ABSTRACT
Historicising Ethiopia’s contemporary global PPP agenda, this chapter examines how its contemporary manifestation in Ethiopia bears the imprint of the PPP model’s checkered historical and political trajectory. The underlying analytical gambit is that tracing the ‘travels’ of the PPP model – via analyses of China and the UK’s PPP waves – can both help explain how Ethiopia ended up adopting the model in the first place and understand the distinct form this adoption has taken. In the process, the analysis shows how Ethiopia’s PPP policy relies upon a highly selective process of ‘lessons’ to be ‘learned’ from (un)successful projects that partially but not entirely airbrushes out experiences that would threaten the uptake of the model. These elisions are crucial for imagining that the risks of PPP can be overcome with capacity-building and more rigorous management processes. The chapter contends that this selective learning can help account for the spread of PPPs to Ethiopia and the persistence of the PPP promotion efforts by international financial institutions globally. Taken together, the chapter makes the case for treating the PPP model as an unfolding global process.
