MPIfG Welcomes Visiting Researcher from Ethiopia

In April 2027, Endalcachew Bayeh from the Department of Political Science and International Studies at Bahir Dar University (Ethiopia) will return to the MPIfG as a visiting researcher after being awarded a Max Planck Africa Mobility Grant (MPAMG). He first visited the Institute in 2025 under the ARTEMIS mentoring program. In his project with the working title “The Politics of Growth Models in Ethiopia: Regime Survival at the Core,” Bayeh explores the political rationale behind Ethiopia’s successive shifts in development models. He contends that governing elites pursue specific models not solely for economic growth but also to consolidate political power, and that these shifts are shaped by domestic, international, and geopolitical factors. Bayeh draws in his study on perspectives from comparative and international political economy. With the Ethiopian case, he aims to expand growth model research beyond its primary focus, which to date has been on advanced capitalist economies, to include the Global South perspective. The Max Planck Society’s MPAMG aims to help stem brain drain in Africa, strengthen scientific cooperation, and support early-career researchers from Africa. The initiative is intended for researchers in the final year of their PhD or who earned their PhD in the past ten years and offers flexible stays at a Max Planck Institute in Germany. The MPAMG is part of the Max Planck Africa Initiative, to which the ARTEMIS mentoring program and a virtual lecture series also belong.