Public Administration in Ethiopia: Case Studies and Lessons for Sustainable Development, edited by Bacha Kebede Debela, Geert Bouckaert, Meheret Ayenew Warota, and Dereje Terefe Gemechu, offers an analysis of how the government works in post-1990 Ethiopia, focusing on the systems of public administration. It is no exaggeration to state that this book may well be the cornerstone for the study of public administration in Ethiopia context. The readers may be practitioners, professionals, students, or just those with plain curiosity, but regardless of their motivation, they will find information here that can be found nowhere else. The editors provide a comprehensive treatment of public administration in Ethiopia within a real-life context, as they apply various dimensions or constructs of public administration to the country. The book outlines how and when public administration education was instigated under different regimes, which is then the basis for further study. In these various chapters, the readers acquire even deeper factual and comprehensive in-depth knowledge on the subject of public administration in Ethiopia.
Another important and special insight of this book is why the African institutions of higher education are unable to adapt and practice their own teaching methods and research areas regarding public administration, management, and policy styles. The authors clearly state that this is because “most African universities rely on Western theories for teaching and research” (23). The book explains in detail why the Africa Public Administration education system is attached to the Western Blind post-copy model and how higher education institutions can help achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Last but not least, I have a reservation about the silence on the findings of “several papers” referenced on page 26. It might have been better to summarize the findings presented in those papers. However, there was no mention of the papers that were presented from the first to the third National Public Administration Conferences. I believe that the papers presented add new further insight to the academic knowledge of public administration in Ethiopia.
To summarize, the chapters of this book make a great contribution to the field of knowledge and the study of public administration systems with special insights from Ethiopia.
