This chart, sent to us by well placed source, shows ethnic composition of employees of Ethiopia’s federal government. The data shows huge disparity when compared to ethnic composition of the country, even if we use the disputed 2007 census. Amharas make up 51% percent of the employees, which is twice the size of their proportion of the country’s population. Oromos make up 12.7% which is one-fourth of their population size. Somalis, the third largest ethnic group in the country, make up about 6.2% of the total population but they only constitute just 0.07% of the federal government’s workforce.
There is a group categorized as ‘unidentified/ undisclosed’ constituting 23.7% of the federal workforce. While its not clear what criteria is being used to categorize them as such, we can assume these are people who refuse to identify their ethnic background. The likely candidate for this are Amharas who oppose ‘ethnic’ politics and Tigreans whose identity are hidden by the ruling party in order to suppress the ratio of Tigreans in federal government. Therefore, the proportion of Amharas and Tigreans is likely to be higher.
What explains such disproportionate share of Amharas in federal workforce? History! Its not secret that historically administrative functions were the domain of Amharas. Their proportion has decreased in regional states due to federalism and change in working language that opened the room for native civil servants. But the federal system still remains the same. Under the supposedly diversified federal cabinet lies an Amhara dominated bureaucracy in control of and running the machine.
Finally, while not equitable, women’s representation is quite reasonable. They make up 50.6% of the whole population and 39.2% of the federal workforce.
Ridiculous !!! Ok, who are those labeled as "undisclosed" and "Others" ethnicity??
ReplyDeleteShould be crude but,still it is hilarious.