Uses and Users of Justice in Africa : The Case of Ethiopia's Federal Courts

This report presents the findings of one of a series of studies sponsored by the World Bank on the 'uses and users' of courts in the regions where it participates in justice reform projects. These studies typically use aggregate statistics and random samples of cases files to analyze court performance. The results of these studies are useful to countries and to the Bank in separating real from imagined problems, identifying their causes, planning reform programs, and tracking their results over time. Although in Africa court use is typically restricted to a small portion of the population, most donor funding goes to the formal court system and most countries are interested in expanding access to the latter. Hence, the studies can help evaluate those investments and point them in directions where they are likely to do the most good in advancing objectives like increased and more equitable access, delay reduction, and satisfactory resolution of common disputes. Ethiopia is one of the poorest countries in Africa and thus in the world. As in the rest of Africa, traditional dispute resolution mechanisms and a series of 'hybrid institutions' serve a majority of the population. However, its judicial system is unusual in several aspects. First, since 1994, the government has been actively engaged in expanding access to the formal system and improving the professionalism of its judges. Second, at both the federal and sub-national levels, governments have been actively extending the reach of the court system, both by adding courts and judges and by using a variety of additional mechanisms. Third, and most important for this study, for the past ten years, the federal judiciary has been promoting the development of a computerized case tracking system to monitor performance.