The US has suspended food aid to Ethiopia because of widespread theft of emergency food by government officials. This is saddening because Ethiopia was for long considered one of a few countries in Africa with a “developmental state” economic model.
The “developmental state” was a term applied to the economic model that catapulted the Southeast Asian “Tigers” — Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan — to developed status within a single generation. Later, in the 1990s, China and Malaysia would apply a variation of that economic model to make equally spectacular developmental strides.
