After years of aid from abroad and steady economical growth, Ethiopia still struggles to nurture its own population. A new development partnership between the African country and Europe should solve this problem by bringing private investors from abroad on the market to stimulate growth and feed the people. But the profit is certainly not made by the people in need.
It was night-time when the Swedish filmmaker Joakim Demmer was doing his observations at the airport of Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. Looking around, he couldn’t believe his eyes, Demmer told WDR: While food donations from Europe arrived for the hungry population of Ethiopia, food produced in Ethiopia itself was made ready to be exported to Europe.
Since the beginning of foreign aid investments research has shown that the traditional path of Europe in the fight against problems in Africa has not been able to meet the expected outcomes – therefore Europe started a new track by not just sending foreign aid from above, but trying to meet the African countries on the same level. In the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition (NASAN), the common goal is to help the country’s economy through private investments in the agricultural sector. France has now stopped its contribution for this kind of development aid, because studies showed that it’s not necessarily the starving population that profits – the hunger increases, causing political instability.
Small farms in Ethiopia were part of the landscape that is now under threat: Foreign private investors take away the land from small-scale farmers in cooperation with the Ethiopian government. © Flickr / Mariusz Kluzniak
Foreign aid to boost economical growth
For decades Europe transferred foreign aid to countries like Ethiopia to fight against poverty, hunger and diseases and for good education, a functioning healthcare system and improved lifestyle. Many economists believed that foreign aid would boost economic growth. But research shows that it is not as easy: Already in the early 2000s the report ‘Can Foreign Aid Buy Economic Growth?’ by William Easterly of New York University proved one thing – just the influx of foreign aid does not produce economic growth. Often it was actually the other way round, a paper by Arvind Subramanian and Raghuram Rajan shows, since foreign aid can stimulate corruption.
The New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition was implemented to change this path and enable sustainable and real economic growth and at the same time make sure that food reaches the people that suffer the most. Launched in 2012 the committing parties set out their common goal: “Agricultural transformation in Africa is a shared interest of the public and private sectors and presents a unique opportunity for a new model of partnership.” Ethiopia is one out of 10 African countries that are part of this new agenda, partly financed by European countries and the EU.
Ethiopia's chronic food problem
The country is among the fastest growing economies of the world. Just two decades ago the second most populous country in Africa was the third poorest of the world, but the outlook for the future is bright: As the latest forecast of the IMF shows, the Ethiopian GDP per capita is expected to grow at an average of 6,2 percent through 2022.
According to the World Bank, agriculture is one of the main drivers of this path, but economic growth alone does not also transform into human development. A report by Save the Children has shown that in Nigeria, a similir case, the GDP per capita has also increased by far, but income inequality and extreme poverty have risen as well. “It’s called development, but the benefits are not for the Ethiopian people,” says J., a food activist and expert on indigenous people, who has to be anonymous in this article for his personal security. “It’s benefiting only a small group of elites of the ruling party at the cost of environmental disaster, at the cost of communities.”
Despite being one of the biggest receivers of development aid, Ethiopia has made no significant progress and continues to make headlines about the catastrophic conditions the people face. “The 2016 crisis is a harsh reminder that despite the trumpeted economical miracle, Ethiopia has not moved beyond its tragic history of chronic hunger and famine,” the Oakland Institute points out in their 2016 report. Still agricultural products account for more than 80 percent of Ethiopias exports.
Governments policy focuses on agriculture
To fight this problem the Ethiopian government decided to not only heighten the productivity of small-scale farmers – but also (and to a bigger extent) rely on large-scale farming operations. This new form of agriculture leads to what Demmer saw at the airport: Products being exported overseas, instead of being given to the local population.
As part of the country’s Growth and Transformation Plan the government has promoted large-scale land deals. Being in the second phase, the plan emphasizes that agriculture should “continue to be the main source of economic growth.” Just between 2005 and 2012 more than one million hectares of land was leased for those purposes, tendency growing. According to the government, the capacity and the potential of Ethiopia’s agricultural sector is not fulfilled and therefore the country remains a hot spot for foreign investors.
The policy-makers say these strategies of leasing the land for 25 to 100 years should not only stimulate economic growth and job creation, but also aim at stabilizing food security and fighting against poverty. According to the Ethiopian journalist Merga Yonas, working for Deutsche Welle in Bonn, the government claims that the land is vacant and open for use, but in reality small groups of indigenous people are living scattered all over those remote areas.
“It's a kind of new colonial idea,” J. points out. “It's not something that is very new; it's a follow up of colonial style. It used to be by force, when it was colonial time in Africa, but now it is an economical and political game.”
“The government came up with a plan called villagization,” Yonas explains. With the purpose of bringing those small communities together and giving them access to healthcare, schools, electricity as well as other facilities, the government could give the open land to the investors who come not only from Europe, but from all over the globe."
Next to the Middle East and Asia, Europe invests massively in land on Ethiopian soil. Data: Land Matrix, © K. Stefanova/USAID
The issue of land grabbing
The most visible outcome of this new path for agriculture in Ethiopia, according to the Oakland Institute, is “forced evictions of local communities, mostly pastoralists and agro-pastoralists, and the seizure of land and water resources on which millions of Ethiopians rely for their livelihoods.”
J. tells his personal story: “I belong to a herders group, they are called the Karrayyu-Oromo.” Already in the 1960s the pastoralists lost more than half of their traditionally owned land – and more importantly they lost the access to water through a sugar cane plantation and a national park. Growing up in the desert J. wasn’t ever able to see the river. “There is a time every year when we don’t have water, not for my animals, and let alone for myself. But the sugar cane has water every second.” Today the Karrayyu-Oromo are environmental refugees. “We are not important, the sugar cane is,” J. says.
Several rights of Ethiopians are violated by the practice of giving the land of the people to private investors from abroad. Still, the former landlords do not really have a chance to prevent this development: There is no adequate legislative protection of their rights.
Senior Legal Researcher Tinyade Kachika says in her report about land grabbing that it “is seriously threatening the livelihoods of marginalized groups like small-scale farmers, women, and pastoralists in many rural communities in Ethiopia.” The people lose their land, their produced food and often also their job – because large-scale agriculture is based on automated machines and does not need an extensive workforce. “The proportion of total jobs that are skilled is small and most work is casual and temporary, rather than permanent,” says James Keely and his team in their paper ‘Large-scale land deals in Ethiopia: Scale, trends, features and outcomes to date’. According to the CIA Factbook, more than 70 percent of Ethiopians work in the agricultural sector today.
Relocation to food insecurity
The relocation through the ‘villagization´ programme by the government is thought to compensate the people who lost their land. “Everything in Ethiopia, honestly speaking, seems quite interesting on paper, but whenever it's getting to implementation, the reality becomes different,” says Yonas. From what he has seen, people have not been compensated, the promised basic services have not been materialised. According to the journalist, it’s the fulfillment of the promises that lacks both on the government's side as well as on the investor's side.
Still, it became a new pattern that people are being brought to other areas of the country. According to Nyikaw Ochalla, director of the Anywaa Survival Organisation, the new land often does not fit the people’s basic needs – they lose their land to produce their own food, access to water supply and the alternative food supplies through the loss of the forest. As a result, the food insecurity rises for these communities who were able to nurture themselves beforehand. There the Western donators come back on the table by sending food to the Addis Ababa airport. “It’s not about living, it’s about survival,” says J.
Europe is repeating mistakes
Africa hosts the largest share of EU land acquisitions, with about 90 percent of all deals worldwide, say Marta Antonelli and her team in their paper ‘Global investments in agricultural land and the role of the EU: Drivers, scope and potential impacts’.
Not only in Ethiopia food insecurity remains, despite the investments in agriculture. “It's all over Africa, I would say all over the globe,” says J. making the link to weak governments.
Ethiopia itself has developed massive land deals under their Growth and Transformation Plan with the goal of being a food secure and middle-income country by 2025. Foreign investors play a central role in this strategy. “There are a number of European investors that are working in Ethiopia,” Ochalla explains. The European Union wants to facilitate responsible agricultural investment in Ethiopia, to help the country in the fight against poverty and hunger. But of course the European countries and cooperations also have their own interest – in terms of markets, returns and profit, Ochalla says.
MEPs in the European Parliament have already spoken up for a change in this policy. “We have already made the mistake of intensive agriculture in Europe, we should not replicate it in Africa because this model destroys family farming and reduces biodiversity,” said Mara Heubuch from the German green party. But the investment goes on – and displaced families have to live without compensation.
“It’s an aid game”
The rising food insecurity and the resulting political instability is then leading to the need of new foreign aid and food deliveries. “It’s an aid game, which is also perpetuated by Western donors,” says J. The receiver of the aid is the Ethiopian government that also stands behind the forcible eviction of people from their land.
“You push the local people out, you take their land and now you are telling ‘Those people are in trouble, let’s help those people’,” J. says. According to him and Yonas you need to follow the money and check if it was spent properly. “In fact most of the Ethiopians see the Western donations, the Western aid as a threat to our daily lives, to our culture, to our future. Because we can see through the time that nothing has been changing, rather it has been deteriorating. The resource comes over for good but the result becomes worse,” J. says, explaining the Ethiopian view.
“When the political debate goes in the wrong direction or a small group is leading or playing with the countries daily operations, the people might suffer,” J. says. “In Ethiopia there is an state of emergency now, it is not because the people just protest for fun, it is all what the Western aid has done to the country in one way or another.” This is mainly due to the fact that aid is still flowing without any further restriction or controls. “The aid that Europe gives to Africa for us is what is killing us, what is putting us behind,” J. says. “When you talk about land grabbing, you are talking about water grabbing, you are talking about right grabbing, you are talking about freedom, culture, identity. And who is responsible?”
Not only in Ethiopia food insecurity remains, despite the investments in agriculture. “It's all over Africa, I would say all over the globe,” says J. making the link to weak governments.