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Preface
highly problematic. The global indicators measuring corruption are also inconsistent. The drive for this study arose from this set of conflicting and unresolved perspectives as to the nature and scope of corruption in Ethiopia. In early consultations, the World Bank country team in Ethiopia and many key development partners argued that they needed to know more about the nature, scope, causes, impacts, and costs of corruption so that development decisions were not based on assumptions. In late 2008, the World Bank approached the Federal Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (FEACC) to propose an independent diagnostic to unravel the story of corruption in Ethiopia. With the full support of the government of Ethiopia, the World Bank then commissioned an independent set of sector-level diagnostics. With the benefit of hindsight, the sector approach was a hugely ambitious undertaking that has been achieved but has been significantly delayed. Although the studies themselves were completed by January 2010, the process of checking, review, and agreement for publication was slow and finally brought to conclusion only in 2011. Nevertheless, the funding development partners and the FEACC consider the story worth telling, and the disaggregated framework for each sector facilitates ongoing comparison and assessment. The chapters in this book are put forward with this caveat—that this was a long process and information is bound to have changed in the process. The process and outputs are nevertheless revealing, opening the path for further assessment work to be undertaken in hitherto unreported areas. For this purpose, the Joint Governance Assessment and Measurement (J-GAM) Initiative has been established in Ethiopia with the support of the World Bank, Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), U.K. Department for International Development (DFID), and the Royal Netherlands Embassy. This joint fund aims to enable better measurement, promote dialogue, and improve harmonization of governance interventions. We would like to thank all those whose engagement and commitment to this effort has led to these diagnostics and to those who will take forward this first stage into more detailed assessment efforts that will help to improve the efficiency of public resources. In particular, we are very grateful to the FEACC Commissioner, Ato Ali Sulaiman; the World Bank Country Director, Guang Zhe Chen; as well as the former Country Director, Ken Ohashi, for their support throughout; the excellent team of consultants that has worked diligently to explore new ground—Hamish