Ethiopia: Chronic Food Insecurity and the Dilemma of Food Aid
Side Goodo
May 31, 2008
1. Introduction
According to the United Nation´s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), food security exists when all people, at all times, have access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. Measured both by the minimum required kilo calorie (Kcal) food intake (which is about of 2200 Kcal) and the money needed to buy the stated minimum Kcal (based on money metric approach), an average of 6-9 million Ethiopians are chronically food insecure every year. Recurrent hunger and famine are rooted in this massive chronic food insecurity.
According to the UN Children´s Fund, a recent severe drought in the country threatens up to six million children of whom 126,000 were already suffering from severe malnutrition and needed urgent therapeutic care (AFP, May 2008). The agency added further that in addition to some eight million people characterized as food insecure and supported by the government programme, aid agencies are warning that over 3.4 million people require emergency food aid in several central and southern regions. Thus, overall, over 11.4 million people are chronically food insecure or on the brink of famine.
The Fund further states that the troubled outlook of children in Ethiopia is exacerbated by the widespread drought, poor rainy season, heavy loss of livestock, limited food supply and soaring prices of food, fuel and fertilizer linked to the global food crisis (AFP, May 2008). However, the primary causes of chronic food insecurity, recurrent hunger and famine in the country are chronic poverty and underdevelopment. Chronic food insecurity is a structural economic problem but not the result of the recurrent drought. The Egyptian civilization and survival depended primarily on a single river, Nile. However, the peoples who live on the source of Nile, and many large rivers such as Ganale and Logita in Sidama (which form Wabeshebelle in Somalia), the Baro and Akobo in Gambella, the Gibe in Oromia and so on failed to sustain their basic livelihood for over a century. The inability to feed ones population is a national embarrassment. It is now clear that the chronic food insecurity in Ethiopia is the result of a chronic problem of governance.
Thanks to the alternative concept of development formulated by the 1998 Nobel Lauriat, Professor Amartya Sen, economists are now able to examine the nexus between governance and poverty. According to Sen´s alternative concept of "development as freedom", the process of development consists of the removal of various unfreedoms which include freedom from such deprivations as starvation, under nourishment, escapable morbidity or premature mortality, literacy and numeracy, political freedom, and free speech. According to this alternative vision of development, improvements in material life come along with political liberties, the spread of voluntary exchange in free markets, social development, the building of social safety nets, and so on.
It is a sad fact that the successive Ethiopian regimes failed to remove the various unfreedoms that continue to decapitate any economic progress in the country. The Emperor´s attempt to hide the 1973 famine in Wollo and Tigray provinces in which over 800,000 people perished was one of the main factors that galvanized the 1974 revolution. The revolution led to the eventual abolition of over 80 years of archaic monarchical rule. Twenty four years have passed since Bob Geldof´s Live Aid Concert alarmed the whole world about the plight of 8 million hunger stricken Ethiopians during the disastrous famine of 1984-85 which killed over a million people.
Droughts and famines have recurred throughout the country's history. Since 2000 alone, there have been three major droughts, including a devastating episode in 2002-2003 (UNDP, 2007). Furthermore, according the World Bank (2003) between 1978 and 1994 alone, there were 15 droughts and famines with large number of households facing food and non-food consumptions shortfalls each year. The Bank states further that there is a broad consensus that on average there appear to be 5-6 million Ethiopians in a normal rainfall year who are in a need of some form of public assistance to help meet their basic calorie needs, although the deprivation is exacerbated in years when rainfall deviates significantly below the trend.
Radical policies and effective governance is required to address these chronic problems. The current regime emphasizes economic growth as a panacea for the problems facing the country. Recent research based evidences indicate that growth is necessary but not sufficient to reduce chronic food insecurity. With the majority of the population vulnerable to recurrent drought and famine, policies should focus on removal of Sen´s unfreedoms instead of the sole focus on GDP growth.
The basic responses of the current government to the country´s chronic food insecurity take two forms. These are (a) the usual appeal for international emergency food aid and (b) an introduction of an ambitious Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP). We begin with the analysis of food insecurity and food aid.
2. Food Insecurity and Food Aid in Ethiopia
Most food aid programs began in the late 1950s, but according to the most comprehensive international trade data available Ethiopia did not begin importing wheat until the early 1970s (Kirwan and MacMillan, 2007). Thus, food aid did not play an important role in the Ethiopian economy until the famine of 1984/85. Between 1984 and 2003, however, wheat food aid was on average equal to 68.4% of domestic wheat production, and in some years, wheat food aid exceeded domestic wheat production. Thus, the potential for wheat food aid to impact producer prices and domestic output is significant (Kirwan and MacMillan, 2007).
Ethiopia receives more food aid than almost any other country in the world. Food aid reached 15% of annual cereals production in 2003, and typically represents between 5% and 15% of total annual cereals production (Kirwan and MacMillan, 2007). At the same time, it is widely recognized that raising the productivity and profitability of smallholder agriculture is essential for poverty reduction in Ethiopia. These authors further argue that extensive government programs aimed at raising agricultural productivity have been disappointing and many observers have attributed the poor performance of agriculture to uncoordinated food aid shipments.
The basic problem of food aid is that the bulk of it comes in the form of domestically produced surplus crops shipped via rich country transport mechanisms. This guarantees market for domestic producers and increased profit for transport companies. According to Laurie Garrett (May, 2008) OXFAM estimates that 79% of all food aid from wealthy countries in 2007 was in the form domestically produced surplus shipped via rich country transport mechanism where the transport costs ate up over 40% of all food aid spending in the same year.
The great friend of the world poor, Laurie Garrett (May 2008), therefore, concludes that the real beneficiaries of the food aid scheme are the domestic food producers of Europe, Canada, the United States, Australia and the shipping giants like Maersk, Mitsui, and American President Lines. Garrett further states that food dependency can only end if the aid business model changes better reflecting the interest of farmers in poor countries rather than the producers in the rich countries. According to this respected citizen of the world, genuine food aid would aim at improving the technology of agriculture, directly investing in small scale farming operations in poor countries, provision of mechanised irrigation systems and fair trade practices that could allow an African corn farmer as good a chance of selling his harvest in Italy as a Canadian or Russian.
Some African leaders have already begun denouncing food aid scheme. The strongest attack on Food charity came from the Senegalese president Abdoulaye Wade on May 4, 2008 in which he denounced most UN system of aid, all of the top humanitarian relief nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) and specifically called for the demolition of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) which he described as a "bottomless pit of money" largely spent on its own functioning with very little effective operations on the ground (Garrett, May 2008).
Wade further argued that food charity must be progressively abandoned in favour of "help to stand up" policy or help for self assistance. According to Wade, instead of food handouts, Africa needs fertilisers, pesticides, irrigation equipments; tractors, technology, and access to global market place on equal standing, for sale of its products (Garrett, May 2008). If the rich countries fail to immediately address such real concerns of the poor countries of the world, their continued aid would not be viewed differently from a crocodile tears. While such aid programmes save lives temporarily they perpetuate dependency and kill many more lives in the future. If rich countries are really concerned about the chronic food insecurity of poor countries, the aid should focus on increasing the local agricultural production capacity and bring an end to dependency on food aid. The food aid should not be seen as an end in itself. It should serve as a means to bring sustainable solution to poverty and food insecurity in poor countries.
The humanitarian model failed to avoid deprivation and chronic famine and hunger for the past sikx decades. It is time to completely abandon the current food aid model and devise an alternative approach. The PSNP programme launched by the Ethiopian government in partnership with some donors is an attempt to move away from the humanitarian model and address the chronic food insecurity in a sustainable manner.
3. The Ethiopian Productive Safety Net Programme
The PSNP was launched by the government and donors in December 2003 as an alternative model to the humanitarian model of food aid. According to UNDP (2007), it is an employment-based social transfer programme targeting people facing predictable food insecurity as a result of poverty rather than temporary shocks. The programme offers guaranteed employment for five days a month in return for transfers of either food or cash-US$4 per month for each household member.
Therefore, the programme will still address immediate and emergency human needs by providing food to the population in chronically food insecure local government area, but in addition, will provide grants to households and communities to encourage them to engage in production and investment. The program is also expected to promote market development by increasing household purchasing power and supporting the transformation of the rural economy (World Bank, 2004).
The PSNP aims to extend coverage from 5 million people in 2005 to 8 million by 2009. Unlike the food aid model, the PSNP is a multi-year arrangement. Funded by government and donors it will operate for 5 years, shifting the mode of support away from sporadic emergency aid towards more predictable resource transfers.
The programme was funded by the UK Department for International Development, the US Agency for International Aid, the World Bank, the European Commission, the Canadian International Development Agency, Ireland Aid, the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Swedish International Development Agency.
Although there are some signs of improvements in the lives of some households that participated in the PSNP, it is not clear that the programme will equip people with the assets and resources needed to escape deprivation and poverty for good (UNDP, 2007). First of all, the grant of US$4 per family member per month is too little to promote investment in productive assets. Over 80% Ethiopians are directly employed in subsistence agriculture and most of them lack modern equipments to improve farm productivity. The little grant provided by the PSNP will make non difference in the production technology in subsistence agriculture.
Furthermore, although the programme anticipates that each batch of participants would graduate in 3 years, the current chronic food insecurity indicates that the target is unlikely to be met. It seems that the initial 5 million targets in 2004 have never graduated from the PSNP so far, and may be part of the 9 million chronically food insecure at present.
Another serious problem is the sustainability of the PSNP model. According to UNDP (2007) over 35 million Ethiopians live in chronic poverty. Therefore, most of the chronically poor are already left out from the programme which will dampen the overall effects of the intervention.
While the PSNP is an approach in the right direction, the scale of the problem and the limited finance provided to the participants seriously undermines its impacts and sustainability. If the PSNP does not lead to increase in agricultural productive capacity, it is doomed to fail like its predecessor, humanitarian aid.
4. Food Insecurity and Development Policies
Some scholars believe that such massive level of chronic poverty in the country could be significantly reduced if the current government followed flexible policy regimes. The often cited "antidevelopment" policy of the current regime is its reluctance to fully privatise the land ownership. According to Habisso (April 2008), the debate on the land ownership in Ethiopia has divided the Ethiopian elite into two camps or groups: (1) those who advocate state or public ownership of land on the one hand, and (2)those who advocate private ownership, on the other hand. He further states that there are also some who support a mixed ownership, i.e. private, collective or communal and state ownership.
The core argument of those who favour private ownership of land is that state ownership of land reduced the population in to virtual state tenants and undermined tenure security thereby killing any incentive for increased investment to improve agricultural productivity. This group implies that the current chronic poverty and food insecurity can be improved by instituting free exchange of land.
On the other hand, those who argue in favour of the state ownership of land state that private ownership will lead to concentration of land in the hands of a few who have the ability to buy and to eviction of poor peasants and displacements of pastoralists. They further argue that this will leave the displaced peasants without any alternative means of livelihood and could cause a massive rural-urban migration by the displaced poor. This group implies that the land use right guaranteed in the constitution ensures tenure security and could not create any disincentive to investment initiatives aimed at improving agricultural productivity. The basis of the argument of those in favour of the state ownership of land is the UN Land Policy articulated in United Nations Conference on Human Settlements in Vancouver, in 1976 (Quoted in Habisso, April, 2008):
" Land... cannot be treated as an ordinary asset controlled by
individuals and subject to the pressures and inefficiencies of the
market. Private land ownership is also a principal instrument of
accumulation and concentration of wealth and therefore contributes to
social injustice; if unchecked it may become a major obstacle in the planning
and implementation of development schemes. The provision of
decent dwellings and healthy conditions for the people can only be
achieved if land is used in the interests of society as a whole.
Public control of land use is therefore indispensable..."
The arguments of both camps have some elements of truth. According to Sen´s concept of "development as freedom", the development process encompasses freedom to free exchange of all properties, including land. The scale of the development of free exchange is an important indicator of the level of development while restrictions to freedom of exchange are both causes and consequences of underdevelopment. Therefore, such unfreedoms must be removed.
However, due to unique nature of land as an asset and historical realities of land ownership in the country, complete privatisation of land could indeed be disastrous. Where 80% of the Ethiopian population is living below US$2 a day, the market for free exchange of land is completely imperfect. Those who favour a complete and automatic privatisation of land, could easily be trapped into the 80-20 Pareto rule, where the upper 20% have access to everything while the bottom 80 does not matter.
In addition to the anticipated and, of course, real fear of market failure, the history of land ownership in Ethiopia is not in favour of those who argue for a complete privatisation of land. Between 1880s and 1975, land in southern, western and eastern Ethiopia was fully owned by a few land lords from Abyssinia. The peoples in these parts of the country have an agonising memory of the enslavement following their forced conversion into serfs. Therefore, they view any attempt to allow free exchange of land in these areas with a serious suspicion. For peoples living in these areas, a complete privatisation of land, would be the most unpopular decision any government could make.
Under these circumstances, it is therefore not unreasonable for the current regime to be reluctant about a complete privatisation of land in the country. At the same time, ensuring poor peasants´ permanent use right of land while their capacity to produce for themselves keeps on dwindling ever, does not make any economic sense.
The Ethiopian government and the elites should stop their ideological battles around the land issue and come down to the reality on the ground. While the complete privatisation of land could be ruled out due to market imperfections and historic circumstances, maintaining the status quo is not the best solution either. The 1975 Land Reform guaranteed the use right of every citizen in the country. However, it failed to ensure food security.
The country needs a compromise solution- a mixed ownership of land. Given the high probability of rain failures and drought in the country, subsistence households will never be able to produce enough food. This will only perpetuate the current chronic food insecurity. Thus, pockets of large scale irrigable lands should be privatised and sold out to the private commercial farmers. These pockets of land could be located in areas that do not lead to the displacement of large number of rural dwellers. We are told that large scale mechanised flower farms are booming in the country at present. The country got its priority wrong. While these farms increase the volume of export and improve the country´s balance of payments, they may have disastrous ecological consequences in the long run. What the country needs is large scale wheat and maize farms in order to feed the 9 million or so people who remain on the brink of famine every year. However, the increased food production in the country does not necessarily mean access to it by all citizens. The government should revisit its other core development policies and create better employment and income generation opportunities by the majority of the population.
Land where the majority of the population has settled should still remain under state ownership. Ownership of pastoral lands could be transferred to the communities living on it. Thus, the only viable solution to the current chronic food crisis in the country is a combination of state, private and communal ownership of land. Given the current level of poverty and historic circumstances, neither full privatisation nor the complete state monopoly of land will be a desirable solution.
According to the United Nation´s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), food security exists when all people, at all times, have access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. Measured both by the minimum required kilo calorie (Kcal) food intake (which is about of 2200 Kcal) and the money needed to buy the stated minimum Kcal (based on money metric approach), an average of 6-9 million Ethiopians are chronically food insecure every year. Recurrent hunger and famine are rooted in this massive chronic food insecurity.
According to the UN Children´s Fund, a recent severe drought in the country threatens up to six million children of whom 126,000 were already suffering from severe malnutrition and needed urgent therapeutic care (AFP, May 2008). The agency added further that in addition to some eight million people characterized as food insecure and supported by the government programme, aid agencies are warning that over 3.4 million people require emergency food aid in several central and southern regions. Thus, overall, over 11.4 million people are chronically food insecure or on the brink of famine.
The Fund further states that the troubled outlook of children in Ethiopia is exacerbated by the widespread drought, poor rainy season, heavy loss of livestock, limited food supply and soaring prices of food, fuel and fertilizer linked to the global food crisis (AFP, May 2008). However, the primary causes of chronic food insecurity, recurrent hunger and famine in the country are chronic poverty and underdevelopment. Chronic food insecurity is a structural economic problem but not the result of the recurrent drought. The Egyptian civilization and survival depended primarily on a single river, Nile. However, the peoples who live on the source of Nile, and many large rivers such as Ganale and Logita in Sidama (which form Wabeshebelle in Somalia), the Baro and Akobo in Gambella, the Gibe in Oromia and so on failed to sustain their basic livelihood for over a century. The inability to feed ones population is a national embarrassment. It is now clear that the chronic food insecurity in Ethiopia is the result of a chronic problem of governance.
Thanks to the alternative concept of development formulated by the 1998 Nobel Lauriat, Professor Amartya Sen, economists are now able to examine the nexus between governance and poverty. According to Sen´s alternative concept of "development as freedom", the process of development consists of the removal of various unfreedoms which include freedom from such deprivations as starvation, under nourishment, escapable morbidity or premature mortality, literacy and numeracy, political freedom, and free speech. According to this alternative vision of development, improvements in material life come along with political liberties, the spread of voluntary exchange in free markets, social development, the building of social safety nets, and so on.
It is a sad fact that the successive Ethiopian regimes failed to remove the various unfreedoms that continue to decapitate any economic progress in the country. The Emperor´s attempt to hide the 1973 famine in Wollo and Tigray provinces in which over 800,000 people perished was one of the main factors that galvanized the 1974 revolution. The revolution led to the eventual abolition of over 80 years of archaic monarchical rule. Twenty four years have passed since Bob Geldof´s Live Aid Concert alarmed the whole world about the plight of 8 million hunger stricken Ethiopians during the disastrous famine of 1984-85 which killed over a million people.
Droughts and famines have recurred throughout the country's history. Since 2000 alone, there have been three major droughts, including a devastating episode in 2002-2003 (UNDP, 2007). Furthermore, according the World Bank (2003) between 1978 and 1994 alone, there were 15 droughts and famines with large number of households facing food and non-food consumptions shortfalls each year. The Bank states further that there is a broad consensus that on average there appear to be 5-6 million Ethiopians in a normal rainfall year who are in a need of some form of public assistance to help meet their basic calorie needs, although the deprivation is exacerbated in years when rainfall deviates significantly below the trend.
Radical policies and effective governance is required to address these chronic problems. The current regime emphasizes economic growth as a panacea for the problems facing the country. Recent research based evidences indicate that growth is necessary but not sufficient to reduce chronic food insecurity. With the majority of the population vulnerable to recurrent drought and famine, policies should focus on removal of Sen´s unfreedoms instead of the sole focus on GDP growth.
The basic responses of the current government to the country´s chronic food insecurity take two forms. These are (a) the usual appeal for international emergency food aid and (b) an introduction of an ambitious Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP). We begin with the analysis of food insecurity and food aid.
2. Food Insecurity and Food Aid in Ethiopia
Most food aid programs began in the late 1950s, but according to the most comprehensive international trade data available Ethiopia did not begin importing wheat until the early 1970s (Kirwan and MacMillan, 2007). Thus, food aid did not play an important role in the Ethiopian economy until the famine of 1984/85. Between 1984 and 2003, however, wheat food aid was on average equal to 68.4% of domestic wheat production, and in some years, wheat food aid exceeded domestic wheat production. Thus, the potential for wheat food aid to impact producer prices and domestic output is significant (Kirwan and MacMillan, 2007).
Ethiopia receives more food aid than almost any other country in the world. Food aid reached 15% of annual cereals production in 2003, and typically represents between 5% and 15% of total annual cereals production (Kirwan and MacMillan, 2007). At the same time, it is widely recognized that raising the productivity and profitability of smallholder agriculture is essential for poverty reduction in Ethiopia. These authors further argue that extensive government programs aimed at raising agricultural productivity have been disappointing and many observers have attributed the poor performance of agriculture to uncoordinated food aid shipments.
The basic problem of food aid is that the bulk of it comes in the form of domestically produced surplus crops shipped via rich country transport mechanisms. This guarantees market for domestic producers and increased profit for transport companies. According to Laurie Garrett (May, 2008) OXFAM estimates that 79% of all food aid from wealthy countries in 2007 was in the form domestically produced surplus shipped via rich country transport mechanism where the transport costs ate up over 40% of all food aid spending in the same year.
The great friend of the world poor, Laurie Garrett (May 2008), therefore, concludes that the real beneficiaries of the food aid scheme are the domestic food producers of Europe, Canada, the United States, Australia and the shipping giants like Maersk, Mitsui, and American President Lines. Garrett further states that food dependency can only end if the aid business model changes better reflecting the interest of farmers in poor countries rather than the producers in the rich countries. According to this respected citizen of the world, genuine food aid would aim at improving the technology of agriculture, directly investing in small scale farming operations in poor countries, provision of mechanised irrigation systems and fair trade practices that could allow an African corn farmer as good a chance of selling his harvest in Italy as a Canadian or Russian.
Some African leaders have already begun denouncing food aid scheme. The strongest attack on Food charity came from the Senegalese president Abdoulaye Wade on May 4, 2008 in which he denounced most UN system of aid, all of the top humanitarian relief nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) and specifically called for the demolition of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) which he described as a "bottomless pit of money" largely spent on its own functioning with very little effective operations on the ground (Garrett, May 2008).
Wade further argued that food charity must be progressively abandoned in favour of "help to stand up" policy or help for self assistance. According to Wade, instead of food handouts, Africa needs fertilisers, pesticides, irrigation equipments; tractors, technology, and access to global market place on equal standing, for sale of its products (Garrett, May 2008). If the rich countries fail to immediately address such real concerns of the poor countries of the world, their continued aid would not be viewed differently from a crocodile tears. While such aid programmes save lives temporarily they perpetuate dependency and kill many more lives in the future. If rich countries are really concerned about the chronic food insecurity of poor countries, the aid should focus on increasing the local agricultural production capacity and bring an end to dependency on food aid. The food aid should not be seen as an end in itself. It should serve as a means to bring sustainable solution to poverty and food insecurity in poor countries.
The humanitarian model failed to avoid deprivation and chronic famine and hunger for the past sikx decades. It is time to completely abandon the current food aid model and devise an alternative approach. The PSNP programme launched by the Ethiopian government in partnership with some donors is an attempt to move away from the humanitarian model and address the chronic food insecurity in a sustainable manner.
3. The Ethiopian Productive Safety Net Programme
The PSNP was launched by the government and donors in December 2003 as an alternative model to the humanitarian model of food aid. According to UNDP (2007), it is an employment-based social transfer programme targeting people facing predictable food insecurity as a result of poverty rather than temporary shocks. The programme offers guaranteed employment for five days a month in return for transfers of either food or cash-US$4 per month for each household member.
Therefore, the programme will still address immediate and emergency human needs by providing food to the population in chronically food insecure local government area, but in addition, will provide grants to households and communities to encourage them to engage in production and investment. The program is also expected to promote market development by increasing household purchasing power and supporting the transformation of the rural economy (World Bank, 2004).
The PSNP aims to extend coverage from 5 million people in 2005 to 8 million by 2009. Unlike the food aid model, the PSNP is a multi-year arrangement. Funded by government and donors it will operate for 5 years, shifting the mode of support away from sporadic emergency aid towards more predictable resource transfers.
The programme was funded by the UK Department for International Development, the US Agency for International Aid, the World Bank, the European Commission, the Canadian International Development Agency, Ireland Aid, the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Swedish International Development Agency.
Although there are some signs of improvements in the lives of some households that participated in the PSNP, it is not clear that the programme will equip people with the assets and resources needed to escape deprivation and poverty for good (UNDP, 2007). First of all, the grant of US$4 per family member per month is too little to promote investment in productive assets. Over 80% Ethiopians are directly employed in subsistence agriculture and most of them lack modern equipments to improve farm productivity. The little grant provided by the PSNP will make non difference in the production technology in subsistence agriculture.
Furthermore, although the programme anticipates that each batch of participants would graduate in 3 years, the current chronic food insecurity indicates that the target is unlikely to be met. It seems that the initial 5 million targets in 2004 have never graduated from the PSNP so far, and may be part of the 9 million chronically food insecure at present.
Another serious problem is the sustainability of the PSNP model. According to UNDP (2007) over 35 million Ethiopians live in chronic poverty. Therefore, most of the chronically poor are already left out from the programme which will dampen the overall effects of the intervention.
While the PSNP is an approach in the right direction, the scale of the problem and the limited finance provided to the participants seriously undermines its impacts and sustainability. If the PSNP does not lead to increase in agricultural productive capacity, it is doomed to fail like its predecessor, humanitarian aid.
4. Food Insecurity and Development Policies
Some scholars believe that such massive level of chronic poverty in the country could be significantly reduced if the current government followed flexible policy regimes. The often cited "antidevelopment" policy of the current regime is its reluctance to fully privatise the land ownership. According to Habisso (April 2008), the debate on the land ownership in Ethiopia has divided the Ethiopian elite into two camps or groups: (1) those who advocate state or public ownership of land on the one hand, and (2)those who advocate private ownership, on the other hand. He further states that there are also some who support a mixed ownership, i.e. private, collective or communal and state ownership.
The core argument of those who favour private ownership of land is that state ownership of land reduced the population in to virtual state tenants and undermined tenure security thereby killing any incentive for increased investment to improve agricultural productivity. This group implies that the current chronic poverty and food insecurity can be improved by instituting free exchange of land.
On the other hand, those who argue in favour of the state ownership of land state that private ownership will lead to concentration of land in the hands of a few who have the ability to buy and to eviction of poor peasants and displacements of pastoralists. They further argue that this will leave the displaced peasants without any alternative means of livelihood and could cause a massive rural-urban migration by the displaced poor. This group implies that the land use right guaranteed in the constitution ensures tenure security and could not create any disincentive to investment initiatives aimed at improving agricultural productivity. The basis of the argument of those in favour of the state ownership of land is the UN Land Policy articulated in United Nations Conference on Human Settlements in Vancouver, in 1976 (Quoted in Habisso, April, 2008):
" Land... cannot be treated as an ordinary asset controlled by
individuals and subject to the pressures and inefficiencies of the
market. Private land ownership is also a principal instrument of
accumulation and concentration of wealth and therefore contributes to
social injustice; if unchecked it may become a major obstacle in the planning
and implementation of development schemes. The provision of
decent dwellings and healthy conditions for the people can only be
achieved if land is used in the interests of society as a whole.
Public control of land use is therefore indispensable..."
The arguments of both camps have some elements of truth. According to Sen´s concept of "development as freedom", the development process encompasses freedom to free exchange of all properties, including land. The scale of the development of free exchange is an important indicator of the level of development while restrictions to freedom of exchange are both causes and consequences of underdevelopment. Therefore, such unfreedoms must be removed.
However, due to unique nature of land as an asset and historical realities of land ownership in the country, complete privatisation of land could indeed be disastrous. Where 80% of the Ethiopian population is living below US$2 a day, the market for free exchange of land is completely imperfect. Those who favour a complete and automatic privatisation of land, could easily be trapped into the 80-20 Pareto rule, where the upper 20% have access to everything while the bottom 80 does not matter.
In addition to the anticipated and, of course, real fear of market failure, the history of land ownership in Ethiopia is not in favour of those who argue for a complete privatisation of land. Between 1880s and 1975, land in southern, western and eastern Ethiopia was fully owned by a few land lords from Abyssinia. The peoples in these parts of the country have an agonising memory of the enslavement following their forced conversion into serfs. Therefore, they view any attempt to allow free exchange of land in these areas with a serious suspicion. For peoples living in these areas, a complete privatisation of land, would be the most unpopular decision any government could make.
Under these circumstances, it is therefore not unreasonable for the current regime to be reluctant about a complete privatisation of land in the country. At the same time, ensuring poor peasants´ permanent use right of land while their capacity to produce for themselves keeps on dwindling ever, does not make any economic sense.
The Ethiopian government and the elites should stop their ideological battles around the land issue and come down to the reality on the ground. While the complete privatisation of land could be ruled out due to market imperfections and historic circumstances, maintaining the status quo is not the best solution either. The 1975 Land Reform guaranteed the use right of every citizen in the country. However, it failed to ensure food security.
The country needs a compromise solution- a mixed ownership of land. Given the high probability of rain failures and drought in the country, subsistence households will never be able to produce enough food. This will only perpetuate the current chronic food insecurity. Thus, pockets of large scale irrigable lands should be privatised and sold out to the private commercial farmers. These pockets of land could be located in areas that do not lead to the displacement of large number of rural dwellers. We are told that large scale mechanised flower farms are booming in the country at present. The country got its priority wrong. While these farms increase the volume of export and improve the country´s balance of payments, they may have disastrous ecological consequences in the long run. What the country needs is large scale wheat and maize farms in order to feed the 9 million or so people who remain on the brink of famine every year. However, the increased food production in the country does not necessarily mean access to it by all citizens. The government should revisit its other core development policies and create better employment and income generation opportunities by the majority of the population.
Land where the majority of the population has settled should still remain under state ownership. Ownership of pastoral lands could be transferred to the communities living on it. Thus, the only viable solution to the current chronic food crisis in the country is a combination of state, private and communal ownership of land. Given the current level of poverty and historic circumstances, neither full privatisation nor the complete state monopoly of land will be a desirable solution.
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