Search

This paper examines the effects of changes in land tenure on female potters in the southern highlands of Ethiopia. Communal land has historically played an important role in the livelihoods of potterymaking women, who rely on the non-agricultural use of this land. Data was gathered through interviews and observations, and the resulting evidence was organized and analyzed to address the research objectives and contextualize the findings within a broader empirical framework. Recent changes to Ethiopia’s communal land tenure system have disproportionally affected the socio-economy of the pottery-making women in comparison to their non-pottery-making counterparts by constraining their access to clay mining sites. Meanwhile, globalization and the freemarket economy have facilitated the unrestricted import and distribution of plastic and metal objects, significantly reducing the need for pottery objects, and further impacting the potters’ livelihoods and social status. The fact that globalization and government changes to the communal land tenure system have disproportionally affected artisan women in Ethiopia resonates with the need for academia to pay more attention to intersectionality when studying gender bias, given that the situation has created an additional level of discrimination for socially marginalized women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relocation from inner cities and rehousing in suburbs is becoming an increasingly prevalent issue in developing countries. However, there is limited evidence about the perspectives of adolescents and most studies are from western contexts. In addressing this gap this study tracked adolescents before and after they were relocated over an eight-year interval from the centre of Addis Ababa to the outskirts, mainly to government-sponsored condominium housing. The paper also compares the views of those who were relocated with those who stayed behind. The paper argues that condominium housing enabled low-to-middle-income households to become house owners, while the poorest could not afford the costs, and the richest preferred building their own houses. From the perspective of adolescents who were relocated the move led to better housing and improved sanitation. However, students faced difficulties in the first year commuting, and schools and health centres were considered better quality in the previous locations; markets and shops were initially less well developed in the condominium areas, and there were fewer recreation options, though pollution and safety were greater concerns in the old neighbourhoods. A significant majority of the adolescents (79%) felt that the changes were positive or mainly positive and soon adapted to the new social environment, though social ties were less strong than in their previous neighbourhoods. Those who moved had better internet access and there were gender differences in decision-making, leisure activities and spending, with girls having less freedom, somewhat compensated for by mobile phones and social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In spite of high capital expenditures, the development of state-owned sugarcane estates in Ethiopia's southwestern lowlands did not bring the desired success in terms of sugar revenues, employment creation, or the socio-economic development of the local agro-pastoralist population. Yet, the radical and capital-intensive transformation of the Omo River basin was by no means without impact. This paper shows that the Kuraz Sugar Development Project (KSDP) entails 'side effects' which manifest themselves in different spatial–temporal dimensions. More technically, the paper examines how water resources are linked to the outcomes of this state-led development intervention and how it increases the degree of legibility from above and outside. It is based on qualitative case study research conducted between 2013 and 2017, which included multiple visits to the study region and in-depth discussions with different stakeholders at the federal and local level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the litigation strategies adopted by Eritrea and Ethiopia before the Eritrea-Ethiopia Claims Commission convened at The Permanent Commission of Arbitration at The Hague between 2001 and 2009. I pursue insights from the work of Laura Nader concerning how, through binding arbitration, the international community imposes its power on disputing parties as opposed to allowing their competing legal claims to be fairly decided. The claims examined by this paper concern who started the border war and that Ethiopia denationalized 'Eritrean' nationals and unlawfully deprived them of their property. I conclude that the PCA's decisions on Eritrea and Ethiopia were flawed and that its deliberations need to be viewed in a much wider political context; furthermore its decisions contributed to further political instability in the Horn of Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Ethiopia, informal land transactions are proliferating in urban centers and triggering wider socio-economic and environmental challenges in the sustainable development of cities. Taking the case of Bahir Dar city, this paper examines informal land transactions in Ethiopia in terms of its rule-structuring processes, roles of actors in the transaction, and factors for its emergence and continued proliferation. Empirical evidence collected through key informant interviews, participant observation, and from secondary sources were analyzed qualitatively. The study reveals that the lease system in Ethiopia is ill-suited to the interests and reality of many urban dwellers and is unable to meet their needs. As a response to the failures of the lease system, residents are increasingly turning to informal land transactions. The success of informal land markets in Bahir Dar is reinforced by the possibility of formalization of land holdings through corrupt practices in local land administration. Moreover, the processes of the informal markets have provided adaptive and responsive alternatives for urban dwellers to access land. Unless land administration shifts to adapt to these realities, informal markets will likely continue to thrive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past decade an increasing number of adolescent girls in Ethiopia have moved from villages and rural towns to Addis Ababa to improve their own lives and those of their families. While girls' migration is in a way a 'normality', with historically girls migrating for domestic work, the dominant discourse in Ethiopia describes the migration of girls mainly in terms of trafficking and exploitation, in particular when they are doing sex work. As a result, adolescent migrant girls are reduced to passive victims. In this paper we analyse the agency of adolescent migrant sex workers in three 'phases' of their migration process, namely in the decision to migrate, in their lives in the city, and in their future aspirations. We argue that the decisions of adolescent girls to migrate to Addis Ababa is a way of asserting their agency in moving forward with life, yet this agency is taking place in highly constrained circumstances which are strongly related to the gendered ideologies that affect their position in the household, their educational opportunities and their labour market perspectives. The paper is based on a qualitative study conducted in Ethiopia in 2014. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethiopia has a long history of economic relations in its borderlands. Since the early 1990s, the Ethiopian state began to earnestly entrench its authority in the Ethiopia-Somaliland borderlands. This study examined the governmentalization of the Ethio-Somaliland borderlands in the post-1991 period. Drawing on official data and key informant interviews, the study identifies several techniques of governance that the Ethiopian state instituted to govern and control economic activities in these borderlands. The analysis reveals that the manner in which economic relations are governed is directly shaped by the exceptional nature and logic of borderlands in general and the Ethiopia-Somaliland borderlands in particular. The Ethiopian state has sometimes used 'informal' mechanisms and this particular way of governing economic activities in the border region is analyzed in this paper, which highlights five prominent techniques, but also looks at how people in the region circumvent some of these government techniques. There is a mutation of governance in which the distinction between what is formal and informal is often blurred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a special issue of the Journal of Eastern African Studies devoted to a review of Ethiopia's 20 years of “revolutionary democracy”. The collection brings together 11 articles exploring differing aspects of Ethiopia's political experience since 1991. This introduction begins with a short summary of these 11 papers, but then moves to a substantive review of Ethiopia's political history over the past two decades, featuring consideration of the extent of transformation and continuity under the ruling Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), the importance of economic issues in defining government policies, and the significance of development and relations with donors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

African approaches to development have shifted, particularly in north-eastern Africa. Donor-driven policies have given way to state-led development ‘visions’, often with a focus on large-scale infrastructure projects – feeding into and reflecting ‘Africa Rising’ discourses. In Kenya and Ethiopia, these visions include flagship projects in the geographical frontiers, areas previously viewed as buffer zones, whose people have been historically marginalised. This paper adapts the analytical framework from James Scott’sSeeing Like a Statein order to compare Kenya’s and Ethiopia’s state visions, and to understand the risks to the populations intended to benefit from such visions from the unintended (but predictable) consequences such projects have had in the past. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The inhabitants of the lower Omo Valley, a lowland area of southwestern Ethiopia, are facing rapid and unprecedented changes due to the implementation of a large-scale development project along the Omo River. The Ethiopian government has undertaken the establishment of a sugarcane plantation of massive proportions and plans to make the local agro-pastoralists into out-growers settled in large, government-designed villages. This paper compares the discourses of the government on the value of local livelihoods with the internal discourses of one local group, the Mela, on the changes affecting the land. It demonstrates that the government and Mela discourses draw on radically different cosmologies and engagements with nature. Whereas the state discourses encapsulate a disenchantment of the world, Mela discourses stress the importance of propitiating mythical beings, held as the ‘real custodians’ of the land. In Mela’s views, their successful engagement with these mythical beings means that they belong to the land, in contrast to the government which they see as neglecting these beings and thus to be doomed to fail in its developmental endeavours. The paper points towards the relevance of these discourses for Mela’s sense of agency and autochthonous identity. In the context of an authoritarian state which bridles at open contestation, these discourses provide, in Mela minds at least, a means to subvert state power and to contest its legitimacy and efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Dats'in are an indigenous minority group living on the Sudanese-Ethiopian borderland. They passed unnoticed to researchers, administrators and the wider world until 2013, when the authors of this paper met them in the lowlands of Qwara (NW Ethiopia). They speak an undocumented Nilo-Saharan language, related to Gumuz, and share important cultural and social traits with other indigenous communities in the area, while at the same time remaining clearly distinct. Dats'in history, which is related to that of the so-called Hamej peoples – the blanket name by which they are known to other groups – can be traced back several centuries through oral traditions, texts and archaeology. The Hamej, in fact, played a crucial role during the Funj Sultanate (1504–1821) and probably before. The present article is based on three field seasons carried out in the lowlands of Qwara (Ethiopia), one of the areas where they live today, and intends to offer some insights into their history and culture. They exemplify well the multifaceted relations between small-scale and State societies that have characterized the last millennium in the Sudanese-Ethiopian borderland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inter-ethnic relations in Ethiopia have always been complex and dynamic. As home to diverse ethnic groups with differing livelihood strategies and diverging social institutions, this country is beset with fluidity of relations, shifting allegiances, as well as building and breaking alliances. Yet, the amplitude of political temperature at the center seems to play a decisive role in the making or breaking of these relations at all levels: center and periphery. This article examines the dynamics of inter-ethnic relations in two districts, Gidda and Kiremu, located on the western edge of northern plateau of Ethiopia in East Wollega, Oromiya Regional State, in historical perspective. Based on extensive review of historical documents and on empirical data generated through successive fieldwork conducted during the early 2000s, the paper tries to shed light on changing trends of inter-ethnic relations among diverse communities inhabiting the two districts. The economic, political, cultural and ecological dynamics of these relations are placed in a wider regional and historical context, which includes the former Horro-GudruAwraja(Amharic: “sub-province”). Competition over resources, particularly land, is identified as a major driving factor in conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Ethiopia has become a major recipient of international development aid since the coming to power of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). This is despite ideological differences between EPRDF and its donors. EPRDF champions the developmental state model that assigns to the state a key role in the development process within a dominant party political framework. Donors broadly fall within the liberalism continuum with the private sector as the driving force and the assumption of a democratic-pluralist politics. The paper examines the making of a robust aid relationship across this ideological boundary and the underlying tensions. It also analyses the “significant others” that have influenced the tone of the conversation between EPRDF and donors. The paper refers to the literature that considers aid relationship as a negotiation rather than the normative and politically loaded term “partnership”. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An ideology of “revolutionary democracy” has driven the project of state building in Ethiopia over the last 20 years. This paper explores the relationships that the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) and the Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) government have sought to forge with the Ethiopian state and its people, by means of the various political organizations (parties, fronts, mass associations) that organize, represent or control them. It examines continuities and shifts across a series of iterations since the late 1970s: the Front's politico-administrative organization in 1980s Tigray; the party-led construction of the federation, civil service reform and political “gimgema” in the 1990s; the politicization of capacity building as the focus shifted to the developmental state following party splits and “renewal” from 2001; and the reconstruction of party structures distinct from those of the state in the wake of a strong electoral challenge in 2005, culminating in sweeping electoral wins in 2010. Despite its imprecision, the notion of revolutionary democracy has anchored shifting constellations of party–state relations, and changing strategies of political mobilization and organization, in the all-encompassing and fundamentally non-liberal political aspiration characterized by the Prime Minister as forging a direct “coalition with the people”. Whilst the ruling party has been widely criticized for failing to compromise or collaborate with alternative sources of authority, the paper suggests that this reflects a set of deliberate political choices that are both ideologically and sociologically reinforced. Processes of state building are at root about power, and as such their assessment calls for a nuanced understanding of context. The paper traces the role of ideological, historical, institutional and cultural influences and continuities in the Ethiopian case. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The traditional history of the Dassenech is based almost entirely on oral sources. An amalgam of peoples who identify themselves as members of territorial sections, clans and sub-clans, the Dassenech came together as a people over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This paper reviews these various traditions and notes the particular role played by environmental and ecological disasters in causing individuals, families and larger groups of people at certain times to migrate and at other times to be absorbed as new immigrants by neighboring communities. Also considered are the mechanisms that facilitated these movements. More contemporary research makes clear that traditions, which recall such interethnic relationships, are still acknowledged and drawn upon in times of present-day violence and rapid change. However, as the last section of this paper notes, there is a serious lack of evidence from the period after 1925 as to the particular mechanisms that allow individuals, families, or larger groups of people to actually shift identity. Can the Dassenech still respond as they once did, and by extension the other peoples in the South Omo, to contemporary environmental and/or ecological crises such as are now posed by the dams of the Gilgel Gibe project on the Omo River? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of state borders has long been preoccupied with their artificiality and the negative impact they have had on the local people. Recent studies have shifted the focus on state borders away from constraints to state borders as conduits and opportunities. Different factors are involved in determining the conditions of resourcing state borders and borderlands. The paper argues that local perceptions - the range of cultural meanings attributed to state borders - significantly factor in how a particular international border is used by specific groups of people. Drawing on the ethnography from the Gambella region of western Ethiopia, the paper advocates for a cognitive psychological approach in border studies. In so doing it goes beyond the conventional dichotomous template between the “bounded” European and the “permeable” African border imageries. Here the binary opposites are not Europeans and Africans but rather two African neighbors - the Anywaa and the Nuer - with sharply contrasting concepts of borders. Kew is the Anywaa concept of border which they also use to refer to the International border. Its use should be restricted to the Anywaa only but conceptually it is similar to the European notion of a bounded boundary. The Anywaa subscribe to a compartmentalized view of political boundaries both at the inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic level and thus they project onto the state border the same imagery. The Nuer, on the other hand, subscribe to a more flexible view of a political community. A tribal boundary (Cieng) is permeable. Individual Nuer change identity as situations demand, this often being dictated by their search for “greener pasture”. The Nuer do exactly the same in national identification with a dynamic pattern of border-crossing depending on the fluctuating opportunity structures between the Ethiopian and Sudanese states. The Anywaa's call for the rigidification of the international border and the chronic border crossing of the Nuer seemingly has strategic dimensions. A closer examination of their behavior, however, reveals that in making use of the state border both the Anywaa and the Nuer draw on their respective cultural schemata. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change and variability severely affect rural livelihoods and agricultural productivity, yet they are causes of stress vulnerable rural households have to cope with. This paper investigated farming communities' vulnerability to climate change and climate variability across 34 agricultural-based districts in Tigray, northern Ethiopia. It considered 24 biophysical and socio-economic indicators to reflect the three components of climate change vulnerability: exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity. A framework was used that combines exposure and sensitivity to produce potential impact, which was then compared with adaptive capacity in order to yield an overall measure of vulnerability. The classic statistical technique of factor analysis was applied to generate weights for the different indicators and an overall vulnerability index was constructed for the 34 rural districts. The analysis revealed that the districts deemed to be most vulnerable to climate change and variability overlapped with the most vulnerable populations. The most exposed farming communities showed a relatively low capacity for adaptation. The study further showed that vulnerability to climate change and variability is basically linked to social and economic developments. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the role of the judiciary in Ethiopia. Implicit in the notion of separation of powers is the fact that the judiciary has a crucial role in resolving disputes impartially, ensuring the rule of law and in setting limits to power. Yet in Ethiopia the legislature has sought to take away power from the courts, placing them in quasi-judicial bodies within the executive. The judiciary has also failed to check that the executive is acting within the framework of the law. The overall assessment is that the judiciary has not yet defined its role; has not properly interpreted the concept of separation of powers; and has not yet become a key organ for enforcing human rights. The judiciary has abdicated its core function of reviewing acts and decisions of the executive and administrative agencies and is in danger of paving the way for arbitrary and unchecked government. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper presents an ethnographic description of the institutions and processes of decision-making among the Kara of Southern Ethiopia, central among them the council of spokesmen called the borkotto bitti. Comparing these practices as well as the Kara's own discussions of them with equivalent practices of their cultural neighbours, the Hamar, reveals the extent and complexity of social imagination in the Lower Omo Valley. The philosopher Plato's treatise on the philosopher-kings of the utopian city ('Republic') offers another foil for the ethnographic data in its dense discussion of the links between decision-making, personal virtue, status, accountability and the common weal, which mirrors the Kara's own reflections. The inevitable contradictions in the political system are accordingly treated not simply from an analytical perspective, but as an actors' problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Here we present the context and nature of findings from the first season of archaeological survey and trial excavation in an area of Ethiopia's Lower Omo Valley. With the exception of well-documented early hominin discoveries, the region has previously been overlooked as a wilderness absent of human inhabitation. Such an outlook has fostered various consequences for strategies of legal, research and conservation policy within the regional boundaries of Mursiland in particular. In this paper recent discoveries of megalithic circular platforms and other archaeological remains are introduced against their dynamic local and regional placement within present-day understandings of place. Furthermore, we emphasise the value of a participative archaeology research framework in which accountability is directed towards common ground between multiple 'stake-holders' within the design and dissemination of the research agenda. This demonstrates important possibilities for intricate understandings of wilderness and landscape linked to heritage, conservation, development and tourism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community-based natural resources management (CNRM), which emphasizes community empowerment, participation and enhanced use of indigenous knowledge in resources and environmental management, is an increasingly popular discourse for sustainable development in sub-Saharan Africa. Despite its popularity, CNRM faces various discursive and institutional challenges in countries with a recent history of top-down development. This paper provides a comparative examination of the specific historical, ideological and political contexts behind discourses, policies and institutions for and against community-based resources and environmental management in Ethiopia and Eritrea. There is a need for greater emphasis on communal rights to pastoral, agricultural and forest resources, in contrast to the continued support for a neo-Malthusian dispensation of environmental rehabilitation or reclamation which still reigns supreme in both Eritrea and Ethiopia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pastoral areas of Ethiopia are witnessing radical change in terms of both increasingly restricted mobility and access to vital resources. A cause and consequence of such constraints has been a move toward sedentarised forms of livestock and agricultural production. This is occurring in a political and socio-economic vacuum, in which the customary institutions responsible for resource allocation and access to land are becoming weaker, and where the Ethiopian government has yet to develop a clear policy or strategy for resource distribution and tenure security in pastoral areas. To date, pastoral women's property rights have been afforded a certain degree of protection by customary institutions; however, the impact on such protection is likely to be negative as these institutions weaken. Appropriate and effective government protection for women's property rights do not yet exist. Land tenure reform in pastoral areas appears imminent, partly due to increasing conflicts over access to resources, and to the existence of such reforms in other parts of the country. This paper discusses the changing nature of pastoral land rights in Ethiopia through a detailed case study of the Boran people in Oromia Regional State. It sets the case within wider national land reform processes and makes recommendations regarding how civil society and other actors can best engage with land policy and law formulation and implementation processes to secure women's land rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, consecutive natural calamities occurred in North Eastern Africa that collapsed pastoral economies and forced human adaptations. A rinderpest epizootic and devastating famine characterized the period. Using oral narrations of the Borana Oromo of Southern Ethiopia, this paper discusses the impact of the Great Rinderpest of the 1890s on cattle, as well as the subsequent famine, and the beginning of predation by carnivores on humans. Societal memory is utilized to reconstruct that particular historical period, referred to by the Borana as ciinna tiittee guracha - the “extermination of cattle whose corpses were covered by swarms of black flies”. The pastoral economy and human population collapse that occurred left imprints on historical traditions. The impact of the pandemic was explored in this study by discussing family traditions of the unusual danger of man-eating carnivores, the practice of pawning children, the dispersal of populations, the wiping-out of entire families and, most critically, the crisis of social identity. We examine societal responses and the revival of those social institutions that coordinated recovery and the redistribution of resources. We attempt to understand the process of recovery: the importance of head counting the survivors, the social and ritual re-organization of the gada, and the revival of social institutions that re-created social harmony and promoted pastoral economic recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper, which sees democracy as an incremental habituation of a political culture that societies with modern economy entertain, argues that Ethiopia's current politics can only be understood as a transition from a totalitarian to a democratic culture. However, the transition to full-fledged liberal democracy is struggling to overcome two hurdles: the absence of a formidable middle class and the prevalence of a tenuous national identity. Even if liberal democracy appears a distant dream, the current hybrid political culture will not allow the country to backpedal to a blatant authoritarianism. The political culture, which is undergoing a permanent change, is en route to liberal democracy, albeit incrementally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against the promise that new trade corridors in Africa lead to political stability and state control, this article presents a contradictory case. In the context of the implementation of the LAPSSET corridor, Moyale at the Kenyan–Ethiopian border has been undergoing a transformation. The formerly marginalized border town is today envisioned as a major trade hub for the region. However, this development has been recurrently disturbed not only by trade barriers and import regulations but also by violent clashes between local communities. Moyale’s history, economic rivalries, and an intra-federal boundary dispute make the new corridor a specifically dangerous setting for the local population, while alternative smuggle routes are perceived as more reliable and secure. The text provides insights into ethnographic research in a particular violent surrounding. Qualitative interviews and participant observations were conducted with locals and border officials in Moyale during clashes between the Borana and Garre communities in 2018. The article aims to understand trade and security strategies on the ground, which are far from being controlled by state monopoly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethiopia, the host of the African Union, did not ratify the African Women’s Rights framework (the Maputo Protocol) for fifteen years. While realist, liberal and constructivist scholars have theorised why countries ratify human rights treaties, this article adds to this debate by asking ‘why not?’. Based on interviews, archival material, document analysis and fieldwork in Addis Ababa, the article explores the dominant explanations for adopting human rights treaties, such as donor pressure, legitimacy, openness of a political system and normative alignment. By analysing the Ethiopian government’s decision not to ratify the Maputo Protocol on numerous occasions before finally ratifying it quietly and with a long list of reservations, the article argues that countries may adopt regional human rights treaties for different reasons than the global ones. By tracing this ‘non-event’ from the early attempts to adopt the Maputo Protocol until its ratification in 2018, the article provides an indepth analysis of the recent history of women’s rights in Ethiopia’s complex national context, including the rise of women’s movements, closing civil space, growing authoritarianism, anti-rights rhetoric, and a government crisis that paved way for reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Extreme Deprivation Index uses easily verifiable answers to ten questions about the ownership of the most basic non-food wage goods - things that poor people in a variety of rural contexts want to have because they make a real difference to the quality of their lives. Using this Index, we define rural Ethiopians and Ugandans who lack access to a few basic consumer goods as ‘most deprived’: they are at risk of failing to achieve adequate education and nutrition; becoming pregnant as a teenager; remaining dependent on manual agricultural wage labour and failing to find to a decent job. As in other African countries, they have derived relatively little benefit from donor and government policies claiming to reduce poverty. They may continue to be ignored if the impact of policy on the bottom 10% can be obscured by fashionably complex indices of poverty. We emphasise the practical and political relevance of the simple un-weighted Deprivation Index: if interventions currently promoted by political leaders and aid officials can easily be shown to offer few or no benefits to the poorest rural people, then pressures to introduce new policies may intensify, or at least become less easy to ignore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Insights into the role of changing historical-political-cultural contexts and social norms in shaping adolescent girls' and boys' futures contributes to an understanding of human development at the intersection of gender and youth in low- and middle-income countries. This study investigates the capabilities and aspirations of adolescent girls and boys and their evolution in Amhara against the background of three successive political regimes that governed Ethiopia over the last 90 years, the Haile-Selassie imperial regime (1930–1974), the socialist military Derg regime (1974–1991), and the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (1991–2019), each with their own institutions, structures and infrastructure, and gender- and age-related relations and norms. The study adopts a capability approach with a gender and generationing development lens as a framework and relies on qualitative data collected through community- and mixed-generation group discussions. The study illustrates that, even if institutional and structural barriers became less stringent over time, cumulative gender- and age-related obstacles – some rooted in beliefs, norms, traditions and relations – hindered the expansion of adolescents' capability success, consistently more so for girls than boys. (The threat of) gender-based violence pervasively constrains girls' capabilities success and aspirations in spite of more formal protective institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taxation practices are embedded in a complex web of institutional and social factors, norms and values, some of which encourage, some of which depress tax compliance. Rather than simply constituting a revenue generating practice, taxation also represents a powerful tool to govern citizens. Studying the everyday practices of paying taxes means analysing how tax rules are applied, respected, contested and subverted in real life. Contributing to a growing canon on the social practices of taxation, this article asks: How do small- and medium-sized business owners navigate their relationship with tax authorities and attempt to make sense of their compliance and non-compliance? Through an in-depth study of the everyday practices of taxpaying in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa using interviews with business owners, this article demonstrates that taxpayers apply two different forms of reasoning to describe their taxation practices, a business logic and an emotional response. Taxation practices are governed by the double aim of reducing the financial, as well as the emotional burden associated with paying taxes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article critically analyses the history of the Ethiopian sugar industry, with emphasis on drivers, decision-making and processes of incorporation and exclusion aiming to transform lowlands. We argue that the government has used a state-led modernization and expansion of the sugar industry to consolidate the power of central governments. Through the creation of sugar-based agribusinesses, the changing regimes have sought to extend their control over natural resources, increase the movement of labour, and stimulate economic growth. This has led to deepened state structures and considerable transformation of power relations, causing marginalization of the affected communities. In Ethiopia's post-2018 political and economic transition, this modernist and expansionist programme found itself in a set of deep economic and financial crises, leading to government initiatives to privatize the sugar industry. In response to the privatization initiatives, local elites articulate and contest the historical process of marginalization and compete in demanding redress for the adverse incorporation of the communities. They do so to expand the community space for agency and enforce their interests in gaining from, and perhaps dominating a privatization process through takeover strategies. The past modernist development approach that caused marginalization is likely to affect a new stage of lowland transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With Siad Barre's invasion of Ethiopia in 1977, the military regime of the Derg implement policies aimed at the weakening and destabilization of the Republic of Somalia. This initiative was not entirely novel but was based upon precautionary plans first laid down under the imperial administration of Haile Selassie. The defeat of the Somalia army in the Ogaden would in fact herald the beginnings of the collapse of the power of Siad Barre and the Somali state, but the destabilization of Somalia has also destabilized the entire region of the Horn of Africa. This article charts the Ethiopian response to Somali irredentism at this crucial time, particularly focusing on the clandestine operations by the Derg to permanently eliminate the threat posed by Somalia. Previously untapped archival materials from the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs are used as the basis for this analysis of Ethiopia's foreign policy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article contextualizes football fandom in Ethiopia during a period of increasing political dissent, drawing on interviews and first-hand observations as well as historical and contemporary media and academic sources. The analysis takes into consideration socio-political realities while presenting the complexity of identity and belonging in contemporary Ethiopia. By engaging with spectator cultures, and the aesthetics of fandom at Ethiopian football stadiums, the article shows that the stadium is a space where Ethiopian fans express their concerns about socio-political injustices, the ethics of the media and police, and about identity and belonging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Amhara Region protests originated in Gondar in 2016 and swiftly spread. The study addresses the questions of how mass mobilization occurred in Amhara, the dynamics, diffusion, and contribution of the protests to national political reforms. Using the political process model, the study identified several local and external factors that provided opportunities for mobilization. Researchers conducted in-depth interviews with activists, government officials, residents of North Gondar, and scholars. The study finds the bitter relationship between Amhara elites and the Tigray People's Liberation Front, the presence of opposition political party structures in the region, divisions in the ruling coalition, the diaspora community, and protests in Oromia to be the major factors that promoted the Amhara protests. Furthermore, the research found out that social capital and social media sites played influential roles in spreading anti-government protests across the region. The study contends that Amharas contributed toward national political reforms through spreading the protests to a wide geographical area and throughout the social and political environment, which compromised the government's ability to repress decisively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Divisive debates on what constitutes the Ethiopian nation, how the state should be structured and how power should be devolved, have dominated Ethiopia's private press since the ruling party, the Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), came to power. The press has served as both a mirror reflecting these issues and a space for literate elites to engage in political debates. This article analyses the role of the media, and the press in particular, in Ethiopia's political debates. It also explores how the tenets of “Revolutionary Democracy” have shaped the media. This has polarized Ethiopia's media, which has been unable to effectively serve as a forum for the negotiation of political power or for reconciliation between divided sectors of society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Using untapped archival documents from the Däbrä Marqos provincial archives in Gojjam, and the archives of the Ministry of National Defence (MOND) in Addis Ababa, this study attempts to investigate the untold stories of militiamen drafted into the Ethiopian army in 1977 on the eve of Somalia's invasion of Ethiopia and in the wake of the fall of many towns in Eritrea in the hands of insurgents. These men played a critical role in reversing these threats (temporarily in the case of Eritrea, on a much longer-term basis in that of Somalia), and their impact on the region's history was massive. The archival evidence gathered from the former Gojjam province sheds new light on their personal lives, and the dislocation for those left behind, which is often missing from the larger histories of the Därg's wars. Those stories have been substantiated by interviewing ex-militiamen. Many of the stories revealed in the archives are quite disturbing – broken marriages, emotional distress, separated families and the like. This study, thus, attempts to show the importance of 'history from below' in the construction of narratives of the Ethiopian revolutionary wars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During its 28 years of rule, the Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) had built a strong system for controlling the Ethiopian state and civil society. This article looks at how the party first managed to keep control over the civil service. It analyses the functioning of civil servants' evaluations called gimgema. Such evaluations comprise the filling of evaluation forms and sessions of criticisms and self-criticisms during which bureaus' employees have to publicly acknowledge their mistakes and accuse colleagues. Bureau heads who are also party officials then decide on the employee's future. The article describes the functioning of gimgema, its political efficiency, and some resistance strategies put in force by state agents. Born in a Marxist-Leninist ideological framework, gimgema is an Ethiopian variation on the global socialist evaluation theme, now fitting perfectly with neoliberal injunctions to 'good governance', 'commitment' and 'transparency'. As a symbol of the EPRDF's ideological evolution, gimgema exemplifies the ideological indeterminacy of government techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers an analysis of the causes and consequences of the Ethio-Eritrean rapprochement. The causes are both internal (each side had their reasons) and external (under the influence of the UAE and Saudi Arabia). As for the consequences, the peace served as a catalyst of Eritrea's reintegration: it boosted bilateral visits, had a limited regional snowball effect, lifted the UNSC sanctions, and accelerated the engagement of multilateral organizations and the EU in Eritrea. However, this reintegration is limited because of the persistent ambivalence of the regime, the degradation of the relations with Saudi Arabia and the US, and the fact that the peace with Ethiopia has stalled. Moreover, there is no peace dividend for the Eritrean population: after a glimpse of freedom when the border opened a couple of months, it is all back to the status quo ante, and even worse in some human rights respects. The conclusion shows the paradoxical nature of a rapprochement that also had negative effects and draws some lessons from the deeper problem explaining the stalled peace, that is institutional imbalance between a totalitarian state and a democratic one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Ethiopia, farmland belongs to 'the people' (the state) and cannot be sold or bought, but compensatory measures have been introduced for land expropriated for infrastructure and industry. The article analyses processes of valuation and compensation of land in Kombolcha district in the Amhara region of Ethiopia. Here numerous projects have affected highly productive farmland over the last decade. Monetary compensation to land holders whose farmland is expropriated is relatively new in Ethiopia, and we explore how peasants and authorities gradually have attained increased competence in dealing with land valuation and compensation, faced with often obscure and contradictory legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decades of both non-violent and armed struggle did not bring much result to the Oromo quest for political power over the Ethiopian state, and contemporary Oromo politics often appear recondite and discordant. When Abiy Ahmed came to power as the new Prime Minister in April 2018 as the first Oromo politician entering the former imperial palace, many believed it was the Oromo's turn to rule. Developments since then have, however, revealed a far more complex picture, where previous internal divisions have resurfaced, and where the inherently fragmented nature of Oromo politics seems to have prevailed. Drawing on recent interviews, in this article, we argue that the current divisions and positions in Oromo politics may be made explicable by applying a multilayered ethnographic approach to identify their provenance and grassroots anchoring. With the three main positions found within Oromo politics – the unitarist, secessionist, and federalist – as our point of departure, we unveil the deeper connections between the current political positioning and their historical trajectories and ethnographic anchoring, and we capture overlooked and competing power discourses informing Oromo politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes contests among Ethiopian and British imperial agents and their ostensible Somali (and other Muslim) subjects for control over commerce in the Ethiopia-British Somaliland borderlands. British claims of sovereignty over Somalis and other Muslim merchants operating in Ethiopia created a field of hybrid commercial control in which neither Britons nor Ethiopians held complete dominance. Competition to capture borderlands commerce focused on Jigjiga town as a site where Ethiopian rule and British-backed trade mixed. Amidst crises of warfare and famine in the countryside and the growth of a cash economy shaped by this imperial conjuncture, Jigjiga grew in importance as a site of accumulation and (especially for Somalis) of cultural transformations in understandings of commerce and its relation to political authority. Hybrid commercial sovereignty tended to separate the military-administrative authority of the empires on either side of the border from the Muslim-dominated field of trans-border commercial control, shaping links between ethno-religious identity and fields of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the construction of citizens and subjects in eastern Ethiopia during the period of the British Military Administration from 1944 to 1954. It does so by examining processes of identity formation during this period. The article argues that when Britain administered parts of eastern Ethiopia during this period it entrenched customary authority, which became a focal point around which Ethiopian and British forms of domination collided in a bid to assert their authority. The contestation was about establishing hegemony over sections of the population by categorising them. The article demonstrates that current discourses on identification in eastern Ethiopia are not a post-1991 phenomenon, but are part of an ongoing historical process of negotiating identification. The article thus contributes to, and expands on recent literature that seeks a deeper understanding of ethnic federalism and the implications it will have on processes of identity formation in Ethiopia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines processes by which development project implementations afford the state the appearance of being a separate structure. By exploring the implementation of an important state development project in North-western Ethiopia, the Koga Irrigation and Watershed Management (KIWM) scheme, it shows why and how the project plan does not correspond to the real life of the scheme. The article unpacks assumptions that policymakers and development practitioners make about the a priori existence of a community and state distinction, and the ways in which they arrange them as functionally differentiated entities. It also shows how the project's community-driven participatory approach, wherein local people were involved in managing the scheme, produces the effect of ghettoising practices of abuse as community issues. The article contributes to recent ethnographic studies of state-society relations and contends that these studies could gain important insights by exploring development project implementation practices as an entry point into the study of the processes that give the state the appearance of a material reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For centuries, the core religious values of Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Church communities have ensured the protection of church forests. Despite this strong and longstanding tradition, however, communities are now facing a host of new challenges and opportunities. Our interdisciplinary research highlights ways in which the ecological status of church forests may be threatened due to new practices as well as the changing economic status of church forest communities. We find that the adaptability of these communities to changes associated with modernity might, inadvertently, be a key factor in ecological degradation. But their adaptability might also offer a window of opportunity for agents of forest conservation. Based primarily on ethnography, this article presents Ethiopian church forests as dynamic socio-religious spaces, explores the types of changes affecting the communities and their forests, and considers ways in which the church forest conservation model is evolving. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deployed to Mogadishu, Somalia in March 2007, the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) became the Union's longest running, largest, most costly, and most deadly operation. Yet, of the 54 AU members, only 6 contributed troops to AMISOM: Uganda (2007), Burundi (2007), Djibouti (2011), Kenya (2012), Sierra Leone (2013) and Ethiopia (2014). This article applies a widely utilized theoretical framework to explain peacekeeping contributions in order to analyse why these six states chose to join AMISOM. It concludes that there is no single or uniform explanation for their decision. Nevertheless, the most common official justifications - assertions that events in Somalia posed a direct security risk to the troop-contributing countries (TCCs) and normative commitments to African solidarity - were often less important than other unacknowledged or downplayed factors. Specifically, a combination of institutional, political, and economic factors was generally more important in understanding why these six states became AMISOM TCCs. Joining AMISOM did help alleviate some regional security concerns but the decision also brought tangible benefits at home to both the TCC governments and their militaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the first half of the twentieth century, the north-western lowlands of imperial Ethiopia were the typical interstitial frontier of the Ethiopian–Sudanese borderlands. Starting in the early 1960s, a cash crop revolution paved the way to the transformation of the Mazega into a settlement frontier and the emergence of a dispute with Sudan for demarcation of the international border. This article explores the entanglement between the political economy of frontier governance and border diplomacy in the contested area. It highlights how the management of the border dispute was deeply affected by the contradictory interests of the various layers of government and “twilight” entities that projected Ethiopian statecraft at the periphery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiethnic Ethiopia has been “exercising” federalism for the last two decades with unique constitutional and institutional designs. This article deals with House of Federation, the second chamber of the federal parliament, which, in both its composition and competence, hardly shares the attributes that characterize federal chambers elsewhere. While previous studies have focused on its powers of constitutional interpretation, this article attempts to provide a wider picture of the House of Federation by discussing its composition and competences, the constitutional and political underpinnings behind its (unique) design, and associated ramifications and paradoxes. It shows how representing individual groups rather than member states at the federal chamber, though constitutionally justifiable, is practically problematic in light of the powers constitutionally attributed to the House of Federation, which are predominantly regional in their dimensions and implications. With regard to its competences, the article argues, the fact that the House of Federation is non-legislative is not only an indication to the paucity of “shared-rule” in Ethiopia, but also paradoxical in view of the emphasis on group “self-rule” and the guardian powers that the House has in respect to the federal constitutional order. Discussing its considerable arbitration assignments, apart from the widely discussed constitutional interpretation, it demonstrates that Ethiopia's House of Federation is also unusually and predominantly adjudicative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the hybridism of the Ethiopian developmental state through an analysis of the local interface between the state and the peasantry. The aim is to explore to what extent bureaucratic rationality both conditions and perverts the procedures employed in the implementation of public rural development policies, in this case agricultural extension. And to what extent development policies can operate as an instrument of power that reinforces the local disempowerment of the most vulnerable peasants. The article makes a detailed analysis of the machinery of agricultural extension, the local conditions of distribution and reception of fertiliser and improved seeds in rural Ethiopia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What accounts for the difference between peaceful and violent elections in semi-authoritarian countries? This article analyses the influence of electoral management bodies (EMBs) on the likelihood of widespread violence triggered by opposition protest during election times. It is argued that by establishing inclusive and collaborative relationships through which political actors can jointly negotiate important electoral issues, EMBs influence the incentive structure of the major stakeholders in favour of non-violent strategies. The relationship is explored by comparing elections in Malawi (2004), Ethiopia (2005) and Zanzibar (2005). The analysis supports the idea that inclusive EMBs, rather than legal independence, are critical to guarantee the influence of the opposition in order to address both their interests and their mistrust of electoral politics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Over the past few decades the inhabitants of the Oromo–Somali borderlands of southern Ethiopia have encountered three competing nationalisms: Ethiopian state nationalism (patriotism), Somali ethno-nationalism (irredentism), and Oromo ethno-nationalism. The territories and peoples claimed by each competing nationalism overlap. In the 1960s and 1970s Somali irredentist claims predominated, and generated a severe Ethiopian response. In the post-1991 period, claims and counter-claims over territories around the borders of the Oromia and Somali ethno-national regional states of Ethiopia became the centre of conflicts. These claims specifically contest water points, tracts of land, ritual sites and towns. The ethno-territorial contestation and negotiation between the Oromia and Somali ethno-national regional states are mirrored and explained at the local level by disputes and conflicts between the Borana and Garri pastoralists, who have reformulated their longstanding competitions over pastoral resources along the new political dispensation. This article examines the multifaceted interactions between state patriotism, ethno-nationalisms, irredentism and ethno-federalism in these borderlands from the 1960s to the present. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 1991 the Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) introduced policies aimed at recognizing the country's long-standing religious diversity, providing a public arena for religious groups, and maintaining a sharp division between religion and the state. This further eroded the traditionally dominant position of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, strengthened Protestant Christian and Muslim communities, and created a more fluid and competitive configuration among the religious communities. Seeking to maintain its political power, the EPRDF has at the same time made efforts to monitor and control the different religious communities. Therefore, the last 20 years have been marked by uneven developments, in which the government's accommodating attitudes have been interlaced with efforts to curtail the influence of the religious communities. This article surveys the intersection and reciprocal influences between EPRDF policies and religious communities over the last 20 years, and discusses how Muslims and Christians (Orthodox and Protestant) have negotiated their roles in relation to politics and public life. These developments have, the article argues, led to the emergence of divergent and competing narratives, reconfiguring self-understanding, political aspirations and views of the religious other. The EPRDF ideology of “revolutionary democracy” has, in this sense, enabled religion to surface as a force for social mobilization and as a point of reference for attempting to define nationhood in Ethiopia. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]