‘The peri-urban space at work’: micro and small enterprises, collective participation, and the developmental state in Ethiopia

Abstract

AbstractBy discussing details of the current policy emphasis on entrepreneurship and microfinance, this article explores the dynamic and inconclusive negotiation of state authority in Kolfe Keraniyo, peri-urban Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. In the last few years, Ethiopia embarked on a strategy of rapid transformation driven by what its political elite defined as a ‘developmental state’, which entailed the significant rescaling of the peri-urban space. The promotion of micro and small enterprises is an important aspect of the territorialization of state power in the peri-urban space, and is actively negotiated, challenged and refashioned. The first part of the article presents three central aspects of such projects: the policy of regularization and legalization; the notion of ‘group first’ or collective participation in the country's development; and the emphasis on ‘saving first’ to create micro-dynamics of capital accumulation. The second part of the article discusses how the beneficiaries of entrepreneurship initiatives mediate the normative framework provided by the developmental state, and highlights how that framework is neither inclusive nor particularly distinct in its effects from neoliberal development strategies. The article concludes that the making and unmaking of state authority is not unidirectional from above but operates through the redefinition of spatial and temporal boundaries from below.