VARIOUS: British based charity Survival International claims Ethiopian farmland is being leased to foreign companies at the expense of local farmers

Record ID: 1533993

  • Title: VARIOUS: British based charity Survival International claims Ethiopian farmland is being leased to foreign companies at the expense of local farmers
  • Date: 18th August 2011
  • Summary: BAKO, ETHIOPIA (FILE) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF FARMER LEADING COWS AS THEY PULL PLOUGH TRADITIONAL FARMING METHODS BULLS WALKING VARIOUS OF FARMER WITH HARVEST OF A CROP / BULLS WALKING PAST
  • Embargoed: 2nd September 2011 03:44
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Kenya, Ethiopia, United Kingdom
  • City:
  • Country: United Kingdom Kenya Ethiopia
  • Topics: International Relations,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA63E7CXBQ340GFISDVAD2T0YG8
  • Aspect Ratio: 4:3
  • Story Text: An investigation carried out by Survival International claims land in Ethiopia's Omo valley is being taken away from local communities and leased to foreign companies.
    The organisation which works towards supporting tribal people around the world, says the livelihoods of around 200,000 people are at risk based on an the Ethiopian government's scheme.
    Jonathan Mazower is an Advocacy Director at Survival International, he says several communities that have lived in the region for centuries could be turned from self sufficient farmers into plantation workers.
    "What they're doing now is that they're accelerating a programme to lease the most fertile areas of land to outside companies to grow cash crops, and biofuels. And their vision for the tribal people in this area is now as they are now, basically self sufficient and able to support themselves, but that they effectively be turned into workers in these vast plantations that the government wants to create there," said Mazower.
    With memories of Ethiopia's devastating 1984 famine still fresh in the minds of its leaders, the government has been enticing well-heeled foreigners to invest in the nation's underperforming agriculture sector. It is part of an economic development push they say will help the Horn of Africa nation ensure it has enough food for its 80 million people.
    But activists do not share in the enthusiasm for the policy saying hectares of land have been placed, with varying degrees of transparency, in foreign hands.
    According to Survival International the fertile land around the Ethiopia's Omo River, in the country's south west, is being leased to companies in Malaysia, Italy and Korea.
    They describe the government's actions as a way of 'grabbing' the land from the people.
    Mazower said international law recognises the true land owners as being the people who have lived there for decades.
    The report comes at a time when people in the Horn of Africa are grappling with one of the worst droughts in decades, the United Nations has warned the famine is spreading, and it is already affecting millions of people in Ethiopia, Kenya, Djibouti and Somalia -- being the hardest hit.
    "I mean this is so obviously unjust and unfair and destructive to people who simply want to be left alone, and unlike so many others in that region who are suffering in the drought, they are basically OK at the moment. The government's plan is to make them destitute," said Mazower.
    It isn't clear how long the leases are for, and the amount of money that is exchanging hands but Survival International says the communities in the area are unaware of the government's plans. They also said those who speak out against the government's initiative face intimidation and even imprisonment.
    In response to Survival International's claims, Ambassador Dina Mufti, spokesman for the Ministry Of Foreign Affairs in Ethiopia said the report was a "white lie".
    He said that while leases where being given to foreign companies to boost agricultural output, the land in question is idle land and communities are not being put out.
    "The notion of land grab, taking land from the poor and giving it to the investors is simply a white lie, it is not true. It is absolutely untrue because, it is the idle land that is being given to the investors. The idle land means the land that has not occupied by any farmer. We do have plenty of them," said Ambassador Mufti.
    A devastating drought in the Horn of Africa, which the UN has called the worst in 60 years is already putting Africa's food security to even greater question.
    The effects of the drought are worst felt in Somalia, facing famine in parts of the south and an insurgency that has meant farmers could not stay on their land to cultivate, even with poor rains. But Ethiopia and Kenya are also part of what analysts call the "triangle of death" with 12 million people going hungry in the region due to drought.
    For deeply impoverished Ethiopia, with 111 million hectares within its borders, part of the answer in the government's eyes, is to lease 'spare' land to wealthy outsiders to get them to grow the food.
    The government says it is also trying to get the country out of a cycle of aid dependancy by getting small scale farmers to irrigate so that when the rains fail, there are still opportunities for food production.
    "By expanding irrigation activities and by giving the farmers a productive yield and training them in various agricultural practices, we think we can lift up the country from dependency on the rain, especially the agricultural sector should not depend on the rain. The water harvest should be sustainable, it should be developed and in a very short while we hope, we are very much optimistic that Ethiopia will be free of food aid," Mufti told Reuters.
    By 2050, when its population is likely to be more than 9 billion, up from 6 billion now, the world's food production needs to increase by 70 percent, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, FAO.
    In Africa, which for a variety of reasons was bypassed by the Green Revolution that transformed India and China in the 1960s and 1970s, the numbers are even more bleak.
    The continent's population is set to double from 1 billion now.
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