Although still a majority rural country, Ethiopia has been rapidly urbanizing in the past few decades. The urban centres have increased both in size and number. In the 1960s there were about 384 towns with a total population of 1.5 million, which increased to 925 in 1994 with the urban population of 8.5 million. Currently, the urban population has more than doubled reaching at 19 million. Over the past 30 years, Ethiopia’s annual urban population growth rate has been higher than the average in Sub-Saharan Africa, according to a report released by the World Bank Group in 2015.

A Population Growth Perspective

In the past, Ethiopia has experienced different defining moments that have allowed it to survive for thousand years. One moment, for instance, was the war against colonialist Italy during the second half of the nineteenth century, which culminated in the Battle of Adwa. Today, Ethiopia has to choose another defining moment to ensure the material well-being and unity of the people and survival of its cultures: Embracing industrialisation-led structural transformation.

There seems to be a consensus that Ethiopia’s decade-long economic growth is largely the result of government investment in public infrastructure and the growth of the country’s labour force. Indeed, government investment in the physical and institutional infrastructure created jobs and growth in the service sector. According to World Bank data, of the 11Pct annual growth rate registered during this period, the service sector contributed 5.5Pct, while agriculture and industry contributed 3.6Pct and 1.9Pct, respectively.