Emerging Southern powers and new forms of South–South cooperation: Ethiopia’s strategic engagement with China and India

This article critically examines Ethiopia’s engagement with China and India. Despite being a non-oil exporting country, Ethiopia has become one of the fastest growing economies in Africa and, over the past decade, millions of people have been lifted out of poverty. Part of Ethiopia’s success has been the ability of the developmental state to harness its relationship with the new as well as the traditional development partners strategically, to unleash the country’s productive potential while maintaining national policy space. Ethiopia’s pragmatic ‘economic diplomacy’ arose from the desire of the liberation movements that formed the umbrella Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) to fundamentally transform all aspects of Ethiopian society and to break out of poverty, which the EPRDF considers a ‘national shame’ and a handicap to the country’s ability to define foreign and development policies independently. The Ethiopian experience challenges the school of thought that equates the rise of emerging powers in Africa with a new form of ‘colonialism’, disregarding African agency to transform these relationship into ‘win-win’ partnerships.