The Practice Of Large Scale Transfer Of Investment Land In Ethiopia: An Expository Survey Of The Major Legal And Institutional Challenges

Abstract

One of the challenges related to investment in Ethiopia is large scale land deals. Currently the large-scale land acquisitions are expanding in developing countries and in particular in Sub-Saharan Africa. Ethiopia too is also actively engaged in this global situation. Land is the main means of livelihood in any agricultural economy. Land conversion is a method where land is modified from agricultural to urban uses, and is a development that seems almost inevitable during periods of economic development and growth .In Ethiopia, large scale land deals are mainly conducted on the premises that there is extensive underutilized or empty land in the low land areas of the country. However, several concerns were raised and addressed by different authors. The objective of this thesis was to identify some of the legal and institutional challenges encountering Ethiopia in the course of the controversial large scale land deals between the government and foreign investors. The primary tool utilized in collecting data was a desktop review. . In Ethiopia large areas have been leased to foreign and domestic capital for large-scale production of food and agro fuels, mainly in lowland regions where the state has historically had limited control. Much of the land offered is classified by the state and other elites as ‘unused’ or ‘under utilised’, overlooking the spatially extensive use of land in shifting cultivation and pastoralism. This threatens the land rights and livelihoods of ethnic minority indigenous communities in these low lands. This thesis concluded that there exist some legal and institutional challenges between the government and foreign investors in Ethiopia when transferring large scale land investments. Forest degradation, displacement of local populations, expropriation of land, increasing local food insecurity and increasing poverty are linked to large scale land investments. Displacement due to the LSAIs has worsened the income and asset condition of the displaced households in Ethiopia. Therefore, policymakers should put in place specific interventions to protect the income and asset holding of displaced smallholders