Maybe it's both. Western countries have long protected their domestic agricultural industries (while calling for free trade for the products they want to export).
How does it explain Kenya, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Tanzania's foray into food production?
There just isn't capital in Ethiopia. It's literally one of the least developed countries on earth.
The country had a civil war from 1974-1991 that killed 1.7 million people, a civil war/war of independence by Eritrea from 1961-1991 that killed 225k people, a second war with Eritrea from 1998-2000 that killed 300-500k people, a civil war from 2020 to today that has killed around 200k-600k people, 2 wars with Somalia that killed 35k people, and a number of ethnic insurgencies
In 2000, it's HDI was 0.292 and in 2021 it barely reached 0.498, which is where Vietnam was in the 90s and barely above Afghanistan and the DRC (I'd have compared Ethiopian numbers from the 90s but those don't exist due to the wars above). It's human capital is some of the least developed in the world.
They will get more development in food processing (and in general) because the UAE has been cultivating Abiy, but out of all commodities producers, they are one of the less developed ones.
> protected their domestic agricultural industries
Not at the processing level. Domestic agricultural tariffs are meant to protect commodity prices for farmers, not the processing capacity.
Most low level food processing is now Asian and Brazilian, with multibillion conglomerates like CP Group (Thailand), IndoFood (Indonesia), Mayora (Indonesia), Golden Hope (Malaysia), Kulim (Malaysia), ITC (India), Hindustan Unilever (India), COFCO (China), Foshan Haitian (China), and dozens of SOEs from those countries.
You need an industrial base to process food at an industrial scale.
Defending your own agricultural manufacturing makes sense - you want your people to be able to eat + not have risks related to other counries/ politics/ transport.
There are lots of risks, and those are not at all the largest ones. The entire world relies on international agricultural trade and it's never been better fed.
One reason is that the resources are much greater - if one place has a bad year, another can have a good year. Also, each location can produce what it does best, what its land, capital, skills, and infrastructure best support. Then other locations do what they do best, and we get the most economical, the best of everything.
Economic nationalism is, among other things, a ruse by some businesses to monopolize markets (not having competition) and get subsidized by the public.
