Bøger af Dessalegn Rahmato

This volume brings together a number of studies on rural Ethiopia written by the author in recent years and offered as a contribution to the emerging debate on agrarian change in the country. The broad time frame for the work is the last half-century of modern Ethiopia, from the 1950s to the beginning of the 2000s, a period which coincides politically with the country's three regimes, namely the imperial regime of Haile Sellassie, which was replaced by a military-Stalinist junta known as the Derg, and the present regime which came to power after overthrowing the latter. Over this half century much has changed in the country but much also remains the same. Similarly, while the three political regimes differ radically in a number of significant respects, they also have many things in common, particularly in their relations to the peasantry, their quest for a strong presence in the countryside, and, in some respects, in their approach to development management.

Under its program of land investments, the Ethiopian government has leased out huge tracts of land to domestic and foreign investors on terms that are highly favorable to both but particularly to foreign ones. Critical reports on the ìbonanzaî reaped by foreign capital have appeared in the world media and the websites of international activist organizations, and while some of these are based on questionable evidence, the global attention they have drawn may well be deserved given the image of the country as a land of poverty and hunger. This study, which is based on information gathered from field interviews as well as other sources, looks at the subject from a land rights perspective, with emphasis on the relations of power between small land-users and their communities on the one hand and the state on the other. At bottom what is at stake is the land and the resources on it, and what is being grabbed are rights that in most cases belong to peasant farmers, pastoralists and their communities. In the long run, the shift of agrarian system from small-scale to large-scale, foreign dominated production -which is what the investment program is now doing- will marginalize small producers, and cause immense damage to local ecosystems, wildlife habitats and biodiversity.