Others have tried to represent it as a nationalist revolution—similar to that of Algeria or Angola—which was pushed to the brink by the Eritrean revolt. However, the 1974 Ethiopian revolution was unique to the African continent in both depth and magnitude. It was a social upheaval of dramatic proportions, the result of a historical process that had been unfolding over several decades. The political convulsion in question was directly tied to modern education, modern educated elites, and the contradictions inherent in a traditional polity that was attempting to survive with all its innate characteristics, even when modernization had introduced entirely new and different vistas to the country’s body politic. Careful analysis shows that Haile Selassie was not overthrown by the military, and that the 1974 revolution was not merely an ethnic revolt, although narrow nationalist revolts did indeed contribute to its outcome. Rather, the crucial and decisive deathblow that crushed the Haile Selassie regime emanated from the methodical forays of the students and teachers who were the products of the modern school system.
It is an accepted fact that the modernization of any traditional, developing nation requires the introduction of modern education that is based on science and technology. This has given rise to a concerted move by international agencies to introduce massive financial aid into development schemes that usually link education with political and economic development. However, the campaigns, aimed at producing more skilled labor, have not succeeded in transforming Third World countries in the direction of equitable distribution of resources. In areas where industrial development took place and created employment for a section of the urban population, the labor supply increased at a faster rate than available jobs. The inevitable consequence is that the unemployed intellectuals, liberated from the constraints of past tradition, have rebelled against their Western educators and their own indigenous rulers who, in most cases, are autocratic and depend militarily, economically, and politically on the metropolitan nations.
In spite of the above pattern, many scholars keep blaming the systematic instability and underdevelopment problems of the Third World countries as emanating solely from the inherent backward