Land Tenure in Ethiopia: Continuity and Change, Shifting Rulers, and the Quest For State Control (original) (raw)

Unmaking the commons: Collective action, property rights and resource appropriation among (agro-) pastoralists in eastern Ethiopia

The CGIAR Systemwide Program on Collective Action and Property Rights (CAPRi) is an initiative of the 15 centers of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). The initiative promotes comparative research on the role of property rights and collective action institutions in shaping the efficiency, sustainability, and equity of natural resource systems. CAPRi's Secretariat is hosted within the Environment and Production Technology Division (EPDT) of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). CAPRi Working Papers contain preliminary material and research results. They are circulated prior to a full peer review to stimulate discussion and critical comment. It is expected that most working papers will eventually be published in some other form and that their content may also be revised (

Enabling Equitable Collective Action & Policy Change for Poverty Reduction and Improved Natural Resource Management in Ethiopia and Uganda

2007

Land-grabbing and the right to adequate food in Ethiopia

African Human Rights Law Journal, 2019

The post-2008 global land rush was mainly targeted at Africa. With its weak system of governance and abundant arable land and water resources, Ethiopia has been and remains one of the hotspots for land-grabbing in Africa. Land-grabbing has various negative consequences for the human rights of rural communities. Due to the link between food security and land-grabbing, the right to adequate food is the human right most affected. The right to adequate food requires states to refrain from depriving people of access to natural resources that they use to feed themselves; this includes land and water. Although the right to food is progressively realised, the duty not to take retrogressive measures is immediate. As the custodian of the land under the 1995 Constitution the Ethiopian government has since directly concluded deals with investors, displaced communities, and given away land previously used by Ethiopian farmers to the new foreign lessees. Since land-grabbing mainly affects the agrarian rural community, the article analyses the phenomenon of land-grabbing against the type of agriculture practised in Ethiopia, climate change and coping mechanisms of communities, and the livelihood of pastoralists and indigenous people. It demonstrates how land-grabbing is antithetical to the right to adequate food in the context of Ethiopia.

Enabling Equitable Collective Action and Policy Change for Poverty Reduction and Improved Natural Resource Management in the Eastern African Highlands

2008

LAND TENURE SYSTEM IN ETHIOPIA: ISSUES, CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES

2019

Ethiopia is an agrarian country where land has been the major means of production and livelihood. Tenure rules help to define how property rights to land are allocated within societies. Our paper aims on discovering the issues of land tenure system in Ethiopia along with its challenges and opportunities. Ethiopia has complex land tenure system. Land had been controlled by elite king until Derg Regime came in power in 1975 with slogan "Land to the Tiller" but ended up owning the land itself rather giving it to the people. The existing government that controlled power in 1991 maintained the Derg's state ownership and new constitution 1995 approved the state ownership of land in Ethiopia. Farmers have only usufruct right to land which raise issue on food sovereignty. Food insecurity has a disproportionate impact's on Ethiopia's economy. There have been lots of people and dozens of parties arguing for private landowner ship, the debate on this issue continues till this day, as ratification of 1995 constitution could not conclude the controversial and throny issue. As a result, farmers who are interested in agriculture sometimes face credit constraint as banks find it more risky to lend to such business, which affects the level of production since agaric inputs are expensive Thus, a policy has to be drawn to facilitate more efficient transactions of land between farmers and to minimize inefficiencies associated with these tenure systems. 2 |Land Tenure System in Ethiopia

Equity and Efficiency of Registering Land Tenure Rights in Benishangul-Gumuz Region, Ethiopia

Benishangul-Gumuz Region is one of the lowland regions in Ethiopia, situated in the west of the country and bordering Sudan. Complex land tenure rights exist in the form of formal, informal and customary, held by a range of indigenous and non-indigenous ethnic groups. A range of factors affect land rights in Benishangul-Gumuz Region. These include: ‘slash-and-burn’ cultivation methods; inequitable land allocation; improper land use practices; encroachment onto communal grazing and forest lands; a lack of gender equity; polygamous family relationships; marginalization of indigenous land rights; boundary conflicts; tensions between commercial agricultural investors and small-scale subsistence farmers; limited capacity in land administration institutions. This paper argues that a critical success factor for the land registration is the extent to which the needs of the society are being satisfied and considered throughout the whole process. A progressive and pragmatic approach is needed to improve security of tenure, and buy time to strengthen the capacity of governing land right institutions. The Regional land legislation should seek to bridge legality and legitimacy by providing a framework for effective, equitable and sustainable practices, rather than seeking to impose a non-contextualized set of rules which ultimately could be unenforceable and jeopardize the benefits of land registration.

Land Reform in Ethiopia: Recommendations for Reform

2011

The challenges of land tenure in Ethiopia are part of a complex policy problem that stem from failed attempts at agricultural modernization and the consolidation of state power. Several significant problems have brought Ethiopia's land tenure laws to the attention of international observers. Food Insecurity. Food insecurity has made Ethiopia a center of development efforts in Africa. It is estimated that 44 percent of Ethiopians are chronically or acutely undernourished. 1 Undernourishment has largely been attributed to Ethiopia's susceptibility to famine, the most recent of which was the root cause of the food crisis of 2002-2003. 2 Rural Poverty. Agriculture makes up 50.7 percent of Ethiopia's GDP, 3 meaning that food insecurity has a disproportionate impact on Ethiopia's total economy. Malnourishment decreases productivity, which then increases poverty as part of a downward cycle of food insecurity and poverty, 4 Landlessness and Land Poverty. High rates of rural landlessness and land poverty exacerbate food insecurity and poverty. Forty-three percent of rural Ethiopians have no access to land and fully 60 percent lack sufficient land to grow enough food for a family of five. 5 Land Expropriations for Foreign Investment. Recent years have seen an increase in land contracts between Ethiopia's government and foreign agriculture investors for "unused" land. This land is typically arid or semi-arid pastoral grazing land in lowland areas of Oromia, Afar, Gambella, Southern Nations, Nationalities, Republics and Peoples (SNNPR), and Benishangul Gumuz regions held under unregistered customary tenure arrangements. Large farming operations displace pastoralists, monopolize resources, and degrade the land, causing increasingly bloody conflicts among pastoral clans over resources. Drought is not solely responsible for these problems. The roots of Ethiopia's food security, poverty, landlessness, and expropriation problems lie in deficiencies in education, infrastructure, business environment, and land tenure policies. This policy proposal will focus on the role of land tenure policy in creating and mitigating these problems. We will show that food insecurity, poverty, landlessness, and expropriations are the result of land tenure policies and governance that undermine tenure security, contribute to weak land administration institutions, and limit market efficiency. i This document is a condensed form of "Land Reform in Ethiopia: Recommendations for Reform" produced by these same authors. Please contact SMNE to review the long-form version of this document. who are, in turn, granted usufruct rights by the community. By legitimizing traditional tenure arrangements, this model is designed to utilize the legitimacy of customary practices and institutions as a path to good governance while maintaining land tenure security for individuals. Case Studies from sub-Saharan Africa Recent land tenure reforms in sub-Saharan Africa have focused on formalizing customary land tenure to improve land tenure security. They have largely taken two forms: conversion to individual or associative freehold title (Kenya, Uganda, Ghana), or certification of individual or associative usufruct rights on state-owned land (Mozambique). Each of these case studies resulted in partial (Kenya, Ghana, Mozambique) or complete (Uganda) failure. In each instance, low percentages of total plots were registered, with a high of 60 percent in Ghana (the African average is 80 percent). 6 In Uganda, complete failure led to a wholesale return to customary tenure practices. In Kenya, Mozambique, and Ghana, partial failure led to the development of parallel formal and informal tenure systems under which wealthy and wellconnected individuals exploited to take land from unregistered landholders. For these reasons, quantitative studies have shown little impact on land tenure security, investment, or productivity and large increases in inequality as a result of these land policy reforms. There are three main reasons for these failures: Cost. Precise measurement for cadastral maps pushed total nominal costs for plot surveys above 200 USD in Uganda. 7 Corruption added to nominal costs, and long, complicated registration processes increased transaction and opportunity costs. Poor farmers who could not afford to register their land instead chose to remain in traditional tenure arrangements, while the wealthy took advantage of reforms to register land and thereby legally 'claim' it. This formation of parallel formal and informal tenure systems allowed the wealthy to dispossess traditional landholders, causing landlessness, exploitation and conflict. Institutional Capacity. In each example of reform, administrative institutions lacked capacity to inform the public about land reforms and process land registrations. None of the case studies featured widespread knowledge of reform among rural landholders. Adjudication and registration was complicated and time intensive. As a result, the educated and politically well connected were able to leverage information asymmetries to grab land from traditional landholders. Governance. Corruption and politicization in reform implementation processes were found to be a substantial problem in all case studies. Examples of abuse included: allocation of land to political favorites, the double-registry of land, and the widespread use of bribery to settle resulting land disputes. In Kenya, for example, democracy deficiencies undermined associative ownership structures as community elders abused their authority, allocating land to family members and selling land as if it were their own. Thus, corrupt, politicized governance structures contributed to land tenure insecurity. The main lesson to be drawn from the case studies examined here is that the form of land tenure system is secondary to issues of cost, institutional capacity, and governance in determining success. region contains many different systems of land management, largely based on tribal arrangements. Pastoral groups in Ethiopia's lowlands operate under community-based tenure arrangements. Local Experience of the State. The Ethiopian state administers policy through a hierarchical system of ethnic federalism with power ostensibly concentrated in regional bureaucracies, from the regional level down through the local woreda (district) and kebele (neighborhood) governments. Woreda and kebele officials are typically loyal to the EPRDF/TPLF ruling party, and decentralization (or more correctly de-concentration) has granted them significant power over daily life. These officials are the main administrators of federal and regional laws and gatekeepers of budgetary aid flows. Local officials are viewed as inconsistent and corrupt, and therefore lack legitimacy and accountability to the people they supposedly serve. Broadly speaking, peasant-tostate relations are characterized by vertical power structures that peasants allow to generally go unquestioned. Peasants are typically unaware of their legal rights and therefore are unable to defend themselves against abuse. Even when they are aware of such rights most choose to defer to authority out of fear of reprisal or punishment. These roles and relationships are particularly salient in the case of land administration. The Political System. In Ethiopia, EPRDF functionaries dominate all levels of government, effectively blurring the lines between government and the ruling party. In short, all federal policies, including land policies, are drawn up and implemented largely to reflect the position of the party. This fact complicates reform in that any proposal for change must criticize current policy, and in doing so, criticizes the policy position of the EPRDF. This relationship makes land tenure reform an extremely sensitive political issue in Ethiopia. Recent Land Reform in Ethiopia Recent land tenure reforms in Ethiopia can be characterized by the success of regional certification programs in Tigray, Amhara, Oromia, and the SNNPR. However this success is tempered by failure of administrative institutions to create an environment conducive to development and effective governance and the specter of redistribution and dispossession enshrined in land laws. Land Law Ethiopia's land tenure laws are largely the combination of the Federal Land Proclamation of 2005 and the regional proclamations. The 2005 Proclamation was rushed to passage after the contested 2005 elections and had the effect of increasing federal control over land tenure. Land tenure reforms since 1997 have largely preserved the Derg system of expropriation and redistribution as a means to deal with rural development issues. The focus of the system is to A) encourage equity in land distribution and prevent the emergence of exploitative land relationships and B) promote rural development through limited market reforms and providing land to the landless. Ownership. Ethiopia's land laws view land as the "common property of the Nations, Nationalities and Peoples of Ethiopia" 8 with the right to ownership "exclusively vested in the state and in the

Land Governance in Ethiopia: Towards Evaluating Global Trends

2018

Land is a vital resource and a driver of economic growth and development. The way it is governed and administered therefore has a significant impact on a certain country’s future. Land and the institutions that govern its ownership and use greatly affect economic growth and contributes in poverty reduction. Lack of access to land and inefficient or corrupt systems of land administration have a negative impact on a country’s investment , climate and general wellbeing of the society. Well-functioning land institutions, land markets and easy access to credit facilities for entrepreneurs contribute for development. Land governance must help to eradicate poverty, not contribute to it. Hence, Ethiopia needs to have a land governance policy that fosters transfer of land rights, fosters respect for human rights, and rescues the environment from imminent peril in line with the principles of sustainable development. Hence, this article contributes knowledge towards responsible land governance...

Land Tenure in Ethiopia: Continuity and Change, Shifting Rulers, and the Quest For State Control (original) (raw)

Related papers