Ethiopia’s Renaissance, Dams, and State-Led Development in the Twenty-First Century

This final chapter summarizes the book’s key arguments, highlighting, in particular, how the centralization of political power under the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front was essential to overcome the multi-scalar political barriers that had constrained dam building under past regimes and undermined the planning process by bypassing technical input into decision making. In doing so, the chapter emphasizes the utility of the multi-scalar approach to the analysis of the politics of dam building. Moreover, the chapter highlights the book’s contributions to the three literatures noted in Chapter 1. Ethiopia has been held up as a leading example of state-led development, one of the main protagonists in the twenty-first-century wave of dam building, and as a potential leader in the transition to renewable energy. The Ethiopian experience is certainly of great significance to each of these debates. However, analysis of Ethiopia’s ‘developmental state’ reveals notable failings alongside high-profile achievements.