A Survival International investigation has uncovered alarming
evidence that some of Ethiopia’s most productive farmland is being stolen from
local tribes and leased to foreign companies to grow and export food – while
thousands of its citizens starve during the devastating drought.
Vast blocks of fertile land in the Omo River area in
south west Ethiopia are being leased out to Malaysian, Italian and Korean
companies, as well as being cleared for vast state-run plantations producing
export crops, even though 90,000 tribal people in the area depend on the land
to survive.
The government is planning to increase the amount of land to be cleared to at
least 245,000 hectares, much of it for vast sugar cane plantations.
The region’s worst drought in 60 years has left millions starving. The Omo Valley tribes, are for now,
relatively secure. But the government views them as “backward” and is determined
to “modernize” them: it wants to turn them from self-sufficient farmers,
herders and hunters into workers in vast plantations. However, they may be
simply evicted from their land.
Part of its
scheme involves the construction of a series of dams along the Omo River, including Gibe III, which will be the biggest dam in Africa. Hundreds
of kilometers of irrigation canals will follow the dam construction, diverting
the life giving waters. This will leave the tribal people without annual floodwaters to grow their crops.
Local people are being intimidated to stop them talking to outsiders or
journalists, and there have been no meaningful consultations. A visitor recently in the
region told Survival that the government and police are cracking down, jailing
and torturing indigenous people and raping women, so they do not oppose the
land grabs. One tribesman told the visitor, ‘Now the people live in fear – they
are afraid of the government. Please help the pastoralists in southern
Ethiopia, they are under big threat.’
Survival’s Director, Stephen Corry, said today, ‘The Omo
Valley tribespeople are neither ‘backward’ nor need
‘modernizing’ – they are as much a part of the 21st century as the
multinationals that seek to appropriate their land. The tragedy is, forcing
them to become manual laborers will almost certainly lead to a drastic
reduction in their quality of life and condemn them to starvation and
destitution like so many of their fellow countrymen.
