Governance Failures Undermine Environmental Safeguards on Ethiopia’s Flagship Road Corridor

Ethiopia has poured billions of dollars into its road network over the past two decades, transforming travel times across a country larger than France and Germany combined. Yet a new study of one of its most ambitious infrastructure undertakings suggests that the environmental safeguards meant to keep that expansion sustainable exist largely on paper. Research published in Environmental Management examined the Modjo–Moyale Interregional Road Project, a flagship corridor linking the central highlands to the Kenyan border, and found that while the paperwork of environmental assessment is being dutifully completed, the substance of environmental protection is quietly falling away.

The study, led by Mekonen Mekasha of Addis Ababa University together with professors Belay Simane and Engdawork Assefa, set out to answer a question that has dogged environmental policy in developing economies for decades: does Environmental Impact Assessment, or EIA, actually change what happens on the ground, or does it merely produce documents? To find out, the researchers deployed a concurrent parallel mixed-methods design, combining quantitative survey data from 103 technical experts working across the road sector with in-depth qualitative interviews of 16 senior officials drawn from federal and regional government agencies. This dual approach allowed the team to measure perceptions of effectiveness statistically while also probing the institutional reasons behind the numbers.

The analytical framework rested on four widely used dimensions of EIA effectiveness. Procedural effectiveness asks whether the legally required steps, screening, scoping, report preparation, review and approval, are carried out on schedule. Substantive effectiveness asks whether the process actually improves environmental outcomes, from protecting watersheds and wildlife corridors to reducing soil erosion along cut-and-fill slopes. Normative effectiveness concerns whether the process embodies values such as transparency, public participation and social equity. Transactive effectiveness, the least studied of the four, measures whether the costs of running the assessment system are justified by the benefits it delivers.

The results revealed a striking asymmetry. Procedural effectiveness scored relatively well: environmental impact statements are prepared, reviewed and cleared, and projects obtain the certificates that allow construction to proceed. But the other three dimensions lagged far behind. Mitigation measures recommended in assessment reports were frequently not carried through into construction contracts or supervision plans. Monitoring of predicted impacts during and after construction was sporadic at best, and in many cases effectively absent once the approval stage had been passed. Public consultation, where it occurred, tended to be superficial, announced late and conducted in forms that gave affected communities little genuine influence over project design or compensation decisions.

Behind these weaknesses, the researchers identified a consistent root cause: governance. Poor governance, characterized by a lack of accountability, institutional misalignment and weak enforcement, undermined the performance of the entire EIA system. The Environmental Protection Authority, nominally the regulator, often lacked the staff, technical capacity and political weight to challenge powerful road agencies. Responsibilities for environmental oversight were fragmented across federal and regional bodies with unclear boundaries, allowing responsibility to slip through institutional gaps. When violations occurred, enforcement mechanisms were so feeble that contractors faced few meaningful consequences for ignoring mitigation commitments.

The Modjo–Moyale corridor makes an ideal test case precisely because of its scale and ambition. Stretching hundreds of kilometers from the town of Modjo, south of Addis Ababa, toward the border town of Moyale, the route crosses sharply contrasting ecological zones, from the Rift Valley’s semi-arid lowlands to fertile highland plateaus. Road projects of this magnitude cut through farmland, disturb drainage patterns, generate large volumes of borrow pits and quarries, and open previously remote areas to rapid land-use change. Satellite-based research on Ethiopia’s broader road investment program has already documented how new roads accelerate agricultural expansion and land conversion, making robust environmental follow-up along such corridors not a luxury but a necessity.

The Ethiopian findings echo a broader pattern documented across East Africa and beyond. Studies in Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya and Namibia have similarly reported that EIA systems in the region are procedurally mature but substantively thin, with follow-up and monitoring identified as the weakest links almost everywhere. International best-practice principles for EIA follow-up, first codified by researchers in the mid-2000s, call for continuous monitoring, adaptive management and clear feedback loops between predicted and actual impacts. The Ethiopian case shows how difficult those principles are to institutionalize when the agencies charged with them are under-resourced and politically subordinate to the very projects they are meant to scrutinize.

What distinguishes the new study is its insistence that the remedy is not primarily technical. The authors conclude that the key barriers to effective EIA implementation in Ethiopia’s road sector arise from governance deficiencies rather than from gaps in scientific methodology or legal drafting. Ethiopia has had a mandatory EIA proclamation since 2002, and its assessment guidelines are broadly consistent with international norms. The problem, the researchers argue, lies in how power and accountability are distributed. Improving baseline surveys or adding more sophisticated impact-prediction models will accomplish little if nobody is obliged to act on the findings.

Accordingly, the study prescribes a set of targeted institutional interventions. First, transparency must be strengthened, with assessment reports, monitoring data and compliance records placed in the public domain so that civil society, the media and affected communities can act as external watchdogs. Second, public involvement must move from token consultation to substantive participation, in which community input demonstrably shapes project alignment, mitigation design and compensation schemes. Third, an independent and reliable monitoring system is needed, insulated from the construction agencies it oversees, with statutory authority to halt works, impose penalties and require corrective action when environmental conditions are breached.

The stakes extend well beyond a single road corridor. Ethiopia’s road network is the backbone of a national development strategy that aims to connect landlocked production zones to ports and regional markets, and international lenders including the World Bank and the African Development Bank finance a substantial share of that expansion. If environmental assessment remains a procedural formality, the cumulative costs, degraded watersheds, lost biodiversity, eroded soils and unresolved community grievances, will accumulate silently across thousands of kilometers of asphalt. Conversely, if the governance reforms identified in this study are implemented, the authors argue, EIA could be transformed from a bureaucratic checkpoint into a cornerstone of sustainable development, ensuring that the country’s remarkable infrastructure growth does not come at the expense of the landscapes and livelihoods it traverses.

Subject of Research: Effectiveness of Environmental Impact Assessment in Ethiopian road infrastructure projects

Article Title: Environmental Impact Assessment Effectiveness in Ethiopian Road Infrastructure Projects: Evidence from the Modjo–Moyale Interregional Road Corridor

Article References: Mekasha, M., Simane, B., & Assefa, E. (2026). Environmental Impact Assessment Effectiveness in Ethiopian Road Infrastructure Projects: Evidence from the Modjo–Moyale Interregional Road Corridor. Environmental Management, 76(10), Article 323. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-026-02594-y

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s00267-026-02594-y

Keywords: environmental impact assessment, Ethiopia, road infrastructure, Modjo–Moyale corridor, governance, environmental management, public participation, monitoring, sustainable development, East Africa, institutional capacity, environmental policy