The Department of Government Efficiency (#DOGE), is a proposed initiative in the United States championed by figures like Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, aims to drastically reduce government waste and enhance the efficiency of public spending. DOGE’s principles of cuting bureaucratic overhead, eliminating redundant programs, and leveraging technology for transparency and accountability potentially offer valuable lessons for the rest of the world, including our country, Ethiopia.
Ethiopia, with its unique economic and governance challenges, can adapt these types of ideas to address inefficiencies in its federal budget spending and related governance systems. As we may recall, multiple inefficiencies, audit findings, corruptions, accountability, performance challenges have been consequently reported during the parliamentary hearings of various government offices annual reports at the House of Peoples Representative. The Office of the Auditor General, was also continuously warning the federal or concerned regulatory actors to take corrective measures on the existing findings, as well as mitigating future occurrences of similar discrepancies and inefficiencies. However, so far, we have not seen a major improvement, rather it keeps being a recurrent issue across the board.
This article will try to look the country’s current status-queue of the federal budget, while outlining the key lessons the government can learn from DOGE, put-forward strategic measures to streamline federal spending, and recommendations for improving inefficiencies patterns.
1. Prioritizing Waste Reduction through Audits and Accountability
As the DOGE’s framework focuses on identifying and eliminating wasteful government spending via comprehensive audits, for Ethiopia, this is critical given the inefficiencies observed in most of its ministerial offices, and regional administrations. For instance, the Ethiopian Sugar Corporation has faced chronic losses due to mismanagement, draining subsidies. Auditing and potentially restructuring such entities could redirect funds to high-impact areas like education or healthcare. Similarly, the Ethiopian Railway Corporation, with significant debt and underutilized assets, could benefit from a DOGE-inspired review to optimize its operations.
2. Leveraging Technology for Efficiency and Transparency
DOGE advocates using technology to streamline processes and make government spending data to be publicly accessible. In Ethiopia, procurement processes are often opaque and bureaucratic, with the Ethiopian Public Procurement and Property Administration Agency reporting in 2011 that 64% of public organizations’ budgets go to procurement, yet inefficiencies persist. Adopting digital platforms for real-time budget monitoring and procurement tracking could reduce corruption and administrative delays, aligning with DOGE’s tech-driven philosophies.
3. Eliminating Redundant Programs and Bureaucracy
DOGE seeks to abolish overlapping or obsolete government programs and reducing bureaucratic administrations. Ethiopia’s current decentralized federal system, with twelve regional states and two city administrations, sometimes results in duplicated efforts. For example, both federal and regional governments fund similar agricultural extension services, leading to inefficiencies. A DOGE-like review could consolidate these programs under a single, efficient framework, which will result in saving resources while improving service deliveries.
4. Focusing on Outcome-Based Spending
DOGE emphasizes measurable outcomes over inputs, ensuring taxpayer money delivers tangible results. In Ethiopia, federal spending often prioritizes inputs, such as hiring more staff, over outcomes like improved literacy rates. The General Education Quality Improvement Program for Equity (GEQIP-E) has increased school enrolment, but teacher quality and student outcomes still lag behind. Shifting to an outcome-based model, tying funds to performance metrics, could optimize spending and aligned with DOGE’s focus.
5. Streamlining Ethiopian Federal Spending
Ethiopia’s federal budget for 2024/25 is approximately 971.2 billion ETB (about $17 billion USD), with significant allocations to recurrent expenditures (salaries, administration, accounting appx. 46%) and capital projects, accounting appx. 29%. However, inefficiencies undermine its impact.
Taking in to account the DOGE’s frameworks in place, let us see how Ethiopia can reduce federal government wastes and streamline its budget spending inefficiencies;
The status-queue:
- Recurrent spending, including salaries for a large public workforce, consumes over 40% of the budget. This figure tells that the Ethiopian civil service is overstaffed, with low productivity in some sectors, as evidenced by studies showing administrative costs outweighing service delivery outcomes, in all possible assumptions.
- Procurement delays and corruption inflate costs, with studies estimating a 20-30% cost inflation due to inefficiencies, equating to billions of ETB lost annually.
- Intergovernmental Fiscal Transfers (IGFTs) to woredas (districts) account for a large share of spending, but weak oversight leads to misallocation. The Promoting Basic Services (PBS) Program has improved service delivery, yet disparities persist, as rural areas remain underserved.
DOGE-Inspired Fixes:
- By implementing a workforce audit to identify redundancies, and introducing performance-based contracts, the government could potentially save billions of ETB annually. From this saving, the budget can be reallocated to fund capital investments like rural electrification or health infrastructure.
Example: If Ethiopia can reduce recurrent costs from the total budget by 10%, savings would be approximately 97.12 billion ETB, enough to fund new schools or hospitals.
- Centralize procurement under a transparent, tech-enabled system and privatization. For instance, privatizing parts of the Sugar Corporation could generate revenue and reduce losses.
Example: If procurement inefficiencies are reduced by 50%, savings could reach 15% of the procurement budget, or around 46.14 billion ETB, based on the 64% procurement share of the budget.
- Strengthen accountability mechanisms for IGFTs, using DOGE’s focus on measurable results. Digital dashboards tracking woreda-level spending and outcomes could ensure funds are reaching intended beneficiaries, as well as reducing waste.
Example: Enhancing oversight could reduce misallocation by 20%, saving approximately 19.42 billion ETB annually, based on IGFTs being a significant budget component.
Potential Impacts with Quantitative Analysis
As reflected above, applying DOGE’s approaches could yield substantial impacts in improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the federal budget. Lets summarize the quantitative analysis recommended above to bring more clarity to the context, as shown in the below summary table.
| Scenario | Potential Savings (Billion ETB) | Impact |
| Reduce recurrent costs by 10% | 97.12 | Fund new capital projects, e.g., schools or hospitals |
| Reduce procurement waste by 50% | 46.14 | Increase budget flexibility for social programs |
| Improve govt offices efficiency by 25% | 29.28 (hypothetical, based on losses) | Generate revenue, reduce subsidies, e.g., Sugar Corporation turnaround |
| Enhance IGFT oversight by 20% | 19.42 | Ensure funds reach rural areas, reduce disparities |
Assuming all DOGE-led scenarios recommended above are implemented, total savings could reach approximately 192 billion ETB, or about 19.8% of the 2024/25 budget, significantly enhancing fiscal space for development.
For instance, out of the projected saving, if the the rural health spending can be increased by 15%, it could serve an additional 10 million rural residents, potentially reducing maternal mortality rates by 5%, based on historical trends. In addition, redirecting these savings to capital expenditures could boost GDP growth by 0.5-1%, as per World Bank estimates for infrastructure investment impacts.
Conclusion
Indeed, Ethiopia can learn from DOGE, a U.S.-proposed efficiency initiative, to address its federal spending inefficiencies (of the $17 billion budget, of the FY 2024/25). Key lessons include auditing wasteful spending patterns, using technology to cut procurement corruption (saving 46.14 billion ETB), eliminating redundancies in its decentralized system, and focusing on outcomes over inputs.
Reforms could reduce recurrent costs (97.12 billion ETB savings), enhance oversight of regional transfers (19.42 billion ETB), and from service sectors, potentially saving 192 billion ETB, or a total of 19.8% of the budget can be saved. Revamping intergovernmental relations, public financial management, and improving governance could boost health, infrastructure, and GDP growth for Ethiopia’s 120 million people.
In the next article, we will deep-dive in to specific sectors budget allocations and spending patterns, underlining the area of inefficiencies that needs to be reformed.
Join the conversation, share your thoughts on how Ethiopia can cut waste and boost efficiency in the comments below!
Key Citations
