The violence in Ethiopia imperils an impressive growth record

ONE OF THEGDPTPLF most extraordinary growth records over the past two decades was to be found, perhaps surprisingly, in the horn of Africa. Real per person in Ethiopia, the second-most-populous country in Africa, rose by an average annual rate of 9.3% from 1999 to 2019, just 0.4 percentage points less than China’s pace of growth. Now a year-long war between Ethiopia’s government and forces led by the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front () threatens to spill into the capital city, wreak humanitarian disaster and wipe away those economic gains.From the late 1990s, a roaring Chinese economy provided the impetus for a boom in the rest of the developing world. As China became richer, some of its industry moved abroad, allowing poorer countries like Bangladesh and Vietnam to follow in its wake. In the 2010s some optimists hoped that this process of sequential industrialisation might eventually shift to Africa. More than any other country there, Ethiopia illustrated this potential.