Tigray reconstruction planning

By Hluf Hagos Shiqar

Nowadays, in most meetings or events concerning how Tigray could emerge from the devastation of the war, Tigrayans are starting to have candid discussions about thorny issues in a way they did not before. Organisers and participants freely express their feelings about various issues pertaining to Tigray. 

But one senses that the feelings and ideas lack clarity, specifically in the area of planning. Nor does it seem that people have carefully thought their ideas through, whether it is how realistic they are or how they would be implemented. It is very common to hear suggestions about reconstruction planning based on what is desirable for the future of Tigray, not based on what is undesirable now. But, even though it is understandable that reconstruction plans could cover some relief measures, rehabilitation and recovery efforts and the rebuilding back better affairs, in times of crisis, which we are in, evidence suggests that long- and medium-term planning based on what is desirable in the future is not that beneficial; but establishing clear priorities based on what is undesirable in the present and immediate remedy to the priorities using the available resource at hand as well as a closer look at the number of people directly impacted from any policy measures, not the extent or level of individual benefits.

Specifically, researches on post-conflict prioritisation and sequencing of policies have shown that, though post-conflict reconstruction efforts are non-linear and context specific, early reconstruction efforts need to focus on generating rapid and visible results on security issues, initiating effective, accountable, and inclusive governance institutions, institutionalising of  democracy, and economic stabilisation measures aimed to revive the market, attract investment, generate employment opportunity, and create an environment for economic recovery and stability. And, in general, Fukuyama argued that post-conflict rebuilding tasks are divided into three distinct phases: (1) initial stabilisation of a war-torn society; (2) the creation of local institutions of governance; and (3) the strengthening of those institutions to the point where rapid economic growth and sustained social development can take place. Similarly, in “Practical Guide to Multilateral Needs Assessments in Post-Conflict Situations ”, commissioned by the United Nations Development Programme, World Bank, and United Nations Development Group, Kievelitz et al divide the post-conflict period into three phases, including the suggested length of each phase: (1) stabilisation/transition (1-12 months) ; (2) Transformation/institution building (12-36 months) ; and (3) Consolidation (36-120 months).

What is concerning about Tigray is that there is still no clarity or consensus on the idea of a post-war reconstruction planning. In various meetings, mixed suggestions have been forwarded. There have been suggestions that it should be based on project planning, program-based planning, integrated planning, sectoral planning, participatory approach, consultative approach, process approach, blueprint approach, marshall Plan, etc. Moreover, although the people have been crying out loud  about the need for strong bureaucratic machinery that could modernise Tigray, scholars are knowingly or unknowingly working against it. For instance, instead of strengthening our existing organisations with similar mandates, as if Tigray will stay under the interim administration over the whole reconstruction period, and reconstruction plans are separate from development plans, at least in our case, which will be expected to take long time and needs whole-rounded effort, it is suggested that an ad hoc committee is needed to be established to oversee rehabilitation and reconstruction plans. 

History of planning

Let us first highlight a few points about the history of planning. It goes without saying that, apart from having been dismissed in the 1980s and early 1990s as a piece of command economy and state-led development, planning has been used in almost all countries. It might be called a development plan, rehabilitation plan, recovery and reconstruction plan, public sector plan, investment plan, macroeconomic plan, and sustainable development goals, among others. While the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was the first country to develop a national plan after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, a series of similar initiatives were evolved, such as in India in 1933, the Philippine experience in 1934, and France in 1945. France’s planning experience in 1945 was reported to be a striking case in point as it became the first country in Western Europe to economically plan its future, and it has become a case where planning is also desirable in free-market economies. After the end of World War II, however, planning has acquired tremendous support throughout the globe in the name of rehabilitation and the ambition of rapid economic development after countries’ independence from colonisation.  

Currently, all economies have already returned to a kind of comprehensive planning with different approaches without using the term planning, and this approach has been reflected in the Agenda 2030 and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals . They reported that the number of countries with a national development plan has more than doubled since 2006, from about 62 in 2006 to 134 in 2018. However, the effectiveness of planning in achieving its intended results was observed to vary across countries and over time. While the reason for such variation could be due to both problems of planning and implementation, a mind-boggling and unacceptable reason has been provided by African countries. As if Africans are born with a deficiency of the implementation gene, African countries have commonly been reporting that they have good policies and plans, but they have problems with implementation. If you have a chance to participate in any workshop that exposes African countries’ development policies and plans, you could be provided with various examples of “beautiful plans” that are “technically perfect”, but they were never implemented. Whereas in successfully planned economies, ranging from South Korea to Scandinavia to China, broad political consensus has been achieved, and these economies solved the planning problem by first solving the agency problem, Africans are still besieged by an agency problem.

Though it is not popular, in a very short but seminal article, Joe Abah, a Nigerian barrister, argued that there have been five types of bad plans that were most featured in Africa. These were: (1) donor plans, (2) advocacy plans, (3) the Plan “A” Only plans, (4) beautiful plans, and (5) fire brigade plans. The first types of plans are written for the benefit of donors, and they are usually written by donors for donors in the name of Africans, such as Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers and Structural Adjustment Programmes. They lacked top-level government ownership and often no link to government budgets; no consideration of implementation capacity; and no consideration of institutions and politics. 

The second type of plans, advocacy plans, are intended to be used to put pressure on the government. Sector plans are cited as cases in point, which are passionate about improvements in their field “but are usually blissfully unaware of the pressures on other arms of government”. Such plans fail to consider the government’s fiscal capacity; they cannot even be fully funded if a country were to spend its entire budget on a single sector plan. In the third type of plans, Plan “A” Only plans, though they are usually preceded by good analysis, fail to conduct risk analysis, risk mitigation and contingency planning. Similarly, the fourth type of plans looks technically perfect, but they are completely unrealistic. It pretends that politics does not exist, that people do not have self-interest and that everyone’s priorities are uniform. In the fifth type of plans, fire brigade plans, they are written to facilitate the theft of public funds from donors or the government itself. 

Though Abah concluded that such kinds of plans were most featured in Africa and African problem is planning, not implementation, which is an extreme one in its concluding remark, Tony Killick, Senior Research Associate of the Overseas Development Institute, has also articulated that while strong coordination between planning agencies and ministries of finance is believed to be a prerequisite for aligning financial resources with national development priorities, their asymmetrical power relations have unfortunately been undercutting planning agencies’ capacity to fulfil their role in coordinating the planning process and ensuring that the programmes and projects of implementing agencies are aligned with the priorities of national development plans. 

Therefore, though planning has long been acknowledged as a means to a development exercise aimed to collectively achieve worthy life standards, and, in short, it is a future study, it is too clear that it is not merely the utility of planning that pays off. Perhaps the most important ones are, the way the plans are formed, changes over time and mobilised in a variety of socioeconomic and political situations as well as understanding the conditions under which planning does or does not achieve its stated objectives.  

In general terms, scholars have identified two competing paradigms that inform understandings and practices of development planning. The authors summarised that while the first category frames national development as a ‘problem’ that can be theoretically and empirically understood by experts so that the outcomes of public interventions can be predicted and optimal policies identified, the second one frames national development as a ‘development mess’ which is understood differently by citizens and is only partially understood theoretically. 

It is believed that while the first category is grounded in theories of linear rationality, where national development planning is seen as a rational science, a plan becomes a blueprint document informed by science and driven from the top by impartial experts (technocrats) with access to all necessary data and almost infinite analytical capacity, the second paradigm, based on more recent theories of communication and negotiation, uses collaborative or instrumental rationality, and planning is seen as a process of communication and negotiation about a desired future, involving interaction of numerous individuals who bargain and negotiate from varying power bases to achieve objectives that at least partially reflect their self-interest built around shared values, and the process of planning is as important as the eventual content of the plan. 

In their book titled “Planning with Complexity” Innes and Booher underlined that scholars and practitioners have often been thinking of collaborative processes more or less as black boxes, and it results in an inauthentic collaboration which may produce little or nothing and simply be a waste of time and money. Taken directly, it may be window dressing for decisions already made; or it may be a lowest common denominator agreement or even a co-optation process. And, if someone suggests a collaborative planning approach, it is also important to check issues of diversity, inter-dependence and authenticity of the dialogue so that you can assess whether they are really committed to collaborative rationality, or are they just traditionalists hiding behind the mask of collaboration?

‘Post-War’ Planning in Tigray: how should reconstruction plans be formulated? 

Even though the war on Tigray and Tigrayans was arguably started in 2010, when the Ethiopian Satellite Television (ESAT) started spreading hatred against Tigrayans, notably the infamous “drain the sea to catch the fish” broadcast on 6 August 2016, Ethiopian and Eritrean regimes explicitly waged a devastating war against Tigray on 04 November 2020. Whereas most Western media and commentators had been referring to it as a civil war, and sometimes simply as a conflict in Northern Ethiopia or Tigray conflict, others have named it differently, such as genocidal war, ethnic cleansing, war of aggression, geopolitical war, war of extermination, and so on. I would thus like to call upon all political scientists, lawyers, and conflict and security study specialists, among others, to critically examine the type of war fought in Tigray from November 2020 up to November 2022. Tigray was under a complete siege and blockade. The only answer for almost all supplies of goods and services of our time was “No”; no cash or banking; no fuel; no land and air transport; no telecommunication; no school; no medicine; no general public services; and etc. Millions were forcibly displaced empty-handed. Thus, as a provoking statement, the war in Tigray might be globally branded as “Tigray War”, in which researchers will be required to elaborate on its specificities. 

I am still doubtful that the war on Tigray has ended, as I think the war is continuing in other forms. But, not recognising the on-going peace process following the Pretoria accord would be uncharitable. The people of Tigray are now breathing a relatively good air and harbouring various feelings of hope. But a general atmosphere of fear and uneasiness persists, and a post-war plan is urgently needed to take Tigray out of the dire situation it is in. 

A good plan has long-lasting and substantively transformational objectives, including sustainability transitions, and it can only come about through the accumulation of several integrated smaller-scale actions associated with strategically successful initiatives and programs. Even though it is arguable whether or not there is an organic link between envisioning documents, development policies, plans, programs and projects, sequentially, good plans need to be informed by a shared vision, properly costed, a well-thought out financing mechanism, and have an implementation plan that factored-in all resources such as human, financial, technological and institutional which include rigorous analysis of risk and mitigation strategies. 

Whereas Ethiopia as a country has been cited as a forerunner of the planning approach to development in Africa, alongside Ghana and Nigeria, which can be traced back as far as the early 1940s, it is particularly found to be unlucky in having and implementing a shared vision document and/or long-term plans that guide its medium and short term plans and its medium plans lacked a proper costing exercises. Its first long-term plan (1984-1994), which was regarded by scholars as the best long-term plan by far in its time, was aborted in 1991 due to regime change. 

The recently initiated 15-year perspective plan has also become a kind of stillbirth plan. Whereas the National Planning Commission, now named to be the Ministry of Planning and Development, was mandated to prepare a 15-year perspective plan that guides its medium-term plans, it failed to formulate such a plan due to lack of organised and integrated planning leadership and overall political turmoil in the country. Despite the fact that the commission managed to conduct various background study papers in collaboration with the Korea Development Institute (KDI) and Ethiopian Development Research Institute (EDRI), in which I was also part of the coordinating team, it failed to timely articulate the country’s long-term plan. This is partly due to lack of consensus on its approach, such as sectoral versus integrated approach, and the political turmoil and resulting leadership change within the EPRDF in March 2018. 

But in 2020, the country managed to prepare a 10-year development plan, without even the need to improve its establishing regulation, which demands it to prepare a 15-year perspective plan. The plan clearly stated that one of the major failures of Ethiopia’s economy is the inability to set a common national vision to achieve major successes with consensus and popular legitimacy (Planning and Development Commission, 2020). Leaving aside the legality of the length of the plan, the country is still unlucky in having a shared vision and implementing a long-term plan. Its 10-year plan has also failed to be properly rolled out and customised across the regions. A devastating war broke out in Tigray in November 2020 and the country is still in turmoil and suffering from the resulting socio-economic crisis.

Tigray, too, has failed to have a shared vision document and/or long-term plan, apart from its first attempt on the eve of the Tigray war,  which was also not too clear whether it was an vision document or a long-term plan, even to some of the team members who prepared it. Such commitment during a pandemic and the eve of the war, which is unlikely to know its baseline, was unwise in terms of efficient use of resources. Evidently, both the long- and medium-term plans, the latter being finalised and the former on its work-in-progress, were aborted due to the war on Tigray. 

Such a problem of planning is however still continuing. In almost all gatherings and/or meetings here and there, be it organised by the TIRA or other professional and civic associations, it is common to hear suggestions about Tigray`s reconstruction plan based on what is desirable for the future of Tigray, but issues that do not give time such as IDP return, security and territorial integrity are not addressed as well as war damage and loss assessment, current state of the economy (baseline) and needs assessment are not yet conducted.

Indeed, though estimates of the economic and human costs of Tigray war are yet to be publicized by The Commission of Inquiry on Tigray Genocide and the current state of the economy is expected to be surveyed by Tigray Statistics Agency and reconstruction needs assessment is expected to be conducted by Tigray Planning Commission and/or Tigray Institute for Policy Study and other collaborative organizations, it is too clear that the undefined war, with a complete siege and blockade, has resulted devastating consequences. World experience indicated that, not only such a unique war, a major episode of violence is reported to be wiping out an entire generation of economic progress (World Bank, 2011). It has been documented that the average cost of civil war is found to be equivalent to more than 30 years of GDP growth for a medium- sized developing country and trade levels after major episodes of violence take 20 years to recover. 

Thus, coupled with the economic mismanagement before the war, such as budget planning and implementation, the disruption of supply of goods from the rest of Ethiopia and the flow of foreign investment into the region since June 2018, and various outbreaks on the eve of the war like EI Nino, Locust swarms and COVID-19, it will not be an exaggeration to remark that economic and social cost of Tigray war is unique and will need a unique post-war reconstruction approach. Such scenarios could sometimes be considered as an opportunity to build an economy back better, to build a resilient and equitable economy. But this is easier said than done. It needs a whole-of-government approach where resources are better mobilised and used efficiently and effectively. Tigray will thus need a well thought out planning, and there should not be any chance to make a mistake, as it does not deserve to be back to square one anytime onwards. 

Before we all jump to answer what to plan, however, which is not the scope of this paper, it will be better if we elaborate how Tigray could plan better. This is because, as mentioned in the introduction section, it is not merely the utility of planning that pays off, but also, perhaps the most important ones, are the way the plans are formed, changes over time and mobilised in a variety of socioeconomic and political situations as well as understanding the conditions under which planning does or does not achieve its stated objectives. In future studies, three modes of thinking could generally be drawn: (1) Assessing the probable (what is most likely to happen?), (2) imagining the possible (what might happen?), and (3) deciding on the preferable (what we would prefer to happen?). Whereas the first category includes forecasting, mainly based on historical data and trend analysis, the second and third categories include scenario and back-casting studies, respectively.  

In the aftermath of the war in Tigray, I am still sticking to the recommendation I made on the eve of the war, in my work entitled “COVID-19’s Fiscal Policy Implications and Ways Forward in Tigray Regional State”. Taken directly, in times of crisis, where we are still in a post-war crisis, evidence suggests that long and medium-term planning based on what is desirable in the future is not that beneficial, but establishing clear priorities based on what is undesirable in the present and immediate remedy to the priorities using the available resource at hand as well as a closer look at the number of people directly benefited from any policy measures, not the extent or level of individual benefits.  

As it is repeatedly stated, post-war Tigray’s immediate priorities are also understood to be respecting its territorial integrity, ensuring security, psychosocial support, returning internally displaced persons voluntarily, and resumption of basic services, such as opening up health and school facilities and banking, and well-thought out disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration activities. These activities could be better served through integrated program-based planning (based on both people and place), usually conducted in the rehabilitation and recovery stage. This would ideally take one to four years, and an effective, not necessarily efficient, annual planning and budgeting system could be pursued. This will be followed by a comprehensive reconstruction plan, where the Plan Commission of the region will be required to play a critical role. But preparatory works need to be started as soon as possible, as the saying goes that “Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be failure”. 

Like what Rwanda did in Village Urugwiro between 1998 and 1999, after the 1994 genocide, Tigray will need to select a village and launch a well-planned Tigrayans reflection sessions, with an overarching objective of articulating Tigrayans aspiration and determination that can serve as a main base to formulate an envisioning document and long-term/ reconstruction/ plan. Main questions, like that of Rwandans reflection sessions, could be: How do Tigrayans envisage their future? What kind of society do they want to become? How do they construct a united and inclusive Tigrayans identity? What are the transformations needed to emerge from an unsatisfactory social and economic situation?  In Rwanda, after they lived under authoritarian and exclusivist dispensation for so many years, they have come to develop a common paradigm such that the unfortunate and disastrous events were mainly due to colonial power, in collaboration with some religious organisations which exploited the subtle social differences and institutionalised discrimination (Rwanda Vision 2020). 

With regard to planning technique, all the available techniques are better seen as complementary rather than opposing one another. Results from forecasting exercise and the desired vision from backcasting exercise are better compared. If the vision is unlikely to be reached based on the most reliable forecasts, model calculations and other estimates as well as backcasting studies should be used to generate images of the future that fulfil the targets. We could also scrutinise how to attain a desirable future by working back from the desirable future to check the physical and social feasibility of the route or pathway towards that future. 

Moreover, as emphasised elsewhere in Vergragt (2005), although it is important that stakeholders share a future vision, it is not enough in itself to effectively follow-up and implement a given plan. It is also equally important to understand the culture and interests of stakeholders and their reasons for participating both during planning and in a follow-up activity. It is also remarked that countries need to solve the agency problem to solve the planning problem. What is more, though there is no one-size-fits-all solution to the role of the planning agency, it is also underlined that a credible mechanism that assigns equal importance to finance and planning is needed in the governmental hierarchy; if it is not, a high emphasis is needed to be given to the latter one during a catch-up stage. In economies like ours, planning agencies would need to be like that of the current status of the Ministry of Finance and/or European Central Bank in the EU and like that of the U.S. Department of Treasury and/or the Federal Reserve (FED). Whereas those agencies are highly influential when it comes to policies that affect institutional units of their economy, planning agencies are witnessed to take such roles during the catch-up stage, such as during Korea and Japan’s high growth and development period.

But in Tigray, clarity on policy sequencing, the role of the Plan Commission of the region and other stakeholders as well as planning approaches and techniques are lacking, which needs quick evaluation and fixation. A quick content analysis of TIRA’s leadership speeches indicates that, though issues of relief and rehabilitation are mentioned, greater weight seems to be given to the bigger picture of reconstruction plans. With regard to reconstruction planning approaches and techniques, given Tigray’s current situation, where the pre-war trend is also part of the current problem and is currently under high uncertainty, a much emphasis on participatory, not a consultative approach, and a more of backcasting and scenario planning techniques, not forecasting techniques, will pay-off. But it seems to follow a more of consultative or top-down approach and forecasting techniques. Again, while the Plan Commission of the region would be expected to be visible in spearheading sectoral and macroeconomic plans, it sounds that the TIRA is busy with establishing ad hoc committees.  

Such a problem of planning is however a continual problem, at least it started on the eve of the war. As I mentioned elsewhere above, in spite of focusing on what was undesirable during the time and designing strategic response, the leadership was busy in formulating a long-term development plan, which was later aborted due to the war. The plan formulation was also led by ad-hoc teams, whereas there was an institution mandated to plan the socioeconomic development of the region. Similar measures were also repeated after the government was back to administer the region. It gave the mandate of war damage and loss assessment task to a newly established Commission of Inquiry on Tigray Genocide, while Tigray Statistics Agency was there mandated to be a socioeconomic and geospatial data hub in the region, including verification of administrative data and regulating any other regional level surveys. 

If an organisation has faced capacity problems, which is sure in our case, it is better helped if the task is given to the mandated organisation and is supported through recruitment of volunteers and project-based high-calibre experts headhunted from anywhere. That could be a better way of strengthening organisations so that organisational memory will not be lost. But this will only flourish when each of us pay a price and fight for it, such as by saying no when assignments are given to organisations or individuals who are not mandated to do so (issue of legality), and putting effort into directing the task to the right organisations and individuals and help to build capacity (issue of legitimacy). Otherwise, simply crying out loudly about the presence of weak institutions and organisations and the desire to have strong ones will not pay us; rather, it will continue to cost all of us, including to the future generation.  

Concluding remarks  

This short article aims to share some preliminary ideas about the post-war reconstruction planning in Tigray; how the plan should be formulated. Specifically, it attempted to highlight whether the reconstruction plan should be based on a blueprint or process approach. And should it be coordinated by an ad hoc committee or by an organisation established for the long-term? In doing so, it has initially highlighted some critical accounts of the history of planning, paradigms that inform understandings and practices of planning, modes of thinking in planning, examples of bad plans that were most featured in Africa, estimated reconstruction periods of major episodes of violence, and stages of post-conflict planning.  

While the damage and loss resulted from the war will be unique in its way and it may take a longer reconstruction period than the world’s average of major episodes of violence, which would then need very much careful planning, this article argues that clarity on policy sequencing, the role of Plan Commission of Tigray and other stakeholders as well as planning approaches and techniques are lacking, and it needs a quick formative evaluation and fixation. While evidence suggests that,  in times of crisis, long- and medium-term planning based on what is desirable in the future is not that beneficial, but establishing clear priorities based on what is undesirable in the present and immediate remedy to the priorities using the available resource at hand as well as a closer look at the number of people directly benefited from any policy measures, not the extent or level of individual benefits, it has been very common to hear suggestions about reconstruction plan based on what is desirable for the future of Tigray. Mixed suggestions have also been forwarded with regard to ‘post-war’ reconstruction planning; the way the plan needs to be made. It is suggested to be based on project planning; program-based planning; integrated planning; sectoral planning; participatory approach; consultative approach; process approach; blueprint approach; Marshall Plan; etc. 

Thus, in my opinion, in ‘post-war’ Tigray, I would suggest an integrated program-based planning (both people- and place-based) for the rehabilitation and recovery efforts, not sector-based planning. Sector specialists and/or experts would better come to a central coordinating unit and formulate a horizontally, vertically and laterally integrated program and implement it in a coordinated and integrated manner. Especially, in a time where a given economy is struggling to collect revenue in the millions, not in the billions, sectoral planning approaches will not pay off. As also argued by Abah (2017), sector plans usually fail to consider the government’s fiscal capacity; they cannot even be fully funded if a country were to spend its entire budget on a single sector plan. 

For the comprehensive reconstruction plan, like what Rwanda did in Village Urugwiro between 1998 and 1999, after the 1994 genocide, Tigray will need to select a village and launch a well-planned Tigrayan reflection sessions, with an overarching objective of articulating Tigrayans aspirations and determination that can serve as a main base to formulate long-term vision and/or plan (impact and outcome oriented), followed by sector-based medium-term plans (output oriented).

With regard to the planning approaches and techniques for the reconstruction plan, given Tigray’s current situation, where the pre-war trend is also part of the current problem, and it is currently under high uncertainty, much emphasis on participatory, not a consultative approach, and more backcasting and scenario planning techniques, not forecasting techniques, will pay-off. In a more general and technical terms, the post-war reconstruction plan in Tigray will need to follow a process/participatory approach, not a blueprint/consultative approach. Otherwise, Tigray may end up with plans that are similar to the bad plans coined by Abah (2017). As also concluded by Innes & Booher (2010), plans based on a consultative approach are seen to result in an inauthentic collaboration which may produce little or nothing and simply be a waste of time and money. Taken directly, it may be window dressing for decisions already made; or it may be a lowest common denominator agreement or even a co-optation process.

Furthermore, whereas the Plan Commission of Tigray would be expected to be visible in spearheading sectoral and macroeconomic plans, it sounds like the leadership is busy with establishing several ad-hoc committees. If an organisation has faced capacity problems, it is better helped if the task is given to the mandated organisation and is supported through an advisory body, recruitment of volunteers and project-based high-calibre experts headhunted from anywhere so that organisational memory will not be lost. Thus, in our case, though I have been calling for and still suggest that its position and internal structure needs to be revisited, i.e., it will better be placed to be directly accountable to the president, post-war planning needs to be led by the Plan Commission of the region. Otherwise, simply crying out loudly about the presence of weak institutions and organisations and the desire to have strong ones will not pay; rather, it will continue to cost all of us, including the future generation.

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Hluf Hagos Shiqar holds an M.A. degree in Public Economics, Law and Politics/policies from Leuphana University, Germany, and a B.A. degree in Economics from Mekelle University, Ethiopia. Currently, he is working for Tigray Statistics Agency, and also serves as a volunteer General Manager of Tigray Economics Association. Formerly, he has worked for FDRE Ministry of Finance and Economic Development and National Planning Commission. Any reflections in this article are however very personal, and for any comments, he can be contacted via: hiluf6hagos@gmail.com.