article 17, Sub-Article 2 of the

Order, before starting their service, civil servants should confirm their loyalty to the King and to

the Constitution by appearing before the minister, a chartered government office or a higher

official of another government official's office. The civil servants oath was the following.

“ለግርማዊ ንጉሰ- ነገስቴ ታማኝና ታዛዥ ለመሆን፣ በመንገስት መስሪያ ቤት አባልነት፣ ከሁሉ ነገር
በላይ አድርጌ ለኢትዮጵያና ለነጉሰ ነገስቴ ጥቅምና ደህንነት እንድሰራ፣ በማናቸዉም ጊዜ የንጉሰ
መንግስቱን መንግስት ግዛት ህጎችና ህገ- መንግስቱን በታማኝነት እንዳከብር፣ በደንበኛ ስራዬም
ምክንያት የተገለጸልኝን ሚስጢር መረጃ ለሌላ ሰዉ እንዳልገልጽ ሁሉን በሚችል በእግዚአብሄር
ስም ምያለሁ፡፡ ለዚህ እግዚአብሄር ይርዳኝ፡፡”12

The roughly English translation is:

“In order to be faithful and obedient to His Majesty the King, as a member of the Royal
Office, I will put everything above all else to work for the benefit and safety of Ethiopia
and the King. I swear in the name of Almighty God that I will not disclose any
confidential information disclosed to me due to my work. God help me for this.”
The other person who asked for a reform in civil service administration was Lieutenant Colonel

Worknäh Gäbäyähu. Passionate about the Japanese development model was, for progressive

intellectuals of the 1920s like Nägadras Gäbrä Heywot Baykädaň, Blattén Géta Heruy Woldä

11
Public Servant and Office Administration Commission, Yätglena Genebata Tarik, (Addis
Ababa, 1984), pp. 3-4; Henok Seyoum, “Recruitment and Promotion Practices in the Ethiopian Civil
Service,” Public Policy and Administration Research 8(2018),p. 27; Ministry of Ethiopian civil Service,
The Historical Evolution of Ethiopian Civil Service (Addis Ababa, 2013), p. 1.
12
The 1958 revised constitution, 1958, ECSCL, File No., 72.

41
Selassé, Dr. Martin Worknäh, and Ato Käbädä Mikael,13 what enthusiastic about Japan’s civil

service institutional reform was for Colonel Worknäh Gäbäyähu who was the then Special Chief

of General Staff to the Cabinet Affairs of Haile Selassie I government and who joined later the

December 1960 failed coup de ’tat with the two Neway’s. He was one of the men who wanted

and demanded the Ethiopian civil service to bring about institutional change.14 Thus, the imperial

government had a good justification to dominate and control the Ethiopian Public Service

Institutions through centralizing it as a result of the 1960 failed coup de ’tat. And this aim could

be accomplished through establishing the Imperial Central Personnel Agency in 1961.

The other intellectual who gave advice concerning the formation of the Ethiopian Central

Personnel Agency for the Imperial Ethiopian government was Mäkuria Worku. He provided a

three page study letter for Emperor Haile Selassie about the concept of the Civil Service

Commission formation in 1959. He explained how much this institution was significant as a

machinery or mechanic of government and identified the way in which the institution would

evolve briefly. Related to this he recommended personnel administration Institutions initially to

be started at the Ministry of education and then to establish one personnel administration

institution based upon the experience of the Ministry of Education which controlled and guided

the entire public service institutions of Ethiopia. His comment can be summarized as follows:

13
Bahru Zewde, Pioneers of Change in Ethiopia: The Reformist Intellectuals of the Early
Twentieth Century (Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2022),p. 55 ; Bacha Kebede et al. , Public
Administration in Ethiopia: Case Studies and Lessons for Sustainable Development (Leuven University
Press, 2020), p.73.
14
Berhänu Asräs, Man Yenagär Yänäbärä: Yätähasasu Gergerna Mäzäzu, pp. 63-114.

42
 “Dear Majesty፡

“Any work can be done efficiently and on time when the available workforce is well
organized. For this reason, it is possible to establish and implement a personnel
administration work that will satisfy your majesty without saying 'wait and see'. Having
said this, I dare to apply to your majesty as follows.
1. To establish a well-run 'model personnel' in the Ministry of Education as an
example for other offices. But before the establishment of this so-called ‘model
personnel’, a minister of education should establish as an administrative board
and this board should issue administrative rules/policies prepared in a new system
and monitor their implementation through the leaders of the ministry.
2. These model personnel should be in operation for one or two years and after it is
improved, it should be established and used in the same way in other offices
according to the need.
3. The Administrative Board of the Minister of Education mentioned in the first
ordinary number is called the Personnel Administration Board of the Monarchy of
Ethiopia so that other offices can perform their personnel administration work
under the same board.
4. The powers of this board should be expanded to become an independent civil
service commission of the monarchy.”15
The other factor is related to the role of external institutional agencies. The effort to transform

the Ethiopian empire into a modern bureaucratic apparatus was linked productively with the

expansion and increasing ope-rationalization of international organizations during the 1960s and

1970s. International organizations, their expertise, and their assistance programs were part and

parcel of the expansion of the bureaucratic infrastructure in Ethiopia.16

The numerous proposal documents which Ethiopia exchanged with UNDP illustrate how the

Ethiopian government agencies readily slotted the funding available through UNDP’s into

existing or newly created vacant places in the administration which domestic resources couldn’t

sufficiently cover. For instance, the Imperial Ethiopian Public Administration Institute was

founded as an institute of the Ethiopian government with the collaboration of the United Nation

Letter from Mekuria Haile to emperor Haile sellasie, 1959, NALA, File No 8.1.21.2
15

Marie Huber, Developing Heritage – Developing Countries: Ethiopian Nation-Building and the
16

Origins of UNESCO World Heritage, 1960–1980 (Berline: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2021), pp. 149-158.

43
in technical and financial aid. Haile Selassie I used the international organizations to obtain

financial and expert assistance for Ethiopia to establish this institution.17

Resembled to this the attempt to establish modern civil service institutions was made before the

introduction of any formal education and training, in a sense, putting ‘the cart before the horse’.

The Imperial Ethiopian Public Service were run by feudal lords and priests, with a slight of

knowledge reading and writing obtained from church education before the 1950s.18 The

following photo illustrates this argument.

Photo 2 Imperial Ethiopian Courts in 1955 G.C

Source: Historic Ethiopia through the Camera Lens: 1860s - 1990s,

17
Office Notice from the Imperial Ethiopian Public Administration Institute, 1956, NALA,
File No., 8.1.107.1.
18
Henok Seyoum , “Recruitment and Promotion Practices in the Ethiopian Civil Service,”
Public Policy and Administration Research 8(2018), p. 27.
44
 https://www.facebook.com/sisaytmekonnen.

This implies that Ethiopia lacked a skilled workforce before the 1950s and the civil service

institution and its reform was mainly provided by religious leaders. The attempt to establish

modern civil service institution was made fruitful through the introduction of formal college and

different vocational training institutions after the 1950s and 1960s. For instance in 1969 there

were different vocational training institutions in education, agriculture, public health, industry,

and social service. Two of them were administrative and management vocational training

institutions (i.e. The Imperial Ethiopian Public Administration Institute and the Center for

Entrepreneurship and Management Training).19 But the Ethiopian Management Institute was the

well -known training institutions in designing and delivering a number of management

development programs that aimed at enhancing the managerial capacity of public service at the

time.

The Imperial Ethiopian Public Administration Institute was established in July 1956 to improve

the organization, management, and performance of the public administrative machinery in

general and the Ethiopian civil service in particular. Initially this Institute had become

responsible for the Minister of Education, then to the Council of Cabinet, Prime Minister Office,

Public Service Administration and Pension Commission consequently during the imperial

regime.20

This Institute was established with a grand aim to aid in the improvement in public

administration in Ethiopia. Hence this institution did through training course for public officials,

19
Imperial Ethiopian Government Ministery of National Community Development and Social
Affairs Department of Labour, “The Training of Manpower in Ethiopia during 1961 E.C: Vocational
Training Facility Available and Supply of Trained Personnel,” (n.p, 1971), pp. 11-12.
20
Office Notice from the Imperial Ethiopian Public Administration Institute, 1956, NALA,
File No., 8.1.108.8
45
through advice on problems of administration organization, and methods, through technical aids

on matters such as system of personnel and through providing information on administration.

Conducting research and publishing documents based on the research on the matter of

administrative interest were part of its activities.21

Since its establishment, it has been the forefront in the endeavor to introduce modern

management administrative systems to our country. But to correspond to changes, Imperial

Ethiopian Public Administration Institute did not end up with the same purpose, status and name.

For instance, in 1985 it was reorganized as a management institution to add up on the socialist

capabilities of government organizations.22 It was transformed later in 1994 into a full-fledged

specialized human resources and management development organization extending its scope of

operation to serve public sector.23

The Institute was jointly headed both by a U.N Director and his counterpart, an Ethiopian Co-

Director. Similarly the functional units of the Institute, which were categorized into five main

divisions, namely, Civil Service and Clerical, Training, Organization and Methods, Personnel

Administration, Revenue Administration, and the Administrative Service Branches, were staffed

by U.N experts and their Ethiopian Counterparts. For instance, the Civil Service training branch

was led by Mr. Lawrence Jones and Ato Minasé Dägu, whereas the clerical training branch was

led by Mr. G. Weilelmann, and Ato Däsaläň Rahmato.24

21
Office Notice from the Imperial Ethiopian Public Administration Institute, 1956,NALA,
File No., 1.2.77.16,
22
Negarit Gazeta, Proclamation No. 278 of 1985.
23
Negarit Gazeta, Regulation No. 181/1994.
24
Office Notice from the Imperial Ethiopian Public Administration Institute, 1956,NALA,
File No., 8.1.107.8
46
More importantly, this Institute since its establishment till 1959 submitted and presented an

article about the need for a central office like the Central Personnel agency in various seminars,

conferences and Workshops.25 This implied that the institution has made a concrete contribution

and pressure to the establishment of this office by providing a research paper.

Equally in Imperial Ethiopia more specifically during the reign of Haile Selassie I agencies were

creatures of the emperor. They did not spring up on their own, and the prime minister or council

of ministers could not create them. They did not have legal existence unless there was the

emperor willingness for their establishment. Hence, the Imperial Central Personnel Agency that

was in function so far those that a emperor had given it the authority to function. It was created

and assigned specific tasks by the emperor. They carried out the tasks making decisions of

human resource administration supervising the procedure by which the decisions were carried

out. There were many reasons why Central Personnel Agency might be needed. It had been

created because of recognized problems in personnel administration in the public service, from

the belief that the Central Personnel Agency might be able to help in solving these problems.26

More specifically, the imperial (Haile Sellasie I) government had a good justification to

dominate and control the Ethiopian Public Service Institutions through centralization

Generally, the Haile Sellasie I government needed centralized jurisdiction, uniform rule and

principle, homogeneous service, minimum necessary expenses, and to establish an institution

that was organized in a new form and was responsible for the administration and employment of

government employees. For the first time, by order No. 23 of 1961, the Imperial Central

Personnel Agency (ICPA) was established in 1961. Thus the Agency had actually started its

25
Office Notice from the Imperial Ethiopian Public Administration Institute, 1956,NALA,
File No., 8.1.107.1
26
Sälamu B.and J. Vender linden, http://ejol.aau.edu.et/index.php/JEL/article/view/4060/2920.
47
operation in 1962. In 1962 it was renamed as Central Personnel Agency and Public Service by

the Order No.28 of 1962. 27

The Agency had actually started its operation in 1962 after the appointment of its first Chief

Commissioner by King Haile Sellasie I. At the time of its establishment, the institution had one

chief commissioner, one commissioner, one acting deputy commissioner, and not more than five

employees.28

To sum up the Ethiopian Civil Service in general and its institution in particular since 1962 -

2021 was led by different Commissioners, Deputy Commissioners, Director General and

Ministers like “Commissioner Mammo Tadässä29, Käbädä Gäbrä Mariyam,30 Ţilahun Andargé31

Olana Natnael32Masräšä Gugsa,33 Šäaläqa Mika’el Zäwoldé34 (Germa Seyum, Gulelat Ţilahun,

Alämayähu Gäbrä Mariyam, Mäsfen Tafässä, Director Atkelt Hägos, Minister Täfära Waluwa,

Junädin Sado, Muktar Kädr, Astér Mammo, Tadässä Chaffo, and Commissioner Bäzabeh

Gäbräyäs).35

Among these Commissioners, Directors and Ministers, “Commissioner Mammo Tadässä,

Käbädä Gäbrä Mariyam, Minister Täfära Waluwa, and Junädin Sado, were who made a great

significant contribution for the structural changes in the Ethiopian Civil Service Institutions.

Mammo Tadässä and Käbädä Gäbrä Mariyam wished to create a professional civil service

27
Negarit Gazeta, Order No. 28 of 1962.
28
Public Servant and Office Administration Commission, Yätglena Genebata Tarik, 7.
29
Negarit Gazeta, General Notice No. 301 of 1962
30
Negarit Gazeta, General Notice No. 317 0f 1963
31
Negarit Gazeta, General Notice No.390.of 1969
32
Negarit Gazeta, General Notice No. 458 of 1974
33
Negarit Gazeta, General Notice No. 419 of 1971
Negarit Gazeta 34, General Notice No 10 of 1976
35
Ethiopian Civil Service Commission, “Former officials who led the Ethiopian Civil Service:
http://www.ecsc.gov.et./.

48
staffed with competent officials chosen on merit. They had got a resistance from those who

wished to retain the traditional patronage system whereby elected politicians selected

government officials based on the criteria of loyalty. But the two Commissioners called for the

establishment of a merit-based civil service as the answer to the rampant nepotism, inefficiency,

and incompetency that plagued the Ethiopian governance.36

More over both Commissioners strove to improve the civil service through the introduction of

competitive examinations for entrance into the civil service, to formulate regulation and

coordinate the activities in the sphere of personnel administration. For instance, a study to

regulate public service position classification and salary scale was begun by Commissioner

Mammo Tadässä. Then a regulation cited as “Public Service Position Classification And Salary

Scale, Regulations No. 2 of 1972”, which was replaced in 2019, was issued when Commissioner

Käbädä Gäbrä Mariyam led this institution.37.

Besides, when Täfära Waluwa was a Minister, building the capacity of civil service

organizations has got a notable recognition from policymakers, reformers and international

development agencies, while Minister Junedin Sado had been well known in reforming

government Bureaucracies or framing and re-framing tools that was used for service delivery.38

36
Informant: Däsaläň Dengäta
37
Ibid
38
Informant: Gétnät Tägäň
49
 Photo.1 Ministers and Commissioners who led Ethiopian Civil Service Institution from

1991-2021

Täfära Waluwa Junädin Sado

Astér Mammo Muktar Käder

Tadässä Chafo Bäzabeh Gäbräyäs

Source: Pamphlet Photos which is found at ECSC Building 9th floor.

50
Generally the establishment of Central Personnel Administration Agency enabled to provide a

law that covers every possible issue that might arise from personnel administration. The higher

branch of the Imperial government could not legislate in sufficient detail to cover all aspects of

many problems and could not possibly legislate in minute detail and, as a consequence, it used

more and more general language in stating its regulatory aims and purposes. Therefore, it

delegated to the Central Personnel Agency the power to make rules and regulations to fill in the

gaps, and create the necessary detail to make personnel administration laws workable.

Furthermore, the development of sound policies and proper decisions in personnel administration

areas requires expertise. Similarly, the Central Personnel Agency provided needed continuity and

consistency in the formulation, application, and enforcement of rules and regulations governing

human resources.39

This institution was established with the support of the French. Influenced by Europeans, the

central personnel agency was structured in line with bureaucratic principles of a strictly defined

hierarchy governed by clearly defined regulations and lines of authority. The agency’s primary

objective was establishing a homogeneous public service governed by uniform rules and

principles; recruitment of both classified and unclassified public servants; appointments up to the

rank of assistant minister; and instituting a pension scheme for public servants.40

In addition to this an order and regulations were issued through Order No. 23 of 196141 and

Legal Notice No. 269 of 196242 in respectively to provide a detailed guideline on almost every

aspect of public personnel administration. The regulations includes, scope of function, personal

39
Negarit Gazeta, Legal Notice No. 269 of 1962
40
Henok Seyoum , “Recruitment and Promotion Practices in the Ethiopian Civil Service,” Public
Policy and Administration Research Vol.8(2018), p.27.
41
Negarit Gazeta, Order No. 23 of 1961
42
Negarit Gazeta, Legal Notice No. 269 of 1962
51
responsibility of the commissioners, administrative arrangement, public service regulation,

position classification, survey, recruitment and selection, registration, reports, vacancies,

appointment, responsibility for training, duties of public servants, liability of public servants,

personal conduct, protection by the state, leave, disciplinary penalties and procedures, promotion,

transfer, resignation and retirement, dismissal, salary and allowance, rank, tittle, grade, pay scale,

making of regulation, and interpretation of regulation.43

On the other hand in 1962 an order cited as the “Public Employment Administration Order,

1962” was established. As a result of this order an office with the name Public Employment

Administration was created which was under the direction and supervision of the Minister of

National Community Development. This office had the responsibility to determine the

distribution of the functions within the Provincial and Local Employment Office, to determine

the geographical area of their jurisdiction, and organize, direct, and supervise their work, to

collect and publish information statistics relating to the employment situations in Ethiopia.

Moreover, this office was subject to the provision of Central Personnel Agency and Public

Service Order (Order 23 of 1961). And the Central Personnel Agency was accountable for Public

employment Administration. 44

In 1963 the Central Personnel Agency and Public Service Commissioners issued a regulation

entitled as “Regulations for the Organization of the Central Personnel Agency”. This institution

was organized into Staffing Department (which consisted of Registration and Statistical Division,

and Appointment, Promotion, and Transfer Division as well), Training Department

(Management Training Division, and Vocational Training Division ), Administrative Service

43
Negarit Gazeta, Order No. 23 of 1961; Negarit Gazeta, Legal Notice No. 269 of 1962
44
Negarit Gazeta, Order No. 26 of 1962
52
Department (Personnel Division, Finance Division, and General Service Division), the

Classification and Compensation Department (Classification Division, and Compensation and

Condition of Service Division), Public Service Tribunal Department, and the Secretariat of the

Commissioners and Public Regulations Office. 45

In the same year (1963) the Central Personnel Agency with the approval of the Council of

Ministers issued two extra important regulations. The first regulation authorized the appointment

of temporary employees whose service is needed for a limited period or for a designated project

for such specific period, or for the duration of the project. But that temporary employment might

be terminated at any time with one month’s notice. 46

The second regulation was related to the Employees excluded from the coverage of the term

“Public Servant”. These excluded employees were officers from Boy Scout Association,

National Lottery, Haile Sellasie I Foundation, Horse Racing Club, Menelik II Fund, National

Sports Confederation, Red Cross Society, and Society for the Protection of Animals, Trinity

Monastery, Women’s Welfare Association, Haile Sellasie I Theatre, Imperial Saving & Home

Ownership Public Association, Central Medical Stores Corporation, and Pasteur Institute.47

Similar to this later in 1964 the employees of the Ethiopian Airline48 and Ethiopian Grain

Corporation49 were excluded from the coverage of the term “Public Servant” by the Public

Service Commissioners after the approval of the Council of Ministers.

In May 1965 a committee was organized to undertake a study for improving the Imperial public

administration. The Members of the Committee were; Ato Mammo Taddässä, Major General

45
Negarit Gazeta, Legal Notice No. 270 of 1963,
46
Negarit Gazeta, Legal Notice No. 277 of 1963
47
Negarit Gazeta, Legal Notice No. 278 0f 1963
48
Negarit Gazeta, Legal Notice No. 285 of 1964
49
Negarit Gazeta, Legal Notice No.286 of 1964
53
Woldä Sellasé Bäärka, Ato Assäfa Gäbrä Maryam, Ato Seyum Härägot, Ato Mulatu Däbäbä, Dr.

Seyum Gäbrä Egziyabhér, Ato Wubšät Delnäsahu, Dr. Harbert Harmashor, Mr. Donald, E.

Paradis. Later Mr. S. Frezer and Mr. Cordo Magat had become advisers for this committee. The

committee was mandated to review the appropriateness of the existing structure of the Public

administration institutions.50

In doing so, the committee took a study on the restructuring of institutions including; Ministry

of agriculture, Trade and Industry, Education and Art, Foreign Affairs, Palace, Communication,

Land Own Improvement (Ideal for establishment), Mines (Ideal for establishment), National

Community Development (Ideal to include the sector Social Service), Defense, Pension (Ideal

for abandon), Post and Telecommunication, Public Health, Work and Transport ( Ideal for the

replacement of the previous Work and Communication), Public Property (Ideal for the

Establishment), and Procurement (Ideal for abandon). 51

Consequently, the committee had submitted a study on ways of restructuring the central

government institution (Ministries and commissions). More importantly, a study on

administration in the public service had been made and its proposals had been submitted. They

recommended that all the governmental activities (including pension) which were connected to

the Public Servant should be only served by one institution called Central Personnel and Pension

Administration Office. They recommended the role and responsibility of the Ministry of Pension

to be included to the Central Personnel and Pension Administration Office. Hence, all the above

studies had been put into action. This was done because the same tasks that should be performed

by the same organization are being repeated by the two organizations. Hence it became clear that

50
An order to organize a committee by Ethiopian public Service Agency, May 1965, NALA,File
No., 8.1.9.3
51
Ibid
54
the need to coordinate activities and regulations more closely and manage them in a uniform way

would not be wasted.52

Generally, in order to carry out its assigned responsibility well, the institute evaluated the actual

conditions every time and forwards the various rule enforcement policies to the government

offices between 1961 and 1974. Among the basic ones are; Employment Authorization Policy53,

Promotion Committee Establishment Policy,54 Health examination policy of new employees,55

allowance regulation56, Salary scale regulation and position classification57 etc.

2.2.1 New Public Servant Recruitment

The human resource statistics between 1963 and 1974 shows a remarkable increase in the

recruitment of new civil servants from 424 (Four Hundred twenty Four) in 1963 to 6008 (Six

Thousand Eight) in 1974. In more details as depicted in graph 2.1, the number of the Civil

Servants who were recruited in all permanent, temporary, and contract way in the Ethiopian

Public Service were 424 in 1963; 2056 in 1964; 2224 in 1965; 2195 in 1966; 2168 in 1967; 4245

in 1968; 4640 in 1969; 5306 in 1970; 6103 in 1971; 6304 in 1972; 7775 in 1973; and 6008 in

1974.58 Such a trend of increment is depicted in graph 1.

52
An order to organize a committee by Ethiopian public Service Agency, May 1965, NALA,File
No., 8.1.9.3
53
Policy document prepared by Central Personnel Agency concerning about about employment
authorization, 1965,NALA, File No., 8.172.9
54
Policy document prepared by Central Personnel Agency concerning about Promotion
Committee Establishment,1966, NALA, 8.1.100.3
55
Policy Document prepared by Central Personnel Agency about health examination of new
employees, 1968, NALA, File No., 8.1.100.4
56
A regulation regulated by the Imperial Pariament concerning about allowance, 1970, NALA, ,
File No., 8.1.134.2
57
A regulation regulated by the Imperial Pariament concerning about salary scale and position
classification,1972, NALA, File No., 8.1.138.3
58
Public Servant and Office Administration Commission, Yätglena Genebata Tarik, p.353

55
Graph 1: Number of New Recruited Government Employee between 1963- 1974

Source: Public Servant and Office Administration Commission, Yätglena Genebata Tarik.

2.2.2 Job Evaluation, Grading, and Pay Structures

Grade structure was needed to provide a logically designed framework within which the Imperial

Civil Service Institution’s pay rules could be implemented. Structures enabled an institution to

determine where jobs should be placed in a hierarchy, to define pay levels and the scope for pay

progression and provide the basis on which relativists can be managed. A grade and pay structure

was also a medium through which the Imperial Civil Service Institutions could communicate the

career and pay opportunities available to employees. Seventeen (17) broad graded structures had

come to the fore front as the most pragmatic option. Grades were well defined, thereby making it

56
easier to differentiate between them, and to evaluate jobs carefully to ensure the best fit between

individual role profiles and grades.59

In 1972 regulations cited as “Public Service Position Classification and Salary Scale Regulations

No. 2 of 1972” were issued by the Central Personnel Agency and upon the approval of the

Council of Ministers. Positions were classified to service and grade on the basis of their

difficulty or complexity, extent of responsibility and requisite qualifications. Recruitment to

positions were made only according to merit and fitness, to be determined as far as practicable

by competitive examination and effected after consideration and determination in each case by

the Central Personnel Agency. This regulation also organized hierarchical structure for Ethiopian

Public Service Institutions. Namely: Department, Division, Section, and Unit. 60

The Public

Service was made up of the following:

1. Administrative Service
2. Professional and Scientific Service
3. Sub- Professional Service
4. Clerical and Fiscal Service
5. Trades and Crafts Service

In addition to this the Imperial Civil Service at stages of its collapse had established a common

pay and grading system. This means that all departments and offices had the same approach to

grading, with pay levels in respect of each grade determined centrally. The rational for these

arrangements was to promote and preserve an independent and impartial civil service.61

59
Public Servant and Office Administration Commission, Yätglena Genebata Tarik, p.353.
60
Negarit Gazeta, Regulations No. 2 of 1972; and Negarit Gazeta, Legal Notice No. 419 of 1972
61
Negarit Gazeta, Regulations No. 2 of 1972; and Negarit Gazeta, Legal Notice No. 419 of 1972

57
Table 2: Services and Grades, and Salaries in Grades in 1972.

Source: Negarit Gazeta, Legal Notice No. 419 of 1972, Public Service Position
Classification and Scale Regulations No2, 1st June 1972.
Generally the above table shows, in this period, government employees were well paid.

Administrative Civil Servants enjoyed a good pay in comparison to any government employees.

Sub- Professional grades were a little lower from Administrative Civil Servants, but still

competitive in relation to Clerical and Fiscal Civil Servants. Trade and Crafts, and Custodial and

58
Manual Civil Servants were paid less but better than their equivalents in the less formal parts of

the private sector. Moreover, at this time Ethiopian civil services still had pay structures

sufficient to recruit, retain and motivate qualified staff.62

However, characteristics at entry, particularly entry pay grade, are important descriptors of the

career profiles personnel. Evidence shows that entry grade varied considerably across

occupational areas during the imperial regime. As one would expect, occupational areas where

entrants have more education and therefore better external market opportunities have a higher

entry grade. This was to be expected because civil service managers must offer higher pay in

order to compete successfully with the private sector for better-educated workers and workers in

technical areas. Those in science and mathematics, engineering, and the medical and financial-

management fields had higher entry grades than those in the clerical and technical areas but

lower entry grades than those in the administrative officials.63

Through these regulations, government recruitment, selection, training, performance appraisal,

pay rise system, public works Levels and their classifications (AD; SP, CF, TC, and CD) as well

as Salary scale system were established. The practices followed by the rules made the system of

government one of the most modern in the world. Through these regulations, government

recruitment, selection, training, performance appraisal, pay rise system, public works Levels and

their classifications (AD; SP, CF, TC, and CD) as well as Salary scale system were established.

Generally, these legal documents and legislation attempted to introduce merit as a criterion for

appointment, replacing the old method which was based on favoritism or ascription. All of these

Negarit Gazeta, Regulations No. 2 of 1972; and Negarit Gazeta, Legal Notice No. 419 of 1972
62

Ibid.
63

59
regulations were made by the Council of Ministers, and approved and proclaimed by the

Emperor. 64

2.2.3 Promotion

One of the core functions of the Agency for Imperial Public Servant was to safeguard standards

of best practice in promotion processes to positions in the organizations within its remit. This is

because promotion of Civil Servant was a human resource function aimed at ensuring that

officers ascend to higher positions in the grading structure based on merit. The promotions that

were made intended mainly to fill staffing gaps, boost morale and there by improve service

delivery.65 According to evidence, between 1964 and 1974 financial year, a total of 7266 civil

servants were promoted.

As depicted in graph 2 the number Civil Servants who were promoted in salary increment in the

Ethiopian Public Service were 102 in 1964;152 in 1965; 457 in 1966; 856 in 1967; 980 in 1968;

617 in 1969; 740 in 1970; 955 in 1971; 761 in 1972; 431 in 1973; and 1215 in 1974.66 This

argument can be illustrated in detail in graph as follow:

64
Negarit Gazeta, Regulations No. 2 of 1972; and Negarit Gazeta, Legal Notice No. 419 of 1972
65
Public Servant and Office Administration Commission, Yätglena Genebata Tarik, p.455.
66
Ibid

60
Graph 2. Number of promoted Civil Servants from 1964-1974

Source: Public Servant and Office Administration Commission, Yetigilena Yeginbata Tarik, 1976.

2.3 The History of Ethiopian Civil Service from 1974- 1991

In November 26, 1974 (as soon as Därgue took over the leadership of the country), one of the

first historic steps it took was to examine the general administration of the government from

various angles and establish a high-level "Administrative Reform Committee" to restructure it in

the direction of the "Ethiopia First" policy announced at the time. This Committee had four (4)

sub technical committees. These were the Subcommittee on Organization and Management;

Manpower Studies, Assets, Procurement and Protection; and Budget and Accounts.67

A Proclamation issued by Council of Ministers for establishing Public Servant and Office
67

Administration Commission, 1975, NALA, File No., 8.1135.2.

61
In January 28, 1975 this committee proposed and presented the establishment of the Central

Personnel Agency with the name “Public Servants Administration and the Pensions Assembly"

by combining Public Servants Administration, Pensions Assembly, and Public Administration

Institute or the former the Imperial Ethiopian Public Administration Institute to the council of

ministers. However, the Administrative Reform Committee after examining the situation in

detail decided to continue as the Government Pension Service Assembly, due to the complexity

and scope of the work and assuming that it will continue to grow in the future. Hence, on

November 5, 1975 the Council of Ministers proclaimed the establishment of Public Servant and

Office Administration Commission by amalgamating only Public Servants Administration and

Public Administration Institute. Later in 1982 it was replaced with the name the Public

Employee Administration Commission. 68

This Institution was reorganized into eleven (11) with various work units. These were

departments for; Government Employees Training Department, Organization and Management

Studies, Classification of works, Deployment of government employees, Civil Service Tribunal,

Administrative service, Research and Literature Organization, Statistics and Record,

Administrative Reform Committee , and Asmara Branch Office. Later in January 1976 the

institution Central Personnel Agency had been set up with the name “Public Servants

Administration and the Pensions Assembly" by combining Public Servants Administration,

Pensions Assembly, and Public Administration Institute or the former the Imperial Public

Administration Institute.69

Public Servant and Office Administration Commission, Yätglena Genebata Tarik,p.21.

68

A Proclamation issued by Council of Ministers for establishing Public Servant and Office
69

Administration Commission, 1975, NALA, File No., 8.1135.2.

62
Därgue during its power (1974-1991) had done a lot of major policy and directives regarding to

Ethiopian Public Service and Public Servant such as about the minimum wage rate, about

making contract and temporary workers permanent,70 directives and regulations to renewed

public pension system,71 directives about required skills of government employees, job

performance evaluation criteria,72 work dress code of government employees,73 new promotion

guide,74 directives to miscellaneous allowances (Per Diem, Transport Allowance, Hotel

Allowance, in Town Transport Allowance, Hardship Allowance etc.).75

This payment of allowance to modern public servants has a century of history and can be traced

back to at least the beginning of the 20th century. The purpose of allowance was essentially to

compensate traveling public servants fairly for the costs incurred on overnight stays away from

their duty station. Moreover in Ethiopia, the distribution of Allowance, like other political,

economic, and social developments, has been changing from time to time and moving from one

method to another. In the administrative process before 1942, when a government employee was

ordered to go to another place from his regular place of work, he was not paid other than his

regular salary. However, the worker was not limited to the dry food he took from his house; he

A directive document prepared by Public Servants Administration and the Pensions

70

Assembly concerning about about the minimum wage rate, about making contract and temporary
workers permanent, 1977, NALA, File No., 8.1.66.4.
71
A directive document prepared by Public Servants Administration and the Pensions
Assembly concerning about renewed public pension system, 1977, NALA, File No., 8.1.66.5
72
A directive document prepared by Public Servants Administration and the Pensions
Assembly concerning about job performance evaluation criteria , 1978, NALA, File No., 8.1.66.2.
73
A directive document prepared by Public Servants Administration and the Pensions
Assembly concerning about work dress code of government employees, 1979, NALA, File No.,
8.1.54.1.
A directive document prepared by Public Servants Administration and the Pensions
74

Assembly concerning about new promotion guide,1981, NALA, File No., 8.1.134.7.
75
A directive document prepared by Public Employee Administration Commission
concerning about miscellaneous allowances (Per Diem, Transport Allowance, Hotel Allowance,
in Town Transport Allowance, Hardship Allowance etc.),1982, NALA, File No., 8.1. 134.2.
63
would carry out his mission by being prepared for him by the order of the government, by his

own request and by the goodwill of the people. Not only these per- diem for public servants was

also vary and depend upon the willingness of the King. So the allowance was in kind. The

following letter illustrates this argument.

Musa Furno with five other persons is working at the telephone that is stretched out to
Häräregé and is cleaning up the damage. In every place where he stays, give two
chickens, ten eggs, 50 loaves of bread, three cups of stew, …, two sheep’s, and two cups
of butter every six days….76
However, after 1942, due to changes in administrative hiring, transportation and other conditions,

accommodation contributions began to take on the spirit of allowance when the civil servant

moved for work. However, the payment of allowance was not based on study and was not

centralized; rather it was based on the decisions made by different officials in different offices. In

1952, "Point Four", USA NGO Program was established in Addis Ababa which paid two percent

(2%) of the workers' daily wages. The Minister of Finance took this procedure as a good practice

and ordered the Public offices of Ethiopia to follow it.77

"Administrative Reform Committee" along with the “National Advisory Council” tried to

investigate the allowance system in Ethiopia in 1975. But in upgrading the findings of

"Administrative Reform Committee" and “National Advisory Council”, the “Salary and Various

Allowances Study Committee” amalgamated from Government Employees and Offices

Administration Commission, Plan Commission, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Labor and

76
Ṕawulos Ňoňo, Așé Menilek Kähägär Wusţ Yätäșașafut Däbdabéwoč,(Addis Ababa:Astér Näga
Printing Press,2011),p.498.
77
Public Servant and Office Administration Commission, Yätglena Genebata Tarik,p. 45.
64
Social Affair, Ministry of Trade and Tourism, Addis Ababa University, and Central Statistics

Office founded a new allowance system in 1978. 78

Hence a regulation regarding public employee allowance was established in 1978. This

regulation allowed public servants to be paid from birr 8 to birr 18 per day on the basis of salary

scale when they participate in any public service event which takes place outside of the Public

Servant duty station. This public servants (more particularly for taxi drivers and assistant field

workers) per-diem allowance was not commensurate with the 1980s market value/ price good

and service (i.e. Hotel and Food price) which affected the efficiency and effectiveness of public

institutions. Cognizant of this fact, in 1984 the Administration Affairs Committee of Council of

Ministers undertook other study and draft regulation on allowance for public employees in

Ethiopia.79

The Members of the Committee were Ato Tayä Ţilahun (Coordinator from Ministry of Interior),

Commissioner Masräša Gugsa (Issue prover from Public Servant and Public Service Institutions),

Ato Täfära Haylé Selassé (member from Council Minister), Ato Käbädä Gäbrä Maryam

(Member from Ministry of Justice), Ato Bäa’lu Germa (Member Ministry of Communication),

Ato Bäkälä Tamirat (Member from Ministry of Finance, and Ato Yämane Areya (Member from

Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs). On the basis of the forgoing, a council of Ministers had

approved a new public servants per-diem allowance, which had been issued by the Public

Servant and Office Administration Commission. The new allowance rate manual had been

developed which incorporated important issues that were not addressed in the previous public

78
Public Servant and Office Administration Commission, Yätglena Genebata Tarik,p. 45.
79
Ibid
65
servants per-diem allowance manual and also took into account the 1980s market price of goods

and services. 80

2.3.1 New Public Servant Recruitment

The Dergue regime restructured the cabinet and expanded the state apparatus through creating

new ministries, commissions, agencies, and local administrative bodies. Associated with these

expansion actions, within a few years, the number of civil servants effectively doubled from the

number of civil servants increased from 101,147 under the previous regime to 216,058 when the

regime left office.81 More specifically the number of new entrants decreased to 6142 from 10822

in 1975 but increased to 13997 the highest number between 1975 and 1983.

Graph 3. New Public Servant Recruitment from 1975-1983

A directive document prepared by Public Employee Administration Commission

80

concerning about miscellaneous allowances (Per Diem, Transport Allowance, Hotel Allowance,
in Town Transport Allowance, Hardship Allowance etc.),1982, NALA, File No., 8.1. 134.2.
81
Solomon Markos, International Journal of Public Administration, 36 (2014), pp. 235-247.
66
Source: Public Servant and Office Administration Commission, Yetigilena Yeginbata Tarik,
1976, p.578.

2.3.2 Recruitment In Terms of their Educational Background

Equally, over periods, the qualification of the civil servants has been improving. For instance,

by 1975, of the total newly recruited civil servants inherited by the Dergue government, 527

were university graduates and 14 post graduate and 9 PhD. while the balance had no more

Certificates. In 1983 over 30 percent of the newly recruited civil servants held “Certificate” and

above qualifications.82

Table 3. Recruitment In Terms of Their Educational Background in 1975

Year Illiterate Literate 1-6 7-8 9-12 Certificate Diploma Degree M.A/MSC. PhD. Other

1975 181 1755 1492 829 3130 1248 1242 527 14 9 395

1976 103 996 847 470 1782 709 705 299 6 - 225

1977 4 183 405 513 1442 223 2697 65 11 6 5796

1978 2 530 464 271 1216 33 107 152 5 - 6821

1979 - 1630 1386 769 2908 1159 1153 489 14 8 535

1980 - 2185 1857 1030 3983 1545 1545 656 18 9 632

1981 - 1319 1121 622 2348 933 933 396 11 11 433

1982 - 1733 1322 556 2750 2457 2457 167 34 25 47

1983 - 1477 1201 541 1898 1182 1182 782 19 13 71

Source: Public Servant and Office Administration Commission, Yätglena Genebata Tarik, 560.

As shown in the above table there is a dramatic decline in illiterate public servants between the

base year of 1975 and 1978 while the increase shifted to a dramatic increase in literacy where the

number of literates actually above doubled. This was indeed encouraging, but shows that

82
Public Servant and Office Administration Commission, Yätglena Genebata Tarik, pp. 345.

67
Ethiopia’s public service organizations were still dominated by public servants who were

between grade nine and grade twelve. This implies that public servants who occupied most of the

positions in civil service organizations lacked post-secondary education. Broadly, this implies

that effective implementation of public service reforms could be negatively impacted due to

poor-skilled workforce. Another serious problem observed during these years was the lack of

professionals at the PhD. level and even MSc. or M.A public servants who can advise and assist

in public service implementation, and in program monitoring and evaluation.

2.3.3 Recruitment In Terms of Age Distribution

As a productive age group, the expectation from young professionals is to accept and adopt new

technologies easily, being flexible and providing quality public service in a timely manner,

among other things. In this regard, between 1975- 1983, of the total new recruited public

servants in Ethiopia, the majority of the public servants were between the ages of 18- 32. The

following table corroborates this fact.

Table 4. Recruitment In Terms of Age Distribution from 1975-1983

Year 18-22 23-27 28-32 33-37 38-42 43-47 48-52 ≥53

1975 6489 3901 336 96 - - - --
1976 3621 2035 242 156 88 - - -
1977 6877 3687 565 118 76 22 - -
1978 4403 2917 1229 489 359 204 - -
1979 5001 2061 1673 854 251 201 - -
1980 6569 3696 1790 641 425 219 91 38
1981 3580 2787 911 406 242 134 54 18
1982 6826 3841 1860 666 442 228 95 39
1983 6112 3850 1252 540 321 157 67 25
Source: Public Servant and Office Administration Commission, Yätglena Genebata Tarik, p.348

68
 2.3.4 Civil Servant and Sex Composition

During this period the commission opened branches in different provinces. But the total number

of civil servants and sex composition varied from province to province. In spite of their

contributions to the well being of their family and community affairs, women experienced lower

status in general and hence is marginalized from civil services at all provinces during this period.

The following table shows the provisional distribution and sexual composition of Ethiopian

Public Service in 1982.

Table 5. Provisional distribution and Sexual composition of Ethiopian Public Service in

1982

Province Male Percent Female Percent Total

Addis Ababa 29551 71 11985 29 41536
Shäwa 15740 84 2919 16 18659
Arsi 6004 88 781 12 6785
Käffa 6718 87 982 13 7700
Wolläga 7317 89 875 11 8192
Sidama 8235 87 1255 13 9490
Illibabur 4060 88 577 12 4637
Gamo Goffa 3444 89 438 11 3882
Balé 3126 84 583 16 3709
Harär 8104 79 2151 21 10255
Wollo 8791 84 1718 16 10509
Tigray 5703 89 1200 11 6403
Gondär 6337 81 1532 19 7869
Eritrea 6345 72 2447 28 8792
Gojjam 7287 85 1306 15 8591
Assäb 393 69 174 31 567
Total 127155 80 30,923 20 158078
Source: Public Servant and Office Administration Commission, Yätglena Genebata Tarik, pp.
349.

69
The above table shows by broad sex groups, 80 percent of Ethiopians civil servants were male in

1982; only 20 percent were female. The data indicated that the percentage of Male and Female in

the Ethiopia Civil Service were nearly the same for all provinces in the respected financial year.

It appears that all provincial areas had a higher percentage of male than female in this year. The

primate city of, Assäb, Addis Ababa, and Eritrea had relatively good female civil servant than

the others. Wolläga, Tigray and Gamo Goffa provinces in particular show the lowest proportion

of female civil servants. Concerning to provincial distribution of Ethiopian Civil Servant, almost

38 % of Ethiopian civil Servant were found in Addis Ababa and Šäwa. Assäb, Gamo Goffa and

Illibabur provinces had in particular show the lowest civil servant number.

But it is difficult to conclude whether there was uneven distribution of the Ethiopian civil

Servant within provinces or not since there was no population data for each and every province

of this year. But based on rough guesses and sample survey, the Ethiopian population was

estimated 37.21 million. Ethiopia ranked in the lowest quintile in terms of density of public

service personnel, with 0.4 per 100 populations. This implies that, Ethiopia had 4 (four) public

personnel per 1000 (One Thousand) population by 1982.

2.3.5 Promotion

The vacant posts in the government services were filled up indirectly by giving promotion to

those persons who were already in the government service. This method is called ‘promotion

system’. In Ethiopia promotion is considered as an integral part of the career service. The two

important principles that were followed in making promotion are the principle of Merit and the

principle of Seniority. Promotion changed the rank, status, designation and salary of the public

employee.

70
As depicted in graph 5 the number Civil Servants who were promoted in salary increment in the

Ethiopian Public Service were 1605 in 1975;3048 in 1976; 4596 in 1977; 5868 in 1978; 5008 in

1979; 3071 in 1980; 6210 in 1981; 5136 in 1982; and 5153 in 1983.83

Graph 5 Promotion from 1975-1983

Source: Public Servant and Office Administration Commission, Yetigilena Yeginbata Tarik,
1976, p.544.

Moreover, the Dergue regime systematically attempted to enhance its ability to control the civil

service. The Dergue attempted to recruit former high school and college students who were then

serving in the Zemecha. More over after the establishment the Yekatit '66 Ideological School

many civil servants could be taught Marxist-Leninist doctrine inside Ethiopia. Many civil

Ibid
83

71
servants traveled to the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and Cuba for ideological training. Some

returned and became party cadres and served in various parts of the country to encourage and

monitor the political education.84

The inauguration of the Workers Party of Ethiopia resulted in a blurring of the lines between

party and state. This party operative tended to interject themselves freely into the areas of civil

service. For example, party cadres had important political and intelligence gathering roles in the

workplace. The Working People's Control Committees, created in 1981 so as to supervise, and

follow-up the government policies, regulations, and directives, and had come to serve as a

somewhat threatening "watchdog" over productive activities of Civil Service.85 Thus the Dergue

regime (r.1974-1991) was characterized by widespread civil servants dissatisfaction. Hence they

were victims of the regime. The Civil servants Photography of the Victims of the Dergue Regime

which is found in the Red Terror Martyrs' Memorial Museum of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, reveals

a lot regarding to this issue.

Informants: Negsté Käbädä; Dawit Demisé

84

Ibid.
85

72
 CHAPTER THREE

3. CIVIL SERVICE ADMINISTRATION IN ETHIOPIA, 1991 -2021

3.1 Introduction

Given the institution’s attributes, it is not surprising to discover that it makes numerous and

wide-ranging changes. The study surveyed these changes by describing several tangible

examples, from which we later draw conclusions. Meanwhile the study took 1991 and 2021 as a

benchmark to start and end in respectively this chapter because both periods marked changes in

both structural and procedural reforms in the Ethiopian Civil Service Institution.

The EPRDF inherited a weak civil service system and poorly functioning civil service agencies

in 1991 as a result of two decades of civil wars, famine, and military dictatorship. As a result, the

country was not only at the lowest level of civil service development by all standards but also

without adequate financial resources to provide essential civil services. It was characterized by

the ineffectiveness of policies, rules and regulations on civil service, limited structural set up for

monitoring and control, unidentified management systems and procedures in utilization of

manpower and other resources, limited managerial know-how, insufficient service delivery

systems etc. One of the first priorities of the new government was to restore the capacity of the

civil service its structure and functions to ensure political stability and promote economic growth.

Since 1991 reforming Ethiopia’s public administration in general and civil service institution in

particular have been given a high priority.1

1
World Bank, Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia: Ethiopia Public Sector Reform
Approach: Building the Developmental State - A Review and Assessment of the Ethiopian Approach to
Public Sector Reform, Report no. ACS3695, (2013), p.1; ECSC, the Historical Evolution of Ethiopian
Civil Service (Addis Ababa, 2013), pp. 1-5.

75
On the other hand in 2021, the Civil Service Commission was re-established as an autonomous

federal government organ having its own legal personality and being accountable for the Prime

Minister.2 In this year the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia Civil Service Commission

not only introduced its ten-year public service sector road-map (2021-2030), 3 but also has issued

the revised Federal Employees' Employment, Promotion and Transfer Directive in accordance

with the powers vested in it by the Federal Government Employees Proclamation No. 1064/2010

and this shows a renewed interest in reforming the structure and nature of civil service systems.4

Beside this, in this year its previous executive organs of Ethiopian Civil Service such as the

Ethiopian Civil Service University has become accountable to the Ministry of Education, the

former Mäläs Zénawi Leadership Academy with the new name African Leadership Excellence

Academy has become accountable to the Prime Minister, and the Public Servants Social Security

Agency have become accountable to the National Bank of Ethiopia. The only executive organ

which continued as accountable to the Civil Service Commission was the Ethiopian Management

Institute.5 This witnessed the other parts of the Ethiopian Civil Service institutional history.

Generally, the study selected this historical period for this chapter because many gradual and

drastic transformations were made during the past three decades. These, therefore, were the

terminal dates of the chapter.

2
Negarit Gazeta, Proclamation No. 1263/2021
3
Ethiopian Federal Civil Service Commission, Yämängest Agälegelot Zärf Fenotä Karta , 2021-
2030 (Addis Ababa, 2021 ),pp. 1-79.
4
Federal Civil Service Commission, Yätäšašaläwu Yä Federal Mängest Säratäňoč Yäqţer,
Yädäräja Edegätna Yäzwuwur Afäșașm Mämärya (addis abbab, 2021),p. 8.
5
Negarit Gazeta, Proclamation No. 1263/2021.
74
 3.2 Phases of Ethiopian Civil Service Reform

The government tried to restructure the civil service in three phases. These were the formative

phase (1991-1995); the second phase (1996-2002); and the third phase (2003-2021).6

3.2.1. Phase I: from 1991–1995

The July 1991 Peace and Democracy Conference that led to the establishment of the Transitional

Government of Ethiopia (TGE) adopted a Transitional Charter that recognized a federal

government with nine regional states. These include Tigray, Afar, Amhara, Oromia, Somali,

Benishangul-Gumuz, Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples, Gambella and Harari. The

regions are hierarchically divided into Zones, Wäräda, Special-Wäräda and Qäbälés.7

In 1993 a proclamation was issued to define the powers and duties of the central and regional

executive organs of the transitional government of Ethiopia. Consequently the Public Servants

Administration Commission and the Public Servants Administration Bureaus were established at

central and regional level in respectively.8

The Public Servants Administration Commission had the powers and duties to prepare, supervise,

and upon approval the implementation of policies and laws concerning the administration of

public servants, issue detailed implementation directives, keep a register of details of Public

Servants of the Central Government, interpret Public Service laws, regulations, and directives,

provide assistance and advice to Regional Self Governments with regard to the administration of

6
Melesse Asfawu, and Gebre Meruts, “The Implementation of Civil Service Reforms in Ethiopia:
The Promise for Civil Service De-Politicization of Tigray National Regional State,” Developing Country
Studies, 4 (2014), p. 93.
7
Negarit Gazeta, Charter No.1 of 1991; Hashim Tewfik, Transition to Federalism: The Ethiopian
Experience, (Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, 2010), p.6.
8
Negarit Gazeta, Charter No.1 of 1991
75
Public Servants, etc. The commission was accountable to the council of Ministers9 whereas

Public Servants Administration Bureaus had become accountable to the Executive Committee of

the region.10

Similarly the Public Servants Administration Bureaus had powers and duties to insure the

implementation, in respect of the public servants of the region, of policies, laws, regulations and

directives relating to the administration of public servants, keep a record of the detailed

particulars of the public servants of the region and transmit to the Public Service Commission,

transfer problems arising in the interpretation of public service laws, regulations, and directives

to the Public Service Commission, etc.11

In 1995, the Ethiopian government bequeathed a Federal government and a regionally

decentralized civil service. Hence, Ethiopia had a civil service system at the central, state, and

local government levels. Ethiopia has three tiers of civil service institutions: federal, state, and

district. The regional states consist of 815 districts and 133 urban administrations, which are the

main units of local civil service institutions. Each district had Restructured Wäräda offices,

human resource planning, and Wäräda personnel administration. Accordingly, Ethiopia had

many district “civil services,” nine regional state civil services, two city administrations, and one

federal civil service institution. Besides, the total numbers of civil service institutions were

around 145 at federal level, 404 in 11 regional states/two city administration level, and over

19,635 at Wäräda level in 1995. 12

9
Negarit Gazeta, Proclamation No. 41/1993.
10
Ibid
11
Ibid
12
World Bank, Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia: Ethiopia Public Sector Reform
Approach: Building the Developmental State - A Review and Assessment of the Ethiopian Approach to
Public Sector Reform, Report no., p. 1.
76
Similarly, in 1995 the government established the Federal Civil Service Commission as an

autonomous public institution of the Federal Government, and accountable to the Council of

Ministers through replacing Public Servants' Administration Commission. The Commission was

established so as to the realization 'of a meritorious, efficient, productive and permanent civil

service in accordance with the law,13 and was obliged to review existing organizational structure

and manpower utilization of the Federal civil service.14

Generally, this led to the Federal State to establish a proclamation applied to Federal Civil

Servants while the Regional Civil Servants to establish their respective Regional Civil Service

proclamations which are in most cases similar in content to the Federal one. Both levels of

governments (Federal and Regional) have civil service commissions of their own, which are

independently mandated to implement civil service laws, policies, regulation, and directives;

supervise and control hiring (recruitment, selection and placement), transfer (lateral and vertical),

salary administration, performance appraisal, training, discipline and separation of civil servants,

and evaluate organizations and staffing of government office. However, the rule requires

regional governments to ensure that educational, training and experience requirements of any job,

title or position approximate national standards.15

Hence, the 1st phase was a Structural Adjustment Program to skip from the Socialist Ideology to

Federal System and which focused mainly on macro-level and were mainly quantitative in nature.

And in these years, the Ethiopian civil service institutions have been deeply restructured. To sum

up in the first phase, so as to alleviate the problems of civil service, the government established

an Inter-Ministerial Committee (task force) consisting of representatives from the Prime

13
Negarit Gazeta, Proclamation No 8/1995
14
Ibid.
15
Ibid
77
Minister‟s Office, Ministries of education, Finance, Planning and Economic Development,

Labor and Social Affairs and the Public Service Commission. The committee was mandated to

review the appropriateness of the existing structure of government in the light of the new

economic policy and devolution measures. It was given the task of reviewing the whole civil

service administrative system so as to recommend ways and means of renovation.16

In doing so, the task force had in turn created six sub-committees to work on the restructuring of

institutions; civil service pay; position classification, personnel directives and manuals,

efficiency, effectiveness and accountability, and training. This task force submitted draft

proposals on the salary scale, allowances and benefits of the civil servant. A study on working

conditions and occupational safety was underway. A study on position classification in the civil

service had been made and its proposals had been submitted. Nonetheless, all the above studies

have not been put into action. The committee had also submitted a study on ways of restructuring

the central government institution (Ministries and commissions).17

3.2.2 Phase II: from 1996–2002

Since the early 1990s when the government of Ethiopia embarked upon a long term strategy of

“State Transformation” institutional capacity has been widely acknowledged as critical to the

success of Ethiopia’s development long term objective of poverty eradication and

democratization. The scope and severity of institutional capacity constraints were also

recognized and measures were taken to fill the gap. Capacity building initiatives have included

a wide range of training to facilitate the civil service reform program. However, these capacity

building efforts were fragmented, and the government recognized the need for a guiding

16
Yosef Taye, “A Study of the Civil Service Reform in Adama City Administration: Regional
State of Oromia- Ethiopia,” (MA thesis, AAU, 2011), p. xxxii.
17
Ibid
78
framework and a more coordinated approach. Hence the government issued a national Capacity

Building strategy in 1998.18

The National Capacity Building Strategy (NSBS) was issued to tackle the serious deficiencies in

human and institutional capacity, working systems and procedures which severely constrained

the government’s development objectives. The strategy had three themes. The first focused on

institutional capacity building to ensure efficiency and sustainability. The second aimed at a

comprehensive development of human resources, institutions, and organizations as a means for

achieving the country’s overall development goals. The third endeavored to build in flexibility so

as to accommodate change.19

Consequently in the mid of 1990s though the new federal system have significantly decentralized

power to regional states and lower administrations, the capacity of public sector established in

both federal and regional states were very limited; as a result there exist deficit in the

implementation capacity among civil service institutions at all levels. And to address this gap

and continuously build and transform the public sector at all levels, the federal government has

established Ethiopian Civil Service College as an autonomous higher education institution

having its own legal personality and accountable to the Prime Minister in 1996.20

In the 20th January 2006 the College was re-established by adding the objective of improving the

professional and leaders capacity and ethical standards of the Ethiopian Civil Service; providing

consultancy services; and formulating standards and certify professionals (formulating standards

and based on such standards confer professional certification in auditing and accountancy).

18
Ministry of Capacity Building, “Success stories of Public Sector Capacity Building in
Ethiopia,” (n.p, 2007), p. 1.
19
Ibid
20
Negarit Gazeta, Proclamation No. 4/1995.
79
Similarly in this year the College had Administrative that were accountable to the Ministry of

Capacity Building and which consisted of a chairperson and other six members appointed by the

Minister.21

Later in 2011 it grew to a University level. Generally, between 1996 and 2021 this institution

(ECSU) established faculties and other academic and research centers; designed and

implemented undergraduate and graduate and post graduate programs; organized and conducted

seminars, conferences and symposium; established relations with domestic and foreign sister

institutions having similar objectives, and established and published academic journals and

newspapers that helped for searching, cultivating and transmitting knowledge for women and

‘backward regions’ civil servants.22

To sum up, the Ethiopian Civil Service Training Institutions (Ethiopian Civil Service University

and Ethiopian Management Institute) in their decades of journey of excellence in training of civil

servants has managed to make significant contribution in building capacity of the civil service

sector. Even they have played a great role in promoting the designed, implementation and

evaluation of reform tools (BBR, BSC, Change Army, and Citizen Charter) by providing

research, training and consultancy services.23

On 12th October, 2001 an office for the Coordination of Capacity Building at Ministerial level

was established. The office had the powers and duties mainly to initiate national capacity

building policies, to ensure that the necessary capacity is created for the national capacity

21
Negarit Gazeta, Council of Ministrs Regulation No. 121/2006.
22
ECSU,“The profile of Ethiopian Civil Service University,” available in http://www.ecsu.edu.et/.
23
Informant: Täsfayä Gumsa
80
building, to supervise and coordinate the executive organs, and to “support regions in promoting

capacity building activities.24

The executive organs such as the Ministry of Education, Ethiopian Science and Technology

Commission, Federal Civil Service Commission, Ethiopian Management Institute, Ethiopian

Civil Service College, and Justice and Legal System Research Institute had been accountable to

this Ministerial Office.25 Thus this office brought together all the key players involved in

capacity building into partnership, to encourage shared responsibility and mutual accountability,

and to maintain a donor- country dialogue. It constituted a focal point for collaborative

endeavors with the country’s development partners and provided a conceptual and operational

framework for donor efforts on issues of national capacity building.26

As part of the country's reform framework, the Coordination of Capacity Building Office of

Ethiopia has launched a civil service reform program in five main areas since then.27 These were

financial expenditure and business management, human resource management, service delivery,

top management system, and ethics.28 Responsibility for each sub- program had been placed

within the relevant federal government central institution, with a senior official appointed as a

director. The Minister of Finance was responsible for the expenditure management and control

reform program execution where the Federal Civil Service Commission was for the human

24
Negarit Gazeta, Proclamation No. 256/2001,
25
Ibid
26
Ministry of Capacity Building, “Success stories of Public Sector Capacity Building in
Ethiopia,” p. 1.
27
Ministry of Communication, “Yämängest Yämasfäșäm Aqem Ginbata Steratéjina
Programočä,”(Addis Ababa:Berhänna Sälam Printing Press,2002), pp.193-261.
28
Ibid
81
resource management sub program. The rest of sub- programs such as Top Management Systems,

Service Delivery, and Ethics were given to the Office of the Prime Minister.29

One project of the ethics sub-program (the Ethics Monitoring and Central Body Establishment

Project) was to establish the commission. Accordingly, the Federal Ethics and Anti-Corruption

Commission (Commission which was and is directly accountable to the Prime Minister of

Ethiopia) on May 24, 2001 was established by proclamation as the ethics monitoring commission

in the Ethiopian civil service.30

The Federal Civil Service Commission was empowered to lead the Human Resource

Management (HRM) components of the Ethiopian Civil Service Reform Program (ECSRP) had

long realized the importance of well trained staff for a successful development and

implementation of the undergoing reform initiatives. Therefore several workshops and seminars,

hired expatriate consultants for both to train project staff and assist in program development.31

Meanwhile from the 7th -30 March 2001 a study tour to Malaysia and Philippines was made to

equip the project managers and team members of the HRM reform program with adequate and

relevant knowledge and best practices. The members of the delegation were Ato Fäkadä Sellasé

Mami (from the department of Recruitment, Selection, transfer, and Promotion), Ato Gétačäw

Mogäs and W/ro Șähay Assäfa (from the Department of Human Resource Planning), Ato Ţilahun

Fänta (from the Department of position Classification and Remuneration System), W/ro

29
Yosef Taye, “A Study of the Civil Service Reform in Adama City Administration: Regional
State of Oromia- Ethiopia,” p. xxxiv.
30
Negarit Gazeta, Proclamation no. 235/2001
31
Ministry of Communication, “Ethiopia: Yä 1995 Amätawi Mäșhét,”(Addis Ababa: Masträr
printing press, 2003), pp. 371-372.
82
Wubamlak Ešätu (from the Department of Performance Evaluation and Training), and Ato

Abäbä Kassé (from the Department of Human Resource Information Management).32

When they returned to their homeland the delegations briefly wrote up and presented lessons

learn from both Malaysian and Philippines experiences. They recommended the institution to

give great emphasis for improving Quality Service Delivery through a computerized system.33

Twelve years later in 2016 Integrated Civil Service Management Information System (a web

based system) was developed for a civil servant administration and regulation functions intended

to be implemented in the public institutions at both national and regional levels. Though it was

intended to be deployed at the national level the first phase deployment was done at nine

government institutions which included, Ministry of Civil Service, Ministry of Education ,

Ministry of Health, Oromia National Regional State Civil Service and Good Governance Bureau

including One Zone and One Wäräda of North Shewa at Feché town of Gerar Jarso Wäräda, and

Amhara National Regional State Civil Service Bureau including One Zone and One Wäräda of

North Shewa Civil Service Bureau at Däbrä Berhan town of Angolälana Ţära Wäräda Civil

Service Bureau.34

The system comprise Human Resource Management System (Administration Functions),

Human Resource Study (Organizational Structuring and Job Positions functions), Human

Resource Inspection Functions (Regulatory Functions), Administrative Tribunal Functions

(Complaint Handling Functions), and Human Resource Archives and Records Management

32
Federal Civil Service Commission, “A Study Tour Report : Malysia And Philipines,” (Addis
Ababa:, n.p, 2001),pp.3-4.
33
Gebre Miruts Beyene, “Civil Service Reform and Leadership Role in Ethiopia: The Case of
Tigray Regional State,” Public Policy and Administration Research 5 (2015),p.78.
34
Ministry of Public Service and Human Resources Development, “Integrated Civil Service
Management Information System (ICSMIS): Archive and Records Management Module,” (Addis Ababa:
Custor Computing PLC, 2016), p. 1.
83
(Administrative functions).35 In 2020 ECSC has digitized its service through the Integrated Civil

Service Management Information System, the new technology which cost the Commission 50

million Birr.36

In 2002 a proclamation was established mainly to promulgate a law on the administration of civil

servants compatible with the progress of the country, to make the Federal Civil Service efficient,

effective, neutral, sustainable, transparent and development oriented, to establish a system that

might attract and retain competent professionals dedicated to serve the public , to legislate clear

provisions which guarantee job security and fair conditions of service to civil service, to ensure

that the appointment, promotion, transfer, salary increment and training was based only the

educational qualification, ability, profession, experiences and performance of the Civil Servant,

to base remuneration on position classification and grading and thereby ensure the principle of

equal pay for equal work, and to establish procedures for the adjudication of case of civil

servants. 37

This Proclamation provided for the right to equality of treatment in the workplace on the basis of

nationality, sex, religion, political outlook or any other conditions or on the basis of payment and

other benefits. However, female candidates and members of nationalities comparatively less

represented in the government office, having equal or close scores to that of other candidates

have the right to join the institution in an affirmative action in this proclamation. 38

Generally during the 2nd phase (1996-2002) was instituted to build a capable civil service to

promote democracy, federalism and good governance, provide citizens with friendly service

Ministry of Public Service and Human Resources Development, “Integrated Civil Service
35

Management Information System (ICSMIS): Archive and Records Management Module,” p. 1

36
Fortune, Oct 3 , 2020
37
Negarit Gazeta, Proclamation No. 262/ 2002
38
Negarit Gazeta, Proclamation No. 262/ 2002
84
delivery and support the government’s socioeconomic development policies and the

development of the private sector.

3.2.3 Phase III: 2003-2021

In this phase more specifically in 2004 measures had been taken to alleviate the organizational

structural problems of the Ministry of Capacity Building. The Ministry organized a Committee

consisting of representatives from the Ministry of Capacity Building as Coordinator (Ato Tešomä

Kätäma), Ethiopian Management Institute (Ato Zäkariyas Assäfa), Ethiopian Science and

Technology Commission (Ato Abäbaw Mäkuriyaw), Federal Civil Service Commission (Ato

Nässibu Aleyu and W/ro Mäskäräm Sentayähu), Justice and Legal System Research Institute

(Ato Gulelat Ţilahun), and Civil Service College (Ato Šäwa Jämal). The committee reviewed the

appropriateness of the existing structure of the Ministery of Capacity Building and its executive

organs in the light of the new civil service reform. 39

Besides this, as soon as the Committee came to investigate, the question was whether Ethiopia

has a bureaucracy that is capable of doing the EPRDF Civil Service reforms or not. The

Committee identified that Ethiopian bureaucracy was characterized by being very hierarchical

with many non-value adding positions, nepotism and lack of transparency and accountability,

and corruption, lack of leadership capacity, input based, etc. It was difficult to undertake reform

with this bureaucracy. They recommended the establishment of new institutions, the “Ministry of

Civil Service” with the mandate of undertaking reforms in all civil service institutions.40

39
An order prepared by the Ministry of Capacity Building to ECSU O establish
Committee,2004, ECSU File No.,000127
40
Informants: Negsté Käbädä; Dawit Demisé
85
In 2005 the Ministry of Capacity Building was reestablished by a proclamation No.471 /2005 to

undertook studies, on the basis of the country’s long term development directions, to identify

capacity gaps that may be observed from time to time; to ensure the integrated formulation and

coordinated implementation of the necessary reform programs and projects; to establish a general

monitoring and evaluation system to ensure the effectiveness of various reform programs; to

cause the creation and optimum utilization of capacity building capabilities; to ensure the

establishment and proper implementation of modern and comprehensive system for human

resource management within the federal civil service; and to ensure the creation of conducive

conditions for expanded and strengthened utilization of information and communication

technology.41

As a result of this proclamation the executive organs such as the Federal Civil Service Agency;

the Ethiopian Civil Service College; and the Justice and Legal System Research Institute had

been accountable to the Ministry of Capacity Building. The powers and duties given to the

Federal Civil Service Commission were hereby given to the Federal Civil Service Agency. 42

In 2010, the Ministry of Civil Service was established at Ministerial level. It had the power to

ensure that a competent and effective civil service was established; to ensure that the recruitment

and selection of the federal civil servants was based on merit system; to adopt strategies for the

sustainable development and use of human resources in the civil service, to ensure that

competence and performance related pay and reward system was established for the civil service;

evaluate its effectiveness and make necessary adjustments; to ensure the establishment of a

system for monitoring the observance of federal civil servants' code of ethics, to follow up and

41
Negarit Gazeta, proclamation, No No.471/2005
42
Ibid
86
ensure the proper enforcement of federal civil servants' administration laws; to adopt strategies

for continuous improvement of service delivery in the public sector; to review organizational

structures of federal government offices for their appropriateness; provide necessary support in

conducting reform studies, etc.43

Consequently, the powers and duties given to the Federal Civil Service Agency were hereby

given to the Ministry of Civil Service. The Ethiopian Civil Service College remained to be

accountable to the Ministry of Civil Service, whereas the Justice and Legal System Research

Institute had been accountable to the Ministry of Justice.44

Later in 2015 this institution was reorganized into the Ministry of Public Service and Human

Resource Development. The Ministry of Public Service and Human Resource Development had

the powers and duties to adopt strategies for continuous human resource development and

deployment activities of executive organs, public enterprises and private sectors of the country,

adopt strategies for building competent, effective and development oriented public service ; etc.

More importantly, the executive organs such as Ethiopian Civil Service University, the Ethiopian

Management Institute and the Ethiopian Kaizen Institute had become accountable to the Ministry

of Public Service and Human Resource Development in 2015. 45

In 2007 a proclamation was issued so as to address the problems identified during the

implementation of proclamation No. 262/2002 and give the later sufficient clarity and to

strengthen the justice system so as to give civil servants better protection and it was essential to

43
Negarit Gazeta, Proclamation No. 691/2010
44
Ibid
45
Negarit Gazeta, Proclamation No. 916/ 2015
87
incorporate in a new law the changes occurring as a result of the implementation of the human

resource management subprogram of the civil service reform program.46

The proclamation tried to includes a new rule for the civil servant related to equal pay for equal

work, payment and increment of salary, attachment and deduction of salary, allowance, human

resource planning, staffing and performance evaluation, filling of vacancy, vacancy

announcement and examination for recruitment, eligibility to be civil servant, employment of

foreigners, medical certificate and police record, appointment (permanent and temporary) and

oath of fidelity, determination of starting salary, probation, selection and revocation of

promotion, transfer (internal and external) and reassignment, secondment, and redeployment.47

Performance evaluation, working hours (regular, overtime work hours) and leave (public

holidays and weekly rest days, annual leave, maternity leave, sick leave, leave for personal

matters, special leave with and without pay ), medical benefits, and employment injury and

safety measures, training, managing information profile, obligation and ethics, disciplinary

measures and grievance procedure, administrative tribunal, termination and extension of service,

and etc were the other issues raised in this proclamation in more detail. 48

This proclamation was repealed by proclamation number 1064/2017, which was issued in order

to promulgate a law that help in the making of basic change in the system of recruitment and

selection and the introduction of national system for the certification of professional and

occupational competency as well as the subjecting of civil servants to undergo through such

process and thereby build a civil servant that could guarantee diversity and the sustainability of

Negarit Gazeta, Proclamation No. 515/2007

46
47
Negarit Gazeta, Proclamation No. 515/2007
48
Negarit Gazeta, Proclamation No. 515/2007
88
the country’s growth and the enhancement and sustainability of the achievement of civil service

reform programme in human resource management.49

More importantly, this legislation of Ethiopia poorly protected the breastfeeding rights of most

new civil servant mothers through revised Federal Civil Servant Proclamation of Ethiopia. It

provided a maternity leave period and the establishment of a nursery in government institutions

where female civil servants could breastfeed and take care of their babies.50

Generally, in the third phase public sector reforms such Kaisen, Business Process Re-engineering

(BPR), the Balanced Scorecard (BSc), the establishment of the Change Army, and the Citizens’

Charter were implemented.

3.2.3.1 Business Process Re-engineering (BPR)

The first attempt of BPR in Ethiopia started in 2004, but was unsuccessful. Later, BPR has

started more clearly and broadly in 2006/07 budget year in some of the federal government

organizations51 (such as the Ethiopian Telecommunication Corporation, The Ethiopian Power

Corporation, the Ethiopian Investment Commission, the Ministry of Trade and Industry, and

Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development) and in some regions and universities.52

The reason why the Ethiopian government adopted BPR was that services delivered by the

public institutions were characterized by long time taking, costly, incompetence, not responsive

49
Negarit Gazeta, Proclamation number 1064/2017
50
Ibid
51
Ministery of the Ethiopian Civil Service, “Business Proccess Re-engineering,” (Addis Ababa,
2014), pp. 1-6; Tesfaye Debela, “Business process reengineering in Ethiopian public organizations: The
relationship between theory and practice,” Journal of Public Management and Development, 1 (2009), p.
40.
52
Belayneh Muche, “The Implementation and Challenges of BPR in Ethiopia, in Case of Bahir
Dar Revenue and Custom Authority,’ International Journal of Science and Research,10(2011),p. 626.
89
and not dynamic.53 Hence the government had chosen BPR aimed to radically transform the civil

service system into modern, effective and efficient system that allows government to attain the

vision and policy strategies, and in order to transform to totally new civil service system where

jobs are organized around results, people are focused on end result, the management and

measurement system based on result and the belief and values of people in the organization has

charged toward supporting development.54

However, Civil Service Institutions undertaking BPR have been going through lots of challenges.

In this regard Täwäldä Mäzgobo’s studies reveal that the Ethiopian civil service cultural context

could not go in line with the BBR. Firstly, BBR needed a radical approach to performance

improvement but the Ethiopian civil service culture is characterized by a risk adverse behavior.

Moreover, these problems are also further complicated by the rigid nature of public institutions.

Secondly, BPR initiatives demanded an exclusive top down approach for achieving radical

change. However due to the collective nature of Ethiopian culture any change or transformation

needs a nation wide support.55

Thirdly, BBR requires a process oriented institution. But in the Ethiopian Civil Service all

structures have been organized along functional organizations ever since. Fourthly, the focus of

BPR initiatives was the customer, contrary to the historical perception of civil servants, the civil

servants do not consider themselves as servants of the public rather they are to be served by the

society. Fifthly, the BPR initiative demanded for multi-disciplinary, skilled, highly-qualified,

flexible, self motivating employees who cherish responsibility and are willing to continuously
53
Berihu A., “Business Process Re-engineering in Ethiopia,” 2009, available in
https://www.grips.ac.jp/forum/af-growth/support_ethiopia/document/May09_berihu_bpr.pdf.
54
Tesfaye Debela, Journal of Public Management and Development,p.40.
55
Tewelde Mezgobo, “New Managerialism in Sub-Saharan Countries: A Look at the Practice of
BPR from Ethiopian Experience: An Essay on Management and Decision Making,” (n.p, 2012), pp. 13-
17.
90
learn and supplement their skill-base. Thus it was far from reality to expect such human resource

pools in the Ethiopian civil service organizations. Sixth, the civil service culture and practice of

Ethiopia was characterized by lack of mechanisms to link reward and performance, etc. 56

3.2.3.2 Kaizen

In the summer of 2008, the late Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Mäläs Zénawé, discussed

development issues with scholars from Japan which provided him with an opportunity to learn

about Kaizen. After hearing about the productivity and quality improvement impacts

of Kaizen he extended his request to JICA for further assistance.57 Subsequently, Ethiopia has set

up the Ethiopian Kaizen Institute (EKI) in November 2011 with the help of JICA, which has

designed a three phases Kaizen transfer and development roadmap, prepared models, and crafted

strategies in Ethiopia from Japan for 15 years—from 2011 to 2025.58

In mid-2014, the government formed the National Kaizen Council chaired by the then Prime

Minister Haylä Mariyam Däsaläň. The Council was the highest decision-making body for the

national Kaizen movement and meets quarterly to deliberate on plans and endorse new directions.

During the first extraordinary meeting that the Council had in September 2014, the Council set

the first month September in the Ethiopian calendar as Kaizen month in order to promote the

concept as a national movement. The government also started creating regional Kaizen institutes

56
Ibid
57
Fasika Bete Giyorgis, and Alemayehu Tesfaye, “Kaisen Implementation in Industries of
Southern Ethiopia: Challenge and Feasibility,” Congent engineering, 7(2020),p.5.
58
Kimaiki Jin, “Kaizen Promotion in Ethiopia: A Role of the Government and Change of Mindset
of People,” in Akio Hosono, John Page, and Go Shimada, eds., Workers, Managers, Productivity, (2020),
pp. 89-115.
91
in the major regional states to further strengthen the dissemination of Kaizen across the

country.59

Based on these achievements, the government of Ethiopia incorporated Kaizen mainstreaming

into its five-year national development plan, the Growth and Transformation Plan II, in order to

scale up Kaizen promotion across the country. More importantly, in 2015 the government

changed the supervising ministry of EKI from the Ministry of Industry to the Ministry of Public

Service and Human Resource Development, which represents its policy expansion to

applying Kaizen, not only to the development of industry but also to the civil service sector and

broader human resources development.60

3.2.3.3 Balanced Scorecard (BSc)

The federal government introduced BSC in 2010 building on earlier efforts to establish strategic

planning norms and an employee result-oriented performance appraisal system. The BSc has

been used as a planning, change management, and communication tool, and was also considered

as an opportunity to embed strategic management principles into the plan. The BSc incorporates

the higher-level goals identified by the country’s Growth and Transformation Plan and tries to

operational these goals. The rationale to implement BSc in Ethiopian Federal Civil Service

Organizations was to have a better performance evaluation system in civil service organizations,

to put in practice the Federal Civil Servants‟ Proclamation no. 515/99 (proclamation for

administration of Ethiopian Federal Civil Service employees), and to focus on strategies and link

59
Ibid
60
Ibid
92
the day to day activities to strategies with a well-balanced and multi perspective performance

evaluation system.61

As a result of this in 2012, the civil service’s “Individual Employee Performance Management

and Measurement” directive was incorporated into the BSC. The management of individual

performance was being addressed through a system of individual performance agreements that

are linked to team and organizational targets derived from the four dimensions (finance, learning

and growth, client, and process) of the BSC. 62

These resulted in cascading difficulty as well as later on measuring performances of each sector

i.e. the shared 17 objectives are not relevant to all sectors. The other well noted problem was

related to technology-automation. Despite the establishment of separate processes to lead BSC

and other reforms, there have been lack of details on functions and responsibilities and often

staffed by experts with little or no experience of major reform tools.63

3.2.3.4 Change Army

Change army has been peculiar to the civil service system following its pilot in the rural areas

since 2012. But the legal foundation of the change army is clearly defined in the change army

formation manual prepared by the Ministry of Civil Service in 2014. The Change Army in

Ethiopian civil service was a system in which public servants were made to form a group of five

individuals to conduct daily or weekly peer reviews and evaluate their work performance. This

61
Ministry of Civil Service, ‘Yäfédäral Sivil Särvic Säratäňoč Yäsera Afäșașem Mämäzäňa
Mämärya,” (Addis Ababa, 2012), p. 1.
62
Ibid
63
Ministry of Civil Service, “Steratéen Eskä Geläsäb Yämawuräjana Mastägbäriya Manual,”
(Addis Ababa, 2016), pp. 1-49; Federal Reforms Monitering and Support Directorate of Ministery of the
Ethiopian Civil Service, “ Result Oriented: Performance Management System (It is about Performing,
Not Just Appraising), (Addis Ababa,2014), pp.1-2.
93
was expected to create a mechanism to coach junior staff and to bring change in attitudes by

putting peer pressure on public servants.64

The management of the institution and the entire staff in the government offices from top to

bottom were organized as one wing of the army. And depending on the actual situation of the

institution, it was organized in four levels or five levels if there was no team under the work

process. Moreover, this reform brought together the party, the civil servants, and public wings.

The Party Wing was responsible for providing orientation programs to enable civil servants to

fully grasp and effectively execute government policies and strategies. The State Wing (civil

service) consists of individual civil servants, model civil servants, lower level leadership,

middle-level leadership, and top leadership while the Public Wing consists of clients including

associations for youth, women, and professionals; cooperatives; private sector representatives;

and other groups close to government.65

3.2.3.5 Citizens Charter

In February 2012, the Ministry of Civil Service launched the Citizens’ Charter with the aim of

enabling civil servants to serve the community in an improved manner through ensuring

participation and transparency as well as government’s accountability to the public. The

citizen’s charter, as one of the quality assurance mechanisms in the public sector, has been

introduced in Ethiopia with the view of improving the quality of governmental service delivery,

increasing the level of citizen’s satisfaction and enhancing the efficiency of bureaucratic

apparatus of the public sector. The charters are written documents that constitute a list of services,

64
Ministry of Civil Service, “Yäsivil Särvic Yäläwuţ Särawit Genbata Manual : Räqiq Sänäd,”
( Addis ababa, 2014), pp. 1-47.
65
Ibid
94
standards, rights and duties of service seekers, grievance handling and redress mechanisms, and

the address of the service provider agency, among others.66

Generally according to World Bank synthesis report the civil service has expanded rapidly, with

an annual average growth rate of over 7 percent in the number of employees during the five-year

period between 2008/09 and 2013/14. This was motivated by the government’s decentralization,

and its fast-tracked approach to enhancing service delivery as part of its pursuit of the

millennium development goals. A swift expansion of post-secondary education that aimed to

increase the number of qualified entrants to the civil service also underpinned its growth.67

Graph 6 Number of additional civil servant per year 1992/93-2013/14

66
Ibid.
67
World Bank, Synthesis Report: Moving Further on Civil Service Reforms in Ethiopia: Findings
and Implications from a Civil Service Survey and Qualitative Analysis (2015), p. 25

95
Source: World Bank Synthesis Report: Moving Further on Civil Service Reforms in Ethiopia, p. 25

3.3 Civil Service from 2017 - 2021

The Proclamation cited as the “Definition of Powers and Duties of the Executive Organs of the

Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, Proclamation No. 1097/2018” was proclaimed in 2018

for the success, sustainability and institutionalization of the reform underway in Ethiopia. The

Ministry of Public Service and Human Resources responsibility was degraded from ministerial

level to Commission. As a result of this, the Ethiopian Civil Commission has become

accountable to the Prime Minister, whereas the executive organs such as the Civil Service

University, the Mäläs Zénawé Leadership Academy, the Ethiopian Kaizen Institute, the

Ethiopian Management Institute, and the Public Servants Social Security Agency have become

responsible for Ethiopian Civil Service Commission. This proclamation transferred the rights and

obligations of the Ministry of Public Service and Human Resources on one hand and transferred

the rights and obligations of Government Communications Affairs to the Civil Service

Commission on the other.68

During the reign of EPRDF (1991-2018) different civil service reform programme have been

implemented. All were undertaken with a top-down approach, which was a factor for the

perceived lack of commitment, particularly at the bottom of the hierarchy. As a result of this

the government oversaw other civil service restructuring which result the redeployment of

civil servants in 2018. The Commission directed public offices to establish six-member

committees that submit proposals for an organizational structure to the Commission before

commencing with the redeployment of staff. A few of civil service institutions were returned for

alteration because they did not meet the standards. Candidates for the positions of director,

68
Negarit Gazeta, Proclamation No. 1097/2018
96
deputy-director and team leader sat for exams in which the results accounted for 15 percent of

the evaluation points, while academic credentials and work experience made up half.69 The

assessment has been undertaken based on manuals and criteria developed by the Ethiopian Civil

Service University.70

Prior 2019 the existing payment system was known as position classification rating, which had

been in place for the last 40 years. Moreover, in the past 20 years, the Ethiopian government had

readjusted the civil servants’ salary, aiming to relieve employees from the agony of living under

a volatile and inflationary economy. For instance, there were increments in 2000/01, 2006/07,

2010/11 and August 2014. But, there were 72 different salary scales being implemented

throughout 180 government institutions in Ethiopia prior to 2019.

On 2nd October, 2019, the Council of Ministers approved the much anticipated “Federal Civil

Servants Position Rating, Grading and Salary Scale Regulation”, which spans over 14 pages and

four main chapters. This was established by repealing the Public Service Position classification

and Salary Scale Regulation No. 419/ 1972.71 This proclamation allowed a point-rating payment

system. Under the point-rating system, each job in the civil service system has been evaluated

and ranked under 21 job levels depending on complexity of job, acting independently,

accountability, innovation, responsibility, effort and condition of work, knowledge and skill.

Consequently, the following salary scales were determined.

69
Fortune, Jun 11 , 2022
70
Fana F.M Radio, “Public Servants Will Undergo Competency Assessment As Of Next Month,”
https://www.fanabc.com/english/public-servants-will-undergo-competency-assessment-as-of-next-
month/ , Mar 27, 2021
71
Nägarit Gazéta, Regulation No. 455/2019
97
Table 7 New civil service salary scales in 2019

98
Source: Negarit Gazeta, Regulation No. 455/2019

To sum up, the role of civil service in socioeconomic and political development of a country was

unquestionable. In Ethiopia, however, the civil service was not in line with the society changes.

Thus the civil service was blamed as a major cause for social and political upheavals and

economic crises because of institutional and capacity weakness. As a result, it was common to

see reforming the civil service in the EPRDF regime.72

The transitional government at the time argued that the cause of the general imbalance in the

Ethiopian Civil Service system was the inappropriately marginal position of nation and

nationalities in particular. To this end the member of EPRDF, declarative speaking on behalf of

the group of nation and nationalities, acted at the forefront in promoting more regional civil

service centers and offices to be installed so as to enable quicker communication. Thus the

marginalized civil servants gained a foothold on the Ethiopian civil service which has the

greatest strategic importance. More specifically, the decentralization process which was began in

1991 helps to create avenue for communication, accountability, transparency, independence of

doing activities, exercising power and responsibilities. This in turn fastens service delivery in the

regional government. But in spite of the extensive and impressive reforms undertook by the

government in the civil service training sector (it was pushing for equity among nation and

nationality, and sexual composition), quality training which required professionalization remains

less and gives little attention to ethical issues practically.73

Moreover, in order to carry out activities that can change the civil service system in a continuous

manner, the Ethiopian civil service institutions have been begun to establish an electronic

Informants: Däsaläňä Dingäta; Gétnät Tägäň

74

Informants: Täsfayä Gumsa; Dawit Demisé

73

99
government (E-Government) system that will ensure the continuity of the change management

system.74

While the prospects described have been notable, Ethiopian Civil Service Institution had been

handicapped by some retrospects or had faced certain limitations such as DE-professionalization

and over politicization. Professionalism that promotes the values of probity, neutrality, and

fairness, loyalty, transparency, diligence, punctuality, effectiveness, impartiality and etc had

been found at its infant stage in Ethiopia. This implied that the Federal Civil Service

Commission had not started a practical movement to change the civil service system of Ethiopia

in general by creating a civil servant who is inspired by a new spirit and dressed as a servant75

But it was a paradox that the government expected the civil servants to be efficient while paying

them a salary that barely covers their monthly expenses. Such attitude was then reflected in the

low level of satisfaction of citizens in services provided by public offices. In the windows of

civil service offices, people experienced unnecessary harassment, and impolite behavior of civil

servants who kept customers waiting for hours. Qualified employees left their jobs in need of

better position and pay which eroded the country’s civil service capacity.76

The recruitment of personnel for civil service was continued based on political and ethnic

considerations rather than on merits and competence. This policy of selective recruitment based

on political and ethnic basis could only be their ascribed qualifications of ethnic background or

political loyalty, and no competence for civil service performance.

74
Ibid
75
Ibid
76
Informants: Negsté Käbädä; Dawit Demisé
100
Similarly literature show that under enforced retrenchments as part of the IMF Structural

Adjustment Program more than 15,000 workers lost their jobs by EPRDF government. Some

civil servants claimed that the dismissals were made on the basis of either political favoritism or

ethnic identities.77 The civil service review that took place in the early days of the EPRDF not

only removed the national civil service elite that had remained from the past regime, but either

abandoned or couldn’t be made functional most of the civil systems. As a result of this

regionalization all regions experienced a huge staffing problem.78

However, my informants dis-agree in this statement. The dismissal and voluntary departure of

senior civil service personnel was not aimed to diminish the institutional memory of the civil

service, and the retrenchment was done on the way in which merit-based policies espoused by

the government. The question was raised since the policy was manipulated by some leaders.

More specifically, regional leaders have used political rather than technocratic criteria to make

appointments into top positions in the civil service.79 Consequently, the study recommends

creating a greater sense that only the best and brightest could join key positions in the civil

service, and hence contribute to greater prestige. Specialized competitive exams could be used

for recruitment into civil service sectors.

But my informants believe that, between 1991- 2018, the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary

Democratic Front (EPRDF) had built a strong system for controlling the Ethiopian civil service.

77
Mary Voge, “Pursuit of Pr Pursuit of Professionalism in in Bureaucracy: Perceptions About
Bureaucratic Values of Civil Service Employees in the Ethnic Federalism of Ethiopia,”( PhD
Dissertation, , Old Dominion University,2005),p. 54.
78
Voge, “Pursuit of Professionalism in Bureaucracy: Perceptions About Bureaucratic Values of
Civil Service Employees in the Ethnic Federalism of Ethiopia,” p. 54; World Bank, Synthesis Report:
Moving Further on Civil Service Reforms in Ethiopia, Findings and Implications from a Civil Service
Survey and Qualitative Analysis,
https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/981311547566282423/pdf/133754-WP-World-Bank-
Moving-Further-On-Civil-Service-Reforms.pdf.
79
Informants: Däsaläň Dengäta , Gétnät Tägäň
101
This party managed to keep control over the civil service through the functioning of civil

servants’ evaluations called Gimgema. Such evaluations comprised the filling of evaluation

forms and sessions of criticisms and self-criticisms during which bureaus’ employees had to

publicly acknowledge their mistakes and accuse colleagues. Bureau heads who were also party

officials then decided on the employee’s future.80

Benefits and opportunities were significantly better for political appointees. The benefit package

for Ministers and State Ministers includes government provided housing, as well as land to

construct houses on. In addition, it was common for ministers and state ministers to be members

of the board for various public enterprises, and significant allowances were paid for this function.

These all led civil servants to low morale and poor performance.81

Moreover, my informants have considered the solution to balance the relation between civil

servants and a politician first has to be found within the civil service / civil servants itself. The

basic principle for civil servants is not to undertake any activity that could call into question their

political impartiality or that could give rise to criticism that public resources are being used for

party political purposes. Secondly, to create a free and responsible civil service, civil servants

should create a common professional platform (i.e. Professional association). It is important to sit

together. If they are scattered, they can’t fight for the freedom of the civil service.82

The federal civil service Commission jointly with Ethiopian News Agency organized a

discussion under the theme, “the relationship between politics and public service” in 2020. The

participants (Täfäri Häylä Mikael (Ph.D.), Šärif Husén (Ph.D.), Bäzabih Gäbräyäs (the then

80
Mehdi Labzae, “Gimgema: civil servants’ evaluation, power and ideology in EPRDF
Ethiopia,” Journal of Eastern African Studies, 15:4(2021), pp. 546-567.
81
Informants: Däsaläň Dengäta , Gétnät Tägäň
82
Ibid
102
Commissioner of Ethiopian Civil Service), and Tämäsgän Burqa (Ph.D.)) argued that Ministers

were accountable to the Council of Ministers; civil servants were accountable to the Ministers.

That was the system Ethiopia experienced in the last two decades.83

But there was no national civil service law that establishes the boundary between Ministers and

civil servants. This implied that irrespective of its long history of civil service administrative

Ethiopia has no comprehensive national civil service law to date. But all alternative solutions

will be implementing by establishing a national civil service administration law that demarcate

politics and civil service in Ethiopia. The relationship between politicians and bureaucrats should

be defined in terms of a neutral, public service which is willing to serve the political executive

regardless of party. The political executive in turn respects the integrity of the civil service by

maintaining its apolitical and professional character, and by avoiding actions which may

fundamentally alter this relationship.84

Ethiopian News Agency , “the relationship between politics and public service”, available in
83

WWW.ECSC.GOV.ET.
84
Ibid
103
 CONCLUSION

This thesis has sought to understand the change and continuity in the Ethiopian civil service

administrative history from 1961- 2021. The over-arching goal of the thesis has been to

reconstruct the institutional change in the Ethiopian civil service and explain the dynamics of this

change based on, archives, oral sources and written historical accounts.

Several recent studies have indicated that civil service has developed in an organic fashion at

global level. Such an approach has enabled me to view the Ethiopian civil service change as it

was not created following a period of revolutionary upheaval rather evolved from fairly obscure

origins, and was subject to decades of stagnation and decay, as well as periodic spasms of

innovation and reform.

The practice of civil service has been in existence since the times of ancient civilization Ethiopia.

The study argues that since the early days of civilization, individuals have cooperated to

accomplish numerous duties intended at survival and improvement of living conditions. With the

passage of time and the emergence of governmental institutions, these activities have to be

conducted within the framework of political and administrative institutions such as civil service

institutions established by various states. The Ethiopian state and society also had

institutionalized mechanisms for control and for popular participation in public administration,

even though such participation was limited to certain social groups (nobility class). Clerics and

nobles of various descriptions provided kings with a range of services: record-keeping, military

planning, treasury political advice, etc. Thus even though these social classes were king’s

servants the art of public administration has been practiced for centuries.

104
This was because the 1908 Ethiopian public administration was started by calling ministerial

services, the governmental services that were traditionally performed by feudal lords, nobles and

princes.

For instance, there were some traditional administrative personnel in the government before

1908. There were different heads of government (such as Yäţor Abägaz who was commander-in-

chief of the army, Afä Negus who was a judge on all appeals in the name of the emperor save the

death sentence, Șähäfä T’ezaz who was keeper of the great seal of the Emperor and writer of all

imperial orders, Ligaba who was communicator of all imperial orders) under the emperor.

During the medieval period there was a title called Aqabi Säa’t whose function later had evolved

into that of Liqä Mäkuas. Their transfer to the new post didn’t affect their status, functions and

mode of operations. Hence, this was simply giving new title (Minister) to old officials.

For example, the system of appeals prior to this time was such that people from all corners of the

country came to Addis Ababa to make an appeal to one man Afä Negus. The number of appeals

increased, people were made to stay for up to six months without their cases being resolved or

decisions made. Thus Menilek tried to change the then existing system of appeal, through

making a division of the country into six regions for the purpose of this legal practice. Two

judges and three secretaries were appointed for each region. So in this way the modern institution

of the central government has evolved directly from the imperial entourage and has some organic

linkage to society or indigenous roots.

But, the personnel function was handled from a different direction by each ministry before 1960s.

Therefore, the work was decentralized and chaotic. By 1961 one basic change had been made;

one of the key problems in Ethiopian civil service institutions (i.e. the establishment of a

105
government organ responsible for administering personnel) had been solved. Hence it was during

1961 that Emperor Haile Selassie had brought significant structural and functional change in the

Ethiopian civil service institutions as the result of the issuance of the Public Services Order

No.23/1961. This order created the Imperial Central Personnel Agency as a principal entity of

government which formulated, regulated and controlled civil service administration in Ethiopia.

In 1995, the Ethiopian government bequeathed a Federal government and a regionally

decentralized civil service. Hence, Ethiopia had a civil service system at the central, state, and

local government levels. Similarly, in 1995 the government established the Federal Civil

Service Commission as an autonomous public institution of the Federal Government, and

accountable to the Council of Ministers through replacing Public Servants' Administration

Commission.

Among Commissioners, Directors and Ministers, “Commissioner Mammo Tadässä, Käbädä

Gäbrä Mariyam, Minister Täfära Waluwa, and Junädin Sado, were who made a great significant

contribution for the structural changes in the Ethiopian Civil Service Institutions. Mammo

Tadässä and Käbädä Gäbrä Mariyam wished to create a professional civil service staffed with

competent officials chosen on merit. They had got a resistance from those who wished to retain

the traditional patronage system whereby elected politicians selected government officials based

on the criteria of loyalty. But the two Commissioners called for the establishment of a merit-

based civil service as the answer to the rampant nepotism, inefficiency, and incompetency that

plagued the Ethiopian governance.

More over both Commissioners strove to improve the civil service through the introduction of

competitive examinations for entrance into the civil service, to formulate regulation and

106
coordinate the activities in the sphere of personnel administration. For instance, a study to

regulate public service position classification and salary scale was begun by Commissioner

Mammo Tadässä. Then a regulation cited as “Public Service Position Classification And Salary

Scale, Regulations No. 2 of 1972”, which was replaced in 2019, was issued when Commissioner

Käbädä Gäbrä Mariyam led this institution..

Besides, when Täfära Waluwa was a Minister, building the capacity of civil service

organizations has got a notable recognition from policymakers, reformers and international

development agencies, while Minister Junedin Sado had been well known in reforming

government Bureaucracies or framing and re-framing tools that was used for service delivery.

However, the years before between 1961 and 2021 were characterized by unwarranted political

interference affecting standard administrative procedures, and an emphasis on political loyalty

and relationships with the ruling class as the major criterion for appointments and promotions.

For instance the civil servants’ prime objective during the imperial regime was to promote the

personal interest of the king. Similarly the Dergue regime systematically attempted to enhance

its ability to control the civil service. The Dergue attempted to recruit former high school and

college students who were then serving in the Zemecha. More over after the establishment the

Yekatit '66 Ideological School many civil servants could be taught Marxist-Leninist doctrine

inside Ethiopia. Many civil servants traveled to the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and Cuba for

ideological training. Some returned and became party cadres and served in various parts of the

country to encourage and monitor the political education.

The inauguration of the Workers Party of Ethiopia resulted in a blurring of the lines between

party and state. This party operative tended to interject themselves freely into the areas of civil

107
service. For example, party cadres had important political and intelligence gathering roles in the

workplace. The Working People's Control Committees, created in 1981 so as to supervise, and

follow-up the government policies, regulations, and directives, and had come to serve as a

somewhat threatening "watchdog" over productive activities of Civil Service.

The recruitment of personnel for civil service was continued based on political and ethnic

considerations rather than on merits and competence between 1991 and 2021. This policy of

selective recruitment based on political and ethnic basis could only be their ascribed

qualifications of ethnic background or political loyalty, and no competence for civil service

performance.

My informants believe that, between 1991- 2018, the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary

Democratic Front (EPRDF) had built a strong system for controlling the Ethiopian civil service.

This party managed to keep control over the civil service through the functioning of civil

servants’ evaluations called Gimgema. Such evaluations comprised the filling of evaluation

forms and sessions of criticisms and self-criticisms during which bureaus’ employees had to

publicly acknowledge their mistakes and accuse colleagues. Bureau heads who were also party

officials then decided on the employee’s future.

Benefits and opportunities were significantly better for political appointees. The benefit package

for Ministers and State Ministers includes government provided housing, as well as land to

construct houses on. In addition, it was common for ministers and state ministers to be members

of the board for various public enterprises, and significant allowances were paid for this function.

These all led civil servants to low morale and poor performance.This was because the

government was unable to mobilize qualified people for the civil service. The capacity required

108
for the job were not well developed and the institution was not in a position to work not only

freely, but also efficiently. These are all the valid lessons to be learned currently from that period

experience.

To sum up, efforts to make free the civil service from political influence have been unsuccessful

in Ethiopia. These are all the valid lessons to be learned currently from the experiences of the

three regimes. In deed, there is no civil service apart from politics and vise versa. Or politician

and civil servant are an area of discussion and they are inseparable. There is no a universal

accepted model, which firmly demarcates the two in terms of political and civil service, careers,

and maintains firm boundaries around the civil service. The Government whatever its political

complexion was assisted by the Civil Service. So, what is the solution? But the civil service

should remain totally impartial and neutral and not linked to any party; they work for the State

and carry out the policies of whatever government that is elected. It should have a clear line of

accountability which runs from the electorate through Ministers to the civil service.

Moreover, my informants have considered the solution to balance the relation between civil

servants and a politician first has to be found within the civil service / civil servants itself. The

basic principle for civil servants is not to undertake any activity that could call into question their

political impartiality or that could give rise to criticism that public resources are being used for

party political purposes. Secondly, to create a free and responsible civil service, civil servants

should create a common professional platform (i.e. Professional association). It is important to sit

together. If they are scattered, they can’t fight for the freedom of the civil service.

Institutional history has been a dynamic field of study in Ethiopian studies. But yet studies on

institutional history of Ethiopian civil service, is at its nascent stage in Ethiopia. Accordingly,

109
this study has empirical contributions through bringing a fresh perspective to understand the

forgotten but the building block and multidimensional history of Ethiopian civil service

personnel and institutionalized administrative structure. But I recommended other researchers to

apply theory or models regarding to this theme to further validate the grand findings of this thesis.

110
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Ethiopian Civil Service Commission. “Former officials who led the Ethiopian Civil Service:
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Fana F.M Radio, “Public Servants Will Undergo Competency Assessment As Of Next Month,”
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Sälamu Bäkälä and Linden. “Introducing the Ethiopian Law Archives: Some Documents on the
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Implications from a Civil Service Survey and Qualitative Analysis,
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Bank-Moving-Further-On-Civil-Service-Reforms.pdf

III. News Papers and Magazines

Negarit Gazeta:

Proclamation No. 1263/2021; Regulation No. 455/2019; Proclamation No.1097/2018;

Proclamation No.1064/2017; Proclamation No. 916 /2015; Proclamation No. 714/2011;
Proclamation No. 691/2010; Proclamation No. 515/2007; Negarit Gazeta, proclamation,
No No.471/2005; Proclamation No. 262/ 2002; Proclamation No. 256/2001;
Proclamation no. 235/2001; Proclamation No. 8/1995; Proclamation No. 4 of 1995;
Proclamation No. 43 of 1993; Proclamation No. 41/1993; Charter No.1 of 1991;
Proclamation No. 200 of 1980; General Notice No 10 of 1976; General Notice No. 458 of
1974; Regulations No. 2 of 1972; Legal Notice No. 419 of 1972; General Notice No. 419
of 1971; General Notice No.390.of 1969; Legal Notice No.286 of 1964; Legal Notice No.
285 of 1964; Proclamation No.209/1963; General Notice No. 317 0f 1963; Legal Notice
No. 277 of 1963; Legal Notice No. 278 0f 1963; Legal Notice No. 270 of 1963; General
Notice No. 301 of 1962; Legal Notice No. 269 of 1962; Order No. 26 of 1962; Order
No.23/1961; Decree No .46/1960; Proclamation No. 165 of 1960; Order No. 20 of 1958;
General Notice No. 163 0f 1958; Order No. 1 of 1943; General Notice No. 2 of 1942.

Fortune:
Oct 3 , 2020; Jun 11 , 2022

120
 LIST OF INFORMANT
No. Name Age Place and Date of Remarks

Interview

1 Dawit Demisé 58 02/17/2023 He was a liberarian at Ethiopian Civil

(Ato) Addis Ababa Service Commission

2 Däsaläň 63 02/ 28/2023 He was a higher planning expert at

Dengäta (Ato) Addis Ababa Ethiopian Civil Service Commission

3 Gétnät Tägäň 57 04/25/2023 He was a higher planning expert at

(Ato) Addis Ababa Ethiopian Civil Service Commission

4 Negsté Käbädä 64 05/18/2023 She was a director of Communication in

(W/ro) Addis Ababa Ethiopian Civil Service Commision.

5 Täsfayä Gumsa 43 03/30/2023 He was a director of human resource

(Ato) Addis Ababa record and stastics.

121
122
 APPENDICES
APPENDEX A- 1. The First Ethiopian Cabinet

Source: www.ECSC.Com.
APPENDEX B- 2. Leaders who ruled Ethiopian Civil Service as Commissioner, Director,
and Minister

Source: www.ECSC.Com.
APPENDEX C-1 Circular letter about the role of Central Personnel Agency in 1974
APPENDEX D-1-Circular letter about Imperial Ethiopian Institute of Public Administration aid
from UNDP in 1972
APPENDEX E-1 –Short history of Imperial Ethiopian Institute of Public Administration written
by Ayaléw Zäläqä
APPENDEX E-2
APPENDEX E-3
APPENDEX E-4
APPENDEX F- 1- Circular Letter about establishment of technical committee for structural
study of Ministry of Capacity Building in 2004.
APPENDEX F- 2
APPEDIX- G-1 – Circular letter about establishment and accountability of ECSC
APPEDIX- I-1 –A personal letter written by Mäkuriya Wärqu for Haile Selassie I about the
need for Establishment of the Civil Service Commission
APPEDIX- I-2
APPEDIX- I-3
APPEDIX-J-1– A Per- Diem study
APPEDIX-J-2
APPEDIX-K-1- A Letter written by Dergue about civil servants needed to be prisoned
APPEDIX-K-2
APPEDIX-L-1- A Proclamation about the formation of Ethiopian Civil Service Commission
APPEDIX-L-2-
APPEDIX-L-3
APPEDIX-M-1- A Meeting Report About establishing Civil Servants position, grading and
salary scale regulation
APPEDIX-M-2
APPENDIX N-1- A circular letter written by Mammo Tadässä to Ministy of Finance about
studing civil servants position and salary scale
APPENDIX O-1- A circular letter written by Mammo Tadässä to Ministry of Interior about
studying civil servants position and salary scale
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