By Gutu Olana Wayessa
Addis Abeba – This week marks the 50th anniversary of the radical land reform encapsulated by the “Proclamation to Provide for the Public Ownership of Rural Lands.” The proclamation was profound and marked a significant milestone in fundamentally shaping agrarian relations in rural Ethiopia, with even broader ramifications. Fifty years on, this phenomenal epoch in the political history of Ethiopia warrants a thorough reflection as to its merits, promises, and predicaments that rendered it less effective than it could have been. Before that, however, it is necessary to briefly recap the significance of land.
Land is more than a material asset. Despite cultural differences, this is true around the world. Besides serving as a resource for livelihoods, land is an anchor of identity. In other words, land has material and nonmaterial values. Moreover, it is a crucial component of development theories and theorization, as well as a battlefield for socioeconomic and political struggles.
As a manifestation of this global reality, and peculiar to Ethiopia’s political history, land is at the epicenter of political disputes in the country, with irredentist confrontations on the rise. Land contestation in Ethiopia is intense, polarized, and ideologically riddled, invoking issues of fairness and efficiency. They involve and affect various interest groups, and there is a need for analysis that goes beyond economic explanations to consider political-historical antecedents and the political-economic interests served by existing or potential policy alternatives.
Ethiopia’s land tenure issues are longstanding. At this historical juncture, revisiting the legacy and contemporary significance of the Proclamation is crucial for several reasons. To mention a few, the promises pledged and the hopes raised by the proclamation remain unfulfilled. This has sparked calls for land policy reform, with some advocating for land privatization disguised as a means for economic improvement, often masking political motives.
Understanding land policy issues through a reductionist-economic lens is simplistic and dangerous. I strongly believe that pushing a privatization agenda in contemporary Ethiopia is tantamount to proposing a “solution” to unidentified or misconstrued problems. It could result in misguided land policy reform and the creation of new troubles—or the resuscitation of old ones—in a country already plagued by multidimensional crises.
Land Tenure Before the 1974 Revolution
The Ethiopian empire’s southward expansion in the late 19th century led to significant displacement and land dispossession, creating enduring conflicts that involve critical areas of contention both materially and narratively. This period laid the groundwork for the immediate imperial regime and contributed to the political disputes over land and state structure that persist today to a significant extent. The mass atrocities and population displacements entrenched land-related injustices, igniting fierce contentions over land as a means of power consolidation within the empire-state.
During the imperial era, Ethiopia’s land tenure system was divided into the communal rist system in the north and the exploitative gult system in the south. The proclamation replaced this bimodal system with a unimodal one under exclusive state authority. The imperial land tenure policy primarily favored absentee landlords, who accumulated wealth from the land they occupied by force or were given to them by the state. On the other hand, peasants, dispossessed of their lands, struggled to meet their basic needs. They were subjected to servitude and forced to deliver much of what they produced to the landlords.
The official process of land privatization began before 1935 and accelerated after 1941. While privatization faced resistance in the north, where the communal ownership system of land prevailed, it was aggressively implemented in the south. Land privatization in the south transferred significant land to northern settlers, compounding the injustices faced by the nations and nationalities in the southern part of the empire-state. As a result, the land question and the struggle for land justice became intertwined with justice in (ethno)national relations.
The Revolution and the Proclamation
A precursor to the Proclamation was the 1974 revolution, where the land question—unfolded as demands for the rectification of a highly unequal land access—was a key factor. The revolution was a turning point, marked by overthrowing the imperial regime (1930-1974) and putting a formal end to its exploitative system of tenancy and serfdom. The Proclamation, which nationalized rural land, was a radical move aimed at ending exploitation and (re)distributing land to those who worked it, as signified by “Land to the Tiller”—a poignant slogan of student-championed social movement of the time. Although this reform was hailed by those suffering under the imperial-feudal system, the Derg regime (1974-1991) retained absolute control, curtailing the empowerment of the peasantry and leaving them at the risk of displacement.
Understanding the historical context and the subsequent unfolding of the Proclamation is crucial as we reflect on its legacy half a century later. Below are a few highlights of the proclamation’s break with the past—the pre-revolution land relations—and its merits.
Before the revolution, Ethiopia’s agrarian society was under the repression of the “naftagna-gabbar” system, characterized by skewed access to land, land dispossession, and labor exploitation. The Proclamation was enacted by the Provisional Military Administration Council (Derg) on March 4, 1975. It was a significant shift in Ethiopia’s land tenure history, with broader implications for the country’s political trajectory. The reform aimed to rectify historical injustices by nationalizing land and ending the imperial-feudal system. It abolished landlord-tenant relations, prohibited land privatization, and aimed to increase agricultural production and reduce income inequality.
Despite its revolutionary nature, the Proclamation failed to provide peasants with secure land tenure as the state retained total control over land. The notion of ‘eminent domain’ is at play, compounded by the nature of the state. The undemocratic and hegemonic nature of the Ethiopian state—across regimes—and the cognate lack of recognition for, and representation of, the people have been central factors in the proclamation’s limited effectiveness in rectifying land-related injustices. Addressing these broader factors of representation and recognition is essential to realizing the promise of the land reform. Among many manifestations of land injustices are massive development-forced displacements and perpetual land-related corruption by state elites and party cadres, which continued unabated to date.
From Derg to EPRDF: Continuity and Change
The Derg’s rise to power in 1974 resulted in radical land reforms, followed by large-scale resettlement schemes and the establishment of state farms, both of which were openly coercive. The regime’s subsequent coercive programs introduced new challenges for the peasantry, including heavy taxation and control. The Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), in power from 1991 to 2019, maintained state/public ownership of land while attempting to centralize decision-making power, even against the provisions of the 1995 Constitution for regional states to self-govern, leading to significant land leases to investors and undermining regional autonomy. State hegemony continued under the EPRDF, as it decreed various proclamations to ensure absolute state control. The social movements of 2014-2017, primarily led by Oromo youth, paved the way for the Prosperity Party’s advent in 2019. All along, public land ownership has been characterized by state hegemony, unresolved land questions, precarious livelihoods, and persistent poverty.
Large-scale resettlements by the Derg and the EPRDF involved coercive methods and often led to conflicts between resettlers and host communities. The state’s power to dispossess people in the name of development and violate their rights has been central to the gap between policy and practice. Population displacement and dispossession have persisted – even more intensified due to the violent conflicts ravaging the country – under the rule of the Prosperity Party. Non-participatory and coercive resettlement processes reflected the authoritarian nature of both regimes. In analyzing land control and the state’s role, it is vital to consider the broader political ecology of resource access, especially concerning party politics under successive Ethiopian governments.
Land Leases and the Risk of Privatization
Like many other countries in sub-Saharan Africa and the Global South broadly, Ethiopia has seen significant land transfers since the new millennium, especially after the triple crises of fuel, food, and finance in 2008. Large-scale land leases to investors have resulted in considerable displacement and dispossession of local people, exacerbating land-related injustice. Started under the rule of the EPRDF, this injustice has continued under the current regime—the Prosperity Party. Across regimes, the Ethiopian state’s failure to recognize customary land rights and involve local people in decision-making processes has perpetuated procedural and distributive injustices.
There are sound historical justifications and contemporary political-economic realities casting doubt on the feasibility of land privatization. However, current trends suggest that it is not a far-fetched scenario, particularly in light of the macroeconomic reform undertaken last year, in July 2024. The risk of land privatization is compounded by the neoliberal inclination of the Prosperity Party’s economic policy and the increasing influence of the West and its Bretton Woods Institutions—the IMF and World Bank—in the context of Ethiopia’s protracted armed conflict and civil war ongoing for the last six years.
Advocates of land privatization often overlook or downplay the broader political, cultural, and social significance of land, focusing narrowly on economic efficiency. They position themselves as advocates of individual rights and tend to ignore communal property and governance systems of Ethiopia’s nations and nationalities. They tend to undermine the collective rights of communities. This perspective risks misrepresenting land governance options and obscuring the deeper issues at play. Land privatization, a mechanism of promoting accumulation by dispossession, might enhance tenure security for some, but it often leads to dispossession for the majority.
Even on accounts of agricultural productivity, research on the relationship between land tenure policy and agricultural productivity offers mixed results, suggesting that policy responses must consider local contexts and broader conditions. Overemphasizing privatization as the best condition for investment can undermine opportunities for agricultural growth and fail to recognize the plurality of land governance options. Ignoring the political, cultural, and social aspects of land in policy formulation carries significant risks and can lead to increased inequalities and new conundrums.
Conclusion
The 1975 Proclamation represented a step in the right direction toward equal land access in Ethiopia, but its transformative hopes remain largely unrealized. Analyzing the unfulfilled promises of the Proclamation reveals the need for a politics-centered explanation of land tenure issues. The undemocratic nature of the state, signified by the lack of recognition and representation of people in decision-making processes, as well as its unchecked power, has curtailed the Proclamation’s emancipatory values and redistributive potential.
Treating land tenure issues as apolitical and ahistorical, overlooking the broader political-economic and historical contexts shaping land policies, is a risky policy venture. Policymakers should move beyond narrow, technical solutions to address eco-social injustices related to land governance. This requires a people-centered, participatory democracy that prioritizes cultural recognition, political representation, and equitable resource distribution. A Just and effective land governance cannot exist, and the promises of “Land to the Tiller” cannot be realized under regimes where people are unrecognized and unrepresented. AS
Gutu Olana Wayessa is a senior researcher at the University of Helsinki, Finland. He holds the title of Docent in Global Development Studies.
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