Ethiopia: The government suspends land allocations

Written on 20 March 2012. Posted in Ethiopia

Reports have shown that investors have not been utilizing land allocated to them by the Ethiopian government appropriately. The Ethiopian Ministry of Agriculture will therefore need to re-evaluate the current status of land in the possession of investors before allocating further land for investors.

The Oakland Institute has welcomed the announcement but still stress the need for an independent and transparent investigation. And further points to the need for all Environmental and Social Impact Assessments (ESIAs) to be available for the public. The documents will be an essential source of information for communities to be able to give free prior and informed consent to the investments moving forward. Since the establishment of the Investement Support Directorate the Minstry of Agriculture has allocated 342,099 hectares of land to local and foreign investment companies. The Directorate took 3.6 million hectares of land in Oromia, Benishangul Gumuz, Gambala and the Southern Region and has been allocating large land grants between 100,000-500,000 hectares of land.

Tags: Land rights