Abstract:
Ethiopia was embroiled in spiraling & soaring ethnic and a state-based large-scale armed
conflict that has continued for more than a year. Therefore, these studies were designed to
explore the impact of this state based armed conflict on enterprises in Ethiopia. This study is the
first to explore the short-run impact of armed conflict on firms’ performance and their
perceptions of the business environment. We focus on the 2021 conflict between TPLF and
Ethiopia EFDR Government and use the Business Environment and Enterprise Performance
Survey data before and after this armed conflict. Researcher can exploit the variation in armed
conflict exposure to identify these relationships. The difference-in-differences estimates suggest
that despite the short duration, armed conflict had a significant and negative impact on income,
sales and employment for at least a subset of firms. Perceptions of a few business environment
obstacles were also affected, and necessarily negatively. The results suggest that young firms
experienced a scarring effect, which could lead them to close down prematurely. Longer-term
impacts of the conflict on firms’ performance and local economic development can therefore not
be ruled out. Descriptive statistics results showed several challenges are facing MSMEs due to
the current conflict which destroyed around 12.9%, major damage 36.5% of the MSME's in the
country. The Enterprises were suffered 44.9%, 33.1%, 8.4% and 13.5% of Economic, Physical,
Human and All type of damage/losses respectively. This study found that after the shock the
enterprises reduce employment particularly temporary employees are fired out. The DID
analysis results showed that in average 1.870 million birr losses each Enterprise and that
negative income shocks reduce employments level by 4.528 in averages. The researchers exploit
the current armed conflict as a negative shock to enterprises and economically & statistically
significant impact. Moreover, the researcher recommended certain Strategies to boost and
improve the role of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises in the country's economic growth and
development and avoiding the challenges.