The Works of Dr. Samuel Taddesse
Since the end of World War II, multilateral organizations, bilateral donors, and national governments have spent billions of dollars each year to address development challenges and inprove human outcomes.
While there has been some progress, many development challenges continue to recurr resulting in income inequality, poverty, civil conflict and untold misery, due to wrongheaded governance and economic development policies, regulations, and interventions.
Social Accountability in Ethiopia is a comprehensive guidebook with numerous examples on the use of social accountability—a process by which citizens, communities, policymakers, and government officials are engaged in constructive dialogue about justifications for policies and actions, among other elements. It offers detailed and thorough discussion of how social accountability tools are used to objectively assess government service delivery performance and the mechanisms used for addressing service delivery deficits in constructive and collaborative processes between citizens and government actors.
The primary business of government is to develop, implement and strengthen the conditions that enhance the quality of life of all citizens. Taxation is required to fund government operations to produce and deliver the essential public goods and services that enhance and strengthen citizens’ quality of life and standard of living. Countries like Ethiopia that are not endowed with natural resources such as oil, minerals, and precious metals rely heavily on tax revenues collected from citizens, residents, and businesses.
Taxation relates to the policies, regulations, and processes involved in deciding how much each citizen, resident, and business should contribute to funding government activities (i.e., tax policy). It is also about how these contributions should be collected from citizens, residents, and businesses (i.e., tax administration).