Negusu is a dialogue facilitator who designed and led the facilitation of various high-profile residential consultations including among historians, youth, women, media professionals, activists, religious and cultural leaders, justice professionals, and pre-election dialogues among political parties. He also co-initiated the Multi-stakeholder Initiative for National Dialogue (MIND) initiative which is a consortium of eight local organizations that has laid a foundation for a national dialogue process in Ethiopia. Negusu’s past experiences include complex climate adaptation program management in bilateral and international organizations and policy advocacy in a local environmental NGO. Negusu has initiated and led the Destiny Ethiopia Initiative that conducted a transformative scenario planning process with 50 Ethiopian influential leaders, who drew four scenarios of possible futures for Ethiopia. He has received several national and international recognition for his contributions in the field of environmental and climate change governance, and is a Yale World Fellow.
By profession, Negusu has a combination of expertise in ecology and systematics, environmental diplomacy, and global governance & human security, and dialogue facilitation. Currently, he is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Massachusetts, Boston working on the socio-environmental aspects of China-Africa partnerships. As a passionate Ethiopian intending to transform the nation, Negusu would like to continue to actively participate in promoting peace by championing open dialogue, reconciliation, impartiality, and transparency towards the realization of the Dawn Scenario for Ethiopia.
National dialogues cannot happen in a vacuum. There is a host of local, regional, and international actors and factors that have ramifications for the process. No country including Ethiopia would be exceptionally isolated in this regard. Therefore, it is imperative that national dialogue, as a super-sensitive political process, will need to prudently consider the role external actors may play in the process.
Ethiopia launched a National Dialogue Commission about a month ago that is mandated to undertake a national dialogue process in the country. In this regard, it would make a lot of sense to properly understand the interest of external actors in our country in general and in the envisaged national dialogue process in particular.
The role of neighboring countries in influencing and shaping Ethiopian politics has always wavered between two extremes in a continuum of diverse and mixed stances, constructive political and physical support on the one hand and destructive influence through instigating proxy wars and hosting, training, and deploying insurgencies across the country, on the other. We also share people, culture, and history with our adjoining countries. Albeit these are “periphery”, a political metaphor suggesting marginalized communities that are far off from politics centered around the capital. More interestingly, the fates of neighboring countries are unavoidably intertwined, which necessitates conscious effort that stimulates mutual respect and support. National dialogue in Ethiopia, as a process that has the potential to address deep-seated political, economic and contestations in the country, would have an immense potential to effect positive transformation at least in the Horn of Africa.
Any potential support or resistance to this national process by external actors has the potential to affect the degree of success, more so because this has a direct impact on national ownership of the process.
There have also been cases of mutual mistrust and long-standing animosity with some countries in Africa to such an extent that a win by one has been perceived as a loss for the other. For such an actor, the launching of a national dialogue process in Ethiopia might not be good news at all.
While some countries and institutions have officially offered to provide support technically and financially, a host of others are reportedly approaching the National Dialogue Commission directly or indirectly to forge partnerships.
Experience from other countries has a lot to inform our national process. Neither excluding international actors nor giving them the driver’s seat would be helpful, as per literature and experience. Given the varying levels and types of interest from external actors in this national process, though, engagement strategies should acknowledge and respond to such requests in a judicious manner. Any potential support or resistance to this national process by external actors has the potential to affect the degree of success, more so because this has a direct impact on national ownership of the process. The partisanship of external actors is also another major challenge that needs prudent attention.
The kinds of support provided by external actors could be summarized into three categories: political, financial, and technical. External political and development actors could come with a combination of two or more of these broad clusters of support.
The roles of external actors in national dialogue processes range from a heavy-handed approach to a softer one. I will focus on several potential roles for external actors and how we should respond to these requests.
One decisive role is the willingness and capacity to enable or disable a national dialogue, which is key for the legitimacy of the process. In this connection, messages conveyed by all external actors so far have been positive and welcoming. Of course, the importance of this role will continue to be increasingly significant because there might be a need to bring back actors drifting from the process back to a roundtable. Playing such an enabler role by external actors is highly useful for the process.
Funding the dialogue process is also a matter of keen interest to many external actors, be it political or development partners. I don’t see any harm if external actors were able to finance the process for two reasons. First, the process is capital intensive and the economic hiccups our country is facing now might necessitate this support. The second issue is more political than economic. Even if Ethiopia might decide to mobilize its own resources for this process, allowing willing external actors to chip in funds would help in garnering and assuring political support for the process, which is one key factor for the success of the process.
Learning from the experiences of other countries that have conducted national dialogues, though, several cautions need to be taken in this regard to mitigate some likely or inevitable risks. A major political risk is the temptation of powerful actors to dominate the process and influence the outcomes. Public perceptions might also be negatively influenced if this engagement with external actors goes unbridled in such a way that national ownership and hence legitimacy for the process would be eroded. Moreover, the creation of an overcrowded space by competing external actors could create a logistical and administrative nightmare for the Commission in terms of reporting to specific financial templates of donors. In some countries like Yemen, mutually contradictory views have been reflected regarding the process that might cast a shadow as the process moves along. In Libya, external interests directly collided with national interests.
Therefore, any engagement with external actors would be more meaningful if a mutually agreed engagement modality is put in place to govern this partnership. Key elements this engagement modality might need to take into account include ensuring coordination of funding partners, laying out a proper communication protocol for these actors, agreeing on visibility and branding policies, ensuring flexibility of funding arrangements given the sensitivity of this process to a lot of political uncertainties and dynamics, and, perhaps more importantly, a clause on ‘non-interference’. It is imperative that the National Dialogue Commission have a no-branding policy to ensure the friendly support of donors without much ego for visibility.
A major political risk is the temptation of powerful actors to dominate the process and influence the outcomes.
Providing technical support is another area of interest for external political and development actors. Tapping into the vast knowledge and experience in this regard is undoubtedly a wise move. It is evident that financial support pledges by external actors are usually coupled with technical support and sometimes some external actors are overly prescriptive about who should provide the technical support. Therefore, a partnership engagement strategy is necessary for governing relationships with potential technical support providers. Principal risks associated with technical support provision are potential hijacking of the process, and breach of confidentiality resulting from unrestricted access to information flows in the process. In connection with this, it would be useful for the Commission to initially identify areas for technical support so that the partnership would be demand-driven as opposed to supply-driven. Some scrutiny into past track records of technical support-providing institutions might also be helpful to guide decision-making and fine-tune the engagement modality with the actors in question.
When and where local knowledge and experience might be limited, encouraging external actors to forge partnerships with local actors would be very useful to ensure process integrity, customization of methodologies to the local context, knowledge, and skill transfer.
In a nutshell, whether external actors are directly involved in providing financial or technical support, I firmly believe that the communication strategy of the commission needs to incorporate mechanisms to properly and regularly communicate with external actors of strategic importance. This communication strategy could, among others, encompass providing regular information updates on the process, listening to concerns, and communicating recommendations and concerns, particularly regarding these external players. This will enable us to harness the buy-in from the international community.
Another key element is international interest in observing the process. The national dialogue process will pass through phases of varying sensitivity and importance, based on which the Commission might have to decide on when to invite selected external actors to observe various sessions in the dialogue process.
A rule of thumb to national ownership is to nurture trust all along by giving local actors the priority to support the process financially and technically. When and where local knowledge and experience might be limited, encouraging external actors to forge partnerships with local actors would be very useful to ensure process integrity, customization of methodologies to the local context, knowledge, and skill transfer.
Harnessing the political, financial, and technical leverage of external actors is one of the key factors for the success of the national dialogue process. There is a wealth of information and experience from countries that preceded Ethiopia in conducting national dialogue to guide our thinking and decisions. As the purpose of this article is not to provide an in-depth analysis on this matter, diving deeper into these international experiences would undoubtedly help. The bottom line is writing the rule book regarding modalities of engagement with external actors based on lessons from international experience. This will bring the cart to its natural place – exactly behind the horse!