Currency - Ethiopia - 100 Birr - Year 2011

Item Code: 164/et-2

Year	2011
Obverse	Lion head; Farmer ploughing
Reverse	Man with a microscope in a laboratory
Size	147 x 72 mm

Obverse description 

Agriculture in Ethiopia

Agriculture, which constituted 46 percent of GDP and more than 80 percent of exports in 1998, is by far the most important economic activity in the Ethiopian economy (1998 EST.). An estimated 85 percent of the population are engaged in agricultural production. Important agricultural exports include coffee, hides and skins (leather products), pulses, oilseeds, beeswax, and, increasingly, tea. Domestically, meat and dairy production play an integral role for subsistence purposes.

Coffee harvest in Ethiopia. Coffee, which originated in Ethiopia, is the largest foreign exchange earner.

Socialist agricultural reforms conducted by the Derg included land reforms that led to relatively equitable patterns of land tenure. The state maintained complete ownership of land, and state marketing boards were created with monopolistic rights to purchase and sell agricultural commodities. Currently, the government retains the right of ultimate land ownership in the agricultural sector, though most marketing boards have been abolished. While marketing boards enabled farmers to sell their crops to the highest bidder, they also required the dissolution of minimum prices for agricultural commodities. Since the government normally purchased agricultural commodities at low prices, however, the abolition of marketing boards may prove to be a positive development.

With 25 percent of all Ethiopians—approximately 15 million people—gaining their livelihoods from coffee production, the coffee sector is the most important agricultural activity. Coffee has long held a central role in Ethiopia's export economy and, as early as the mid-1970s, about 55 percent of the nation's total export earnings derived from coffee exports. This percentage share remained more or less constant until the mid-1990s, when it increased to an average of 63 percent of total export earnings between 1995 to 1998.

With 75 million heads of livestock, Ethiopia has the largest concentration of livestock on the African continent. Ethiopia is also the continent's leading producer and exporter of beeswax and honey. The country has approximately 7 million bee colonies. Other important agricultural activities include tea production, which has reached approximately 4,000 metric tons of output in recent years, and cotton and sugar production. Moreover, there are opportunities for expanding cultivation and export of dried fruits, cut flowers, and canned vegetable products.

Traditional farming tools in Ethiopia

Almost all farming tools in Ethiopia are traditional and made of from different wood materials. These tools includes sickle, pick axe, plough shaft, ploughshare, plow, beam and animal force as a machines. The plough shaft, beam and ploughshare are made of wood and the sickle, pick axe, plow are made of metal. Ploughing the land using these tools is ambiguous and time consuming. According to Ethiopia farming, this ploughing the land to prepare the soil for sow requires around two quarter of a year. ploughing the land to soften the land takes three months and from sowing and seedling to the harvesting of the crops requires three to four months. Ethiopian farmers plough their land by combining the above tools for such three months to get yearly consumed food. The major product in are teff, wheat, maize, sesame, Niger, linseed etc. in addition to these cereals, they produce different types of fruits and coffee which are not seasonal.

Reverse description

Education System in Ethiopia

Even with one of the fastest growing economies in Africa, Ethiopia remains one of the poorest countries in the world. The education system in Ethiopia is less than satisfactory and while it is free and compulsory, only 60 percent of children are enrolled in full-time education.

Education in Ethiopia is compulsory for children between the ages of 5 to 16, but with poor facilities and underprivileged backgrounds, many children do not get a high quality, full-time education. In Ethiopia, 95 percent of primary school teachers receives training, which is higher than the world median of 92 percent. While the quality of teaching is high, the ratio of teacher to a child is 1:64, so children are not able to receive the attention that they need in order to reach their full potential.

Prior to secular education being introduced in the early 1900s, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church dominated education in Ethiopia. Before 1974, the Ethiopian literacy rate was below 10 percent. Since then, the emphasis has been put on increasing this rate and it now stands at 49 percent. Even though this is very low compared to the rest of the world, it is a massive improvement for education in Ethiopia.

Although education in Ethiopia has improved over past years, there are still many difficulties that exist within the system. Currently, core subjects such as science and mathes are being taught in English. As this is neither the teachers’ first language nor the students, the concept of the subject gets lost in translation into Amharic.

Another downfall to education in Ethiopia is the lack of good governance. This occurs throughout the schools and universities across the country and puts the level of quality education at risk. And while the number of school dropouts has reduced, many students still finish school before reaching higher education, which limits their opportunity in the future.

Ethiopia joined the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) in 2004, which has since given grants in order to improve the level of education. Ethiopia has received four GPE grants over the course of 10 years and is currently in its third grant. Between 2014 and 2017, Ethiopia will receive $100 million in order to improve the quality of general education throughout the country.

Previous GPE funding has significantly improved education in Ethiopia. Now, each child in education has a textbook, and 60 percent of schools were inspected in 2015. Teacher training was also provided to 100,000 adults in order to increase the number of qualified teachers throughout the entire school system.

Now, the focus in Ethiopia is to keep children in school and progress to higher education and to reduce the number of school dropouts. This can be done through vocational education, such as technical vocation and education programs. This will ensure that even those who are not in education will receive some kind of training, and will be learning new or improving existing skills.

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