Impact of Large Scale Land Acquisition on Equitable
and Sustainable Development in Ethiopia
PhD student: Maru Shete
Based at African Studies Center, Leiden. 2011-2015.
Supervisors: Annelies Zoomers, Ton Dietz, Marcel Rutten
Research
The flow of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in agriculture to Least Developed
Countries (LDCs) has increased substantially since 2007. The global food, energy
and financial crisis motivated developed countries rich in capital but limited in
land resources to invest in poor countries with abundant natural resources
(GRAIN 2008). Especially, the 2007/08 price boom in food commodities has
motivated food import dependent countries to look for option to produce food
commodities in countries where there are abundant land and water resources as
their food security strategy (IFPRI 2009; World Bank 2011). Zoomers (2010), in
her article of “globalization and the foreignisation of space”, extended the drivers
of global land grabs into seven different processes. There are mixed views
whether such investment activities are beneficial to target countries. Some argue
that FDI in agriculture will create opportunity for “sustained” and “broad-based
development” through enhancing technology transfer, increasing domestic
availability of food supply and creating employment opportunities provided that
inward investment is well-managed (World Bank 2011). Others (Mersha 2009;
Grojnowski 2010; Fitzgerald 2010; Rice 2009; Mihretie 2010; McLure 2009)
criticized it as “land grabbing”, “bio-colonialism”, “agro-colonialism” etc. Except
some media reports, little has been done following a standard and scientific
procedure with adequate empirical data to verify whether such large scale land
acquisitions in Ethiopia are opportunities or challenges to sustainable and
equitable development to the country. This research is aimed at identifying the
impact of large scale farm land acquisition by trans-national investors on
equitable and sustainable development in Ethiopia.
Biography
Maru Shete Bekele did his bachelor degree in Agricultural Extension from the
former Alemaya University of Agriculture in 1998 (Currently re-named as
Haromaya University). He did three different master’s degrees: MA degree in
Regional and Local Development Studies from Addis Ababa University (Ethiopia)
in 2004; MSc degree in Development and Resource Economics from the
Norwegian University of Life Sciences (Norway) in 2007; and a third Msc degree
in Tropical Ecology and Natural Resource Management again from the Norwegian
University of Life Sciences (Norway) in 2010. He has over eight years of research
and teaching experience in the field of development studies. He served as a
Research Director with the rank of Assistant Professor at St. Mary’s University
College in Ethiopia until he started his doctoral studies at the Netherlands
Academy for Land Governance (LANDac) in August 2011. In 2010, he won a
research fellowship from the Future Agricultures Consortium Early Career
Fellowship Program to work on land deal issues in Ethiopia. His main research
area of interest is land tenure and land deal issues, impact and livelihood studies,
poverty and food security issues in Africa.
Recent publications include:
Maru Shete (Forthcoming). Socio-economic determinants of tree species
abundance and composition in Gondar, Ethiopia. Journal of Agriculture and
Development, 2(1).
Maru Shete and Roberto J. Garcia (2011). Agricultural credit market participation
in Finoteselam town, northwestern Ethiopia. Submitted to Journal of Agribusiness
in Developing & Emerging Economies 1(1), 52-74.
Maru Shete (2011). Implications of land deals to livelihood security and natural
resource management in Benshanguel Gumuz Regional State, Ethiopia. A paper
presented at the international conference on “Global Land Grabbing”, University
of Sussex. April 6-8, 2011. Brighten, UK
Maru Shete and Roberto J. Garcia (2010). Agricultural loan repayment in
Finoteselam town, northwestern Ethiopia. Ethiopian Journal of Business and
Economics, 1(2), 1-25.
Maru Shete (2010). Magnitude & determinants of rural poverty in Zeghe
peninsula. Journal of Poverty, 14(3), 308-328.
Maru Shete (2009). Poverty in Zeghe Peninsula, Northwestern Ethiopia:
Magnitude, Cause, Manifestations. ISBN-10: 3639165705, ISBN-13: 9783639165708.VDM Verlag Dr. Muller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG Publishing.
Printed in the U.S.A.