Exploring land acquisition and restructuring policy in Addis Ababa

Abstract

This study examines the political economy underlying the design and implementation of land acquisition and restructuring, a territorial policy aimed at reducing affluence disparity. It focuses on the city of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where major land invasions occurred between September 2015 and March 2022 in response to prolonged and acute inequality. Local authorities solicited and even coordinated the arriving land speculators. Moreover, land invasion has been empirically fueled not only by land concentration but also by increasing land prices. To better understand this relationship, a regression analysis was conducted on 154 incidents of land attained throughout the silk-lafto sub-cities of Addis Ababa. The study examined various indicators including the concentration of land ownership, market competition, land invaded per capita, literacy rate, land expropriated and reassigned per capita, and unemployment rate. The results show that Ethiopia's land leasing policy, driven by high speculative prices, intensified land inequality and influenced land invasions throughout the city. This has led to a surge in land prices and worsened the problem of land inequality. The findings provide evidence of political struggles regarding the issue of land ownership inequality and show that socio-political pressures exist in both the planning and implementation phases of land-based policies.