Aplicaci´ on a la teor´ıa de bandas

The development of an agricultural research system is fairly recent in Ethiopia. Historically, agricultural research started in 1947 with the founding of the Agricultural Colleges of Ambo and Jimma (Bechere 2006). Regarding the agricultural research institutes, history goes back to 1966 when the Institute of Agricultural Research was founded (Abate, Deressa and Molla 2004). Several research centres were founded in the 1970s, among them also the Forestry Research Centre (Bechere 2006). The 1990s were the formative years for the Ethiopian Agricultural Research System. At that time, the Federal and the Regional Agricultural Research Centres (RARCs) were divided: the RARCs were decentralised and are independently run by the Regional Bureaus of Agriculture (Bechere 2006). In 1997, the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research (EIAR, until 2005 Ethiopian Agricultural Research Organization, EARO) emerged from a merger of IAR with several other research centres. This decentralisation and reorganisation phase lead to reduced staff capacity and expenditures, and by 2008 EIAR’s share of staff

capacity had fallen from 80% in 1997 to 42% in 2008. The RARC resp. Regional Agricultural Research Institutes (RARIs) on the other hand grew, and their FTE staff numbers increased from 178 in 1997 to 613 in 2008. (Flaherty, Kelemework and Kelemu 2010)

The flagship organisation and main actor on a federal level is EIAR which leads a frequently changing number of centres and subcentres, including the Holeta Agricultural Research Centre (HARC) (Flaherty et al. 2010). Figure 1.5 shows the current hierarchical structure of the Ethiopian National Agricultural Research System. EIAR reports to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MoARD), but it does not have any affiliation with the Ministry of Science and Technology. (Flaherty et al. 2010)

Figure 1.5: Ethiopian National Agricultural Research System (adapted from Bechere 2006).

While EIAR and the universities are under the respective federal ministries, the RARIs have their own regional authorities to report to. This leads sometimes to tensions, especially between the universities and the RARIs. Recently a high number of the newer universities have opened agricultural faculties - and have started to recruit staff members amongst others from the RARIs.

Funding for research activities is low in the research institutes, and it mostly depends on the initiatives of the individual researchers to acquire external, mostly foreign, funds to actively engage in research. A lot of funding also comes from collaborative projects with centres of CGIAR (formerly the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research) (Flaherty et al.

2010). Apart from that, researchers rely on project funding emerging from their personal networks. Acquiring such funds and implementing such projects can consume a considerable amount of time and effort. During informal encounters scientists often complained that they felt trapped between the political system, their interests in their research and their personal careers as well as the need to acquire an adequate income. At the time of my research the salary of a PhD holder was about 4000 ETB per month, which then converted to about 180 Euro.

I learned a lot about the agricultural research system during interviews, Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) and informal conversations with scientists from forestry, agriculture as well as some social scientists in the context of the case studies (see 2.2 and chapter 3). I heard repeatedly that in recent years a number of changes in the governance system as well as political changes had induced a lot of staff turnover in the research organisations. One of those major processes had been the Business Process Restructuring (BPR) that radically changed the entire internal organisation of most government organisations. This system broke up all organisations into business processes to facilitate a less bureaucratic administration. In practice this top-down ordered restructuring process led to a complicated, artificial system of so called ‘processes’ and has paralysed the research system for some time. It also led to high staff turnover in the institutions, where some people were forced to leave, others retired early and others left by their own choice.

Some of the scientists I have spoken to shared their impressions regarding the relation of politics and research with me informally: according to them this relation had intensified in the last years. The last two elections and their aftermath had left their imprint on the research sector. According to them it had become increasingly more politicised, driving staff members to the NGO sector or abroad. This politicisation had not only led to a mix up of politics and research with many of the leading positions in the research institutes assigned to people with political functions, it had also demotivated staff members who had been interested in research rather than politics and had found themselves sitting in meeting after meeting instead of working on their actual research topics.

This high staff turnover has affected the age structure in the research system. Already since the fall of the Derg positions in government related organisations mostly fell to junior employees. During the Derg many scientists left the country. After the fall of the Derg people known to be close to the Derg were replaced with junior staff members – Harrison (2002) also reports this for government representatives in other areas. Flaherty et al. (2010) confirm that most senior staff members have either left, retired or are in hierarchically very high positions.

The majority of the research staff are junior staff (Flaherty et al. 2010).

Among junior researchers staff turnover is high, with people coming and going doing their BScs, MScs and finally PhDs, as I experienced myself during the last years. However, while the number of staff members with higher university degrees is increasing slowly, the level of actual research experience reportedly is decreasing. Many researchers complained during the interviews and personal encounters that they had very little time to do actual research, and that the bureaucracy was overwhelming.

The two research organisations my case studies were associated with were the Holeta Agricultural Research Centre (HARC) and the Amhara Region Agricultural Research Institute (ARARI). HARC is the oldest agricultural research centre in Ethiopia. It was founded in 1977. It is located in Oromia Region, 36 km away from Addis Ababa, and belongs to EIAR. It is thus a federal research organisation. In research it is organised in four work processes: livestock, crop, socio economics and forestry. In the forestry process there is on PhD holder, two MSc, two diploma holders and two staff members with certificate level. The work process has two case teams, the plantation and agroforestry team, and the non-timber forest product team.

They have a tree nursery for experimentation. (HARC 2014)

The Amhara Region Agricultural Research Institute (ARARI) was founded in 2000 as a result of the decentralisation policy of the Ethiopian government. It is located in Bahir Dar, the capital city of Amhara Region. ARARI is organised in nine different regional subcentres, and it has six research directorates for crop, livestock, soil and water, forestry and agroforestry, agricultural mechanization and food science and agricultural economics. The forestry and agroforestry directorate carries out research activities and projects at five centres in Amhara Region. There are also forestry teams at the different subcentres, for example at the Gondar Agricultural Research Centre (GARC). (ARARI 2014)

Some of those subcentres existed already before ARARI itself was founded, others are new.

GARC was established in 2003 and suffers from lack of infrastructure, office facilities are very poor, and there is a constant struggle for field cars. As it is located in Gondar city, it also does not have any adjacent research facilities for field trials.

Both HARC and ARARI are organised according to agricultural commodities, and focus primarily on bio-physical sciences. The structure represents ‘social research’ as socio-economic research only. Some scientists told me that the structure of the research system was in contrast to the situations they were confronted with in the field. The understanding for the importance of social issues was often expressed verbally, but the need to involve social scientists was not always understood to be important. In a discussion about the importance of social research it was pointed by one agronomist that ‘social research will come automatically when we do our research as natural scientists’ (E-scientist, 15.2. 2011, workshop, Gondar). One other concern that some natural scientists at ARARI and HARC expressed regarding social research was that they could not take it seriously when it was qualitative. If research outputs were not presented in numbers, graphs and tables, ‘it will not be taken serious by the government’ (E-scientist, interview, 1.3.2011). Frequently during discussions when I asked scientists to voice their opinion on a certain issue, they were reluctant to make a statement. Many started by saying that this issue required to be studied first with empirical research, and without such data it would be difficult to say something about this issue. I experienced similar situations during conferences and workshops that I attended in Ethiopia. For example during the national conference on soil and water conservation in Addis Ababa, several consecutive presenters did not present their analysis and interpretation of their findings, but the pointed to one table after the other and read out numbers, rather than interpreting them for the audience.

Repeatedly they would say ‘These are the data, here you can see the data.’ (2^nd National Conference on Soil and Water Conservation, Addis Abeba, 27.2.2011). They hesitated to express their conclusions in front of the others. And the responses of the audience were extremely harsh and very destructive in content which was not unusual as other Ethiopian colleagues confirmed afterwards. This culture of discourse is understandable in light of the historical background discussed in 1.4.3.4 – top-down hierarchies and authoritarian discourses that are common in interaction with farmers are also common among scientists themselves.