The Challenge

Public-private dialogue in Ethiopia had a long history of producing consultation records without producing decisions. Business associations and government agencies met regularly, but the meetings lacked structured agendas, clear decision points, or mechanisms for following up on commitments. The private sector participated with declining enthusiasm, because the process rarely produced outcomes that justified the time investment.

Government participants were often not empowered to make decisions within the dialogue process, which meant that even when agreement was reached, it required additional sign-off that frequently stalled. The result was a dialogue infrastructure that was formally active but functionally stalled, and a private sector increasingly skeptical that the process could produce change.

Our Approach

We redesigned the PPD mechanism starting from the decision-making constraints on both sides. On the government side, this meant clarifying which decisions could be made at the working level, which required ministerial sign-off, and how to structure dialogue to produce actionable outputs within those constraints. On the private sector side, it meant engaging with business associations to identify the specific regulatory and operational issues that were most affecting members, and restructuring the agenda to prioritize issues where resolution was achievable.

The redesigned platform included a structured issue cycle, a tracking system for commitments and responses, and a facilitation protocol that guided discussions toward specific decisions rather than general feedback.

Key Activities

  • Diagnosis of existing PPD mechanism failures
  • Stakeholder mapping on both government and private sector sides
  • Decision authority mapping within government
  • Agenda redesign focused on trackable, resolvable issues
  • Development of PPD facilitation protocol
  • Design of commitment tracking and accountability system
  • Training for facilitators and government counterparts
  • Pilot facilitation of redesigned sessions

Outcomes

The redesigned platform produced a measurable increase in the proportion of issues raised that received formal government responses, and reduced the average time from issue submission to response. Private sector participation and satisfaction improved as participants saw that the process could produce outcomes. The facilitation protocol was adopted by the host institution and used to train new facilitators, embedding the approach in the ongoing operation of the platform rather than making it dependent on external support.