The Politics of Private Sector Investment in Local Economic Development: Local Governance and Regulatory Frameworks in Gurage Zone, Ethiopia

Abstract

Private investment is one of the prominent approaches to local economic development. The focus of this study is the exploration of the political elements of private investment in local economic development activities in the backgrounds of local governance. A combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods challenged the idea that private investment, considered economically, contributes to local economic development, an assumption that isolates private investment from the surrounding environments. Therefore, the study found out that private investment in Gurage Zone has been showing an inconsistent trend in terms of its contribution to land development, employment creation, and capital generation. This inconsistency is reflective of the nature of private investment which is a depoliticized, delocalized, and de-bureaucratized program highly isolated from the local realities. This again is related to the detrimental effect of local governance structure which is fragmented, asymmetrical, poorly structured, and de-contextualized, thereby creating weak-bureaucratic services, inefficient partnership, and poorly structured governance platforms. Thus, the study concludes that private investment in Gurage zone is being restrained because of its isolation from the local realities, political imperatives, bureaucratic networks, and resource contexts, supposed to be controlled by the local governments.