ABSTRACT
In 2017, Ethiopia institutionalised PPPs to spur economic growth and improve public services. While media as well as public discourse often emphasise their novelty in Ethiopia, partnerships between ‘public’ and ‘private’ have long been integral to the functioning of the modern Ethiopian sate and vice versa. This chapter adopts an assemblage approach to better understand the nature of PPPs and their rendering in the Ethiopian context. The cases presented in this chapter illustrate how private actors are embedded in the state’s basic functions. Just as viruses rely on host cells, private actors are not external to the state but co-constitutive of it. PPPs, in other words, can be understood as symbiotic relationships, at times antagonistic or pathogenic, at other times commensal or mutualistic. This perspective challenges dominant neoliberal assumptions about PPPs and demonstrates the potential of assemblage ethnography for understanding state–society relations in Ethiopia and beyond.
