While Ethiopia has seen a rapid expansion of school enrollment over the past 25 years, especially in primary education, dropout, absenteeism, and grade repetition remain key challenges to achieving the education-related Sustainable Development Goals. This article uses the 2017/18 Gender and Adolescence: Global Evidence (GAGE) survey of 6800 Ethiopian adolescents and regression analysis to examine how exposure to and /or experience of violence (from peers and at home), adolescent decision-making power in the household, and paid and unpaid child work are related to absenteeism, dropout, and on-time completion in primary school. The findings provide empirical evidence on the positive association between adolescent decision-making power in the household and educational outcomes and the negative relationships between adolescent education and both exposure to and /or experience of violence and paid and unpaid child work. We explore variations in the magnitude and robustness of these associations across gender, age cohort, and rural/urban residential location. Our findings suggest that programs which enhance decision-making power of adolescents in the household reduce exposure to and/or experience of violence among peers and at home and reduce participation in paid and unpaid child work which can improve adolescent educational attainment.

This study investigates the relationships of informal competition with formal manufacturing firms labor productivity measured by value added per total fulltime workers and capacity utilization rates in Ethiopia. A combination of cross-sectional and panel regression methods are employed to investigate the relationships using the 2011 and 2015 World Bank Enterprise Surveys. The results from both the cross-sectional and panel analyses show that informal competition is significantly associated with lower labor productivity and capacity utilization rate. The negative effects of informal competition are large especially on large manufacturing firms which is a disincentive to firm growth. An additional finding is that those formal firms competing against the unregistered firms are found to engage in innovation practices especially in the methods of production and marketing to mitigate the negative consquences of informal competittors on their market performance. The policy implication of the findings is that Competition and Consumers’ Protection Authority (incollaboration with police and judciary) should exert more efforts to reduce the malpractices of informal competitors especially those engaging in brand piracy. Formalizing the informal competitors through imrpived access to credit, tax incentive, and training can also play an indispensable role. Firms should also promote their producs aggressively through different methods to help their customers identify genuine produtts from fakes.

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This paper focuses on research from the RISE Ethiopia team and addresses two major objectives: analysing the progress made towards achieving key goals under the four focus areas of GEQIP-E (internal efficiency, quality, equity, and system strengthening for policy formulation and reform) and whether the indicators of GEQIP-E implementation have been associated with estimated improvements in numeracy over one academic year. The analysis is based on longitudinal data collected as part of the RISE Ethiopia programme during the academic years 2018/19 and 2021/22, as they coincide with the implementation of GEQIP-E (GEQIP-E was disrupted by the dual shocks of COVID-19 and the violent civil conflicts that erupted in November 2020). Findings are presented under the four areas of intervention (school internal efficiency, quality, equity and system strengthening) and the final section links these areas of intervention with learning outcomes.

This study investigates the relationships of informal competition with formal manufacturing firms labor productivity measured by value added per total fulltime workers and capacity utilization rates in Ethiopia. A combination of cross-sectional and panel regression methods are employed to investigate the relationships using the 2011 and 2015 World Bank Enterprise Surveys. The results from both the cross-sectional and panel analyses show that informal competition is significantly associated with lower labor productivity and capacity utilization rate. The negative effects of informal competition are large especially on large manufacturing firms which is a disincentive to firm growth. An additional finding is that those formal firms competing against the unregistered firms are found to engage in innovation practices especially in the methods of production and marketing to mitigate the negative consquences of informal competittors on their market performance. The policy implication of the findings is that Competition and Consumers’ Protection Authority (incollaboration with police and judciary) should exert more efforts to reduce the malpractices of informal competitors especially those engaging in brand piracy. Formalizing the informal competitors through improved access to credit, tax incentive, and training can also play an indispensable role. Firms should also promote their producs aggressively through different methods to help their customers identify genuine products from fakes.