Carol, I am not how this works but this is the link to the PDF link on project Muse:
http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/african_studies_review/v055/5
5.3.adem.pdf
The Local Politics of Ethiopia’s Green Revolution in South Wollo
Teferi Abate Adem
Teferi Abate Adem is a research associate with Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) at Yale
University. He is the author of Land, Labour and Capital in the Social Organization of Farmers
in Wollo (Addis Ababa University Press, 1998) and numerous articles on the subjects of
household dynamics, rural development, and state‒local relations in highland Ethiopia. He was
previously a visiting assistant professor in international development and social change (IDSC)
at Clark University, a postdoctoral fellow in the Agrarian Studies program at Yale, and an
assistant professor and chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Addis Ababa
University. E-mail: teferi.abate@yale.edu
Abstract: This article argues that Ethiopia’s agricultural extension program, which received
more government funding and donor support than other similar programs in Africa, reinforced
the rural presence and authoritarian powers of the ruling party while largely failing to improve
smallholder agriculture. The principal reason for this outcome has to do with the systematic
entanglement of the Green Revolution package delivery system with the immediate goal of
guaranteeing the party’s political security. In one Amharic-speaking community that provided
ethnographic information for this paper, overzealous party leaders rewarded supporters at the
expense of imagined opponents. This distortion, coupled with a culturally embedded concept of
success (defined as upward mobility), caused pervasive fear, insecurity, suspicion, and rivalry
among farmers. Not surprisingly, this insecurity has a deleterious effect on hardworking farmers.
The article suggests that any meaningful attempt at improving the program must recognize the
centrality of politics, especially at the community and household levels, where parochial interests
interface with cultural expectations.
Résumé: Cet article soutient que le programme d’extension agricole en Éthiopie, qui a reçu plus
de financement gouvernemental et de donations que d’autres programmes similaires en Afrique,
a renforcé la présence rurale et les pouvoirs autoritaires du parti en place tout en échouant sa
mission d’amélioration de l’agriculture à petite échelle. Ce résultat est principalement dû à
l’imbroglio systématique du système de livraison mis en place par la Révolution Verte, ayant
pour objectif immédiat de garantir la sécurité politique du parti. Dans une communauté de langue
amharique ayant fourni des données ethnographiques pour cet article, des chefs de parti trop
zélés récompensaient leurs supporters au détriment d’opposants imaginaires. Cette distorsion en
s’ajoutant au concept culturel de succès (défini comme la capacité de monter de grade) a
engendré une peur envahissante ainsi que de l’insécurité, de la suspicion et de rivalité parmi les
fermiers. Il n’est pas surprenant que cette insécurité ait eu des effets néfastes sur les fermiers déjà
durs à la tâche. Cet article suggère que toute tentative d’amélioration du programme devra
reconnaître la centralité du rôle que joue la scène politique, en particulier au niveau de la
communauté et des ménages, où les intérêts de chaque groupe se heurtent aux attentes
culturelles.
This article discusses some of the political and cultural difficulties encountered by Ethiopia’s
national agricultural extension program in their efforts to alleviate rural poverty and food
insecurity. Officially launched in 1995 by the ruling Ethiopian Peoples’ Democratic Front
(EPRDF), and still being implemented with vigor, this program seeks to extricate farmers from
deepening poverty and chronic food insecurity. This goal was to be achieved by fostering the
intensification of smallholder agriculture through the accelerated dissemination of “Green
Revolution” technologies (such as chemical fertilizers, improved seeds, and pesticides), together
with extension training and credit services. To this end, the program received a level of public
funding and donor support that was unprecedented in Africa. Yet today, almost two decades
later, food security remains a key challenge for millions of people, especially in rural areas.1
The article attributes this outcome to the systematic entanglement of the technology
delivery system with measures intended to guarantee the political security of the ruling party. In
one Amharic-speaking community that provided ethnographic information, local party cadres,
backed by district officials, were zealous in their efforts to redefine local responses in political
terms. Thus when a farmer “volunteered” to adopt Green Revolution packages, he was labeled
“supporter,” which subsequently qualified him for political rewards, including recruitment into
the ranks of the local party chapter. Party membership in turn opened doors for other
opportunities such as employment in a rare salaried positions, nomination to a lucrative
government position, better access to credit, and preferential treatment in terms of food aid and
land distribution. By contrast, farmers who did not join the program risked political intimidation
and repressive treatment.
The appropriation of development funds for the purpose of state coercion is not unique to
the EPRDF government of Ethiopia. Many repressive regimes in Africa and elsewhere have
pursued similar strategies to consolidate control, especially over hard-to-reach rural people.2 In
the case of Ethiopia, however, the problem is exacerbated by a national political culture that
survived both colonization and the forces of modernization. One salient aspect of this culture,
which is directly relevant to the argument of this article, has been the total absence of credible
community organizations for engaged famer participation in public life. Rural Ethiopians have
long been ruled by means of a feudal-like patronage system based on a hierarchy of dyadic
personal ties (see Levin 1965b). In this system, upward mobility for both elites and ordinary
farmers depends not so much on success in agricultural cultivation, commerce, or the
accumulation of capital, but rather on mastering a wide variety of political skills, including
loyalty to superiors, military prowess, and the ability to win court cases and earn the favor of
influential officials (see Hoben 1975, 1970). This cultural “logic” of rewarding politically savvy
individuals at the expense of hard-working farmers has continued to the present day, despite
successive regime changes.
This emphasis on culture and history is critical for understanding the kind of systematic
entanglements that have hobbled the extension program. It differentiates my analysis from other
studies that note possible distortions in donor-funded food aid and safety net programs but tend
to blame the problems on technical “targeting errors”—the exclusion of intended beneficiaries
and the inclusion of unintended ones (see Jayne et al. 2000; Devereux 2008). My explanation is
also different from that of Human Rights Watch in its recent discussion of “how foreign aid
money underwrites repression in Ethiopia.” 3 I seek to provide nuanced accounts of the local
context where politics interface with cultural expectations. My goal is to better understand gaps
between stated program objectives and actual outcomes by conceptualizing the Green Revolution
package delivery system not as the execution of clearly stated national guidelines, but as a
political space where sometimes competing, sometimes overlapping meanings, assumptions, and
interested are pursued by different actors. In doing so, I draw on insights from the anthropologist
Donald Donham, who, writing on the experiences of the Maale of Southwest Ethiopia under the
military regime, argues that “the ability of the new state to penetrate local communities cannot be
explained only by the actions of a vanguard”; government agents were also “invited” by local
actors to intervene in local conflicts on the side of one or another set of “parochial interests”
(1999:159).
If my analysis is substantially correct, it follows that any meaningful attempt at
improving the performance of the program must recognize the central role of politics. In the past,
program evaluations focused on narrowly technical and managerial issues. During the program’s
first five years (1995‒2000) of operation, for example, much of the blame for poor results was
attributed to two factors: (1) the inadequate number and skill level of frontline extension agents
and the need for training colleges (Kassa & Degnet 2004); and (2) the overly standardized
technology packages, which did not adapt well to Ethiopia’s varied local agro-ecological
conditions (GoE 2002). By the second five-year period (2001‒2005), the emphasis shifted to
efficiency of factor markets (i.e., the efficiency of markets for key inputs such as fertilizer, seeds,
and labor) and stakeholder relations (Berhenu et al. 2006; Ashworth 2005). According to one
widely quoted report, for example, maize yield during this time tripled and quadrupled in some
districts, thanks to the improved seeds and chemical fertilizers recommended by the program
(Byerlee et al. 2007). Yet farmers did not benefit from this increase since the cost of these inputs,
which were no longer subsidized by the government, was higher than the farm-to-gate price for
the output. Similar issues surfaced during the program’s third five-year phase (2006‒2010).
Recommended solutions included responding to evolving farmer needs through improved
services in marketing and agricultural credit (Spielman et al. 2010).4 These reviews, while
important for improving the program’s efficiency and viability, gave little attention to political
and cultural factors.
The analysis in this article is based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork undertaken in
Amhara Region at four different times from 1993 to 2002. The longest fieldwork period lasted
for nearly two years, from September 1996 to July 1998, when I lived among farmers in a
community called Aba Selama, with occasional visits to the district capital, Kutaber, and my
research base at Addis Ababa University.5 During this time, the adoption of Green Revolution
technology, which had been initiated in 1995 with a few demonstration plots, expanded rapidly
to involve 371 households. This timing provided me with a unique opportunity to observe and
record the kinds of responses it received from different categories of farmers. My fieldwork also
coincided with a tightly controlled decentralization process through which the Amhara National
Democratic Movement (ANDM), one of the partners in the EPRDF coalition, became the ruling
party of the newly established Amhara National Regional State (ANRS, hereafter Amhara
Region). Over the course of my stay in Aba Selama I was intrigued by the degree to which the
adoption rate of the package technologies was systematically entangled with the ANDM’s goal
of consolidating its power and local presence by recruiting new members while repressing
(mostly imagined) opponents.
I collected data from different sources by employing a combination of strategies. I was
able to gain a general understanding of the program’s stated goals and its implementation
guidelines from government documents and official statements. Data on the program’s reported
accomplishments in Aba Selama came from reports of the local Agriculture Development Office
and discussions with the resident development agent (DA). For the more sensitive information
relating to local party and interhousehold intrigues, I had to rely on my own observations of
individuals and their relationships in a wide variety of situations, including public meetings and
related governmental activities. My records on these issues were further enriched by information
gained through casual conversation and informal interviews with people I happened to meet in
various circumstances, including household visits, village tours, farmwork, and trips to Kutaber
(which often with ended with an invitation for a drink in one of the tea houses). I also benefited
from access to the files of a local ad hoc committee, established during the 1997 land
redistribution, which was tasked “screening” the size, composition, and class background of each
household unit. I obtained a copy of the resulting document, which included the political profile
of all household heads as viewed by local ANDM leaders in 1998. I also benefited from access to
tax rolls, food aid distribution lists, and land dispute cases at the local government office.
The next section highlights three salient aspects of the Ethiopian political culture that
provide a conceptual framework for my discussion of the kind of political insecurities
encountered by the extension program in the Amhara Region. The following section discusses
some of the more recent regional politics that, while rooted within the broad historical and
national context, led to the consolidation of ANDM as the ruling party of Amhara Region.
Understanding this context is essential, since it reveals the nature of the patronage system and
top-down approaches that subsequently shaped the implementation of the program in different
parts of the region. The third section presents ethnographic evidence about the impact of the
extension program on the residents of one community. The article ends with a conclusion
asserting the centrality of politics in development intervention, especially at the household and
community levels where parochial interests interface with cultural expectations.
The Political, Cultural, and Institutional Roots of Insecurity and Control in Ethiopia
The “logic” of trampling agriculture in favor of parochial political interests has deep institutional
roots in Ethiopia’s national political culture. Emperor Haile Selassie reigned for nearly half a
century through personal ties with a hierarchy of regional and local elites preoccupied with
controlling land for the sake of their own political power rather than raising agricultural
productivity by rewarding hard-working farmers. Likewise, the military regime, which dethroned
the emperor in 1974, ruled for almost two decades through a unitary state structure concerned
more with exerting central control than promoting human welfare or economic growth.6 The
current government has sought to end this pattern by adopting a new constitution that
restructured the country along a broadly decentralized, ethnically based federal system. Yet
EPRDF leaders maintain tight control over the actual implementation of decentralization in ways
that display continuity with authoritarian rule (see Donham 2002). In agriculture, the top-down
approaches of the current regime are reflected starkly in the total absence of mechanisms for
farmer participation or the opportunity to air local concerns. Like its predecessors, the regime has
continued to erect what Dessalegn Rahmato calls “roadblocks to peasant empowerment”
(2009:229).
In a number of publications that draw on extensive research and intimate knowledge of
Ethiopia since the 1960s, the sociologist Donald Levine links this continuity to the combined
effects of “three troublesome factors” (2007:10) that are deeply embedded in traditional
Ethiopian political culture. The first involves a deep-seated habit of suspicion and distrust in
social relations, which blocks transparency and cooperation. Levine traces this tendency to a
fundamental ambiguity and contradiction in the land tenure system of the Amhara-Tigray people,
who played the dominant role in founding and expanding the Ethiopian empire (see also Donham
1986; Crummey 2000). In this system, each person was believed to have inalienable rights,
called rist, to a share of the land first owned by any combination of his or her ancestors traced. In
reality, however, the actual holdings of a person depended not on birthright but on his or her
ability to activate that right. This was accomplished most successfully through the development
of political and rhetorical skills, including knowing how and when to speak in councils of elders,
mastering the procedures and nuances of litigation and dispute resolution, and cultivating
instrumental ties with influential elites (see also Hoben 1973).
The second factor has to do with the prevalence of a masculine and militaristic ethos that
prevents civil expressions of dissent. Levine attributes this to traditional Amhara-Tigray ideas
about human nature, which he calls “Hobbesian” (1965a:250). Indeed, this point of view, which
conceives of humanity as inherently unreliable and aggressive if not controlled by authority, was
perhaps confirmed by Tigrayan informants who, speaking to the anthropologist Dan Bauer
(1973:271), said that “if there were no district governor, men would kill one another” and “if
there were no provincial governor, district governors would organize their people to fight one
another.” Ironically, this rather favorable attitude toward governmental authorities does not
guarantee security to incumbents. Instead, their power base and legitimacy depend on a
continuous and subtle reassessment of changing personal circumstances and political alignments
entailing intense political analysis of everyday conversation: making sense of whose fortunes are
up or down, who is friends with whom, who is competing with whom, and so on.
Historically, part of this instability and competition rested on the low degree of
differentiation between the social background of influential lords and ordinary farmers. In the
words of the British Consul Walter Plowden (1868:137), who lived in Ethiopia from 1843 to
1860, “Each man considers himself as born to great destinies, despite temporary inequalities in
wealth and social status.” It also has to do with a culturally embedded conception of relations
with governmental authorities as contractual ties between subordinate and superordinate or
patrons and clients, which shift and fluctuate. From the subordinate’s perspective, the duration of
this contract depends on the calculation of self-interest in terms of real or imagined economic
benefits and personal security. When these expectations are not met, the subordinate can cease to
obey. At the same time, culturally valorized codes of masculinity suggest that a superordinate
must defend his honor by enforcing obedience. The tension between these two expectations
closes other options for expressing dissent; a disgruntled subordinate can either suppress dissent
entirely, engage in outright rebellion, or express dissent in devious ways, including the subtle
strategies that James Scott (1985) called “weapons of the weak.”
The last of the “three troublesome factors” is the strong proclivity of policymakers and
ruling politicians across regimes to import foreign ideologies and development programs that
portray farmers as tradition-bound, inefficient, and incapable of improving their lot without
strong guidance from above. This has led to the continuity of widely discredited top-down
approaches, even in programs, such as the agricultural extension program under discussion, that
place a rather strong emphasis on “democracy” and “local participation.”7 In this article, I follow
Levine’s broad analysis to argue that these “three troublesome factors” constitute the cultural and
institutional context that has shaped the local consequences of EPRDF’s rural development and
political agenda. Collectively, these factors have reproduced a political logic that favors
parochial interests at the expense of sound development strategies.
Power to Patrons of the Revolution: Consolidation of ANDM as Ruling Party of Amhara
Region
The Amhara state of Ethiopia was officially established in 1995 when the new EPRDF-led
regime enacted a constitution that divided Ethiopia into nine decentralized and ethnically based
and regional states. On the surface, the laws and administrative practices of these decentralized
states seem unencumbered by past practices. To this effect, EPRDF leaders and supporters often
claim that old patterns of repression and insecurity have been eradicated by means of this
devolution of state powers from the center to regions; more recently these powers have devolved
even further from the region to district and local government levels. Nevertheless, one can
observe a continuity of elements of the “three troublesome factors” discussed above. I will show
this continuity by highlighting some of the tensions and unresolved contradictions I noted when
ANDM became the ruling party in a region with many ethnically unmobilized areas.
The Amhara National Democratic Movement (ANDM) traces its origin to 1978 when a
small group of guerilla fighters splintered away from a group calling itself the Ethiopian Peoples’
Revolutionary Democratic Party (EPRP) to organize themselves as the Ethiopian Peoples’
Democratic Movement (EPDM). Following the ouster of the military regime in 1991, this group
continued to consolidate its powers in Amhara Region to the point that currently it holds all the
seats in the regional parliament. This monopoly came about not because of a lack of political
opposition, but because of the instrumental ties ANDM leaders cultivated and maintained with
like-minded politicians calling themselves “revolutionary democrats.” As in the past, relations
among these new elites remain largely vertical and unstable, in the sense that the success of
middle- and lower-level actors depends greatly on the support they get from powerful officials
higher up in the political hierarchy.
At the apex of the new political hierarchy stands the top leadership of the Tigray Peoples’
Liberation Front (TPLF), which, although hailing from a demographically minor ethnic group,
dominates top leadership positions at the federal level and in the army. The very agenda of
reconstituting Ethiopia along ethnic lines was spearheaded by these individuals who, in 1975,
formed an insurgency group that later became TPLF. Beginning in 1989, the TPLF successfully
expanded the areas under its control into many Amharic-speaking areas bordering Tigray.8 With
this success, TPLF leaders were confronted with the dilemma of pursuing the retreating
government army by deploying their ethnically homogenous fighters among the Amhara. This
was a bit of a problem since, in the eyes of TPLF and like-minded ethnic politicians, the armed
insurgency was blamed on the oppression by Amhara elites of non-Amhara peoples, including
Tigray.
TPLF’s solution to this challenge was to recruit and co-opt like-minded ethnically based
political movements from different parts of the country.9 In Amhara Region, the TPLF
accomplished this by joining hands with the EPDM. This cooperation led to the formation of a
broad political and military alliance called the Ethiopian Peoples’ Democratic Front (EPRDF),
but TPLF continued to dominate both the senior leadership and the rank-and-file fighters.
After ousting the military regime in May 1991, the EPDM became the de facto ruling
party in Amharic-speaking areas. It has been in power for almost twenty years, largely because
of its affiliation with the powerful TPLF under the EPRDF umbrella. This association has given
EPDM leaders access to a preponderance of politically relevant resources including funding,
communications, organizational arrangements, and control of the armed forces, all of which they
use to silence dissident political parties and to incarcerate prominent leaders and civil society
activists.
EPDM’s hostile reactions to opposition parties started early in the transition period, when
the very meaning of “Amharaness” (i.e., being Amhara) was being redefined politically to make
it fit into TPLF’s ethnic discourse. In comparison with the Tigrayans and many other small
groups, the Amhara lacked a definitive group consciousness. Their language (Amharic) was (and
still is) widely spoken throughout Ethiopia since it had been the national language for many
years. Furthermore, urban-based Amhara elites identified themselves closely with a “multi-ethnic
Ethiopia” because a majority of them came from mixed ethnic families that had evolved in the
course of empire-building and population movement. Likewise, Amhara villagers for the most
part identified themselves with multiple markers in different contexts. Some went by the name of
their home province and/or subprovince. Others (e.g., among the religiously and ethnically
heterogeneous Wollo) went by their religious affiliation while also recognizing place-based
identities. Still others emphasized kinship ties with notable individuals and groups. For all these
reasons, many Amharic-speaking people appeared ethnically unmobilized. This put them at odds
with the TPLF, which espoused ethnicity “as an absolute value” for identifying all Ethiopians
(Levine 2007:7).
The reluctance of Amharic-speaking peoples to accept the ethnic label was also a
symptom of another transitional tension among Ethiopia’s new leaders, including many in the
EPRDF coalition, who associated the Amhara with the domination of ethnic minorities by former
feudal lords and gun-bearing followers. They viewed them as the enemy rather than possible
partners in the liberation struggle. For this reason, there was no single political movement early
in the transition period that claimed to represent the Amhara people. EPRDF’s solution was to
redefine the Amhara to make them an acceptable constituent in the ethically based federal
system. A crucial event in this redefinition process occurred in November 1991, when the EPDM
invited hundreds of carefully selected “Amhara” men and women to what it called “The First
National Conference of Oppressed Amhara People.” Held in Bahr Dar, which later became the
capital of the regional state, the conference adopted a ten-point resolution concerning political
representation and the future of the Amhara people (EPDM 1992). The most important of these
points included the confirmation of EPDM, which had operated in the region during the civil
war, as the vanguard of “oppressed Amhara people’s class and national interests.” The resolution
also called upon members of formerly oppressed ethnic groups to affirm that the Amhara masses
were also oppressed, albeit by their Amhara fellows. The conference also affirmed its support for
the building of a new Ethiopia in which the equality of ethnic groups would be guaranteed. This
effort of reinventing the Amhara as a homogonous ethnic group reached a climax in 1994 when
the EPDM itself decided to eliminate the phrase “Ethiopia Peoples” from its name and become
the Amhara National Democratic Movement (ANDM).
Thus the ANDM declared itself the sole representative of the Amhara people. But,
informed by the party’s Marxist-Leninist doctrine, this representation was (and still is) officially
partisan. It claims to embrace “all oppressed Amhara people” while excluding the “elites” that
have long been associated with the old political system (EPRDF 1995). This polarization has
portrayed political options in the region in terms of a fierce class war between the “oppressed
masses,” on one hand, and a few elites on the other. This opposition has at times been very
intense, preventing constructive civil discussion on pressing public issues and flagship
government programs, including the agricultural extension program.
Package Delivery as Space for Extending State Powers: Evidences from South Wollo, 19952002
The officially stated goal of the agricultural extension program tells only one part of the story—
namely, the expectations of higher-level government officials as informed, supposedly, by the
expertise of knowledgeable agricultural scientists. But only a local focus, at the community and
household levels, captures how the program has effected farmers in their daily lives.10
Aba Selama, located in Kutaber district of South Wollo administrative zone, is one of
several local governments in Amhara region.11 As of mid-1997, it had a total of 6,294 inhabitants
and 1,643 household units called bétäsäb (Amharic: people of the house).12 As in the rest of
highland Ethiopia, these households are the basic units of social and agro-economic production.
A majority of the households earn their living from agriculture, which typically involves the
cultivation of grain and legumes by oxen-drawn plow, and the rearing of small and large
ruminants.13 Living at the center of one of Ethiopia’s drought-prone regions, many Aba
Selamans suffer from chronic food insecurity.14 According to a local government official, about
one-half of the population requires relief assistant in any given year, irrespective of climatic
shocks, and the entire population appears in emergency rolls in crisis years.15 This reflects the
degree to which externally provided resources, whether humanitarian assistance or government
safety net programs, have become significant in the lives of households. It also suggests that a
person’s success as a head of a household requires not only hard work in farming but also
political competence in the form of cultivating instrumental ties with local government agents
responsible for redistributing resources.
In October 1996, when I began ethnographic fieldwork in Aba Selama, the agricultural
extension program was already in its second farming season. But its coverage was limited to the
plots of a few “volunteer” farmers selected by the resident extension agent (DA). The DA
himself was a party member, with a fresh diploma in “Agricultural Development” from one of
the junior agricultural colleges newly built with development aid.16 Because of the requirement
that he serve the party’s political interests, the DA selected “volunteer” model farmers who will
praise the Green Revolution packages even when the actual results may not be entirely
positive.17 The DA also has the job of choosing plots whose location and soils are considered to
provide maximum chances for success. Officially called “demonstration plots” (Amharic: serto
masaya), these plots are intended to showcase the benefits of the packages (chemical fertilizers,
improved seeds, and some crop protecting chemicals) when they are applied as recommended by
the program.
A few weeks later, as the harvest season approached, the nearly ripe crops (mostly wheat,
barley, and sorghum) on these demonstration plots promised an unusually excellent yield. This
raised the hopes and spirits of villagers. This good start was also encouraging to EPRDF leaders
back at the district and high up in the hierarchy who, pressed by mounting international pressure,
seemed ready to replace (or give the appearance of replacing) their long-held Marxist-Leninist
ideology with a pragmatic approach more acceptable to donors and humanitarian organizations.18
Parallel to this hope in the agricultural landscape, however, the residents of Aba Selama
began to notice a sense of direction in the local political landscape, which looked as if it was
moving toward a return to the discredited top-down approach of the previous regimes. As it
became all too clear over the ensuing years, the promised participatory (or “revolutionary,” in
EPRDF parlance) democracy was becoming illusive.
Ironically, the reversal was greatly facilitated by the package delivery system of the new
program, which was rhetorically named “Participatory Demonstration and Training Extension
System” (PADETES). This reversal became apparent beginning in the fall of 1996 when the
Amhara regional government scaled up program in the context of its new five-year (1996‒2000)
development plan. Specifically, this expansion plan called for increasing the number of farmers
adopting Green Revolution packages from 2.5 percent to 39 percent by the end of the plan year
in 2000. By doing so, the party hoped to increase the amount of food produced in the region from
the approximately 32.7 million quintals at which it stood in 1994‒95 to 56.5 million quintals in
2000 (ANRS 1996:43).
With this target in mind, the ruling party launched an intensive campaign that culminated
in the imposition of annual quota targets on each of the region’s ten administrative “zones.” Each
zone, for its part, divided the quota share among its constituent districts (woreda), which in turn
divided it according to local administrative units (kebelle). In Aba Selama, the Executive
Committee of the local government spearheaded this campaign.19 About ten days before the start,
all nine members of this committee were summoned to a five-day-long “planning and public
mobilization seminar” at the district capital. In addition to endorsing the district’s quota share,
the seminar established the number of farmers who needed to adopt the package technologies in
each kebelle if the district was to meet that target. As per PADETES guidelines, local officials
had to initiate their farmer recruitment by convening village-level meetings, which were
ironically named “local planning meetings.”
Not surprisingly, in these meetings, some of which I attended, officials of the local
government showed strong support for the kebelle’s quota share. But , as it became clear at later
stages of implementation, the officials were motivated more by self-interest than by their
convictions about the benefits of the Green Revolution. They were concerned more with the
political consequences of not fulfilling the required quota than with its economic outcome, and
they also feared that questioning such a substantive party initiative would be equated with
insubordination. Local officials also anticipated that success would heighten their power as local
representatives of the regional party government.
Household-level interests also started to surface. The quota target received strong support
from a group of ambitious young men and women who envisioned better chances for themselves
if they supported party initiatives. Some of these were male heads of newly established, and in
most cases landless, households. The remainder were unmarried young men and divorcees who
lived with their parents. The group also included a fair number of demobilized soldiers as well as
members of displaced families, mostly famine victims who had previously been resettled
elsewhere. A majority of these farmers had some schooling, but their aspiration to establish their
own households was frustrated by lack of employment and land. By contrast, heads of wellestablished households, who also represented the “better off” group in the community, displayed
much apprehension. They worried that the technology packages might not work as promised.
They also worried about the return to the much discredited top-down campaign approach, which
brought back memories of the failed socialist collectives and forced resettlement projects of the
previous regime.
For senior and district-level party leaders, who had a good understanding of these
dynamics from their experience in other Amhara communities during the insurgency, this
configuration made political sense. It fitted their rather simplistic but politically potent
classification of Amhara people into polarized classes. The interests of the youth and the landless
became greatly aligned with what the party called “oppressed Amhara,” while the concerns of
the economically better off became those of the “oppressor” and the “chauvinist.” With this
reconfiguration, the ruling party found the “oppressed Amhara” it claimed to represent. By the
same token, well-off farmers and seniors became “the enemy.”
This politically charged social cleavage was reinforced by the land policy that has been in
place since 1975. As the centerpiece of the previous regime’s socialist programs, the policy
emphasized a reduction in household-level landholding inequalities by seasonally redistributing
land among all residents of each locality.20 With changes in the demographic composition of
households, this policy generated intergenerational conflicts (see Teferi 1994); when land was
redivided, sons and daughters were able to marry and establish households without being
allocated land by parents, thus weakening the authority of their elders. However, when there was
no redivision, the young remained subordinate to their elders, a situation that, along with related
unmet aspirations of the youth, provided the regional party state with demands for local
intervention.
In 1997 the regime temporarily resolved this tension in parts of Amhara region, including
Aba Selama, by redistributing land in favor of the young and the unmarried.21 This measure
enabled the ruling ANDM to expand its power base and political mobilization in parts of Amhara
Region where it had not recruited local members during the civil war. Over the years since then,
however, the regime has officially stopped redividing land, leaving unresolved the tensions
between those who received land at the last redivision and those who came of age later. As a
consequence, the young farmers continued to be uncritical supporters of government intervention
programs, with the hope of gaining a political edge and eventually receiving land.
Green Revolution adoption in Aba Selama reached 371 households by the 1998 harvest
season.22 As per another key guideline of PADETES, which emphasized “farmer‒farmer
learning,” all the participant farmers in the kebelle were organized into twenty-one teams. Each
team consisted of one or two master farmers called “core demonstrators,” three or four juniors
called “copy demonstrators,” and a dozen or so newly enlisted participants called “followers.”
On the surface, this hierarchy seemed designed to accelerate package dissemination by
concentrating on “progressive” farmers whose experiences could produce a multiplier effect on
others. Up close, however, one would note the sorts of cleavages and partisanships discussed
above. The “core demonstrators” were invariably young farmers who were also “seniors” in the
membership rank of the local party branch. Likewise, those in the “copy” and “follower”
positions were drawn, respectively, from the party’s junior and candidate members.23
Consequently, the actual package delivery system was quite different from the kind of
“model farmer” approach previously used in India and elsewhere. For example, the core
demonstrators were routinely engaged in a wide variety of partisan political activities including
collecting membership dues, circulating instructions from the local party chapter, checking on
the political discipline of members, and so on. As village-level agents of the party, the core
demonstrators were also responsible for providing their superiors at the district party office with
regular updates on the extension program and related governmental activities. While juggling
these two roles, some of these farmers appeared more concerned with advancing their own
political careers than demonstrating the benefits of adopting Green Revolution technologies. This
was especially true of young, zealous core demonstrators who, having completed high school
education, anticipated opportunities for upward mobility in political careers instead of farming.24
Core demonstrators also supervised the planting, weeding, and harvesting schedule of
their “copy” demonstrators in order to ensure that the farmers complied with the packages’
instructions. Not surprisingly, some core demonstrator farmers and local officials used this
opportunity to enhance their personal standing by discriminating between adversaries and
friends. On one occasion, for instance, a man who lived in the lower section of the Aba Selama
escarpment was involved in a serious conflict with a core demonstrator about the harvesting of
his sorghum; the crop has been planted on a marginal plot that was vulnerable to birds and
unattended cattle, and the farmer wanted to harvest the grain as soon as it began to ripen. But the
core demonstrator wanted him to wait three more weeks, arguing that the grain was not yet fully
ripe. When the farmer harvested the sorghum without permission, he was reportedly threatened
with punishment for defying “a government regulation.”25
The basic implementation approach was in fact at odds with the farmer’s logic, which
turned out to be better adapted to plot-level variations in landscape, soil type, and weather
circumstances. However, the approach was well suited to the party’s logic of increasing its local
presence by playing off one faction against another. Official data on party membership was a
sensitive matter to ask about in the context of my fieldwork. In private conversation with a local
party leader, I was told that as of June 1998 ANDM had a total of 170 registered members in
Aba Selama. These included twenty-five individuals who had received formal training in mass
mobilization and related party work in order to be appointed as “farmer cadres.” It also included
ninety-eight of the one hundred incumbent councilors of the local government. To my surprise,
this estimate coincided with an official party document from 1996 that I came across in another
context. Entitled “Plan of ANDM’s South Wollo Zone Branch for the Year 1996/97,” this
document begins by stating ANDM’s past accomplishments in the zone, which included
enrolling one-quarter to one-third of all adults in each rural kebelle (i.e., the smallest
administrative unit) into the ranks of its membership. It also provides a justification for the
party’s focus on the “the rural mass” and “lower class government workers” as opposed to
“urban-based bureaucrats,” “high income government workers” and “merchants” whose political
interests run counter to ANDM’s commitment to the causes of “poor farmers” (ANDM
1996:4‒5).
When I returned to Aba Selama for brief fieldwork in April 2002, the local government,
under the supervision of district officials from Kutaber, was in the initial stages of implementing
EPRDF’s second five-year plan, spanning the years 2001‒5. In this plan, which was meant to
reduce poverty, especially in rural areas, the regional government once again placed the
agricultural extension program at center stage. Parallel to this, the plan also called for solving
longstanding governance issues by devolving the powers of the regional government, which
were greatly increased by the 1995 constitution, down to the district and local levels.
During that visit I was struck by one immediate outcome of the devolution rhetoric: a
clear contradiction between the fiscal and the political sides of the decentralization process (see
Teferi 2004). On the fiscal side, district and local officials benefited from the availability of more
funds from government and international donors that were earmarked for them. They also
enjoyed greatly increased discretionary power in terms of their spending of resources, and they
now commanded more resources to finance social services and public programs. Thus the worth
of their power was heightened in the eyes of ordinary citizens. On the political side, however,
these officials had become highly dependent on the favors of the ruling party, which oversaw
their operations through a hierarchy of trusted, and yet centrally controlled, cadres strategically
deployed at each government level. The cumulative effect of this upwardly skewed
accountability, together with the blurred distinction between party and state, had become a return
to top-down approaches.
Conclusion: Participation with Resentment?
Ethiopia’s agricultural extension program started out as a sound strategy that reflected an adroit
assessment of the country’s long struggle with deepening rural poverty and chronic food
insecurity. It promised to address these problems by unleashing the potential of millions of
smallholder farmers who had been stymied by the socialist agricultural cooperatives and state
farms of the previous regime. It also promised to empower farmers by reversing the top-down
approaches of previous regimes. To this effect, the program represented a rare opportunity for
real change in Ethiopia’s agrarian history. Yet these promises remain elusive. For the farmers of
South Wollo, who endured the worst effects of frequent famines, the program has become yet
another perverse government intervention. For Ethiopia as a nation, which since the 1950s has
witnessed what Levine calls “mishandled structural openings,” and “missed opportunities” since
the 1950s (Levine 2007: 2), this outcome suggests that the program is yet another failure.26
Instead of improving smallholder agriculture, the program has reinforced the ruling
party’s rural presence and authoritarian powers in Amhara region, as well as a dominant political
culture characterized by suspicion and distrust in social relations, masculine and militaristic
ethos, and a tendency to import foreign ideologies (see Levine 1965a, 1997; Hoben 1970;
Weisleder 1963). For rural development and agriculture, one lasting legacy of this culture has
been a concept of success as upward mobility in which an agriculturalist’s political skills in
managing vertical ties with influential authorities surpass his or her ability to accumulate wealth
through crop cultivation, commerce, and other gainful pursuits.
This cultural logic fits well with EPRDF’s logic of entangling the local implementation
of the extension program with the immediate exigency of its political security. In doing so, the
party has received unexpected help from individuals who, in the context of local conflicts and
social cleavages, seek government support. Because of these internal dynamics, the first group of
farmers who “volunteered” to adopt the packages in Amhara region were ambitious youth who
envisioned opportunities for upward social and political mobility by cultivating patron‒client ties
with party functionaries. By adopting the packages, these young farmers sought to score political
gains in the form of party-appointed salaried jobs and access to government-controlled resources
such as land, food aid, and cash credit.
Understanding these culturally informed concerns and strategies is essential for
explaining why several farmers continued to adopt the technology packages regardless of their
economic costs and benefits. In the absence of local mechanisms for democratic participation
and engaged collective action, this opportunism and favoritism had the deleterious effect of
distorting stated extension objectives and approaches. The persistence of these issues suggests
that any meaningful attempt at improving the program must recognize the centrality of politics in
its implementation.
Acknowledgments
An earlier version of this paper was presented in the panel “Transitions without
Transformations? Perspectives on Ethiopia’s Last Two Decades” at the 53rd Annual Meetings
of African Studies Association held in San Francisco, November 18‒21, 2010. I benefited from
comments by the discussant, Andrew Apter, and exchanges with fellow panelists. My
dissertation research in Amhara Region, which lasted from September 1996 to July 1998, was
supported by generous grants from the Christian Michelson Institute (1996) and the Rockefeller
Foundation (1997‒98). The Institute of Development Research (IDR) at Addis Ababa University
financially supported my brief return visit to South Wollo in spring 2002. I am grateful to my
mentor, Allan Hoben, for continuous guidance and inspiration. I would also like to thank the
editors and anonymous reviewers of this journal for their constructive advice and helpful
comments on an earlier draft.
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Notes
1.
According to Dessalegn Rahmato, one of the most recognized authorities on the
dynamics of poverty in Ethiopia, agricultural productivity in Ethiopia has declined continuously
since the 1950s. His works show a depressing pattern of structural shifts from chronic poverty to
extreme destitution, from a viable smallholder agriculture to shrinking “micro-agriculture,” and
from a diversified “farm economy” to consumption-oriented “food economy” (see Dessalegn
2009, 2003, 1997, 1993, 1996, and 1986). Not surprisingly, official government data record
slight improvement in recent years because of the extension program. At the beginning of the
current five-year (2010‒14) “Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP), for example, the number
of “food insecure” Ethiopians, which stood at 28.2 percent (well over 21 million individuals) in
2002, had declined to 21.2 percent of the population (i.e., over 16 million Ethiopians) in 2010
(GoE 2010). Official reports tend to exaggerate success. But this figure itself shows that
household food sufficiency in Ethiopia remains elusive.
2.
The diversion of development funds, including foreign aid, for use as a general
government resource is well documented in many studies. For a more recent review of this
literature and empirical evidence on the political consequences of U.S. bilateral foreign aid in
Africa and elsewhere, see Trisko (2011).
3.
According to Human Rights Watch, development aid to Ethiopia “flows through, and
directly supports, a virtual one-party state with a deplorable human rights record. Ethiopia’s
practices include jailing and silencing critics and media, enacting laws to undermine human
rights activity, and hobbling the political opposition (HRW 2010:4). Unsurprisingly, this report
was strongly refuted not only but the Ethiopian government but also by its major Western
donors. The latter claim that the programs they fund are supported by “relatively robust
accountability systems” (DAG 2010:iv).
4.
A collection of recent high-profile diagnostic reports conducted by the International Food
Policy Institute (IFPRI) thematically divided these issues into the following three groups: (1)
input markets (i.e., seed system, irrigation, and soil fertility); (2) output markets (maize,
livestock, and pulses); and (3) agricultural finance (credit provisions, investment, and savings).
The reports are available at http://ethiopianagriculture.wordpress.com/diagnostic-reports/.
5.
The remaining three were (1) a three-month (1993) research project on household
dynamics in Tewa (South Wollo); (2) a one-month research project on indigenous natural
resource management practices in North Shewa ; and (3) a brief visit to Aba Selama and Tewa
(both in South Wollo) in 2002. See Teferi (1993, 1994, 1995, 1998, 2004).
6.
See especially Crummey (2000) and Donham (1986). Other important works on change
and continuity in state–local society relations in successive Ethiopian regimes include Clapham
(1988, 2002), Dessalegn (1986, 2009), Hoben (1996), and Markakis (2011).
7.
Other Ethiopian programs widely discredited for their top-down approaches include the
preceding regime’s “villagization” plan (i.e, grouping isolated homesteads into government
planned villages) and “collectivization” (i.e, socialist cooperatives) programs. Despite the
extension program’s rhetorical emphasis on farmer participation and democracy (since
participants are suppose to be volunteers), its actual implementation shows continuity of
elements of this top-down approach.
8.
Important sources on the history of TPLF include Young (1998) and Gebru (2009).
9.
For an excellent discussion of the ways TPLF leaders strategically recruited and coopted political supporters from the ranks of elites in each of the many ethnic groups constituting
what they later carved out as the “Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region”
(SNNPR), see Data D. Barata (2010) and Vaughan (2006).
10.
While the argument presented in the following pages draws on ethnographic data
collected before the 2005 parliamentary election, it seems equally applicable as an explanation
for what became of the extension program afterward. Commentaries on the Ethiopian political
scene since then suggest that the EPRDF has continued to divert program resources for
consolidating its powers to the point of achieving monopoly in all districts and localities (See, for
example, Lefort 2010). For Aba Selama, confirmation of this result has to wait for a follow-up
research.
11.
The Amhara Region is internally organized into four administrative levels: from the top
these are the region (kilil), zones (often corresponding to former provinces), district (woreda)
and local (kebelle). As of 2002, there were thirteen zones (10 regular and 3 “special”) and 113
districts. Each district was further divided into ten to fifteen kebelle. By 2008, the number of
districts in the Region increased to 150 (see Yilmaz & Venugopa 2008:4).
12.
Demographic data were obtained from the local government office in June 1997.
13.
For the agricultural history of Ethiopia, see McCann (1995).
14.
For the geographical distribution of famine and chronic food insecurity in Ethiopia, see
Webb and Braun (1994:21‒22).
15.
Interview with Aragaw Muhei, Executive Committee member of the Aba Sälama local
government, May 14, 2002.
16.
This information was obtained from the young man himself later in the course of my
fieldwork, despite the obviously sensitive and secretive nature of party membership.
17.
As discussed in Teferi (2000), most of the young men and women working in this
capacity are well-intentioned experts who want to improve the lives of farmers. But they all face
a career dilemma. Because most of them received this appointment on account of party
membership, their superiors at the district government want them to pay back to the party in
every way possible. In most cases, this expectation includes pleasing party superiors by
compromising one’s own ethics as an expert. This distortion took many forms, depending on
what the superiors wanted. At times, data could be “cooked” to inflate performance. At other
times, farmers could be coerced into meeting party-imposed quota targets. For a discussion of
similar dilemmas faced by DAs elsewhere in Ethiopia, see Kassa and Degnet (2004). For the
most recent period, see Pankhurst and Bevan (2011).
18.
Detailed discussion of this story here would be a diversion, but it is worth noting that the
program evolved from a pilot program funded by Sasakawa-Global 2000. The founders of this
program, Ryoichi Sasakawa and President Jimmy Carter, were said to have personally witnessed
Ethiopia’s suffering from devastating famines and violent civil war. Sasakawa visited some of
those who suffered the most from the 1984‒85 famine, together with one of the architects of the
Green Revolution (Norman Borlaug). Likewise, President Carter became intimately involved
with Ethiopian issues beginning in the late 1980s when he was mediating a series of failed peace
talks between the rebel EPRDF and the military regime. For a brief history of SG-2000 in
Ethiopia, see Takele (1997).
19.
During this time, the Executive Committee of the local (kebelle) government of Aba
Selama consisted of nine men. The number was reduced to five in 2001. For detailed information
on the workings of the local government, see Teferi (2000:173‒203).
20.
For analysis of the military regime’s land policy, see Dessalegn (1984, 1993, 1994),
Hoben (1996), and Pausewang (1983).
21.
For discussion of the 1997 land redistribution in North Shawa, see Ege (2000, 1997). For
Gojjam, see Yigremew (1997).
22.
This was a staggering number for a political party which had no officially registered
members until 1994. It represented over 36 percent of the 1,023 household heads listed in the
local government’s official tax roll for 1998. See Teferi (2000:281).
23.
Local party members, I was told, were organized into four hierarchical groups: kor
(registered supporters), echu (candidate), abal (members), and arso adär cadre (farmer or
primary-level cadres). Party rule required each person to pass through this hierarchy. A member
could also be purged and demoted for a wide variety of reasons.
24.
For evidence of similar processes in Tigray, see Segers et al. (2008).
25.
Farmers who dared to question government orders were politically intimidated by local
party agents who would call them by such negative labels as “anti-development,” “anti-people,”
“chauvinist Amhara,” etc.
26.
“Missed opportunities” and “structural openings” are terms used by Levine in explaining
Ethiopia’s difficulties in modernizing its political system. He identifies the following five
unique, but mishandled, opportunities in Ethiopia’s recent history: “(1) the abortive coup of
December 1960; (2) the ferment of 1974; (3) the regime change of 1991; (4) the Eritrean war of
1998; and (5) the May 2005 national election” (Levine 2007:6).