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Ethiopia The Politics of Villagization
Further evidence of the Ethiopian government's desire to
enhance its control over the citizenry was its villagization
program. The idea of clustering villages was introduced in
the Land Reform Proclamation of 1975; however, there was no
immediate effort to implement such a policy on a large
scale. The first area to become the object of serious
government efforts was Bale, following the onset of the
Ogaden War of 1977-78 (see
The Somali, ch. 5). At that time,
ethnic Somali and Oromo living in Bale were forced by the
Ethiopian government into strategically clustered villages.
The official objective of the move was to provide social
services more efficiently and to stimulate voluntary selfhelp among villagers. By 1983 there were 519 villagized
communities ranging in population from 300 to 7,000.
The government did not introduce a comprehensive
villagization plan until 1985. In January of that year, the
villagization process began in earnest in Harerge, and by
May there were some 2,000 villagized communities there. That
summer, the process was begun in Shewa and Arsi, and in 1986
small-scale villagization efforts were begun in Gojam,
Welega, Kefa, Sidamo, and Ilubabor. The National
Villagization Coordinating Committee of the Ministry of
Agriculture, in collaboration with the WPE, organized and
managed the project. By March 1987, it was estimated that
there were as many as 10,000 villagized communities
throughout the country. The long-term goal of the program
was the movement of 33 million rural residents--
approximately two-thirds of the nation's population--into
villagized settlements by 1994. By late 1989, however, only
about 13 million peasants had been villagized.
The WPE introduced guidelines for site selection, village
layout, and related matters. At the regional level, a
committee planned, coordinated, and monitored the program
through a network of subcommittees (planning and
programming; site selection and surveying; material
procurement, transportation, and logistics; construction;
propaganda and training; monitoring and evaluation; and
security). This structure was replicated in successive
administrative layers down to the peasant associations--the
level with ultimate responsibility for implementation.
In some regions of the country, the decision to villagize
was a voluntary one, but in others the process was
compulsory. In either case, peasants were required to
dismantle their homes and, where possible, transport the
housing materials to the new village site. Campaigners were
usually brought in by the party and government to help the
people physically reconstruct their communities.
Like resettlement, villagization generally caused a good
deal of social disruption. Families usually were required to
move from their traditional locations, close to their
customary farming plots, into clustered villages where the
land to be cultivated often was on fragmented plots far from
the homestead.
The villagization program was most successful in the
central highlands and southern lowlands, regions such as
central Shewa, Arsi, and highland Harerge that were firmly
under government control. Government efforts to villagize
parts of western Shewa, the Harerge lowlands, and Gojam met
with resistance. In the case of Gojam and western Shewa,
this resistance in large measure was attributed to the fact
that the TPLF and the Ethiopian People's Democratic Movement
(EPDM) were most active in those regions. The Harerge
lowlands were populated by ethnic Somali who were not as
cooperative with the government as were the highlanders, who
tended to be Oromo.
But not all Oromo peasants readily supported the
villagization program. Many fled from new villages in
Harerge after 1986, taking refuge in camps in Somalia. By
June 1986, an estimated 50,000 such refugees had fled
resettlement, mainly for political reasons. Some refugees
complained that they were forced to abandon their
traditional patterns of cultivation and to move into
villages where they had to farm collectively and to
participate in "food for work" programs. Private
humanitarian agencies and bilateral and multilateral
development agencies were apparently aware of alleged, as
well as real, violations of human rights associated with the
villagization program. Nonetheless, by early 1987 many seem
to have turned a blind eye to such incidents and to have
concentrated on the humanitarian dimensions of their work.
On purely technical grounds, villagization, like
resettlement, seemed to make sense. The official goal was to
improve the access of rural residents to social services and
to strengthen the ability of rural communities to defend
themselves. Another motive, however, seemed to be the
conversion of villagized communities into producers'
cooperatives or collectives, as well as into centers for
military recruitment.
Data as of 1991
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