Far from global financial worries, the government-owned Ethiopian Herald focused on road development, – which has marked the construction of a total of 44,359 km of all-weather road network – as well as human resource development, saying that the Ethiopian government placed strategic importance on education as a key to all development endeavours.
On road development, the paper noted that “there were times in Ethiopia when roads were practically non-existent. In those days people either traveled on foot or used burden animals such as mules and horses to move from place to place.”
Though road construction is a top agenda of the Ethiopian government, the paper pointed out that this ambition is faced with a number of obstacles, including topographical, budgetary, machinery and skilled manpower challenges.
“Continuation of the momentum in road development is not only a solution to physical access problems, but it is also an indispensable way out, to bring about efficient social and economic services to the people,” the paper added.
Shifting attention to the educational sector, another editorial in the same paper indicated that Ethiopia’s national primary education coverage has risen from 19 per cent in 1991 to 97.1 per cent at present, whereas secondary education has expanded from 6.6 per cent to 40 per cent.
The paper also noted that technical and vocational training institutions have, during the same period, increased from 17 to 117, while the number of public universities jumped from just two to 21.
Total enrolment at university level has increased from 3,000 students to nearly 80,000 while private institutions also showed the same trend.
The paper argued that poverty eradication and the ambition for speedy growth in Ethiopia depended on the production of appropriate human power, both in quantity and quality.
