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Zanzibar has had a long unsettled political history from its colonial era to radicalized post-colonial politics. The core source of such politics is the cosmopolitan nature of the isles whereby races and identities reside on the island for a long time. Such nature made the political and social groups categorized and differentiated from others through identity. As a result, the struggle for the owner and ruler of the island becomes a high concern among the groups in the society. This situation resulted in turbulent politics for many years with violence, killings, and hostility. In 2010, Zanzibar inters in the negotiation to solve the political problem that marred the island for a long time. The Government of National Unity (GNU) which involves the sharing of power between the first and second winners was agreed upon as the structure of the leadership style of Zanzibar. This was done through referendum and constitution amendment. As political identity theory reveals that; political elites use identity groups for their political benefits. They organized and influence their political activities through the identity they are familiar with. So, in solving such an identity politics problem, the identity tragedy must be transformed and accommodated the rational politics. This paper seeks to examine the extent to which power-sharing transforms identity-based politics and is accommodated in Zanzibar. The study was conducted in three districts to represent Zanzibar. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected from five in-depth interviews and two hundreds and eight seven questionnaires respectively. The in-depth interviews involved the GNU's current and former top leaders, members of the Cabinets, and political activists. The questionnaire involves the citizens from districts Mjini, Micheweni, and Kusini. The study found that to some extent the power-sharing successes in reducing the exercises of identity politics in Zanzibar. Three angles have been justifying that reduction. First is the existence and increase of political trust in society to large extent. The second one is the equal treatment of all identity groups, races, and regions by government institutions and society. The Last one is the exercises of political activities without the influence of historical and identity political narrations. This study pinpoints two important aspects of transformational identity politics through power-sharing. The first one is the role of leadership in transforming the mindset and bringing people together. The second one is social change due to generations' natural changes and opportunities. The study concludes that power-sharing can be the source of identity transformation from worst uses to recognition in the society. This will happen only if the power-sharing institution is set to consider the potentiality of mutual recognition of self and respecting social, cultural, and ideological differences in society.

Public expenditure could play an important role in promoting economic growth and poverty reduction. Given the significant role of public spending, this study empirically explores the impacts of public spending on long-run economic growth and poverty reduction in Ethiopia. In particular, the researcher assessed the effects of public spending (disaggregated by function into human capital and agriculture) that can be financed via government saving or foreign saving on economic growth and poverty reduction in the country through its indirect effects on total factor productivity. The researcher employed a dynamic computable general equilibrium model that linked with micro simulation model that is solved recursively for the period 2009-2020. The CGE model used the updated 2009/10 social accounting matrix (SAM) while the MS model employed the 2004/05 household income, consumption and expenditure (HICE) survey to investigate household poverty via the consumption expenditure changes from the CGE model. The results of the study revealed that the government spending either allocated towards human capital or agriculture has improved the macro-economy, welfare and poverty situation of the country regardless of financing options. Given high elasticity of public expenditure on human capital with respect to total factor productivity, public spending targeted towards human capital resulted in high GDP growth and hence significantly reduced the poverty as compared to expenditure targeted agricultural sector. Moreover, the magnitudes of the welfare and poverty improvements is differ among financing options where the improvement of welfare of households and reduction of poverty is large under foreign saving means of financing against government saving financing schemes. Financing additional public expenditure through foreign saving increases the consumption of all households group more than financing through domestic resources (government saving) as households are supposed to save more at the expense of consumption under government saving financing option. In each simulation, the urban households reap more benefit from the improvement of income and consumption than rural households.

The objective of this thesis is to examine the production and marketing performance of vegetables in the eastern and central parts of Ethiopia. Efficiency estimation and identification of their determinants in mixed-crop and market-driven (vegetables) production systems was performed in two districts of eastern Ethiopia. A significant economic inefficiency was observed for both systems, with lower efficiency scores for the market-driven farm production. The improvement in efficiency calls for institutional capacity building that enhances asset and capital formation, extension and credit services, consumption and family planning know-how and crop specialization. Results based on the comparison of the two production systems show that lower economic efficiency scores for the market-driven production is attributable to limited access to capital markets, high consumer spending, and large family size. Furthermore, an assessment of the marketing performance of vegetables is conducted. Since most produce sales are based on relational contracting with traders, the study of market performance encompasses an analysis of grower-trader marketing contract enforcement and factors influencing it. Results show that despite its poor performance, contract enforcement is mainly due to mutual trust and brokers' mediation. Information access, trader-specific investments, farmer's age, whether the buyer is a trader, dependency on the trader, relationship duration, transaction frequency, and distance to the trader were found to be the significant factors affecting contract enforceability through brokers. Risks related to perishability and seasonality of supply, illiteracy, and client-buyer's type were found to be the significant factors causing contract breaches by the traders. In addition, traders' produce pricing behavior in the procurement of vegetables from growers is analyzed. Results show that traders capture a significant proportion of the marketing surplus due to market power and audacity to absorb risk with this share varying along the degree of perishability and across cities. In general, the results of this study reveal the existence of considerable economic inefficiency in production, poor contract enforcement, and imperfect competition in the marketing of vegetables. The findings of this study indicate the need for governmental and/or private institutions interventions to improve the production and marketing performance of vegetables by providing the necessary institutional support to the smallholder farmers in the study areas.