A Japanese Perspective oN Ethiopia’s Transformation

Ethiopia has learned much from the experience and advice from East Asia. The learning was carried out with strong country ownership and necessary adjustments, not by blindly emulating foreign practices. This chapter explains Ethiopia’s policy learning with Japan which began in 2008 where kaizen, export promotion, and other policy skills were absorbed through regular discussions, mutual visits, third-country research, and so on. Topics evolved as learning deepened and circumstances changed. Many proposals were followed up by concrete Japanese industrial cooperation for actual realization. Ethiopia’s industrialization is taking place in Africa where conditions are quite different from those in the East Asia of the late twentieth century. The major difference is the absence of a leading nation and structured layers of follower nations (the Flying Geese pattern), and weak economic linkages among African economies. The implications of this for Ethiopia’s development strategy are also considered.