ABSTRACT
Over the past several years, PPPs have become an increasingly popular policy instrument for economic development in Ethiopia. This chapter analyses PPPs as a specific subset of broader public–private collaborations, or what I abbreviate as PPCs in Ethiopia. It approaches PPPs as a legally distinct form of public–private contract that operates across a range of collaborative arrangements aimed at achieving developmental goals. Drawing on evidence from policy documents, interviews and ethnographic fieldwork on multinational alcohol companies, the following pages explore how PPPs compare to other types of PPCs, such as joint ventures, corporate social responsibility programmes and non-PPP government contracts/leases in Ethiopia. The aim is to examine points of convergence and divergence between PPPs and other types of PPCs in Ethiopia, developing an approach for contextualising PPPs within a broader framework of PPCs operating across the country for future research. Areas of convergence include history (shared non-colonial past/politics of concession), ideology (government agendas organising public–private ventures across sectors) and contested models of development (partnerships navigating patrimonial versus neoliberal styles of project management). Conversely, points of divergence include distinct governing frameworks (laws, institutions and contracts, which are often sector-specific) and how risk is calculated (project-based, situational and epistemological) to mediate partnership or collaborative agreements.
