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Ethiopia Land Reform
Until the l974 revolution, Ethiopia had a complex land
tenure system. In Welo Province, for example, there were an
estimated 111 types of land tenure. The existence of so many
land tenure systems, coupled with the lack of reliable data,
has made it difficult to give a comprehensive assessment of
landownership in Ethiopia. However, the tenure system can be
understood in a rudimentary way if one examines it in the
context of the basic distinction between landownership
patterns in the north and those in the south.
Historically, Ethiopia was divided into the northern
highlands, which constituted the core of the old Christian
kingdom, and the southern highlands, most of which were
brought under imperial rule by conquest. This north-south
distinction was reflected in land tenure differences. In the
northern provinces--particularly Gojam, Begemdir and Simen
(called Gonder after 1974), Tigray, highland Eritrea, parts
of Welo, and northern Shewa--the major form of ownership was
a type of communal system known as
rist
(see Glossary).
According to this system, all descendants (both male and
female) of an individual founder were entitled to a share,
and individuals had the right to use (a usufruct right) a
plot of family land. Rist was hereditary, inalienable, and
inviolable. No user of any piece of land could sell his or
her share outside the family or mortgage or bequeath his or
her share as a gift, as the land belonged not to the
individual but to the
descent group (see Glossary). Most
peasants in the northern highlands held at least some rist
land, but there were some members belonging to minority
ethnic groups who were tenant farmers.
The other major form of tenure was
gult
(see Glossary), an
ownership right acquired from the monarch or from provincial
rulers who were empowered to make land grants. Gult owners
collected tribute from the peasantry and, until l966 (when
gult rights were abolished in principle), exacted labor
service as payment in kind from the peasants. Until the
government instituted salaries in the twentieth century,
gult rights were the typical form of compensation for an
official.
Other forms of tenure included samon, mengist, and maderia
land. Samon was land the government had granted to the
Ethiopian Orthodox Church in perpetuity. Traditionally, the
church had claimed about one-third of Ethiopia's land;
however, actual ownership probably never reached this
figure. Estimates of church holdings range from l0 to 20
percent of the country's cultivated land. Peasants who
worked on church land paid tribute to the church (or
monastery) rather than to the emperor. The church lost all
its land after the 1974 revolution. The state owned large
tracts of agricultural land known as mengist and maderia.
Mengist was land registered as government property, and
maderia was land granted mainly to government officials, war
veterans, and other patriots in lieu of a pension or salary.
Although it granted maderia land for life, the state
possessed a reversionary right over all land grants.
Government land comprised about 12 percent of the country's
agricultural land.
In general, absentee landlordism in the north was rare, and
landless tenants were few. For instance, tenancy in Begemdir
and Simen and in Gojam was estimated at about 2 percent of
holdings. In the southern provinces, however, few farmers
owned the land on which they worked. Southern landownership
patterns developed as a result of land measurement and land
grants following the Ethiopian conquest of the region in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. After
conquest, officials divided southern land equally among the
state, the church, and the indigenous population. Warlords
who administered the occupied regions received the state's
share. They, in turn, redistributed part of their share to
their officers and soldiers. The government distributed the
church's share among the church hierarchy in the same
manner. Officials divided the rest between the traditional
leaders (
balabats
--see Glossary) and the indigenous people.
Thus, the loss of two-thirds of the land to the new
landlords and the church made many local people tenants
(gebbars). Tenancy in the southern provinces ranged between
65 and 80 percent of the holdings, and tenant payments to
landowners averaged as high as 50 percent of the produce.
In the lowland periphery and the Great Rift Valley, the
traditional practice of transhumance and the allocation of
pastoral land according to tribal custom remained
undisturbed until after World War II. These two areas are
inhabited by pastoralists, including the Afar and Isa in
eastern Eritrea, Welo, and Harerge; the Somali in the
Ogaden; the Borana in Sidamo and Bale; and the Kereyu in the
Great Rift Valley area of Shewa. The pastoral social
structure is based on a kinship system with strong interclan
connections; grazing and water rights are regulated by
custom. Until the l950s, this pastoral life remained largely
undisturbed by the highlanders, who intensely disliked the
hot and humid lowland climate and feared malaria. Beginning
in the l950s, however, the malaria eradication programs made
irrigation agriculture in these areas possible. The
government's desire to promote such agriculture, combined
with its policy of creating new tax revenues, created
pressure on many pastoralists, especially the Afar and the
Arsi (a division of the Oromo). Major concessionaires, such
as the Tendaho Cotton Plantation (managed until the 1974
revolution by the British firm Mitchell Cotts) and the Wonji
Sugar Plantation (managed by HVA, a Dutch company), acquired
large tracts of traditional Afar and Arsi grazing land and
converted it into large-scale commercial farms. The loss of
grazing land to these concessions significantly affected
traditional migration patterns for grazing and water.
In the northern and southern parts of Ethiopia, peasant
farmers lacked the means to improve production because of
the fragmentation of holdings, a lack of credit, and the
absence of modern facilities. Particularly in the south, the
insecurity of tenure and high rents killed the peasants'
incentive to improve production.
By the mid-l960s, many sectors of Ethiopian society favored
land reform. University students led the land reform
movement and campaigned against the government's reluctance
to introduce land reform programs and the lack of commitment
to integrated rural development. By l974 it was clear that
the archaic land tenure system was one of the major factors
responsible for the backward condition of Ethiopia's
agriculture and the onset of the revolution. On March 4,
l975, the Derg announced its land reform program. The
government nationalized rural land without compensation,
abolished tenancy, forbade the hiring of wage labor on
private farms, ordered all commercial farms to remain under
state control, and granted each peasant family so-called
"possessing rights" to a plot of land not to exceed ten
hectares.
Tenant farmers in southern Ethiopia, where the average
tenancy was as high as 55 percent and rural elites exploited
farmers, welcomed the land reform. But in the northern
highlands, where communal ownership (rist) dominated and
large holdings and tenancy were exceptions, many people
resisted land reform. Despite the special provision for
communal areas (Article l9 of the proclamation gave peasants
in the communal areas "possessing rights" to the land they
were tilling at the time of the proclamation) and the PMAC's
efforts to reassure farmers that land reform would not
affect them negatively, northerners remained suspicious of
the new government's intentions. The reform held no promise
of gain for most northerners; rather, many northern farmers
perceived land reform as an attack on their rights to rist
land. Resistance intensified when
zemecha
(see Glossary)
members campaigned for collectivization of land and oxen.
Land reform had the least impact on the lowland
peripheries, where nomads traditionally maintained their
claims over grazing lands. The new proclamation gave them
rights of possession to land they used for grazing.
Therefore, the nomads did not perceive the new program as a
threat. However, in the Afar area of the lower Awash Valley,
where large-scale commercial estates had thrived, there was
opposition to land reform, led mainly by tribal leaders (and
large landowners), such as Ali Mirah, the sultan of Aussa.
The land reform destroyed the feudal order; changed
landowning patterns, particularly in the south, in favor of
peasants and small landowners; and provided the opportunity
for peasants to participate in local matters by permitting
them to form associations. However, problems associated with
declining agricultural productivity and poor farming
techniques still were prevalent.
Government attempts to implement land reform also created
problems related to land fragmentation, insecurity of
tenure, and shortages of farm inputs and tools. Peasant
associations often were periodically compelled to
redistribute land to accommodate young families or new
households moving into their area. The process meant not
only smaller farms but also the fragmentation of holdings,
which were often scattered into small plots to give families
land of comparable quality. Consequently, individual
holdings were frequently far smaller than the permitted
maximum allotment of ten hectares. A l979 study showed that
around Addis Ababa individual holdings ranged from l.0 to
l.6 hectares and that about 48 percent of the parcels were
less than one-fourth of a hectare in size. Another study, of
Dejen awraja (subregion) in Gojam, found that land
fragmentation had been exacerbated since the revolution. For
example, during the pre-reform period, sixty-one out of 200
farmer respondents owned three or four parcels of land;
after the reform, the corresponding number was 135 farmers.
The second problem related to security of tenure, which was
threatened by increasing pressure to redistribute land and
to collectivize farms. Many peasants were reluctant to
improve their land because they were afraid that they would
not receive adequate compensation for upgrades. The third
problem developed as a result of the military government's
failure to provide farmers with basic items like seeds,
oxen, and fertilizer. For instance, one study of four
communities in different parts of Ethiopia found that up to
50 percent of the peasants in some areas lacked oxen and
about 40 percent did not have plows.
Data as of 1991
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