Reform trajectories across postcolonial African states are seldom linear, and while Ethiopia stands apart as a nation that resisted formal colonization, it is by no means exempt from the institutional discontinuities and structural legacies that often accompany political transformation on the continent. More often than not, sweeping political transitions are burdened by the institutional residues of past regimes. Ambitious reform agendas tend to founder not for lack of vision or political will, but because the architecture of the state remains fragmented, incoherent, and ill-prepared to sustain transformational change. Ethiopia’s post-2018 reform era exemplifies this paradox. While the political space has widened and reformist rhetoric abounds, the absence of institutional coordination and sectoral integration continues to imperil the long-term viability of the reform project.

At the heart of this challenge lies a deeply entrenched legacy: the personalization of power. For much of its modern history, Ethiopia’s state institutions have operated less as autonomous bureaucracies and more as instruments of personal authority. Under such a configuration, institutions lack durability. Reforms tethered to individual actors, rather than institutional frameworks, dissolve when leadership changes. This phenomenon – aptly described as “reset syndrome” – has fostered a culture of discontinuity. Each new administration tends to abandon or reinvent its predecessor’s policies, eroding institutional memory, undermining coherence, and forestalling the accumulation of institutional capacity.

The Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), the dominant political force until 2018, perfected a mode of governance wherein state institutions were subordinated to a party-centric apparatus. Ministries and agencies functioned not as centers of policy innovation and implementation, but as extensions of a centralized political machine.

When the EPRDF coalition dissolved and a new reform-oriented leadership under Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed assumed power, there was widespread anticipation of a structural reconfiguration of the state. To a degree, that promise was fulfilled – the Ministry of Peace was established, bureaucratic streamlining commenced, and the political space was liberalized. Yet the inherited bureaucratic infrastructure, deeply habituated to vertical command and institutional insularity, proved far more resistant to transformation than anticipated.

The deficiencies in institutional linkage were soon laid bare. The 2018 peace agreement with Eritrea, though historic, was negotiated and implemented without the creation of enduring institutional mechanisms for demobilization, border management, or post-conflict development. The result was predictably unstable: peace was declared, but its architecture remained skeletal, allowing tensions to resurface. In the realm of security sector reform, leadership transitions were carried out, but without the scaffolding of clear mandates, civilian oversight, or cross-agency coordination. The consequences were manifest during the conflict in Tigray, where a fragmented security establishment proved ill-equipped to manage an evolving crisis.

Even in areas of relative policy clarity – such as housing, fiscal reform, or economic liberalization – the absence of cross-sectoral coordination has generated institutional dissonance. Yet without integrated planning or common performance indicators, these efforts failed to converge. Projects remained underfunded or misaligned, revealing the hollow core of reform efforts undertaken in isolation.

Beyond governance mechanics, the human capital dimension of reform also hinges on institutional linkage. A fragmented bureaucracy not only generates policy misalignment but also erodes the professional morale of civil servants who are routinely caught between contradictory mandates and diffuse chains of accountability. In the absence of integrated institutional frameworks, public sector personnel are denied opportunities for cross-sectoral learning, joint planning, and coordinated service delivery.

This breeds not only inefficiency but also a culture of institutional insularity, wherein initiative is stifled and turf protection prevails over collective problem-solving. Reform resilience, therefore, requires more than structural reengineering; it demands a civil service ethos oriented toward inter-agency cooperation, shared ownership of outcomes, and continuity of purpose across administrative cycles.

It is important to acknowledge that efforts to foster sectoral linkage are already underway, albeit unevenly implemented and variably successful. The Integrated Planning and Budgeting Framework introduced by the Ministry of Planning and Development represents a nascent attempt to align federal and regional priorities through joint sectoral reviews and medium-term expenditure planning. In the health sector, the coordination between the Ministry of Health and regional bureaus during the COVID-19 response offered a glimpse of what effective intergovernmental collaboration might look like under pressure. Similarly, the Urban Productive Safety Net Project has, in certain locales, achieved modest success by integrating social protection, job creation, and municipal service delivery.

Yet many of these initiatives remain isolated pilots, undercut by limited institutional buy-in, resource asymmetries, and a persistent tendency to revert to vertical hierarchies. The lesson is not that coordination is unworkable, but that without deliberate institutionalization, it remains contingent, fragile, and prone to reversal.

This pattern is not incidental. It reflects the enduring structural dilemma of Ethiopian governance: institutional silos operating without connective tissue. The Homegrown Economic Reform Agenda, for instance, sought to catalyze private sector development. Yet in the absence of corresponding reforms in judicial institutions and land administration, investor confidence waned amid legal ambiguities and procedural inertia. Fiscal incentives lost their efficacy because regulatory clarity and land rights enforcement lagged behind. In short, progress in one domain was consistently undermined by stasis in others.

Institutional linkage, then, is not a technical consideration; it is the crux of reform durability. Ethiopia’s governance architecture must evolve from a collection of atomized ministries into a system of interconnected institutions capable of policy coherence and mutual reinforcement. The prevailing administrative culture, inherited from a centralized developmental state, remains ill-suited to collaborative governance. Ministries operate as fiefdoms, unaccountable to one another, and allergic to the idea of shared ownership of reform.

To overcome this inertia, Ethiopia must move decisively to institutionalize sectoral linkage as a design principle of governance. Three interventions are particularly salient.

First, the establishment of permanent inter-ministerial coordination units within key reform sectors – economic governance, land administration, and public service delivery – is imperative. These should not be transient task forces, but statutory bodies housed within the Ministry of Planning and Development, with mandates ratified by the Council of Ministers.

Their principal function would be to harmonize planning, implementation, and monitoring across federal ministries and regional governments. Rwanda’s Joint Sector Review mechanism, wherein sector working groups collectively define targets and undergo annual performance reviews, offers a compelling model. In Ethiopia’s case, embedding such units within the existing administrative structure and tying them to performance contracts overseen by the Prime Minister’s Office could institutionalize both vertical and horizontal accountability.

Second, parliamentary oversight must evolve beyond perfunctory hearings and fragmented committee structures. Ethiopia’s House of Peoples’ Representatives currently mirrors the compartmentalization of the executive branch, limiting its capacity to scrutinize cross-sectoral reforms. The creation of a Parliamentary Subcommittee on Reform Linkage, tasked with reviewing multi-ministerial initiatives such as the Homegrown Economic Reform Agenda, could enhance oversight and ensure that reforms are pursued cohesively. This subcommittee would monitor budget allocations, review implementation metrics, and require ministers to publicly account for collaborative progress, thereby embedding a culture of collective responsibility.

Third, the government should establish a Central Reform Delivery Unit (CRDU) within the Office of the Prime Minister. Unlike traditional policy advisory bodies, the CRDU should function as an empowered delivery mechanism – tracking reform milestones, identifying bureaucratic bottlenecks, and facilitating inter-ministerial coordination. Ethiopia’s historical experience with centralized steering under the EPRDF regime underscores the risks of top-down authoritarianism. Yet a reimagined CRDU – modeled after the UK’s Delivery Unit – could act as a strategic integrator rather than a command center. Through quarterly reform scorecards, monthly “reform clinics,” and real-time problem solving, the CRDU would ensure that sectoral reforms are aligned with national priorities and insulated from political volatility.

Taken together, these three mechanisms chart a viable course toward a more coherent, resilient, and accountable reform process – one that is both institutionally and structurally anchored. Rather than necessitating a wholesale reinvention of the state apparatus, they seek to recalibrate existing institutions around the core principles of coordination, continuity, and competence. Crucially, these proposals are not imported wholesale; they are deliberately tailored to Ethiopia’s federal architecture and political context, while drawing judiciously from international best practices.

Ethiopia stands at an inflection point. The ambitions of the post-2018 reform agenda remain within reach – but only if the architecture of reform is reengineered to promote institutional linkage, resist the pull of fragmentation, and anchor change in durable administrative practice. Reform must cease to be episodic and become systemic. Only then can Ethiopia transcend the cycle of resets and build a governance system capable of sustaining transformation across political generations.

By Blen Mamo, Executive Director, Horn Review