AFTERrHilE DERG: AN ASSESSMENT OF RURAL LAND TENURE ISSUES IN ETHIOPIA by John W. Bruce Land Tenure Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison Allan Hoben African Studies Center, Boston University Dessalegn Rahmato Institute of Development Research, Addis Ababa University A collaborative project of the Land Tenure Center, University of Wisconsin- Madison, and the Institute of Development Research, Addis Ababa University, funded by the Ford Foundation. March 1994 AN ARSSI PEASANT'S REFLECTIONS Before the Derg we were servants. The Derg gave us land, but took away our children. When the cooperative came we did not have rest or the right to market our crops. Today is good. Everyone has his own land and can market his own crops. Our only problem now is that there is not enough land. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS List of boxes Vii List of acronyms ix Preface xi Executive summary xiii 1. Background and context 1 1.1 Prerevolutionary land tenure 1 1.2 Agrarian reform 2 1.3 Rural institutions 6 1.3.1 Peasant associations 6 1.3.2 Producers cooperatives 7 1.3.3 Service cooperatives 7 1.3.4 Current situation of rural institutions 8 1.4 Postrevolutionary land tenure policy 9 2. Current situation 11 2.1 Smallholder agriculture 11 2.1.1 Role of smallholder agriculture 11 2.1.2 Access to agricultural land 12 2.1.3 Transactions and strategies 19 2.1.4 Redistribution by the TPLF and EPRDF: pressures and pros- pects 22 2.1.5 Fragmentation and subdivision 28 2.1.6 Security of tenure and investment 30 2.2 Other production contexts 32 2.2.1 Land endowments 32 2.2.2 Large-scale commercial agriculture and access to land 32 2.2.3 State farms 36 2.2.4 Community forestry 37 2.2.5 Community pasture 38 2.2.6 Pastoralist land tenure 39 2.3 Making land policy and administering land 42 2.3.1 Current situation 42 2.3.2 Leadership and decentralization 44 2.3.3 Land registration and taxation 46 3. Policymaking and policy research 49 3.1 Attitudes, models, and roles 49 3.1.1 National level 49 3.1.2 Regional level 52 3.1.3 Local level 52 3.2 Tenure options for farmland 55 3.2.1 Private ownership 57 3.2.2 State leasehold 59 3.2.3 Limited ownership 60 3.2.4 Choosing an option 61 3.3 Common-property and natural-resource management 63 3.4 A Land tenure issues network 64 3.5 Next steps 67 3.5.1 Major policy seminar on rural land tenure 67 3.5.2 Urgent short-term studies 67 3.5.3 Seminar and RRA training on tenure and natural resource management 68 3.5.4 Longer-term research priorities 69 Appendix 1 Africa's experience with tenure reform: 1960-1993 71 1.1 Individualization reforms 72 1.2 State leasehold reforms 73 1.3 Collectivization and state farm reforms 73 1.4 Decentralization reforms 74 1.5 From replacement to adaptation 75 1.6 The other tenure reform: Common-property resources 76 Appendix 2 People interviewed 77 References 81 vi LIST OF BOXES Box 1 Return to prerevolutionary social institutions for settling disputes 13 Box 2 Returning Derg soldiers in Wollaita 18 Box 3 A contract farmer in Arssi 22 Box 4 Access to land in an Arssi Peasant Association 26 Box 5 Access to land in Bulado 27 Box 6 Monks' land at Debra Benkual 33 Box 7 Land for investors in Arssi 34 Box 8 Commercial farming in Humera 35 Box 9 Land enclosures in pastoral areas of the Ogaden 41 Box 10 On the ownership of land 43 Box 11 Land tenure and incentives for production and investment in Eastern Gojjam: a peasant debate 54 vii LIST OF ACRONYMS AMC Agricultural Marketing Corporation CIDA Canadian International Development Agency CSA Central Statistical Authority EC Ethiopian calendar EDU Ethiopian Democratic Union ENI Ethiopian Nutrition Institute EPRDF Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front EPRP Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party FAO Food and Agricultural Organization TAR Institute for Agricultural Research IDR Institute for Development Research ILCA International Livestock Centre for Africa GDP gross domestic product GPS global positioning system LTC Land Tenure Center LUPRD Land Use Planning and Regulation Department MNRDEP Ministry of Natural Resources, Development, and Environmental Protection MOA Ministry of Agriculture MSFD Ministry of State Farms Development OLF Oromo Liberation Front OPDO Oromo People's Democratic Organization PA peasant association (also kebelle) PC peasant cooperative PRA participatory rural appraisal asc Peace and Stability Committee RRA rapid rural appraisal sC service cooperative TGE Transitional Government of Ethiopia TPLF Tigray People's Liberation Front USAID US Agency for International Development ix PREFACE Ethiopia's transitional government has postponed difficult and critical decisions on land tenure policy until elections provide a mandate for those decisions, thereby creating an opportunity to foster discussion and research that will inform policy decisions. The need for this discussion and research exists because Ethiopia faces thorny land-tenure policy issues that have important implications for equity, growth, environment, and political stability. There is a danger that if a process of learning and policy dialogue on land tenure issues is not started soon, Ethiopia, like a number of other African nations, will adopt "ready made" land-tenure reforms that are based on ideological considerations and misconceptions about current problems. At best, such policies will be appropriate for only some of the nation's complex and diverse local land-tenure situations. This report represents one step in an ongoing, flexible effort to generate better information about current land tenure issues in Ethiopia and stimulate a process that will involve policymakers, farmers, and Ethiopian researchers in continuing discussions on land policy. It presents the results of an assessment of land tenure issues undertaken in March and April 1993 by researchers from the Addis Ababa University Institute of Development Research, the Boston University African Studies Center, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Land Tenure Center, in cooperation with officials from the Land Use Planning and Regulatory Department (LUPRD) of the Ministry of Natural Resources. The report is intended to raise and illuminate critical land policy issues, not to resolve them. In this sense, it represents the beginning rather than the end of a process. A draft of the report was discussed at a workshop held at the International Livestock Center for Africa (ILCA) in Addis Ababa on 27-29 August 1993. We have tried to take account of suggestions made at the workshop in revising the report. Proposed next steps in the effort to inform policy dialogue are discussed in the last section. Because our primary objective was to get a sense of the range of issues facing rural people and administrators in different regions, we tried to collect case studies on particular individuals, households, and communities. We hoped that this would help us to appreciate the perspective of the men and women we interviewed, and to appreciate how the processes through which they sought access to land were shaped by class, age, and gender, as well as by the specific social, economic, and political context in which they lived. Information in the report has been drawn from published sources, fugitive documents, and interviews with researchers who have carried out rural fieldwork since the transition in May 1991, as well as from our own observations. During our field visits our approach was based on open-ended interviews rather than questionnaires, and was qualitative rather than quantitative, though we attempted to quantify problems such as landlessness as best we could. While this rapid case-study approach is no substitute for more structured local appraisal (PRA), longer-term in-depth study, and sample surveys, we believe it is a useful first step to these more time-consuming forms of investigation. The criteria for site selection were: cultural-historical and agroecological diversity, crosscut to the extent possible by degree of integration into the cash economy, which for the most part correlated with transport costs from roads and towns. We also made a deliberate effort to revisit sites where each of us had conducted earlier research-for two of us, before the revolution and land xi reform. Finally, our selection was severely constrained by time and logistics. With these criteria in mind, Bruce and Legesse Yihidago of LUPRD visited officials and peasant communities in the woredas of Amba Alagie, Kilte Belesa, and Tach Maichew in Tigray. Hoben visited communities in Dega Damot, Bechena, Debre Work, Gindeweyn; Mota woredas in Gojjam, Sagure, Assessa, Dodota, Hurruta; Digelu woredas in Arssi (Gizachew Abegaz of LUPRD participated); and Goma woreda (around Agaro) in Illubabor. Dessalegn visited the woredas of Bolosso and Damit Gale in Wollaita. Within the communities visited we made an effort to visit homesteads with different characteristics in terms of wealth, age, and, where relevant, ethnicity or religion. Given the constraints under which we worked, we were only partially successful in this effort. Few interviews were held with women; indeed, gender issues on land tenure urgently require special study. There are many other gaps in our coverage. Perhaps the most serious are pastoralists, peri-urban areas, and highly commercialized regions. In the last section of the report we recommend that further studies on these topics be undertaken as soon as possible. In analyzing our material we have been guided by our knowledge of the literature on Ethiopian land tenure, the comparative studies of tenure, and the methodology of "triangulation," that is, trying to obtain and use information from as many different sources and perspectives as possible to illuminate the same issue.