Laga Xaafoo

Implications of Land Policy in Ethiopia

Professor Mohammed Tahiro

The Musket Gave Northerners the Upper Hand

•Resources are source of most conflicts

•If you can't make it, grab someone else's

•Absentee Vs. Resident landlords

•Menelik's motives same as Europeans

•How to rule a minority majority empire

•Assimilation hallmark of Ethiopian policy

•Making Oromia statehood non viable

Resources of Oromia mercilessly Plundered

•Ethiopia GDP was 47.5 Billion 2013.

•Agriculture accounts for 46.6% of GDP and 85% of all employment.

•Coffee alone accounts for almost 30% of foreign exchange earnings.

•Manufacturing is 4% of the economy.

•Per capita GDP was 505 in 2013.

Oromia as spoil of war

•Land ownership and use policies markedly different in the North and the South

•People in the south do not own the land they have settled for millennia

•Most of the available resources used to pacify conquered territories

Integrated Regional Development Plan (Master Plan) Violates existing Laws

•Oromia is "entitled" to special benefits from Addis Ababa

•Oromia towns to be annexed in stages: Gelan, Dukem, Sebbeta ,Legettafo, Sendaffa and Burrayu, Sululta, Burayu-Menagesha, Sebeta, Gelan-Dukem, Legetafo/Legedadi

•The Master plan violates the principle of federal comity (mutual respect of the different orders of government)

•Master plan usurps the power/jurisdiction of the state of Oromia

Integrated Regional Development Plan (Master Plan) Violates Existing Laws Contd...

•Alters the boundary of Oromia by incorporating 36 towns and 17 Woredas

•Eliminates the special benefit Oromia was supposed to get from Finfinnee

•According to the constitution of 1995, state border can only be changed through constitutional amendment or an act of self determination in accordance with article 39

•Violates article 40(6), i.e. protection against forceful eviction from property

•Violates the constitution of the state of Oromia.

Why so Much Focus on Finfinnee?

• Addis Ababa is model for assimilation and marginalization

• Addis Ababa "located in Oromia" Area 540 sq.km• Administratively subdivided into 10 Sub cities and 116 Woredas.• Population 3-4 million• Physically built up area has increased by 20% in last decade• Special zone covers 1.1 million hectares of land and incorporates 5.7

million people currently• Master Plan maker: Conference on the Development and

Improvement of Urban Transport (CODATU) based in Lyon, France

Finfinnee pushing out Oromo

Master Plan's hidden Grand Plan

To neutralize the threat of Oromo statehood

Implications of the Master Plan

• Political• Economic• Social• Environmental• Many evicted Oromos unemployable in large cities due to linguistic

and cultural barriers• By 2040, 50% reside in urban areas• Mining (Adola and Tullu Kapi in Western Wollega)

Water Pollution• Surface and ground waters in the Akaki river basin are severely

polluted

• Run-off chemicals from area tanneries willfully released in the river. Cases of cancer have been documented by international media outlets such as Al Jazeera

• Only 20% of the plants in the area have waste treatment facilities.

Water Pollution Contd...Akaki river poisoned by chemical

pollution

Pollution in the Awash River Basin and Oromia Special Zone

• Soil pollution is among the many environmental problems in Ethiopia

• Harmful levels of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxide

• According to some measures, Ethiopia is the 5th most polluted country

Investment Boom? Who Benefits?

• Investment funded by:• Taxes• More than $3 billion a year in Western "aid"• Loans from China and India• Public investment accounted for 63 percent of growth• As the city grows, increasing from 2.1 million people in 1994 to 2.7 million in

2007• Cereal farmer Bekele complains he was only compensated 700 birr ($36) when he

lost half a hectare of land from his farm to a flower investor. Already companies like Diageo Plc, the world’s biggest distiller, and Turkish cable manufacturer Saygim DM have set up plants in the Sebeta area (Bloomberg News)

Who Benefits? Contd...• Gemechu Tadesse, 40, who guards a factory under

construction near Sululta, says a few years ago his family lost two plots of land to hotel and residential developers. When his father complained about the level of compensation, local officials put him in jail for a night and threatened to take the land without paying anything, Gemachew said “They said the land is the government’s, not yours,” he said. His father now sometimes doesn’t have enough to eat, according to Gemechu. “The expansion plan is not good because farming is better for us.” (Bloomberg News)

Cultural and Psychological Impact of loss of Ancestral Homeland

• Peoples' self identity is inextricably tied to the land

• Madda Walaabuu, locations of the five Sycamore trees, tulluu Wolal, Gooroo fugug, Finfinnee, etc...

• Loss of ancestral land is traumatic and could lead to loss of culture and identity

• "If God had not blinded them", wrote the Jesuit Manoel de Almeida, who visited Ethiopia in the 1620s, and willed that certain families or tribes among them should be at war with one another constantly, there would not have been an inch of land in the empire, of which they (Oromos) were not the masters"

From Hamlet to Homeless