Ethiopia - Administration, Finance, & Educational Research

Originally, the Ethiopian government alone could not finance universal education, so missionaries of all denominations were allowed to build schools. This further broadened the base of education, but Ethiopians viewed non-Coptic religious education as unpatriotic. To them, learning from Catholics was a betrayal of the nation. Any education outside of Orthodox Coptic Church schools was tantamount to being anti-Ethiopian. They felt that learning in a Catholic school amounted to accepting Catholicism and represented a betrayal of national honor and the native religion. Such persons were willing instruments in the hands of alien powers. The Ethiopian Orthodox Coptic Church encouraged such attitudes toward both secular and non-Coptic schools, which hampered the spread of education nationally. Despite this, French Catholics opened the Ecole Francaise, which by 1921 had graduated 1,400 students. Education was free. The old Coptic Church monopoly on education was giving way to a diverse array of other schools, which complimented traditional religious education, which continues to flourish. To meet the rising cost of education a special education tax of 6 percent was levied on all imports and exports.

After his official coronation as emperor in 1930, Haile Selassie put all education under the control of the Ministry of Education and Fine Arts. The education tax generated revenue, and the new emperor added 2 percent of the treasury's national revenue to support education.

Finance for postwar secular education came from two sources. Approximately 3 percent of export taxes financed education. This was supplemented by dedicating 30 percent of the land tax to education. After 1948, elementary schools in rural areas were financed by a special rural land tax. Only church land was exempt. All other education was financed by the national treasury, which devoted 20 percent of its total income to education. This set a pattern followed later by Kenya's Jomo Kenyatta, who dedicated 30 percent of Kenya's budget to education.

Afro-Marxists have mobilized ordinary citizens in rural and urban areas to form associations. These committees furnish labor and building materials, and the government furnishes blueprints for school buildings. These citizen brigades are expected to build 16,000 learning centers throughout Ethiopia. Materials and tools are donated by the government if a community can not afford them. During the same period, the government committed itself to building 1,800 new primary schools. The new regime is promoting the idea of self-help and self-taxation to meet its educational targets.