This paper raises the question: Has the Ethiopian developmental state learned the lessons of the East Asian developmental states between the lines and to the end in order to claim to be a truly developmental state? Also, based on a re-collection of some seven (07) ‘bundles of lessons’ from the East Asian developmental states and an examination of the Ethiopian developmental state against such historical backdrop, the paper debunks that the Ethiopian developmental state has un-learned/wrongly learned more lessons than it has (correctly) learned. As a result, it is increasingly becoming a talking and not a working developmental state and consequently an ‘inflated idea’ with too broad and too vague meaning to bear any significant value for those who expected it to deliver as high as it promised. The paper then concludes that the state of art portrayal of the Ethiopian developmental state as one modeled on the East Asian developmental states is an erroneous leading discourse in the making and merits serious attention. The paper thus calls for a robust revisiting of such portrayal through a thorough re-reading of the Ethiopian developmental state from the perspective of the real experiences of the East Asian developmental states.

Keywords: Debunking, East Asian developmental states (ADS), Ethiopian developmental state (DDS), un-learned/wrongly learned lessons.