Now it is a sort of neo-colonialism. The land-grabbers are
not Europeans- they are Asians, and even richer Africans; and they don’t
employ military force to secure the lands. They pay the African governments.
At the root of the land grab lie global food shortage due to
drought, population explosion, price hikes and lack of fertile, arable lands. This
has immediate and long-lasting consequences.
The immediate consequence is that the owners of the lands will
be dislocated with their ancient villages destroyed, and forced to till their
own lands for a meager wage if they are lucky enough to get hired by the
foreigners that have grabbed their lands.
The long-term consequence is that these fertile lands will lose
their trees, topsoil, natural habitats and rivers, to be rendered barren as a
result of exposition to chemicals latent in the fertilizers, insecticides and
pesticides. If any rivers and lakes survive evaporation, they are likely to be
poisoned by toxic materials and become undrinkable and health hazard.
So far, those aspiring to acquire African lands are India,
Saudi Arabia, Libya, Egypt and even Pakistan and Turkey. Libya is involved in
Mali. India, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt are present in Ethiopia.
The governments of Sudan, Mozambique, Kenya, Uganda and Zambia too, are
inviting such entrepreneurs to come and exploit their lands as if this a good
thing to do. Ethiopia allows the exploiters to use Ethiopian lands for a
maximum of 99 years. This length of
time is scary!
Chief among the food producing firms that plan to exploit
Ethiopia are the Indian Karuturi and Verdanta Harvests. An online Indian news
source titled Prokerala states thus:
“Ethiopia has offered to Indian
investors 1.8 million hectares of farmland, equaling nearly 40 percent the
total area of principal grain-growing state of Punjab, in what could give a big
push to the country’s food security. The land offered by the East African nation, at the horn of the
continent, equals 50 percent of the cultivable land of Punjab, often called
India’s granary, accounting for 23 percent of its wheat and 10 percent of
paddy output.”
Mr. Tefera Derbew, Ethiopian Minster of Agriculture said,
“How much land will actually go to
Indian investors depends entirely on the interest of the investors. If they
come and take all the land, they are welcome.So
far, we have transferred 307,000 hectares of land to foreign and domestic
investors. Some 79 percent of this land has been transferred to Indian
companies. This land is on 70-year lease. We are now proposing to transfer
another 3.6 million hectares of land to investors from overseas. And I am
confident that more than half of this 3.6 million hectares will go to Indians.”
Broadly speaking, Indian firms have interest in cultivating
cotton, palm oil, rubber, oilseeds and horticulture. Such sort of products need
heavy mechanized form of farming that involves concentrated chemicals and mono-culture.
The target regions in Ethiopia are the fertile lands of
Gambella, Afar, Ogaden and Benshangul-gumuz in particular and all arable lands
in general. The people that are earmarked for dislocation from Gambella alone
are about 225,000, consisting of 45,000.00 families and 49 villages. They will
be resettled not too far from the lands they have been dispossessed of, so that
they will be an ideal resource for cheap labor, should the need arise. After
having lost their vast lands, they will end up owning a tiny piece of land- 1.3
hectares per family. According to a reliable source, many Punjabi farmers are
heading to Gambella and other regions for settlement. They and their descendants
have every right to farm these lands and live on them for the next 70 to 99
years and beyond. Moreover, they will export every grain they harvest to India
or to wherever they generate hard currency best. Nothing is left for Ethiopia
farmers. From the perspective of
the natives this is tantamount to neo-colonization whether the
“investors” paid the Government or not.
That is how every colonization that we know of in history
began. First come a group of people. They settle on the best land of the natives.
They grow rich over the years. More and more people flow in following in their footsteps, claiming the
utilization of the lands belonging to their kith and kin.They give birth to children. Their
grandchildren multiply and take over more and more lands. They become stronger
and stronger economically, and then politically; while the natives get poorer
and poorer economically and become politically inconsequential. They will be citizens
of that country by virtue of their births in it, but their loyalty and
allegiance will be to the places of their origins. Eventually the natives
become outcasts in their own countries. Besides being poor economically, they are devastated psychologically and
culturally, feeling inferior to their colonizers. They end up being servants and
maidservants of the colonizers. Ultimately, they are dehumanized, segregated
and discriminated against. That is how colonies in Africa started and ended up.
That is exactly what happened in South Africa, Uganda and Kenya, to cite only three
examples.What makes the current
colonization of Africa slightly different is that “This is colonization
by invitation”, as a well-seasoned Ethiopian patriot put it. What
Europeans couldn’t achieve by military might as in the case of Ethiopia,
Asians are attaining by a bit of cash.
China too, has a huge vested interest in Ethiopia. The most
populous nation on Earth next to India is China. These nations are densely
populated. They seek for sparsely populated and fertile areas to settle their overcrowded
peoples. The first step to achieve this is to acquire some lands as a foothold
overseas. Once they secure a foothold, before the natives realize and notice
it, they can grow astronomically in number and takeover the new lands, and even
countries, gradually. Since they are emerging as superpowers, if necessary,
they can use force of arms to attain their ultimate takeover.This situation is not as simple as the
Ethiopian Government thinks. It is either unable to see the big picture and its
grave implications, or it is deliberately turning a blind eye for temporary
financial gains. Surely, it is only focused on the immediate hard cash it
charges the land-grabbers at present. It proves that it is nonchalant to the
well-being of future generations of Ethiopians. It seems to say like the
selfish donkey, “may not a blade of grass grow after I am dead and
gone!”
What is the Ethiopian Government’s rational behind
allowing foreigners to get fertile Ethiopian lands and virgin forests?One of its arguments is that Ethiopia
has a plenty of uncultivated lands. This, however, is a poor argument. A
government that cares for the well-being of its people doesn’t give away
its natural resources to foreigners simply because it has a plenty of it. Every
good government should protect its national reserve bearing in mind future
generations. Even though Ethiopians are not utilizing all their lands at
present, there would come a time when they will do so due to population
explosion and scarcity of arable lands. Even if this argument had any validity,
the lands the so-called investors have targeted to utilize are not uncultivated
lands. They want to take over lands that have already been cultivated by the
dwellers. If not, why would they dislocate the native farmers from the places
they have farmed and lived in from time immemorial?
The second argument of the Government is that the investors
will create jobs for the natives and improve their livelihood by helping them
to create infrastructures such as roads, schools, clinics and better housing. Judging
by the settlement of Punjabi farmers in Gambella, the prospect of the natives
to work there and benefit financially is null and void. The infrastructure will
serve only those Punjabis more than any body else. After all, why should
Punjabi farmers create jobs for Ethiopian farmers? The Ethiopian farmers were not jobless.
They had a job all the year round for ages cultivating their own lands. Why
should they lose their lands and jobs just to work for others on their own
lands? Isn’t this absurd?
A third argument of the Government is that, conceding lands
to Indian farmers will generate Indian technology transfer to Ethiopia
including the construction of railroads and sugar factories. This argument too,
is lame. The international food producing firms such as Karuturi and Verdanta
Harvests are neither technology transferring agents nor have they any influence
on any such entities. If the Ethiopian Government is after technology transfer,
it should directly deal with the concerned entities that are engaged in this
business, instead of “donating” arable lands belonging to millions
of Ethiopians, to achieve this.
India has a population of 1.2 billion people. Yet she is not
known begging for food from foreign countries to feed her people. Ethiopia,
with only 80 million people, does depend on foreign aid for food as if her
lands don’t grow food. India plans to farm Ethiopian lands to meet its
shortage of food. Isn’t this ironical?
Officially, the investors are acquiring arable lands at a very
cheap price; even cheaper than Indian lands. However, no one but the Government
knows exactly how much money it receives from the investors in addition to the
token or formal officially disclosed prices. Furthermore, it is not revealed where the
money goes. Does it go into the Government treasury for national use or does it
fill the pockets of a few high-profile individuals? Transparency and
accountability are lacking terribly. No open debate is even permissible to
discuss the merit and demerit of this phenomenon of this proportion, which can
cause the dislocation of people, the devastation of top and bottom soils, plants,
animals, rivers and lakes.
The Government of Ethiopia knows full well that the
Ethiopian farmers will benefit nothing from the land grab. On the contrary, it
is self-evident that they will be impoverished even more. So, why is it leasing
arable lands and virgin forests at such an alarming rate? Why all this haste? Of
course, at the heart of all this lies finance. When Ato Meles Zenawi, the Prime
Minister of Ethiopia was asked what the Ethiopian farmers would gain from the
land grab, he was reported to have spokenpoint blank that the investors were
not in Ethiopia for charity reasons. They were there for a return of their
investments. As such, they were entitled to do whatever they liked with the
lands they had acquired paying for them in hard currency.
Such a statement is not befitting the leader of a nation that
he is supposed to protect. It is indeed disheartening and sobering. It is
obvious that the Government of Ethiopia is not preserving and safeguarding the
national reserve and natural resources of the country as long as the best
bidders pay for them in hard currency that the Government needs terribly.
If Ethiopian lands are capable of being farmed and feeding
millions of Indians, Saudi Arabians, Egyptians, Pakistanis and Turks, why
shouldn’t they be cultivated by Ethiopian farmers to feed themselves and
to export the left-over or the surplus harvest to earn hard currency? Is it
because there aren’t any Ethiopian agronomists that can make this happen?
No, I don’t think so. There are many capable Ethiopian farmers that can
undertake this. Is it because of lack of finance? Maybe. This is where the
Ethiopian Government should step in. The Government should encourage Ethiopian
farmers and assist them financially and otherwise, with the same intensity it
initiates foreign food companies to lease Ethiopian lands. Not only encourage
them to farm, but farm organically.
The foreign firms, as stated earlier, will apply mechanized
farming and infest the lands and waters with chemicals; thus contributing to
the bareness of the earth in the long run, after a few bumper harvests. Indian
farmers themselves have protested against the use of chemical fertilizers that
have made their farms totally unproductive after a few bumper harvests.
Non-the-less, Indians or any foreign investors for that matter, don’t
mind applying lots of chemicals to Ethiopian soils to maximize profit and
abandon them for fresh plots of lands, when they become useless, unless they
are monitored closely. On top of
this, they will practice monoculture by planting only one kind of product on a
vast amount of land, such as cotton, tobacco, rubber, oilseeds and
horticulture. If pestilence strikes, all of them will be devastated. The
flower-beds that some Dutch companies have exploited in Ethiopia are not
yielding anymore as in the past due to intensive exposure to chemicals that
have become hazardous to the environment and the inhabitants. More and more
Ethiopians are now afflicted by cancer because of exposure to such toxic
chemicals.
If the Ethiopian Government would initiate Ethiopian farmers
to launch organicfarming in the
form of mixed farming, nonetheless, they can use natural manure as fertilizers,
grow among other plants leguminous seeds such as beans, peas and clover that
generate nitrates in the soil, and that could be harvested twice in a year. The
stems of these plants could be used as cooking charcoal, saving rain-causing
trees from being cut for firewood, and protecting them so that they could in
return protect soils from erosion and desertification. And if pestilence hits one of the plants,
the rest will survive to feed the farmers, contrary to mono-culture, that causes
the devastation of the entire farm.
Hence, the solution for Ethiopia’s underdevelopment in
general, and the problem of her farmers in particular, is not to concede arable
lands to foreign investors, but rather to empower Ethiopian farmers to preserve
their own lands, cultivate them organically, harvest chemical-free foods,
consume them first and foremost, and export the surplus to the very countries
like India, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan and Israel that are out to
farm Ethiopian lands and take the harvests home.
I urge the Government to stop conceding to foreigners the
natural resources and the national reserves of the peoples of Ethiopia, and to
begin helping Ethiopian farmers preserve and farm their lands organically.
Otherwise, there wouldn’t be any arable lands left in Ethiopia twenty
years from now, resulting in more drought, famine, ecological disaster, and
most of all, the annihilation of human life.
If the Ethiopian Government is not willing to reverse its
decision, it should at least review thoroughly the terms of the concessions.
First and foremost, it must shorten the duration of the lease not to exceed 15
years at a time unless the investors are Ethiopians or of Ethiopian descent. It
could be renewable after that, upon a mutual agreement of both parties. Second,
the Government should enforce a strict labor code pertaining to minimum wage
scale, collective bargaining power, as well as medical and retirement benefits
for both the skilled and unskilled Ethiopian employees that would work for the cultivators.
Third, the Government should see to it that both skilled and unskilled
Ethiopians are employed in these projects, since it claims that one of the
reasons why it leases the lands is to create jobs for Ethiopians. As it now
stands, the Punjabis seem to be keen on filling in the farms with their own
workers.Most of all, the
Government should see to it that the environment (soil, air, water, etc.) is
protected against chemicals that would endanger nature, natural habitats and
human life. In fact, it should encourage organic farming all over Ethiopia. Fourth,
it should control the flow of human traffic, i.e., the number of foreign-born employers,
employees and their families entering Ethiopia to settle on their farms. Such
measures can temporarily minimize otherwise catastrophic damages that willcompromise the very existence of
Ethiopia.
