How Sustainable Is Transnational Farmland Acquisition in Ethiopia? Lessons Learned from the Benishangul-Gumuz Region

Hossein Azadi,Jan Nyssen,Dereje Teklemariam,Mitiku Haile,Frank Witlox

doi:10.3390/su8030213

Hossein Azadi, Jan Nyssen + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/su8030213

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Abstract

Due to the nature of available land as one of the main attractions for investment, land lease marketing in Sub-Saharan Africa is appearing on policy agenda. This paper describes critical land-related institutional and governmental frameworks that have shaped the contemporary land governance and land lease contracts in Ethiopia. It also examines the effectiveness of the land lease process regarding economic, social, and environmental expectations from agricultural outsourcing. Both qualitative and quantitative data analyses were used and results showed that the size of the land cultivated by investors is significantly lower than the agreed-upon size in the contract. Besides, the supply of land to large-scale commercial investors in Ethiopia is made without adequate land use planning, land valuation, and risk analysis. Furthermore, limitations in monitoring systems have contributed to meager socio-economic gains and led to deforestation. Accordingly, the study concludes that supplying vast tracts of farmland to large-scale agricultural investors requires integrated land use planning, land valuation and governance, monitoring systems, and a capacity to implement the various social and environmental laws in coordination with other sectors. Improving rural infrastructure, particularly road, is also indispensable to enhance the level of performance of commercial farms. Last but most importantly, the customary land holding rights of residents should be respected and institutionally recognized.

Highlights

As explained by GOE (2005) [40], our study corroborates that the private ownership of land is prohibited to ensure equity of land use among citizens and between generations, especially in the rural areas where livelihood exclusively depends on land; if not, the country would be threatened by the social predicaments of land accumulation within a few hands
There is no single statement in any of the contractual documents or templates which requests the participation of any other stakeholders when signing the land lease contracts
Based on the results obtained, by the end of 2012, 2.11 million ha of the total 11.5 million ha potential investment land is already delivered to investors out of which 600,254 ha is the share of the Western Ethiopian lowland region called Benishangul-Gumuz followed by Oromiya and Gambella regional states with 458,292 and 399,491 ha, respectively

Summary

Introduction

Most of the recent literature highlight the term “land grabbing” as a contemporary phenomenon caused by the combined effects of the global stock market crash and the food and energy crisis of 2008/2009 [1,2,3,4]. The term was mentioned in earlier works by Karl Marx for the first time in the context of the enclosures of England: “The laborers are first driven from the land, and come the sheep. Following the global financial crisis as well as the increasing demand for food and bio-fuel and the effects of climate change, a new wave of land transactions in many developing countries have been stemmed [6,7]

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