Ethiopia: Reforming Land Tenure

Abstract

Land policy in Ethiopia has been controversial since the fall of the military socialist derg regime in 1991. While the current Ethiopian government has implemented a land policy that is based on state ownership of land (where only usufruct rights are given to land holders), many agricultural economists and international donor agencies have propagated some form of privatized land ownership. This article traces the antagonistic arguments of the two schools of thought in the land reform debate and how their antagonistic principles ‐ fairness vs. efficiency ‐ are played out. It then goes on to explore how these different arguments have trickled down in the formulation of the federal and regional land policies with a particular view on the new Oromia regional land policy as it is considered the most progressive (with regards to tenure security). We provide some empirical material on ongoing practices of implementing the Rural Land Use and Administration Proclamation of Oromia Region. Our analysis suggests that while the laws are conceptual hybrids that accommodate both fairness and efficiency considerations, regional bureaucrats have selectively implemented those elements of the proclamation that are considered to strengthen the regime’s political support in the countryside.

Acknowledgements

Part of the research for this article was supported by a grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) in collaboration with the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ). We thank Fekadu Beyene and Tobias Hagmann for critical comments on earlier drafts and Ayalneh Bogale for his continuous support and advice.

Notes

1. Both sides often work with implicit assumptions on farmers’ potential behavior in the discussion about distress sales of land by poor peasants. Rahmato, for example, a key opponent of the government’s position (that peasants need to be protected against being able to sell their land) has argued that such distress sales were unlikely (e.g. Rahmato. 2004) and that there was no evidence for ill‐considered sale of land by the peasantry within Ethiopia, because sales contradicted the Ethiopian tradition of communal ownership of land (Rahmato. 1992:53). But this refutation of the government’s concern about the sell out of the rural peasantry is itself self‐defeating when advanced by privatisation scholars: the occurrence of a significant number of land sales is a precondition in order for land commoditisation and efficient land markets to emerge, and thus the government’s concern may have some validity, overall. Empirical research has demonstrated that land sales have taken place during the pre‐revolutionary period (Joireman, 2000), extra‐legal transfers of land have been undertaken under the derg and the current regime (Deininger et al. 2003) and informal land rental markets have emerged since the end of the derg (Haile Gabriel, 2004).

2. The critics of state ownership of land thereby make an implicit reference to the imperial tenure regimes, where tenants were subjected to high insecurity and exploitative rules vis–à–vis a ruling class of landlords, but this is certainly overstating the point here. Under the current legislation, farmers have usufruct rights to their allocated land plots and thus dispose of much more bundles of rights than a tenant towards a landlord ‐ they are mainly denied selling and mortgaging their land.

3. In 2005, the federal government issued a revised proclamation, the Rural Land Administration and Land Use Proclamation No. 456/2005. The revised proclamation confirms the centrality of state ownership, but suggests measures to increase subjective tenure security, such as land measurement, certification etc. Abdulahi (2007) suggests that the revised proclamation is based on the regional land laws of Amhara and Tigray regions, those closest to the ruling regime’s interests. As the current regional land proclamations have been based on the earlier Proclamation 89, we do not provide a detailed review of the revised national proclamation here.

4. We carried out a series of qualitative interviews with male and female farmers as well as elected village representatives and elders of three kebele in the vicinity of Lake Alemaya and Lake Finkile in Eastern Hararge Zone in Oromia. In addition, administrative officials (chairmen or vice chairmen) of the kebele, an officer at the Rural Land Administration Desk at Alemaya woreda in Alemaya and the head of the Land Administration and Land Use Department at the Zonal Bureau for Agriculture and Rural Development in Eastern Hararge Zone, Harar were interviewed. For deeper insights into the political governance of the implementation process we included interviews with the head of the Land Use and Land Administration Desk the Regional Bureau for Rural Development and Agriculture, Addis Ababa, as well as a team leader of the Land Administration Team at that Department. Our fieldwork refers to interviews held in November and December 2004, two years after the issuing of the Oromia Land Use and Administration Proclamation (RGO, 2002).

5. Interview with the Head of Regional Land Use and Land Administration Desk, 8 December 2004, Addis Ababa.

6. Interview with the Head of Regional Land Use and Land Administration Desk, 8 December 2004, Addis Ababa.

7. Policy makers could not explain enforcement mechanisms for particular provisions but stated that ‘first comes awareness, then penalty’. Interview with the Head of the Land Use and Land Administration Desk, 8 December 2004, Addis Ababa.

8. Interview with the Officer of Natural Resource Section of the Bureau for Agricultural Development, 12 December 2004, Alemaya.

9. Interview with the Development Agent, 11 October 2004, Alemaya District.

10. Interviews and group discussion with male heads of households, 18th December 2004, kebele Damota. The derg’s 1975 land reform did not change the general pattern of land holding in the research area. The documents available indicate that prior to the land reform most farmers were owner operators of plots of inherited land (Gebre Michael, 1966:9).

11. The dissolution process was characterised by two types of land use conflict. First, a general conflict whether the APC should be dissolved or kept as an entity, and second, severe boundary disputes among the previous owners of plots emerged. Those who benefited from the dissolution of the collective farms were in favour of quick dissolution, while others, particularly those who did not bring in land during the formation of the state farm but had migrated to the area and worked on the collective farm, or those whose families had grown significantly during the existence of APC and who feared to receive a plot too small to feed the family, rejected the dissolution.

12. Conflict resolution authorities were groups of elder men. Fieldwork showed ambiguous results of this kind of conflict resolution. Even though all respondents claimed to have retrieved ‘exactly the same’ land back after the dissolution of the APC; (Interview, elder farmers, 23 November 2004), several resource persons expressed the view that the registration of measured farmland will contribute to a clarification of farm borders which is urgently needed.

13. This is certainly not representative for Ethiopia as a whole, because in other locations, in particular in Amhara and Tigray, land redistribution has occurred also after the derg and therefore perceptions on tenure security might differ in other locations of Ethiopia (Deininger et al. 2006).

14. In such cases traditional conflict resolution uses mediators, preferably elder men, each of the conflict party calls upon. If informal mediation fails an expert in conflict resolution is consulted (ferdi chengo) who tries to solve the dispute. In case none of these authorities is able to pronounce a sentence accepted by both parties the case is passed on to kebele administration and courts.

15. Interviews with the Team Leader of the Land Use and Land Administration Authority, 8 December 2004, Addis Ababa and with the Head of the Rural Development Desk/Zonal Bureau for Agriculture and Development, 13 December 2004, Harar.

16. Interview with an elderly farmer, 18 December 2004, Finkile.

17. Interview with the vice chairman of a peasant association (PA), 16 November 2004, Alemaya District.

18. Interview with a divorced female head of household, 19 December 2004, Damota.

19. This view was expressed by kebele chairmen whom we asked why the type of crops grown on the plot was registered on the certificate.