‘Land Grabbing’ as Unlocking and Extracting Lowland Resources

The 'land grabs' debate is predominated by the conception of foreign (often Asian or Gulf) capital victimizing rural citizens in some corner of a developing country, typically from sub-Saharan Africa, in concert with the ruling elite of that country. Lack of transparency, little prior consultation, and the shoddy fashion in which most deals are made has further reinforced such conceptions and reduced the likelihood that local people perceive such investments in a positive light. There is no conclusive evidence indicating whether or not commercial farms could complement, or at least coexist with, local livelihoods. Fair or not, however, the land transfers are legal in most cases.

The agency of governments is often overlooked in popular analyses of the 'land grabbing' phenomenon. Government officials are usually presented as corrupt individuals determined to acquire quick money from the land deals for personal or patrimonial economic uses and/or to consolidate their power, the legitimacy of which is often contested prior to these deals anyway. This perspective constrains our capacity to fully grasp the political economy and policy context of large scale agricultural investments and broader consequences of such agricultural (foreign direct) investments. By positing the process in the broader 'developmental' agenda of Ethiopia's ruling coalition and the massive resource/revenue requirements thereof, this essay contends that land deals should best be understood as extraction of henceforth locked resources and mobilization of revenue to meet increasing state expenses.

Conquering the Lowlands

Most governments stress that they exclusively lease "idle," "marginally used" or "unsettled" land to investors. In the Horn of Africa, this has meant that lowlands - where pastoralism and shifting cultivation are practiced - get particularly targeted due to the expansive use of natural resources and the sparse population density. In Ethiopia, most of the transferred lands (as well as land slotted for future transfers) are located in the southwestern and southeastern lowlands.

Consecutive Ethiopian governments of the past century have failed to effectively control and garner significant revenue from these lowlands. As John Markakis argues in his recent book Ethiopia: The Last Two Frontiers, this has been the case for a combination of reasons: unbearable weather for state officials (often from the highlands), deadly tropical diseases (primarily malaria), inability to reach the majority of the pastoral population (due to the very sparse population distribution) and the comparative advantage in violence of the pastoralists over the state representatives in the lowlands. It was only the Awash Valley which was significantly exploited, and the Humera plains to a lesser extent.

Explaining Ethiopia's Recent Land Deals  

Land leases of the past few years are portrayed as an opportunistic and impulsive decision on the part of the Ethiopian government, perceived as a response to increasing global demand for arable land. There seems to have been a desire to milk such a lucrative opportunity, so to say, while it lasts in the government's plan to transfer "nearly" 3.3 million hectares of land during drafting of the Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP), Ethiopia's third poverty reduction strategy paper, between   2010-2011 and 2014-2015. This should not, however, be construed to mean that the intention to lease large tracts of land to investors, foreign or domestic, is a response to the global land rush.  While the highlands are zones of agricultural intensification and commercialization, the southwestern lowlands were slotted for commercial agriculture from as early as 2001. The post-2001 decade is also the period in which the ruling party's political agenda of building a 'developmental state' commenced and became consolidated: expressed first in public discourse (vehemently after the 2005 elections) and later on in the mega projects of the GTP.

Land Deals and Developmentalism

The huge financial requirement of the various mega projects being implemented, during and beyond the GTP period, is well noted. This need has translated into aggressive revenue mobilization in various forms from different sources. The need for massive domestic resource mobilization to effectively build developmental states is also undeniable.

In Ethiopia's case, the ruling government seems to have internalized this prerogative and has emboldened the capacity for tax collection, in addition to increasing its revenue maximization, for some time now. This was carried out through the expansion of the tax base as well as the augmentation of state efficiency at revenue collection. The recent land deals could also be analyzed through this lens: as an effort to extract lowland resources and increase state revenue.

The Ethiopian State and the Lowlands

Pastoralism and shifting cultivation — which are practiced by indigenous communities of the southwestern lowlands — are not commercially oriented and as such do not produce surplus. Thus, the state has not historically produced significant revenue from these areas. Ethiopia's lowlands — which account for the majority of Ethiopia's territory — contributed a meager proportion of the total national economic pie. In this respect, at least from the perspective of the government, commercial farming was the panacea for revenue creation. These land deals have the appeal of unlocking the untapped lowland natural resources and contribute to national development through taxes, export earnings, or creation of employment opportunities. If everything goes as planned, the Saudi Star PLC alone expects to generate as much as one billion USD annually, which is noticeably larger than export earnings from coffee, Ethiopia's primary export commodity.

Land: Economic and Socio-Cultural Aspects

This promise should not be pursued at all costs, however. This course of action entails the consideration of land as exclusively a means of production which could be commoditized and traded in the most profitable manner. This disregards the socio-cultural, intangible attachments local people have to land, thereby increasing feelings of dislocation, disorientation, and uprooting. This should be avoided not only on moral or ethical grounds, but also as it would be 'bad for business.' Land-based investments could succeed only if local people embrace them, not if the state tries to protect the plantations from local people.

Failure to recognize the legitimacy and soundness of the local livelihoods and cultural values would result in inefficacious use of the lowlands, as well as increased local resentment against commercial farms. If, indeed, the land deals are conceived as a mode of development in the lowlands, such deals should primarily be people-centered. Benefits to locals, in addition to resource mobilization, should take center place in the conception and implementation of such deals.

Fana Gebresenbet Erda is a member of our Southern Voices Network and research fellow here at the Wilson Center. He is a Lecturer at the Institute for Peace and Security Studies (IPSS) of Addis Ababa University (AAU), and a PhD candidate in Global and Area Studies, offered jointly by AAU and Leipzig University, Germany.

Photo of Ethiopian town, Harar, courtesy of Giustino/Flickr. (License: CC BY 2.0)