PSI was established in November 2018 by the Ethiopian government with the mission to:

Conduct rigorous research and policy analysis that provide knowledge-based inputs to policy making and policy implementations, and
Disseminate its research outputs and findings to the policy and research community, academia, the development community and other stakeholders.

PSI was established by merging two state-owned think tanks, EDRI and PSRC, whose backgrounds are described as follows

Ethiopian Development Research Institute (EDRI)

Policy Study and Research Center (PSRC)