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Abstract
The Ethiopian government is an active partner in the general trend in Africa to hand out large tracts of land to foreign companies and governments for big commercial farming in order to enhance national development and growing energy needs. Projected enclave enterprises take off on lands of low density and use but often inhabited or used by a variety of local peoples that have no legal title to their land, despite their customary and usufruct rights, because all land in Ethiopia is state property (since 1975). The economic impact of these enterprises (export crop farms, biofuel enterprises) is expected to be mainly on the national level (land lease fee income, export product growth), and to a lesser extent on that of the regional governments.
While there are precedents to these land deals in Ethiopia, doling out local lands without much consultation of local inhabitants or land users (e.g. in the large-scale resettlement schemes and state farms), this time the controversy is augmented by insecurity about long-term ecological and food security effects and the generation of friction and counter-discourses that will make the schemes foci of conflict. National territory – ‘the motherland’ – and culturally significant locations are also being leased out, threatening social systems and cultural identities of local groups. Apart from the issue of food insecurity effects, economic dependency on foreign sources may increase. Nationalist issues thus may mingle with social, economic, and cultural heritage issues in emerging concerns on the large-scale leases. Critical discourse and protest on this topic is discouraged by the authorities. The paper will discuss a number of arguments in this debate, comment on some incipient large-scale land acquisition projects, and sketch a research agenda, focusing on the legal and social issues.
Notes
1. Cited in: D. Levine, ‘Protecting Ethiopia?’, online paper at: http://www.eineps.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2806 (accessed 4 June 2010).
2. See: www.hindu.com/2011/05/26/stories/2011052667031400.htm (accessed 8 September 2011).
3. A first version of this paper was presented at the international NVAS conference “Africa for Sale: Analysing and Theorizing Foreign Land Claims and Acquisitions”, at the University of Groningen, 28–29 October 2010. I am grateful to various participants in our session for critical comments and suggestions. I also thank the anonymous reviewer of JCAS for giving feedback with very helpful suggestions to improve this text.
4. Even Uganda, with not much land to spare, has reputedly leased out c. 2 mln acres to Egypt; see N. Williams, ‘Alarm bells over Africa land deals’, Current Biology (19(23), 2009, p. R1053.
5. Interview, Addis Ababa, 3 August 2009. Information on the Ethiopian case is based on interviews done in the country in July–August 2009 and September 2010.
6. The high-strung expectations about jatropha curcas were dimmed by a number of conspicuous failures, for example, in India; see: ‘Govt's biofuel dream fails to take off’, in: Business Standard (New Delhi), 27 April 2010. See also the critical report of the African Biodiversity Network et al., 2010, Biofuels: A Failure for Africa, online: www.gaiafoundation.org/sites/default/files/Biofuels_A_Failure_for_Africa_Dec2010_lowres.pdf. In 2009 a 5000 ha. jatropha plantation in Wolaitta was closed due to disappointing yields. A shift to castor beans is in progress, but also these yields prove disappointing. It has become evident that jatropha does not flourish in ‘marginal’, rain-poor soils, but needs better watered, fertile areas, and thus becomes a competitor of food crop cultivation.
7. See: Ministry of Mines and Energy, Ethiopia (2007), Biofuel Development and Utilisation Strategy. Addis Ababa: MoME. Here the estimated potential surface for biofuel cultivation was given as 23, 3 mln ha., roughly one-fifth of the country's total agricultural surface.
8. In late 2010 there were 49 domestic investors in this sector with projects above a 1000 ha.
9. One of the biggest domestic investors was BDFC Ethiopia Industry P.L.C., which in 2008 obtained a claim to 18,000 ha. of land to grow sugarcane (for ethanol and su gar) in the Awi Zone, Amhara Region (Oakland Institute Citation2011, 2). Another was the Ambasel Jatropha Project, a private (ruling party-linked) company that obtained 20,000 ha. of land, with an option to expand to 80,000 ha., for a jatropha plantation in a forest in Metekel Zone, Amhara Region. Production was said to be mainly for the domestic market.
10. Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front, with at its core the leading insurgent movement of the 1970s–80s, the Tigray People's Liberation Front, ruling still.
11. See: N. Yaffe and L. Dismore, 2010a, ‘Landgrabs – a view from the ground’ (Online: www.globaldashboard.org/2010/10-11/landgrabs-a-view-from-the-ground, accessed 17 October 2010).
12. See: UN (Policy Analysis and Networks Branch of the Division for Sustainable Development Department of Economic and Social Affairs), ‘Foreign land purchases for agriculture: what impact on sustainable development?’ Sustainable Development Innovation Brief no. 8 (2010), p. 6.
13. See for 2010: ‘Ethiopia seeks urgent food aid for 6 million’, AP news message, 12 August 2010 (http://article.wn.com/view/2010/08/12/Ethiopia_seeks_urgent_food_aid_for_6_million, accessed 30 September 2010). Ethiopia's leadership is, however, optimistic: cf. ‘Ethiopia won't need food aid after 2015: Meles’ AFP news message, 15 September 2010 (Online: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100915/wl_africa_afp/ethiopiadroughteconomypolitics, accessed 15 September 2010).
14. Cf. N. Yaffe and L. Dismore, 2010b, ‘Ethiopian case study illustrates shortcomings of “land grab” debate’ (Online:http://newsecuritybeat.blogspot.com/2010/10/beat-on-ground-ethiopian-case-study.html, accessed 22 October 2010).
15. As was also noted in: T. McConnell and J. Overdorf, ibid, ‘New scramble for Africa's land’, in Global Post, 5 October 2010.
16. ‘EPRDF banks on outsourcing food production’, Indian Ocean Newsletter, no. 1294, 9 October 2010. But, reportedly, corruption around the LSLAs also frequently occurs on the national level.
17. Ethiopia is the largest donor-money recipient in Sub-Saharan Africa.
18. Incidentally, the sums acquired with the leases do not appear as income in the Reports of the National Bank of Ethiopia or in the federal government budget.
19. With a total of 740,000 acres leased, effective six years after signing the agreement, this would be $ 1.85 mln annually for the company's total area.
20. See: http://nazret.com/blog/index.php/2010/03/07/justifiable_concerns_over_ethiopia_s_rec?blog=15.
21. Basically it is a non-constitutional and non-electoral internal party control mechanism.
22. ‘The Best Investment Opportunity in SNNP South Omo. Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development’, at: www.eap.gov.et/Investment-Opportunities/SNNP-Regional-State-InvestmentAreas,of10March2009 (accessed 20 September 2009, since removed. Accessed 20 May 2010 online: http://assets.survivalinternational.org/documents/194/SouthOmoAgrInvestmentAreas.pdf).
23. Cited in: J. McLure, ‘Ethiopia leases land for agriculture to earn foreign exchange’,Bloomberg news message, 11 November 2009 (accessed 17 January 2010)
24. UN (Policy Analysis and Networks Branch of the Division for Sustainable Development Department of Economic and Social Affairs), ‘Foreign land purchases for agriculture: what impact on sustainable development?’ Sustainable Development Innovation Brief no. 8 (2010), p. 6.
25. Cf. ‘EPRDF banks on outsourcing food production’, Indian Ocean Newsletter no. 1294, 9 October 2010.
26. The Vitellaria paradoxa, also known as Butyrospermum parkii.
27. See: ‘Ethiopian “sacred forests” sold to Indian tea producer’ (Online: http://farmlandgrab.org/post/view/18190).
28. See ‘Ecology is key to effective aid, UN told’, in: Nature 437 (8 September 2005), p. 180.
29. See P. Heinlein, ‘Foreign agro firms scoop up Ethiopian farmland’, VOA news, 22 February 2010 (Online: http://www.voanews.com/english/news/africa/east/Foreign-Agro-Firms-Scoop-Up-Ethiopian-Farmland–84973402.html, accessed 4 September 2010).
30. See also the film ‘Food crisis and the global land grab’, a Planet for Sale2 documentary, at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU1-PpxqeZc.
31. See: ‘Ethiopia: HRLHA presents concern over land grabs at the UN 13th session Human Rights Council’ (Online: http://www.oromoindex.com/latest-news/ethiopia-hrlha-presents-concern-over-land-grabs-at-the-un-13th-session-human-gadaacom-oduu-news.html, accessed 30 August 2010).
32. Cf. the farmer cited in: ‘Land grabbing still rampant in Ethiopia’, in: The Reporter (Addis Ababa), 4 September 2010, p. 9.
33. See: ‘Al-Amoudi to farm inside Gambella National Park’ (message of 10 December 2009), online: http://www.geocities.com/~dagmawi/Zebenya/Zebenya.html, accessed 23 December 2009.
34. For a quite radical view, see: GRAIN, ‘Land grabs threaten Anyuak – GRAIN interviews Nyikaw Ochalla’, in Seedling, April 2010b, pp. 12–13 (http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=680)
35. In interviews with farmers in the Southern Region, Wolaitta, Oromiya and Wollo (2004–2009) this point was constantly reiterated.
36. Interview with informants in Addis Ababa, 3 August 2009, 9 September 2010.
37. Cf. ‘Harrisons Malayalam plans to develop plantations in Ethiopia’, online: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2010/09/15/stories/2010091552060300.htm (accessed 1 October 2010).
38. I could not get confirmation of this. The extent of unconfirmed rumours circulating indicates the apprehensions and the lack of transparency in the LSLA business.
39. Cf. ‘Land grabbing still rampant in Ethiopia’, in: The Reporter (Addis Ababa), 4 September 2010.
40. One example: ‘Sululta town residents revolt against land giveaway’, ESAT news (in Amharic), 12 November 2010. http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Sululta+town+residents&aq=f See also Ray and Roy Citation2010.
41. A confirmation of this came in the recent critical but well-researched report of Human Rights Watch (Citation2010), although quickly denied by the Ethiopian government and the DAG, the donor countries’ group in Ethiopia (See their website: http://www.dagethiopia.org).
42. See: US Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, 2009 Human Rights Report: Ethiopia (Onlin e: http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2009/af/135953.htm).
43. A study of the legacy of the land expropriations for large state and private farms in the Afar area since the 1970s would yield lessons: these ventures undermined Afar livelihoods and probably contributed to making the Afar area what it is now: one of the most famine-prone in Ethiopia.
44. However, as the current phase of the global land rush will end in a couple of years when the lands will have been divided among the foreign players, it is likely that the central government will substantially raise the fees, whereupon the foreign investors will face the choice to pay or to leave and lose on their investments already made. This tendency already started in 2011; see Oakland Institute Citation2011, 29.