Everyday Practices of State Building in Ethiopia: Power, Scale, Performativity (Oxford Studies in African Politics and International Relations) 0192869655, 9780192869654

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Everyday Practices of State Building in Ethiopia Power, Scale, Performativity

O X F O R D ST U D I E S I N A F R I C A N P O L I T I C S A N D I N T ER N AT I O N A L R EL AT I O N S

General Editors

N I C C H E E S E M A N, P E A C E M E D I E , A N D R I C A R D O SOARES DE OLIV EIR A Oxford Studies in African Politics and International Relations is a series for scholars and students working on African politics and International Relations and related disciplines. Volumes concentrate on contemporary developments in African political science, political economy, and International Relations, such as electoral politics, democratization, decentralization, gender and political representation, the political impact of natural resources, the dynamics and consequences of conflict, comparative political thought, and the nature of the continent’s engagement with the East and West. Comparative and mixed methods work is particularly encouraged. Case studies are welcomed but should demonstrate the broader theoretical and empirical implications of the study and its wider relevance to contemporary debates. The focus of the series is on sub-Saharan Africa, although proposals that explain how the region engages with North Africa and other parts of the world are of interest.

Everyday Practices of State Building in Ethiopia Power, Scale, Performativity D AV I D E C H I N I G Ò

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Davide Chinigò 2022 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2022935972 ISBN 978–0–19–286965–4 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192869654.001.0001 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Cover image: courtesy of Adriano Marzi, www.adrianomarzi.com Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

Acknowledgements

This book would not have been possible without the invaluable support and contribution of many people and organizations. At different stages of my postgraduate and postdoctoral career, fieldwork in Ethiopia was funded through the ‘Bando di tesi all’estero’ of the University of Bologna, the Ambassadorial Scholarship of the Rotary International Foundation, and the Hayter Field Research Grant of the University of Edinburgh. I owe so much to the research institutions that hosted me during the book’s long journey. I wish to thank the Department of Political and Social Science of the University of Bologna, the Centre of African Studies at the University of Edinburgh, and the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Stellenbosch University for their institutional support. A special mention goes to Mario Zamponi for his support and advice throughout my graduate and postgraduate career in Bologna. I also wish to thank James Smith and Cherryl Walker for their support and mentorship in Edinburgh and Stellenbosch. A special thanks goes to the Institute of Ethiopian Studies and the Institute of Development Research of Addis Ababa University, and the Centre Français des Etudes Ethiopiennes for their invaluable support during my research in Ethiopia. A special mention goes to Aklilu Yilma, Mamo Hebo, and Thomas Osmond for facilitating my access to these organizations. I am also thankful to the Italian NGOs COOPI and Nexus Emilia-Romagna, and the Confederation of Ethiopian Trade union (CETU) for facilitating the fieldwork I conducted for chapters two and five respectively. I am deeply grateful to Antonio Giudiceandrea, Fabio Gaggi, Giangavino Milia, Federico Dessì, Vittorio Oppizzi, Samanta Pe, Rahel Ayele, Gabriella Rossetti, and Rita Tassoni for their friendship and support. A special mention goes to Lorenzo Fontana for taking care of me like a brother in Shashemene and Ropi during my fieldwork for Siraro, and the Apostolic Vicariate of Sodo during my stay in Wolaita. This book would not have been possible without the help and friendship of my research assistants Wondimu Kedir, Assefa Amejo, Molalign Semau, Wedi Tesfaye, and Geshaw Abat. A special thought goes to the many friends who made me feel at home in Addis Ababa with their invaluable care and love. Among others, a special thanks goes to Samson Tesfaye, Theodros Shewarega, Emma Lochery, Matteo Baraldo, Jakob Braun, Filippo Brasesco, Chiara Scaraggi, Mattia Grandi, Anna Giovannini, Marco Pittalis, Simon Rolph, and George Lwanda. To all of the people that expressed their generosity by making their time and kindness available for my

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questions, thanks for sharing your histories and aspirations, and for making this work possible with the vitality of your everyday life. Your trust and care will always be a source of great inspiration. All names appearing in this book have been either redacted or changed to protect the identities of interviewees. Over the years comments and suggestions for this book came from many colleagues and friends. I owe a lot to the insightful suggestions, conversations, and discussions about Ethiopia to Hussein Jemma, Shiferaw Bekele, Samuel Andreas Admasie, Senait Seyoum, Tefera Negash Gebregziabher, Yonas Ashine, Dessalegn Rahmato, Daniel Mulugeta, Eden Yohannes, Worku Tessema, Bekele Gutema, Ayele Tessema, René Lefort, Logan Cochrane, Luca Puddu, Luca Mantovan, Harald Aspen, Sabine Planel, Cecilia Navarra, Andrea De Marco, Aurelia Patrizia Calabrò, Stefano Caria, Giulia Mascagni, and Florian Scha¨fer. Catherine Dom, Rony Emmenegger, and Sarah Vaughan were all sources of inspiration and motivation on how to frame key parts of this book’s arguments. Where scholarly discussion can no longer be discerned from friendship and life, I was lucky enough to share the journey that led to this book with Marco di Nunzio, Diego Maria Malara, Sara Marzagora, Emanuele Fantini, and Jonah Wedekind. I am particularly thankful to Nic Cheeseman and Ricardo Soares De Oliveira at Oxford University Press for enthusiastically endorsing my book project, and for their help and advice throughout the production of the manuscript. James Merron gave invaluable feedback and support in framing the book proposal. Three anonymous reviewers provided very insightful comments and suggestions, their input was particularly useful for strengthening the overall structure and the analytical scope of the book. Special thanks go to John Markakis and Tobias Hagmann for their feedback and encouragement on the latest version of this manuscript. Early versions of some of the case studies were published as journal articles. Parts of chapter three were published as ‘Decentralization and Agrarian Transformation in Ethiopia: Extending the Power of the Federal State’ in Critical African Studies 6, 1 (2015): 40–56, and as ‘The Politics of Land Registration in Ethiopia. Territorializing State Power in the Rural Milieu’ in The Review of African Political Economy 42, 144 (2015): 174–189. Parts of chapter four appeared as ‘Historicising Agrarian Transformation. Agricultural commercialization and social differentiation in Wolaita, Southern Ethiopia’ in the Journal of Eastern African Studies 9, 2 (2015): 193–211, and as ‘Contract and Control: Agrarian Labour Mobilisation and Resistance under Large-Scale Land Investments for Biofuel Crop Production in Ethiopia’ in Annales d’Éthiopie 33 (2020): 49–78 (co-authored with Jonah Wedekind). An early version of chapter five was published as ‘The Peri-Urban Space at Work. Micro and Small Enterprises, Collective Participation, and the Developmental State in Ethiopia’ in Africa 89, 1 (2019): 79–99. Parts of chapter six appeared as ‘Manufacturing and Labour Mobilisation in EPRDF Ethiopia. A Household Perspective on the Rise and Uncertain Prospects of the Textile Industry in Tigray’, in Afriche e Orienti 2 (2020). I am deeply grateful

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to the editors and anonymous reviewers of these journals for their advice and comments. Credits and special thanks for the cover image, depicting the outskirt of Addis Ababa ‘where the rural and the urban become one’, go to my friend and outstanding photographer Adriano Marzi. I owe a lot to Carmine Onorati for his help in putting together the maps and figures featured in the book. I wrote this book while based in Bogliasco, my beloved hometown. This book would not have possible without the care of the staff of Stella Maris and Il Vagabondo. In particular, I wish to thank Monica, Leonardo, Ibra, Vanessa, and Chiara for feeding me with their smiles, countless caffè macchiato, and sparkling water at ‘my office by the sea’. This book is dedicated to my family. To my father, Carmelo, and my mother, Margherita, and their unconditional love in supporting all my life choices. With my brother and friend Luca I shared all my dreams and plans growing up. To my sons, Henry and James, who are an everyday source of inspiration and imagination about the beauty of simple things in life. And to my life partner and wife, Caroline, for her love, time, and care that keep motivating me more every day.

Contents

List of Figures List of Tables Glossary

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1. The State in the Everyday: Conceptual and Methodological Challenges

1

2. Returning from Resettlement: Rural Modernization in Waag Himra

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3. Manoeuvering Land Registration: Decentralization of Land Administration in Siraro

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4. Making the Most of a Failed Biofuels Project: Agriculture Commercialization in Wolaita

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5. Performing Entrepreneurship: Job Creation in Kolfe

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6. Becoming a Worker: Industrialization and Textile Labour in Mekelle

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7. Conclusion: Identity Politics and the Everyday State in Ethiopia

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Bibliography Index

231 252

List of Figures

1.1. Location of study areas by chapter. Map prepared by the author.

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2.1. Location of study area in Amhara region. Resettlement routes from Waag Himra special zone. Map prepared by the author.

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3.1. Location of study area in Oromia region, West Arsi zone. Map prepared by the author.

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4.1. Location of study area in SNNPR, Wolaita zone. Map prepared by the author.

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5.1. Location of study area in Addis Ababa city administration, Kolfe Keranyo sub-city. Map prepared by the author.

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6.1. Location of study area in Mekelle city administration, Qwiha sub-city. Map prepared by the author.

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List of Tables

3.1. Comparison of Income Tax and Rural Land Use Payment in Proclamation No.99/2005 and Proclamation No.131/2007

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Glossary ADLI: Agriculture Development Led Industrialization ANDM: Amhara National Democratic Movement ARDO: Agriculture and Rural Development Office CF: contract farming CSA: Central Statistical Agency CUD: Coalition for Unity and Democracy DA: Development Agent DAP: chemical fertilizer Derg: the military junta ruling Ethiopia between 1974 and 1991 DFID: Department for International Development, United Kingdom DIDR: Development-Induced Displacement and Resettlement EFFORT: Endowment Fund for the Rehabilitation of Tigray enset: false banana EPDM: Ethiopian People’s Democratic Movement EPLAUA: Environmental Protection and Land Use Authority EPRP: Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party ETB: Ethiopian birr (currency) EPRDF: Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front ETIDI: Ethiopian Textile Industry Development Institute FAO: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations GDP: Gross Domestic Product GEE: Global Energy Ethiopia GPN: Global Production Network GTP (I and II): Growth and Transformation Plan GVC: Global Value Chain HABP: Household Asset Building Programme IMF: International Monetary Fund IP: Industrial Park

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GLOSSARY

kebele: village level administration LAC: Land Administration Committee LR: land registration MF: model farmer MFI: microfinance institution MoARD: Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development MoI: Ministry of Industry NRS: National Regional State MSE: Micro and Small Enterprise NGO: Non-Governmental Organization OFC: Oromo Federalist Congress OFDM: Oromo Federal Democratic Movement OLF: Oromo Liberation Front ONC: Oromo National Congress OPDO: Oromo People’s Democratic Organization PASDEP: Plan for Accelerated Development to End Poverty PP: Prosperity Party PSNP: Productive Safety Net Programme PRSP: Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper SDPRP: Sustainable Development Poverty Reduction Programme SEPDF: Southern Ethiopian People’s Democratic Front SNNPR: Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People’s Region T&G: Textile and Garment industry/sector timad: area of land a pair of oxen would plough in one day, corresponding to approximately 0.25 hectares TPLF: Tigray People’s Liberation Front TVET: Technical Vocational and Educational Training UEDF: United Ethiopian Democratic Forces UNIDO: United Nations Industrial Development Organization USAID: United States Agency for International Development USD: United States dollar (currency) VRP: Voluntary Resettlement Programme WB: the World Bank woreda: district level administration

1 The State in the Everyday: Conceptual and Methodological Challenges 1.1 Introduction In recent years Ethiopia has been in the spotlight of African politics and international relations. The surge to power of Abiy Ahmed in April 2018 following a wave of anti-government protests that swept the country from the mid-2010s marked the demise of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), the party coalition that had ruled Ethiopia since 1991, a few months later. While initially the transition was characterized by a liberalization of the political landscape, the country descended rapidly into a deep political crisis marked by a surge of ethnonationalist politics, which, among other outcomes, escalated into a fully-fledged military conflict in Tigray after November 2020. The current political crisis is rooted in deep transformations that have simmered over a long period of time, and that have at their heart the contested nature of Ethiopia’s history of state and nation building. The crisis thus raises the important question about how to interrogate historical dynamics of state formation from the perspective of the present. In this book I explore the concept of the everyday to study how social and political formations, and the material and representational forces they carry, articulate practices of state building over time. Ethiopia under EPRDF is a productive ground on which to reappraise one of the most lively and yet controversial debates in African studies: how to conceptualize the relationship between state formation and social change. Today this debate remains open to two kinds of question. One is the familiar problem about how to escape the analytical framework of the nation-state model to analyse African social and political formations rooted across increasingly globalized and localized scales. This problematic has been articulated by a considerable body of literature addressing the nature of colonialism and its legacies, the definition of national, sub-national and trans-national identities in the context of globalization, and the structure of African economies in relation to the development of capitalism. State formation as a set of meta-historical and structural transformations confronts the problem of methodological nationalism, which is the tendency of theory to restrict the analytical scope of social and political change against the lens of the nation-state. The second is the debate about how to conceptualize elusive state-society relations. This has led to a wealth of studies focusing Everyday Practices of State Building in Ethiopia. Davide Chinigò, Oxford University Press. © Davide Chinigò (2022). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192869654.003.0001

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on a sociological reading of the state interested in the practices through which a wide variety of actors negotiate state authority in specific contexts. Rejecting meta-historical explanations, the sociological reading has nonetheless confronted the challenge of descriptive empiricism, which is how to inscribe micro-empirical realities within broader trajectories of state formation without reifying contextual specificities, particularly the tendency to culturalize power relations. This book takes a perspective on state formation as an empirical object that requires investigating a wide set of open-ended processes articulating the mutual constitution of the state and society over time. The argument I propose is that if we want to escape depictions that conflate experiences of state formation across space and time, and the reification of micro-empirical realities, we need an empirical focus on social change. To take the problem of both methodological nationalism and descriptive empiricism seriously, this book puts into sharp focus those practices of the everyday that over time articulate state formation. This requires two propositions. First, I contend that the analytical lens of the everyday offers a productive ground from which to conceptualize state formation as epiphenomenal to social change. This is about studying how the material forces of history articulate new openings and possibilities, without incurring in deterministic readings of state formation as a teleological process. Second, interrogating state formation through the lens of social change requires an empirical focus on the social production of difference in the world and a methodological perspective that privileges questions around becomings over belongings in identity formation. In this book I grapple with the question of how to reinstate movements to our conceptualization of state formation in Africa against increasingly globalized and localized dynamics. This is about studying how state power structures and constrains social life, while at the same time it creates the conditions of possibility for new openings and social formations. Drawing insights from the case of Ethiopia between 1991 and 2018, I engage with a set of broad questions about the theory of the state from the vantage point of the interdisciplinary field of African studies. What does state formation look like from the perspective of the everyday? What kind of methodological and epistemological clarifications do we need in order to study state formation from the perspective of the everyday? And how, to what extent, and through what means does state formation reflect new openings and becomings in the everyday? *** This book draws on five different qualitative fieldworks that I conducted in Ethiopia during my postgraduate career between 2006 and 2018. The case studies, located in Ethiopia’s four most populous regions and its capital city, Addis Ababa, explore the relation between state formation and social change, analysing the politics and histories informing the design and implementation of policies of resettlement, decentralization and land registration, agriculture

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commercialization, small business development, and industrialization. The case studies explore the set of diverse and incoherent practices of the everyday through which beneficiaries and local state officials negotiate abstract representations of the Ethiopian state. An empirical focus on societal conflict is my entry point to analyse how fieldwork subjects navigate state power by casting meanings and values to place, land, and work. Empirically I am particularly interested in those mundane practices that describe how people live alongside and despite the constraining power of state policies and development programmes, when their claims for recognition are dismissed or remain unacknowledged. In these fragments of everyday life, which prove central to identity formation, fieldwork subjects seek new forms of recognition, imagine alternative futures, and, in the process, rearticulate the scope of state authority. From a perspective of experience and observation, this book explores some of the important challenges that the ruling EPRDF government, in power from 1991 to 2019, encountered in trying to institutionalize state power through flagship policies targeting selected groups in both rural and urban areas: landless people, smallholder farmers, entrepreneurs, urban unemployed, and industrial workers. The EPRDF came to power after a successful armed insurgency that ousted the military regime known as the Derg (1974–1991). In the course of the 2000s, the EPRDF elaborated a left-leaning political ideology that advocated for state-led development, dubbed the ‘developmental state’. Drawing on experiences from East Asia, the developmental state model advocates for an active role of the state in promoting rapid economic growth and socio-economic upliftment through largescale, public funded, and donor supported development programmes. The book reviews the design and implementation of key programmes and policies that illustrate how the developmental state model emerged and took shape since the early 2000s. By conceptualizing the developmental state as a scalar project, the book demonstrates the ways local state officials and beneficiaries navigated and shaped statesponsored programmes during implementation: it discusses the contingent politics and histories that determined specific outcomes of, and gave new meanings to, central state-sponsored schemes. Each case-study discusses how these policies, which were generally designed disregarding specific contexts of implementation, engendered dynamics of social differentiation, inequalities, and incipient class formation. Local state officials and beneficiaries negotiated, challenged, and manoeuvred these programmes, investing state power with their own meanings, expectations, and aspirations. While these practices often remain under the surface, I maintain that they shape the trajectory of state-society relations, describing the mutual constitution between the state as a conceptual realm and society as an empirical realm (Mitchell, 1991). The book locates trajectories of social change within the mutual constitution of the state as a set of images—the representation of the Ethiopian state emerging in policies and programmes designed by the

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EPRDF government—and the material practices through which these policies are negotiated and shaped during implementation (Migdal, 2001).

1.2 Ethiopia under the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front Ethiopia under EPRDF is arguably one of the most interesting and controversial experiments of state formation in contemporary Africa. The origin of the post1991 regime can be traced back to various armed ethnonationalist movements that in the aftermath of the 1974 revolution began guerrilla style opposition to the military regime of the Derg. The most prominent of these political organizations, which grew out of the same Marxist student movement that in the late 1960s and early 1970s opposed the Imperial regime, is the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). In 1988, four of these regional movements¹ created a broader umbrella political organization: the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front. After taking power, the EPRDF embarked on a political experiment known as Ethnic Federalism, which institutionalized ethnicity as a main principle of state organization. Rejecting ideas of liberal democracy rooted in individual rights, plural representations, and diversity of political views, the political ideology of the EPRDF impinged on the notion of ‘revolutionary democracy’. Revolutionary democracy relies on ideas about collective rights, mass political mobilization, and a form of participation forged through consensus led by a vanguard. Anthropologist David Turton has defined ethnic federalism as a radical and pioneering model of political organization with few precedents around the world (Turton, 2006: 1). In elaborating ethnic federalism, the TPLF/EPRDF political leadership was inspired by a Maoist, and later Albanian, model of political organization, drawing on Stalin’s theory of the national question, which advocates for a selfreliant development independent of the Soviet Union (Bach, 2011: 642; Tefera Negash, 2019). ‘Nation’ was defined by Stalin as ‘a historically evolved, stable community of language, and territory, economic life and psychological makeup manifested in a community of culture’,² a definition that for the TPLF epitomized the national question historically faced by Tigray. By granting the right of selfdetermination to the plurality of ‘nations, nationalities and peoples’ of Ethiopia up to secession, ethnic federalism was envisioned as a system to neutralize the destabilizing forces of ethno-nationalism (Vaughan and Tronvoll, 2003: 118). This was meant to preserve the territorial integrity of the country—with the notal exception of Eritrea, who seceded in 1991—by recognizing the plurality of people and ¹ The TPLF, the Amhara National Democratic Movement (ANDM), the Oromo People’s Democratic Organization (OPDO), and the Southern Ethiopian People’s Democratic Front (SEPDF). ² Aregawi Berhe (2008) cited in Tefera Negash (2019: 470).

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groups that were subsumed in the process of imperial expansion of the Abyssinian polity initiated under Emperor Menelik II in the course of the nineteenth century. While ostensibly providing for a radically decentralized system, revolutionary democracy in Ethiopia has in fact relied on hierarchical governance based on ‘democratic centralism’. Local level bodies have remained highly dependent on federal decision-making, including financial disbursement, thus reflecting state structures poorly emancipated from the ruling party. The EPRDF inherited the system of the local administrative structure of the Derg based on woreda (district) and kebele (village) levels, which under the new course continued to perform the same functions of political control and monitoring. The other important element of continuity with the Derg is state ownership of land,³ although with important transformations in the period under review. In the course of the 2000s, the EPRDF/TPLF leadership articulated ‘revolutionary democracy’ along the model of the ‘developmental state’. This model emerged in the aftermath of the war with Eritrea (1998–2000), when in 2001 a heated debate about the country’s strategic approach to capitalism generated a split in the TPLF’s inner circle (discussed in chapter two). The split consolidated the charismatic leadership of the late Prime Minister, and the developmental state’s principal ideologue, Meles Zenawi. The contested 2005 national elections (discussed in chapter three), which marked the end of a tepid opening to multiparty democracy, further consolidated the re-orientation of the country’s strategic direction towards a model of selective market liberalization heavily managed by the state. The developmental state model advocates for an activist and expansionist state that protects strategic sectors from market forces until their maturity as the fundamental condition to sustain socio-economic transformation in the long run. As compellingly argued by Meles Zenawi himself (2012), the developmental state stands on the refute of neoliberalism and the ‘Washington Consensus’, the development doctrine championed by international financial institutions during the 1990s and 2000s which promotes the idea of a minimal state in the economy (‘rolling back the state’) and macroeconomic reforms (‘making the price right’). On the contrary, drawing on ‘catch up’ theories of late industrializers (Arkebe Oqubay, 2015), the developmental state approach stands on an expansionist role of the state in the economy, drawing on successful experiences of rapid economic transformation in East Asia, and China in particular. The scope of the Ethiopian developmental state reflects the formulation of an ambitious strategy of rapid economic growth and diversification aimed at transforming Ethiopia into a ‘middle income country by 2025’ (FDRE, 2015). The extent to which the EPRDF government departed from the centralized authoritarian rule of previous regimes, and the

³ Land ownership was nationalized in 1975, soon after the Derg junta took power, through a radical land reform which dismantled existing forms of landlordism. See for instance the work of Dessalegn Rahmato (2009), René Lefort (1983), Gebru Tareke (1996), and Christopher Clapham (1988).

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scope of ethnic federalism to produce ethnic politics, are issues that remain disputed to this day. This is also what moved my interest in exploring those practices of power that articulate the relation between state formation and social change from the perspective of the everyday.

1.3 Situating the Relation between State Formation and Social Change in EPRDF Ethiopia The relation between social change and state formation in EPRDF Ethiopia interrogates important questions about the temporality of state formation, the spatial configurations of state-society relations, and the problem of subject formation in relation to state power. In this introduction, I situate the problematics this book seeks to address along the critique to three influential approaches—the centre-periphery, the developmental state, and political culture.

1.3.1 Beyond Centre-periphery Relations: Methodological Nationalism and the Everyday The centre-periphery framework is one of the most influential approaches that students of Ethiopia have employed to critically scrutinize state formation and nation-building over time. A consolidated historiography identifies the formation of modern Ethiopia in the protracted military expansion of the Abyssinian empire in the nineteenth century in the Southern, Western, and Eastern lowlands of the country.⁴ This body of studies can be situated within the Marxist tradition—which was deeply influential in shaping the intellectual trajectory of the student movement inspiring the 1974 and 1991 regime changes (Elleni Centime Zeleke, 2019)—understanding state formation as a set of structural processes. A landmark study here is the book Ethiopia: The Last Two Frontiers (2011), in which historian John Markakis contends that the political project of state formation in EPRDF Ethiopia remains fiercely contested today. Markakis locates the centre of power in the ‘highland centre’, the historical core of Abyssinian society in the Ethiopian highlands, where today the administrative reach of the state is comprehensive. From this centre, the Ethiopian geography of power articulates along the country’s ‘last two frontiers’: the ‘highland periphery’ and the ‘lowland periphery’. Here, Markakis argues that the reach of the state is limited, and efforts of the Ethiopian state builders have intensified only recently.⁵ Relying on this approach, a ⁴ See for instance Donham and James (1986), Bahru Zewde (2001), Dessalegn Rahmato (2009), Markakis (1974), Clapham (1988). ⁵ In Markakis’ terms, the ‘highland periphery’ includes ‘the region that lies roughly below the line that joins the Blue Nile River in the west with Addis Ababa in the east’ (12), which constitutes the

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growing number of studies have looked at the strategies the Ethiopian government has put in place to economically and politically capture these peripheries (Mosley and Watson, 2016; Fouad Makki, 2012; Lavers, 2012), including through the displacement, cooptation, and sedentarization of politically marginalized groups (Abbink et al., 2014; Gabbert et al., 2021). For Markakis the distinction between the centre and the periphery is not only about geo-physical characteristics, but more so about the distribution of power. What defines the centre is the monopoly of power and the hegemonic position it occupies in the state … What defines the periphery is its marginal position in the power structure of the state, or more precisely, its exclusion from state power … Powerlessness, economic exploitation and cultural discrimination add up to a severe form of marginalization, the defining feature of the periphery. (2011: 7)

The centre-periphery framework is helpful for elucidating one crucial dimension of social change in relation to state formation: a focus on those histories that in the narration of state formation as a political elite’s project remain under the surface. Markakis’ endeavour is precisely to narrate the history of state formation in Ethiopia, and its present-day articulations, from the perspective of those people and territories at the frontier, those histories that remain at the margins. By putting into sharp focus the power asymmetries that characterized the formation of modern Ethiopia, Markakis elucidates a perspective of nation-building as the structural outcome of unequal and exploitative centre-periphery relations. Markakis creates the space to analyse social change when he contends that historically, in the pursuit of centralization, Ethiopian state builders resorted to strategies ranging across two opposites: resorting to force, and designing arrangements to accommodate a vastly heterogenous population within the realm of a broad enough national identity. Over time this translated into policies seeking the assimilation of the peripheries to Abyssinian culture, the construction of the socialist state under the Derg, and then cultural pluralism and federalism under EPRDF. However, ‘none of these addressed the fundamental political issue that continues to galvanize resistance: the assumed exclusive right of the Abyssinian elite to rule the state and plot the course leading to national integration’ (2011: 5). The centre-periphery framework points to broader discussions in the field of African studies over the nature of state formation in the continent. Scholars conceptualizing the state as a set of historical processes have debated for a long time geographical extension of the Ethiopian plateau southwards. The ‘lowland periphery’ is the vast semiarid region surrounding the highland plateau on all sides when it drops abruptly from the escarpment, which is characterized by significant differences in terms of climate, density of settlement, and limited suitability for intensive agriculture, factors which historically made mobile pastoralism the main human activity.

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the relative weight of colonization and European imperialism in shaping African social formations and political experiences. Some historians regard colonization as the defining moment of state formation, emphasizing how the legacy of colonial structures has significantly constrained post-colonial configurations (Mamdani, 1996; Young, 1994). Other scholars contend that the trajectory of the colonial and postcolonial state in Africa must be inscribed within a broader history of ‘extraversion’ (Bayart, 1993; 2000), and an approach that scrutinizes the stratified layers of history to capture new openings and possibilities (Cooper, 2002). The role and legacy of colonialism to shape state formation has thus attracted scholars interested in conceptualizing the mismatch between fluid African societies and the classical tools at hand for the study of state power and authority. Normative understandings of state formation rooted in the Weberian ideal type have long dominated conceptualizations of public authority and analyses of power. When such a model was not conforming with complex empirical realities, explanations tended to emphasize the ‘exceptionalism’ of the African state (Chabal and Daloz, 1999). The debate about exceptionalism was then articulated along the role of formal and informal institutions in determining social and political outcomes. Since the 1980s, a particularly influential body of studies has relied on the notion of ‘neo-patrimonialism’ to contend that the nation-state model does not capture forms of political authority that are rather imbued within pre-existing social norms and informal political institutions within the realm of ‘tradition’ (Médard, 1982; Chabal and Daloz, 1999; Chabal, 2008). Contending that formal political institutions have taken little root, this approach privileges a focus on informal politics—for instance emphasizing the role of ‘big men’ and traditional leaders—to understand African social and political formations. The tendency of this approach to reify the dichotomy between ‘modern’ and ‘tradition’, as well as to provide cultural explanations of political processes, has been criticized by new institutional approaches making a case for the role of formal institutions to shape everyday politics (Cheeseman, 2018). The lack of a protracted colonial experience in Ethiopia—limited to the five years of Italian occupation between 1936 and 1941—marks a partial specificity of the country’s historical trajectory when compared to the rest of the continent. However, the debate about exceptionalism in state formation has been no less intense: the lack of a protracted history of European colonization has induced many observers to regard the Ethiopian experience in isolation from the rest of the continent. By extension, the Ethiopian state, and its nature and functioning, has often been constructed as an exceptional object of research.⁶ A central question, which remains today, is how to provide complexity to a reading of Ethiopian history beyond the political project of the centre, capturing loose relations that are taking place beyond the nation-state frame. Recent critical contributions have, ⁶ For a discussion about exceptionalism in Ethiopian historiography, see Marzagora (2017) and Fry (2017).

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for instance, put into sharp focus the contested nature of Ethiopian history, questioning the largely Eurocentric frame within which representations of state formation have been proposed (Elleni Centime Zeleke, 2019). While resonating with current discussions about the meaning of decolonization, questions about the epistemological frame of reference through which to study the state in Africa, i.e., the problem of methodological nationalism, have taken place over a much longer period. In recent years an important contribution to tackling the problem of methodological nationalism has emerged from the interdisciplinary field of borderland studies. Borderland studies privilege an analytical perspective grounded on the historical contingency of social phenomena and offer an interdisciplinary perspective to the study of state formation based on the view that social processes are not imbued in space but rather that they actively generate space (Lefebvre, 1991). Drawing on these insights, Ulf Engel and Paul Nugent (2010) argue for a spatial turn in African studies, urging a shift in the discipline’s focus on dynamics of state formation to how different forms of space are contested by social groups. In Ethiopia, this has led to a wealth of studies on how specific social groups inhabit transnational localities both within and outside the domain of the Ethiopian nation-state (for instance Korf et al., 2015; Emmeneger, 2017). Building on a growing body of literature regarding sovereignty as not necessarily aligned with the territorial nation-state (Hansen and Stepputat, 2005; Mbembe, 2002; Massey, 2005; Agnew, 2005), the spatial turn redefines the empirical realm of state formation to the perspective of how a variety of actors defend or gain sovereignty by contesting the political space. Engel and Nugent contend that this conceptual lens is particularly useful in making intelligible how processes of globalization unfold spatially across Africa. This is an endeavour which, they argue, requires ‘a historically informed theory of Africa’s place in present political, economic and cultural processes of spatial change’ (Engel and Nugent, 2010: 6). The new regimes of territorialization that substantial parts of Africa are witnessing—including ‘re-ordered states, transnational and sub-national entities, new localities and transborder formation’ (6)—requires this spatial thinking to conceptualize ensuing social and political formations. Although the centre-periphery framework is helpful for narrating those histories that remain under the surface and for retaining a critical stance towards the project of building the Ethiopian nation-state over time, it rests on a rather teleological view of history in which state formation is defined in relation to the project of western political modernity. More specifically, the centre-periphery framework reflects a tendency to understand state power as a singularized time, an all-encompassing force moving unidirectionally from the centre to encompass the periphery, both spatially and temporally. In Ethiopia this coincides with the historical project of the Abyssinian elite, and, in the period under review, by the EPRDF/TPLF leadership more specifically. From a methodological perspective,

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this presents the problem of framing fieldwork subjects through the binary distinction between ‘powerful’ and ‘powerless’ subjects, between state builders and those resisting integration. As this book demonstrates, this distinction becomes increasingly blurred when we turn our attention to the problematics confronting beneficiaries of state policies and development programmes in their everyday life. Understanding the nuances of how power relations operate in the everyday requires an approach that moves beyond a view of state power as mechanically unfolding from the centre to the periphery. Markakis maintains that ‘the elite at the centre makes decisions; the elite in the periphery implement them’ (8). While this is certainly true—cooptation has historically played an important role in Ethiopia’s state formation—it also presumes that local state institutions and elites mechanically implement decisions taken at the centre. This misses important aspects of how institutions translate and mediate state power into practices, a central problematic that this book seeks to address, and how specific state practices, in turn, shape the state as an abstract representation. The binary distinction between powerful and powerless subjects obscures how reflexive power relations operate in the everyday. How, then, do we take these problems further? What epistemological clarifications does the problem of methodological nationalism require? In this book I scope the everyday as an analytical concept to study practices of state formation over time.⁷ I aim to put into clear focus those practices of institutional mediation that become relevant to definitions of state formation. The urge to complement the centre-periphery conceptualization of state formation stems from practical problems that I encountered during my fieldwork. I always found it difficult to frame any of the five case studies of this book within strict centre-periphery categorization. I felt much was missing in the ways power was at work. I soon realised that while the centre-periphery framework is useful for sketching state formation in broad historical terms, it presents the practical problem of how to make space to describe agency, while maintaining an open-minded view on the movement of structure. The realm of the everyday allows for a characterization of state power as a diffuse, unstable, and evolving field (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987). At an empirical level, I am interested in scoping two complementary perspectives of the everyday state. The first is how state power constrains and shapes social life. The second is how societal subjects navigate constraining structural forces of the state. The five case studies of this book discuss how contestations over public authority during the EPRDF period have taken place across space—from the cities of Addis Ababa and Mekelle, to rural sites in Amhara, Oromia, and Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People’s Region (SNNPR)—and mobilize a broad set of narrations of state power that escape the centre-periphery representation of history. The problem this book seeks to address is precisely how to take an analytical ⁷ The work of Daniel Mulugeta (2019; 2020) takes a similar approach to studying the formation of state ideas in Ethiopia as they are rooted into practices of power in specific localities.

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perspective that describes how state power constrains social life, while at the same time leaving room to discuss new openings. A focus on everyday practices of state building requires a perspective on history as an open field that remains up for grab. In this book I grapple with the question of how to write the history of state formation in EPRDF Ethiopia from the perspective of the present. What histories count and are worth of narration is a problem that requires additional methodological clarifications. On the one hand, this is a problem about my positionality as a white-Italian male academic engaging with state formation in Ethiopia as an empirical object. The power field that my positionality mobilized during fieldwork is something that the reader is encouraged to take into consideration when reading my empirical material. On the other hand, writing a history of the present is a problem of definition of those dynamics that are relevant to describing trajectories of state formation. The analytical frame of the everyday, I contend, allows for a pragmatic approach. Methodologically this book explores state formation from the perspective of those contingent histories that have emerged during my encounter with fieldwork subjects. The five empirical chapters explore the contingent histories attached to resettlement, land registration and decentralization, agriculture commercialization, employment creation, and industrialization, from the perspective of the problematics that these policies raised in the specific contexts of implementation. These histories make for a narration of state formation beyond the state as a methodological unit of analysis: they articulate specific concerns of beneficiaries and local officials against broader priorities and themes at regional, national, and global scales.

1.3.2 The Ethiopian Developmental State: Alternatives to Neoliberism and the Problem of Scale The second approach to state formation is the growing body of literature articulating state-society relations in Ethiopia through a critique of the developmental state. Ethiopia under the EPRDF has been in the spotlight for its remarkable achievements in terms of rapid economic growth. In 2018 the country was Africa’s fastest growing economy, following a decade of steady growth averaging 10% a year (IMF, 2018), although starting from a low base. Growth was driven by the expansion of services and infrastructure, and the construction sector in rapidly expanding urban areas, particularly the capital city Addis Ababa. Major investments in large-scale infrastructure projects, including the Grand Renaissance Dam and dedicated industrial parks, became flagship projects of the developmental state. Investments in commercialization of agriculture (discussed in chapters three and four), the sector historically employing a vast majority of people, the promotion of small businesses (chapter five), and manufacturing (chapter six) are all distinctive features of the developmental state approach to selective economic

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liberalization. These projects mirror the ambition of the EPRDF elite to nurture the country’s influence beyond national borders, for instance by positioning Ethiopia as East Africa’s main power supplier. While the government’s strategic planning has considerable expectations, projecting a steady growth of these sectors in the period under review, their actual record has been less significant.⁸ The economic achievements experienced in the 2000s and 2010s, which the EPRDF has claimed as a success of the developmental state model, have elicited representations of Ethiopia as a clear example of ‘Africa rising’. Continentally the EPRDF has drawn on a political repertoire emphasizing efforts to promote a new African renaissance impinged on the values of pan-African humanism that characterized the heydays of modernization (FDRE, 2015: 13; Arkebe Oqubay, 2015). This reflects efforts to sustain a more integrated continental market through free trade agreements, as well as to leverage the country’s privileged position as the host of the African Union. In the period under review, Ethiopia, Africa’s second largest country by population, has rapidly expanded its regional influence and ambition. However, the project for economic transformation under the EPRDF has raised questions about the scope of the developmental state model to further democratic rights and the plural representation of the country’s diverse groups. Interestingly, the culmination of this project in the late 2010s also marked the end of the control of the TPLF over the EPRDF, and soon after, the end of the EPRDF itself. On 4 April 2018, Abiy Ahmed became the first Prime Minister of Ethiopia from the politically marginalized Oromo group. In September 2019, Abiy Ahmed signed a historical peace deal with Eritrea settling the border dispute that the 1998–2000 war had left open, and creating the conditions for the movements of persons, goods, and services between the two countries for the first time in twenty years. For this achievement, Abiy Ahmed was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 2019 and celebrated on the covers of major international news outlets.⁹ In December 2019 Abiy Ahmed launched his own political platform, the Prosperity Party (PP), which replaced the EPRDF as the ruling party. While Abiy’s political ideology emphasizes the construction of a broad Ethiopian national identity, on this departing from the TPLF/EPRDF, it remains committed to an approach to economic development based on the developmental state model. The origin and nature of the political transition—which many identify in the nationwide anti-government protests sparked by Oromia, the country’s most populous region, since the mid-2010s—have revamped discussions about the relation between the developmental state and authoritarianism under EPRDF.¹⁰ While one way to read the project for economic development under the developmental state ⁸ See for instance Mulu Gebreeyesus et al., 2018. ⁹ See https://time.com/collection/100-most-influential-people-2019/5567759/abiy-ahmed/ [accessed on 22 June 2020]. ¹⁰ On the relationship between development and authoritarianism, see the edited book by Hagmann and Abbink (2013). For a contextualization of the relationship between aid and authoritarianism in

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is through James Scott’s lens of high modernism,¹¹ the 2018 transition and the ensuing ethnic tensions that have culminated in a tragic conflict between the central government and the TPLF in Tigray since November 2020, require a more detailed investigation of the nature of social and political transformations that took place during EPRDF. The case studies of this book show how the social and political tensions that have come to the surface in recent years have in fact simmered for a much longer period and require a critical focus on the developmental state experiment in its everyday articulations. This book brings into focus a trend of growing inequalities and unfulfilled expectations that have over time resulted in an increased disconnect between the EPRDF and its historical constituencies, and between the developmental state as a set of ideas, policies, and principles, and the actual practices that articulated state-society relations in the period under review. The elaboration of the developmental state in the 2000s intersects with important questions about how scholarship constructs this model as a research object. Discussions about the developmental state are well articulated in the field of African studies, and they are not exclusively confined to Ethiopia.¹² As the model is derived from experiences of socio-economic transformation in East Asia (Hayashi, 2010), its applicability to African cases is disputed (Kanyenze et al., 2016; Mkandawire, 2001; Leftwich, 2000).¹³ In the course of the 2000s, discussions about the developmental state emerged parallel to a growing critique of the effects of neoliberal policies of structural adjustment, market liberalization, and political conditionality sponsored by international financial institutions that African countries widely adopted in the 1980s and 1990s. From this perspective, the developmental state reflects a wide set of aspirations that political elites across the continent have framed through ambitious political agendas, generally rejecting the ‘minimal state’ recipe, of finding alternatives to neoliberalism (Radice, 2008). More controversial is the extent to which the developmental state model is useful for capturing actual patterns of political and socio-economic transformation in Africa. Key questions include the relationship between the private sector and state bureaucracy, the scope of industrial strategies to support import-substitution as a step on the road to export orientations, and the nexus between political legitimacy and socio-economic development. In Ethiopian studies literature, discussions have revolved around the applicability of the concept of developmental state to the country’s structural conditions, particularly the evolution of the ideological Africa, see the edited book by Hagmann and Reyntjens (2016), which includes a chapter on Ethiopia by Emanuele Fantini and Luca Puddu. ¹¹ See Scott (1998) for the notion of high modernism. ¹² Studies have engaged with this question in the cases of South Africa and Ghana (Ayee, 2013), Botswana (Hillbom, 2011), Botswana and Zimbabwe (Maundeni, 2001), Botswana and Uganda (Mbabazi and Taylor, 2005), Mauritius (Meisenhelder, 1997), and Rwanda (Booth and GoloobaMutebi, 2012). ¹³ Critical studies also question the applicability of a pre-packed notion of the developmental state to contemporary experiences in Asia (see, for instance, Liow, 2011; Kim, 1999).

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trajectory of the TPLF/EPRDF and the legacy of the country’s experience of state formation (De Waal, 2013; Lefort, 2013; Melisew Dejene and Cochrane, 2019). For instance, studies have characterized the Ethiopian model in terms of an aspirational developmental state (Bach and Nallet, 2018; Lavers, 2019), developmental patrimonialism (Clapham, 2018), neo-developmentalism (Goodfellow, 2017), and political marketplace (De Waal, 2018). As I stressed earlier, the origin of the developmental state in Ethiopia needs to be situated in the early 2000s, when a political crisis in the TPLF’s inner circle in the aftermath of the war with Eritrea resulted in the consolidation of the leadership and strategic vision over the country’s future of the late prime minister, Meles Zenawi (discussed in chapter two). In the mind of the TPLF/EPRDF political leadership, the self-declared developmental state was meant to achieve rapid economic growth as a way to keep the country together against the centrifugal forces of ethnonationalism. As contended by Meles himself, ‘I am convinced that we will cease to exist as a nation unless we grow fast and share our growth’.¹⁴ The imperative of economic growth to address the question of nationalities¹⁵ is therefore one of the most important themes interweaving discussions about the developmental state and ethnic federalism, a topic which the case studies of this book dissect through the lens of the everyday. One influential contribution to the developmental state literature is the book Made in Africa by the former mayor of Addis Ababa and prominent member of the EPRDF intelligentsia, Arkebe Oqubay (2015). Drawing on theories about late industrializers and import-substitution, Arkebe reviews key sectors of Ethiopia’s industrial policy such as construction, floriculture, and the leather sector. The book makes a strong case for the adoption of developmental state policies in Africa, identifying in embedded autonomy (Evans, 1995) the most salient feature of the Ethiopian experiment.¹⁶ Arkebe acknowledges that the road to the transformation of the economy is dense with obstacles and that the developmental state approach has been successful in sectors such as construction and floriculture but less so in others, such as the leather industry (Brautigam, Weis and Tang, 2016). While Arkebe’s work is useful for mapping the strategic vision behind the developmental state project and its macro-economic and sectoral articulations, it is imbued with a teleology of progress, understanding transformation as a singularized time on the way to modernization. This reflects a perspective on the developmental state as a set of ideas and abstract representations as they are produced by the EPRDF/TPLF political leadership. In this ¹⁴ Quoted in De Waal (2013: 154). ¹⁵ For an early formulation of the question of nationalities, refer to Walleligne Mekonnen (1969). ¹⁶ Arkebe Oqubay (2015: 37) characterizes the developmental state in relation to embedded autonomy as a set of structural features: a development obsessed political elite; a strategic and goal oriented approach to the economy; the mobilization of societal subjects around key national goals and hegemonic purpose; a bureaucracy embedded in society; the ability to take decisive political actions; and the capacity to channel developmental rents from less productive activities to more developmental ones.

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book I am concerned to unpack how these ideas informing the formulation of the developmental state model produce real life effects through practices of institutional mediation by a wide variety of political subjects, including the ultimate beneficiaries of state policies and programmes. The case studies of this book show that the modernization vision underlying the developmental state project has not only been fiercely contested, but that the developmental state itself took on a variety of meanings depending on material specificities, histories, and contingencies of life. By exploring the tensions and contradictions of the developmental state project in this book, I seek for a less-than-certain and less-than-stable interpretation of the relationship between state formation and social change in EPRDF Ethiopia. In the course of the 2000s, the institutionalization of the Ethiopian developmental state underscored a strategy of selective liberalization of the economy which departed from the planned model of the Derg. While strategic sectors, such as banking and telecommunication, have remained under tight state control, after 2006–2007 the Ethiopian government opened the economy to foreign investments, thus uncapping international capital and technologies aimed at capturing export markets to sustain the developmental state’s effort at economic development. Macro-economic instability driven by rapidly growing imports of finished goods to sustain urban development made export orientation even more crucial to counter a swiftly deteriorating balance of payments. Another important objective of this strategy was addressing youth unemployment and landlessness in rapidly transforming urban and rural areas (Di Nunzio, 2019). It is thus important to note that the application of this strategy has not been uniform. While the centre-periphery reading emphasizes a geographically differentiated scope of the developmental state policies, in this book I emphasize the scalar dynamics within which state-driven economic liberalization is enmeshed. This is crucial to critically scrutinize how state-society relations under EPRDF Ethiopia intersects with processes of globalization which unfold through contingent histories. I contend that the Ethiopian developmental state approach to selective economic liberalization should first be understood as a scalar project. Two examples that illustrate the scalar scope of the developmental state are the relations between smallholder and commercial agriculture, and between small businesses and manufacturing industry. Drawing on two case studies from Oromia and SNNPR, chapters three and four review key transformations in the agriculture sector. After a largely unsuccessful strategy aimed at leveraging capital from smallholder agriculture to diversify the economy, known as Agriculture Development Led Industrialization (ADLI) (discussed in chapter two), since the mid-2000s the government’s strategic planning started prioritizing the commercialization of agriculture through the injection of foreign corporate capital. Rooting agro-industry was meant to exploit international agricultural commodity markets of niche products such as floriculture and

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biofuels (the latter is discussed in chapter four). Agriculture commercialization generated the significant rescaling of land and labour relations, this reflecting the attempt of the EPRDF government to pursue different, and often irreconcilable, objectives. For example, the problem of reconciling state ownership of land with measures prioritizing the capitalization of agriculture generated the problem of how to keep together two contradictory elements of land policy, namely, limiting land dispossession and unleashing the potential of agriculture for economic growth. In scalar terms, agriculture commercialization under the developmental state was characterized by three trends. First, important initiatives, including land titling and decentralization of land administration (discussed in chapter three), have targeted smallholder farmers in an effort to boost productivity and their integration to the local market. Schemes of smallholder commercialization have been particularly prominent where historically peasant farmers had direct access to land and population pressure is higher. Prioritizing the smallholder model was meant to jointly sustain food security, while engendering micro-dynamics of capital accumulation to boost productivity. Second, large-scale commercialization schemes via foreign investments and entailing the dispossession and displacement of smallholders and pastoral groups have selectively targeted vast areas of the country’s lowlands where population pressure was historically less prevalent, and have relied on a political repertoire about putting into productive use otherwise underexploited resources (Fouad Makki, 2012; 2014). A third model (discussed in chapter four) is the commercialization of smallholder agriculture through contract farming arrangements in which farmers are integrated into global value chains but retain formal control of the land. Following Fouad Makki (2014: 80), the ‘effect of these contrasting patterns of agrarian transformations is the asymmetrical integration of the mass of Ethiopia’s farmers into a hierarchically structured global agroindustrial complex’. Similarly, important scalar dynamics can be depicted in the strategy targeting business promotion in services and manufacturing. The small/large-scale dichotomy in the ways the government designed and implemented policies and programmes is perhaps even more striking here. On the one hand, as discussed in chapter five, the promotion of micro-entrepreneurship schemes is an important aspect of the developmental state approach to business development. Engineering the creation of small groups to establish business activities in pre-established segments of the service sector, and injecting them with state-sponsored financial arrangements and a strong emphasis on saving, has been a distinctive feature of the developmental state approach to address unemployment, and particularly the threat of unrest that a rapidly growing mass of disenfranchised urban youth posed to political stability. On the other hand, the promotion of manufacturing via foreign investments in large-scale corporations, for instance in the textile sector (chapter six), mirrored the developmental state ambition to promote an

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export-oriented strategy of industrialization. As the Ethiopian government has been successful in attracting foreign capital by setting in place fiscal incentives and an ambitious infrastructural plan of dedicated industrial districts, the delocalization of international corporations was meant to create the technical and technological spill-overs necessary for rooting domestic manufacturing in the long run. Emphasizing the scalar scope of the strategy for selective economic liberalization under the Ethiopian developmental state elucidates important themes that expound the relation between social change and state formation. First, changing land and labour relations constitute an important entry point to scope the significant social and economic transformations that took place under the developmental state project. By rearticulating global configurations of capital in specific localities, the developmental state strategy generated a wide set of conflicts, claims to recognition, and patterns of social differentiation. The empirical chapters of this book discuss how these dynamics, which were filtered through localized histories, proved central to the formation and contestation of public authority in a variety of contexts. Second, Ethiopia under the developmental state, while relying on a discourse about state-managed capitalism to sustain socio-economic development, has been characterized by a trend of growing inequalities, the dispossession and displacement of people and groups, and new rural-urban interactions. The developmental state has thus subsumed discussions around social and political rights, and plural representation, within the priority of economic growth and modernization. Social differentiation and incipient class formation in both urban and rural areas raised the problem for the EPRDF about the changing nature of its main political constituency, historically based on smallholder farmers. This problematic is particularly relevant considering that a rapidly transforming and diversified society exacerbated existing trends towards ethnic identification in the ways people engaged and conceptualized the state, and its developmental ambitions. A growing body of critical literature emphasizes how the policies set in motion through the developmental state are in fact a key mechanism upon which the EPRDF has relied to project central state authority over diverse groups, justifying this through a progressive discourse about economic modernization. The developmental state is mobilized here to discuss the projection of federal state power in specific localities. This critical literature puts into sharp focus the distinction between the developmental state as a set of more or less coherent state policies designed by the EPRDF government and their actual configuration as a set of contradictory practices reproducing social and political inclusion and exclusion (Vaughan, 2011), marginality (Di Nunzio, 2017), ethnic conflict and violence (Mecklenburg, 2019), interaction with the peasantry (Dessalegn Rahmato, 2014; Lefort, 2012; Planel, 2014), corruption and political patronage (Daniel Mulugeta, 2020), land dispossession (Korf et al., 2015; Gabbert et al., 2021), land rights and

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democratization (Tusa Husen Ahmed, 2018), class formation (Bach and Nallet, 2018), and social conflict (Andreas Admasie, 2018). In the 2000s, the design and implementation of policies drawing on the developmentalist ambition of the EPRDF went side by side with an increasing institutionalization of grassroot state and party structures. While the EPRDF inherited the local administrative structures of the Derg, based on kebele and woreda level units, the period under review records a sharp expansion in the scope and penetration of local bureaucracy to virtually encompass all aspects of social, economic, and political life. The modernization impetus dictated by the developmental state justified growing state intrusion on the grounds of improving the efficiency of local institutions in delivering rapid socio-economic development. The reconfiguration of local administrative structures is an important entry point through which to discuss the trajectory of state-society relations under EPRDF, which intersects with at least two important themes addressed by this book. The first is decentralization. Policies and development programmes under EPRDF Ethiopia cannot be read in isolation from broader institutional arrangements regulating ethnic federalism. Article 39(1) of the 1995 Constitution outlines a radically decentralized system of state administration, providing that ‘Every Nation, Nationality and People in Ethiopia has an unconditional right to selfdetermination, including the right to secession’. The Constitution does not specify the conditions and precise arrangements for ethnic groups to secede the federation, this arguably being one of the most controversial aspects of ethnic federalism as a political experiment. In the period under review, the roles and relations between the federal state, the regional states, and the lower-level administrative units have been the object of important policy reforms under the framework of decentralization. In the 1990s, reforms focused on fiscal decentralization and the repartition of prerogatives between the federal government and the nine regional states (Keller, 2002; Keller and Smith, 2005). The 2000s, during which the developmental state model emerged as a main trademark of the country’s strategy for economic transformation, were characterized by an ambitious plan known as woreda-level decentralization, establishing a system of ‘block grants’ transfers from the federal government to district level units (Dom and Lister, 2010). The scope of decentralization reforms is important for understanding key trends of policymaking in EPRDF Ethiopia, which are explored in chapter three in relation to land administration. Rather than a genuine devolution of powers, decentralization reforms should be regarded in terms of the deconcentration of prerogatives to regional and lower-level bodies, with accountability directed upward to the federal government. In fact, decentralization proved central to the territorialization of federal state power and the centralization of political authority (Chinigò, 2015). Rather than expanding the democratic scope of ethnic federalism, decentralization was more effective in strengthening the efficiency of local level institutions to

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mobilize people around development. For this reason, decentralization constitutes one of the institutional backbones of the developmental state model. Top-down policy implementation and strong upward accountability of local institutions to the federal government reflected an aesthetic of state efficiency which the EPRDF government considered a key feature for a successful developmentalist strategy. A second theme is the blurring of political and administrative functions, roles, and prerogatives between the local state and party structures. Especially after the controversial 2005 elections, which for the first time incited visible questions about the legitimacy of the EPRDF political project, the political leadership embarked on a campaign to expand the party membership centred on the objective to mobilize Ethiopians around its developmental efforts. Mass political mobilization was then furthered by the introduction of additional sub-village structures such as development groups, one-to-five networks, and a system of development facilitators known as models (in the rural areas, model farmers). These institutional structures, although not entirely formalized, operate at the intersection between the party and the state, performing both political and developmental functions, including connection to state-sponsored finance. Understanding the role and functions of these micro-institutional structures, which were found both in rural (chapters three and four) and urban areas (chapter five), is key to recognizing how the developmental state operated in the everyday. They represent the local interface within which representations of the developmental state as a set of ideas and political priorities were mediated, and they produced real life effects for beneficiaries of state policies and development programmes. The sectoral and institutional transformations that took place in the 2000s and 2010s require a perspective on the developmental state as a scalar project, an approach that allows inscribing the scope of state policies and development programmes, and their imbrication with globalized discourses, within microinstitutional configurations. This is a methodological angle that describes the movement of structure, while maintaining an open-ended view on agency. The challenge of studying the Ethiopian developmental state is precisely a problem of how to characterize the scalar dynamics that subsume broad social and political phenomena within specific social formations. In this book, I mobilize the category of the everyday, which I contend offers the opportunity to inscribe trajectories of state formation over time within the nuances of micro-empirical realities. The case studies of this book pin an empirical focus on institutions, and their articulation between the formal and the informal, on the practices of institutional mediation of state policies and development programmes in specific contexts. An analytical perspective on the everyday elucidates the scalar scope of the developmental state from two complementary perspectives. First, the developmental state refers to the institutional configuration of the Ethiopian state as a set of abstract images and representations—reflecting the evolution of the EPRDF’s political ideology over time—that define the broad scope of the application of

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specific state policies during the period under review. Second, it identifies the set of largely incoherent, contradictory, and uneven material practices that configure public authority through conflict in society. Through the conceptual framework of the everyday, I aim to shed light on those practices of institutional mediation that remain marginalized and defy dominant narrations of the state. My goal is to challenge those representations of Ethiopian state formation as a stabilized, coherent, and ahistorical process, while avoiding the reification of specific realities. Drawing on Deleuzian philosophy, this approach builds on a view of time as an emerging and unfinished field (Biehl and Locke, 2017), which is meant to restore movement to the subjects of fieldwork and their becomings. It is an empirical perspective based on the indeterminacies that keep history open, and a future that is yet to be written. This approach allows us to capture what happens as human struggles unfold in daily life, pinning a focus on social change as the ultimate driver of state formation. Taking the broader scalar dynamics outlined above as a background, each of the case studies of this book then discuss how beneficiaries and local state officials negotiated, manoeuvred, and contested the state policies and development programmes set in motion by the developmental state. Here I aim to illustrate how the apparatus of power displayed through the developmental state constrained social life, while at the same time it created the conditions of possibility for new openings and social formations. This is a focus on the developmental state from the perspective of its becomings, on how conflicts in society become a productive force of social change.

1.3.3 Beyond Culturalist Explanations of State Power The third approach to state formation resorts to the notion of ‘political culture’ and to the study of relations and structures of power. One important reference is the book by Sarah Vaughan and Kjetil Tronvoll (2003), The Culture of Power in Contemporary Ethiopian Political Life. This approach relies on a consolidated historiographical tradition in Ethiopia that can be traced back to the classic work of Donald Levine (1965) and his widely cited metaphor of the ‘wax and gold’, pointing at the distinction between an aesthetic form of power manifesting through formal institutions, and the underlying relations and systems along which power is organized, which he contends is grounded in the Abyssinian political culture. Focusing on the first decade of EPRDF rule, Vaughan and Tronvoll’s concern is to articulate a definition of state power beyond its institutional manifestation and formal structures. Their task is to study the relations and conventions which underpin and give meaning to formal political institutions. This approach is grounded on a view of power as a system of knowledge which is rooted in society

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rather than specific institutions. It is an analytical focus on how the distribution of power configures institutions, conventions, and structures: institutions do not operate in isolation from society, they are imbued in social relations. This approach, the authors contend, is meant to broaden the scope of debates about democratization, egalitarian justice, and social transformation away from the exclusive domain of the EPRDF/TPLF political leadership, to encompass the social and political relations and views of ‘each and all of its citizens; the state as it is experienced and shaped from below, as well as how it is shaped and experienced from above’ (2003: 31). Vaughan and Tronvoll view state power as a diffuse field that forms ‘points of relay or co-ordination and multiplication of power relations’ (2003: 34), on this departing from Markakis. What I share with Vaughan and Tronvoll is an empirical approach to the study of state power in Ethiopia—the state as a set of practices of institutional mediation imbued with social relations rather than as a set of institutions immune to diverse social forces. A further conceptualization of thinking has been proposed in a recent book by Daniel Mulugeta (2020). This approach reflects a growing trend in African studies literature of characterizing state-society relations through a sociological reading of the state. The sociological reading problematizes state formation, shifting the empirical focus from a narrow analysis of the functioning of structures to the more diffuse field of power relations (Bierschenk and Olivier de Sardan, 2015; 2014; 1997; Krohn-Hansen and Nustad, 2005), and the constitution of fragmented public authority (Lund, 2006; 2016). A main reference of the sociological reading is Joel Migdal’s book State in Society (2001). Unsatisfied with conceptualizations of domination and change based on structuralist explanation, for instance Talcott Parsons’s social systems theory (Parsons, 1951), the state-in-society approach rejects the view that the state constitutes a coherent, unitary, and goal-oriented actor. Migdal proposes an understanding of the state as a field of power constituted by two mutually reinforcing elements: the image and practices of the state (Migdal, 2001: 16). The image is a representation of the state as a unified and clearly bounded organization in a territory that can be referred to in singular terms. Ideology and morality are two key constitutive elements of the image of the state. Migdal contends that a mere focus on the image of the state misses important parts of how the state functions in society; it is a static representation which at best describes what the state should be in relation to the Weberian ideal type. Migdal suggests that one should rather focus on actual state practices to study change and domination in society. A focus on practices relies on a conceptualization of the state as a network of semi-autonomous organizations informed by overlapping and often incoherent goals, and in constant competition with other organizations in society. Conflict, he contends, occurs along two axes. The first is between different state organizations—for instance the High Court, the President’s office, and a local state officer—because they each have their own goals,

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rationality, and specific interests, and respond to specific hierarchical dynamics and processes of subordination, and in so doing they compete for shares of state power. Conflict also takes place between state organizations and other interests organized in society, around the construction of social categories such as race, ethnicity, class, and gender. State formation is the result of the ongoing competition between different state organizations and interests in society in the process of pursuing objectives that are incompatible or not so neatly aligned with each other. By mapping these contradictory practices, Migdal’s approach has opened a new field for investigating social conflict as arising from the mismatch between policy and practice. In African studies, the sociological reading of the state has been employed by a growing body of research in the field of legal anthropology and political geography interested in looking at the discrepancy between official norms and actual practices in the everyday (Olivier de Sardan, 2015; Blundo and Olivier de Sardan, 2006; Blundo and Le Meur, 2009). This literature draws on a Foucauldian understanding of how practices, what Foucault calls tactics of governmentality, produce and reinforce the state as an all-encompassing power and mythicized abstraction, meaning a discourse about what the state can and should do. Based on these insights, de Herdt and Olivier de Sardan (2015) have introduced the notion of real governance to understand how socially accepted divisions between the public and the private, the legal and the illegal, and the formal and the informal emerge alongside the official rules of the state. Where this body of studies differs from Migdal’s is in the ways we can make room to write the unintended outcome of conflict. Although Migdal acknowledges that the contestation of rules reflects ongoing struggles over systems of meaning and territorial and social divisions, the state-in-society approach relies on a rather mechanistic division between organizations of the state and of society. Migdal, who is ultimately interested in providing an accurate definition of the state, maintains that ‘[t]he notion of the state rests on the notion of two stable boundaries, territorial borders and the separation between state and other social actors’ (26). However, African studies literature has demonstrated that the actual distinction between organizations of the state and of society is much more blurred in reality. Diverging interests are for instance determined by practical norms, which refer to those latent rules state officials reproduce that do not comply with official norms (de Herdt and Olivier de Sardan, 2015: 2). Civil servants’ aspirations, expectations, and histories traverse organizations of the state and society, making the attempt to demarcate their boundaries analytically difficult. Sharing this concern, in this book I am less interested in demarcating the boundary between state and society; rather my goal is to embrace their mutual constitution to move beyond a view of state formation as a singularized power field. This requires an empirical focus on the singular and the partial as a driver of social change, on the entanglement

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of formal and informal social formations, and on those instances of everyday life that describe the social production of difference in the world. To study state power beyond its formal and institutional manifestations— i.e. looking at how power is impinged in patterns of knowledge, belief, and convention—Vaughan and Tronvoll resort to the notion of political culture. Here they argue that the Abyssinian tradition has historically provided the dominant trends of Ethiopia’s contemporary political culture. This tradition reflects a pattern of social interaction which ‘sustains a strictly hierarchical stratification of society, where one is constrained, by a largely invisible but rigid system of collective sanctions, to obey the “orders from above” (yebalal akal)’ (2003: 34). This ‘culture of power’ creates various mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion framed along a political discourse dictated by the central government and reflecting a top-down approach to policy implementation and the functioning of state institutions. It is through this lens that Vaughan and Tronvoll conceptualize the political experiment of ethnic federalism under EPRDF as a set of tensions between two contradictory elements. The first is the (laudable, and demonstrably true) notion that a community can be mobilized better in its own language, using its own culture, by its own people—effectively ‘from within’. The second is the (more problematic) view that the criteria for the establishment of ‘nations, nationalities, and peoples’ are objectively and externally identifiable, and verifiable by a vanguard organization independently of the views of the groups’ members—effectively ‘from above’. (2003: 15)

The scope of authoritarian governance under EPRDF is a particularly important theme that interrogates patterns of continuity and change in state formation within the Imperial and Derg periods. Although ethnic federalism marks a qualitative shift away from an approach to nation building based on the construction of an Ethiopian national identity, the centralization of political power under EPRDF has continued through a variety of means, including the cooptation of sub-national elites and the expansion of the party structure to singularize significant aspects of social, economic, and political life. A vast body of critical scholarship convincingly demonstrates that the EPRDF period has been characterized by a centralized and authoritarian system of state governance operating side by side the formal aspects of federalism and the self-determination of ethno-national groups (Aalen, 2011; Hagmann and Abbink, 2013; Aalen, Tronvoll, 2009a; Lefort, 2012; Keller, 2002). More controversial is the extent to which authoritarian rule can be ascribed to a culture of centralist decision-making that impinges on an Abyssinian ‘tradition’ of state power. This debate is particularly relevant as it intersects broader historiographical discussions about change and continuity in the state building experiment across the Imperial regime, the Derg, and EPRDF (Dessalegn Rahmato,

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2009; Gebru Tareke, 1996; Clapham, 1988; 2017; Elleni Centime Zeleke, 2019; Markakis, Schlee, and Young, 2021). Supporters of the culturalist thesis such as anthropologist Jon Abbink (2002; 2006; 2011a) tend to have a view of Ethiopian history of state formation that emphasizes continuity over rupture.¹⁷ While the contemporary Ethiopian nation-state has indeed been shaped along the imperialist ambitions of Abyssinian state builders, reducing this deeply contradictory historical experience to the notion of a single Abyssinian culture of power, and the historic continuity of political authoritarianism, presents a number of problems. First, a notion of political culture that ostensibly keeps reproducing the very same mechanics of power raises the question about its historicity. When applied to state formation, the concept of political culture tends to reproduce a teleological view of history that obscures, rather than unpacks, the ways in which state power articulates social relations. Is a given culture of power immune to change? How do we provide an operational definition to the Abyssinian culture of power? How do we account for other ‘cultures of power’ that, in heterogenous contexts such as Ethiopia, characterized by significant social, economic, ethnic, and religious diversity, shape state formation? While attempting to provide a more nuanced definition of the Ethiopian state, the political culture thesis incurs the problem of how to draw the changing spatial and temporal coordinates of such culture. At best, it is useful for illustrating a view of state formation as a set of images and representations from the perspective of the political elite. However, political culture tells us little of how these images and representations articulate practices of institutional mediation of state formation in specific contexts. The second problem is about how to conceptualize state power in relation to social and political change. Cultural approaches to state power significantly reduce the analytical scope to capture empirically how social and political change unfolds. Subsuming social relations within a static picture of how power is organized at a certain moment in time presents the practical problem of how to capture their movement. This raises the problem of how to elaborate a critique of state formation from the perspective of social change, mapping those relations of causality that capture the constitution and dissolution of state power. To culturalize power is to limit our possibility of seeing how alternative sources of legitimacy emerge in the everyday. For the perspective of this book this is a central concern: resorting to culture overlooks the working of power in the everyday. The third problem has to do with the logical connection between political culture and authoritarianism. Ascribing authoritarian governance to an Abyssinian culture of power that is singularly responsible for the lack of democratization reflects a narration of state formation from the perspective of what is lacking in relation to an ostensibly superior western model. We again incur the problem ¹⁷ See also the response by Tobias Hagmann to Jon Abbink over the problem of how to read the 2005 elections through the lens of political culture (Hagmann, 2006).

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of methodological nationalism, i.e., how to describe social and political change without resorting to models formulated elsewhere. A fourth problem is the tendency of the political culture thesis to frame social identities as stable and ahistorical categories. Political culture lends itself to framing identity formation through questions about belonging, as opposed to becoming, which make for a static picture of how fluid identification dynamics are stabilized through power relations. This perspective fails to capture the movement of identity formation which is inherent in processes of social and political change. This is a particularly important problem for reading Ethiopia under EPRDF considering that ethnic federalism institutionalized ethnicity as the main mechanism of state organization. Then, what kind of epistemological commitment do we need to discuss the predominance of authoritarian politics under EPRDF without resorting to the notion of political culture? In this book I contend that such an endeavour requires an empirical approach that privileges the mutual constitution of state-society relations. An important point of departure here is the work of Timothy Mitchell (1991). Based on a Foucauldian reading of the state as unfolding through governmental practices, Mitchell’s (1991: 78) starting point is that it is unproductive to focus on the boundary between a conceptual realm (the state) and an empirical realm (the society). Mitchell understands the state as a structural effect and not as an actual structure. The state, he contends, is ‘the powerful metaphysical effect of practices that make such structures appear to exist. In fact, the nation state is arguably the paramount structural effect of the modern social world’ (1991: 94). I share with Mitchell the insight that the boundaries between state and society are elusive and indeterminate but, at the same time, that seeking a sharper definition does not necessarily help us to conceptualize social change and state power in a more succinct way. State-society boundaries reflect complex power relations at play. For this reason, ‘[t]he elusiveness of the state-society boundary needs to be taken seriously … we need to examine the detailed political processes through which the uncertain yet powerful distinction between state and society is produced’ (1991: 78). A further articulation of this thinking came from the work of Tobias Hagmann and Didier Péclard (2010), who have introduced the notion of negotiating statehood. This concept is meant to study the ‘dynamic and partly undetermined processes of state formation and failure by a multitude of social actors who compete over the institutionalization of power relations’ (539). This framework, which the authors contend serves to investigate past and ongoing dynamics of state domination, provides a fairly sophisticated explanation of how a variety of actors across local, national, and transnational scales remake the state through ‘processes of negotiation, contestation, and bricolage’ (see also Cleaver, 2012). Grounded on an institutional conceptualization of the state, this approach is useful for moving beyond discussions about political culture from two perspectives.

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First, the negotiating statehood approach proposes a methodological approach that privileges processes over conclusive outcomes. It is premised by an understanding of state institutions as never definitively formed, on this point borrowing from Christian Lund’s ‘Twilight Institutions’ (Lund, 2006). Refocusing the empirical object of the state in the process of interaction between different groups competing for control, influence, and the rules of daily behaviour, Hagmann and Péclard make space for a theory of the state that privileges empirical description over meta-explanation. In the process of interaction, groups change their goals, rules, and tactics, making new alliances and dissolving themselves into new entities which reflect new state-society configurations. Like in the state-in-society approach, negotiating statehood allows for a characterization of how states and societies structure and reproduce rules and social norms beyond culturalist explanations, as well as explanations of how patterns of domination and subordination change and are challenged. In so doing, Hagmann and Péclard make space for writing the elusive, the ambivalent, and the unstable in daily life—what they refer to as ‘the partial “undeterminedness” of state domination’ (545). The underlying conceptualization of power, which I profoundly share and apply to my analysis of the everyday state in Ethiopia, is that while being shaped by techniques of government, people themselves shape, reproduce, and challenge state power and practices of government. In other words, state power is co-constituted and the institutionalization of public authority is never a linear and coherent process. Second, the negotiating statehood approach privileges a focus on microconflicts over general patterns of stability. This highlights the contested nature of the state in the everyday. The negotiation of state power takes place along political struggles, a concern similar to Migdal’s focus on unintended outcomes of multiple conflicts in society, as a more productive explanation of domination and change. Conflict and political struggles require an approach to fieldwork privileging empiricism and the description of how people negotiate state practices beyond an understanding of societal actors as ‘those acted upon’, the subjects of state control, or the passive recipients of rules created elsewhere. This empirical, rather than judicial, understanding of the state is also meant to study how state power is reproduced, as well as how other forms of non-state power and sub-national entities engage with actual state structures (Swyngedouw, 2005; Raeymaekers et. al., 2008). For Hagman and Péclard, conflicts for political power open-up and take place in arenas of negotiation, which represent the broader political space in which public authority is constituted. The everyday state emerges out of these arenas through complex power negotiations at the interface between the formal and informal, the private and the public, the legal and the illegal. Building on these insights, in this book I am concerned with the problem of how to characterize state power from the perspective of social change. I contend that the analytical lens of the everyday allows capturing loose dynamics of state power’s institutionalization, while maintaining an open-ended perspective

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on the movement of agency. Empirically, I am particularly interested to depict how, alongside historically contingent institutional configuration, beneficiaries of state policies and development programmes live through and alongside the constraining forces of state power. The Ethiopian case is an extraordinarily productive ground on which to study these dynamics, considering the significant power field mobilized by the EPRDF in the period under review to pursue its developmental ambition and singularize life through ethnic identification. The empirical chapters of this book pay particular attention to the material and representational problems that confronting state power raise for my fieldwork subjects. This is a perspective that studies state power from the margins and is concerned with articulating the tensions and contradictions intrinsic to the Ethiopian project of state formation under EPRDF. With this I hope to make room for a theory of the state taking a less-than-certain and less-than-stable interpretations of social change. From different perspectives, the chapters of this book reconstruct how categorizations of state-society relations that articulate global-national-local scales, and that describe the loose boundaries between the formal and the informal, the legal and illegal, the private and public, become meaningful and are made visible by my fieldwork subjects. As noted by Migdal (2001: 25), ‘[c]ountries’ stories do not end with the original sin or the critical juncture where there is the imposition of a powerful normative force; they only begin, for those forces call into being resistance and struggle, cooperation and coalitions, that transform the original impulse’.

1.3.4 The State-Society Interface: Performativity and the Problem of Subject Formation The main finding of this book is that the political project of state formation under EPRDF has been a fiercely contested one. The five case studies discuss how, in different ways and resorting to a wide range of political repertoires, beneficiaries of state policies and development programmes creatively negotiated, manoeuvred, and contested from below the political project set in motion by the EPRDF political elite from above. This puts under critical scrutiny the scope of the developmental state experiment to deliver significant expectations about socioeconomic development, thus raising important interrogative questions about how to characterize this wide range of state-society interactions. From an analytical perspective, contestations illustrate the tension between the state as a set of images and representations, and the actual material practices of institutional mediation of state-society relations over time. They thus raise questions about how to conceptualize state power from the perspective of the everyday. In previous sections I have elaborated on why I refrain from suggesting a characterization of state power as a linear process that unfolds temporally and spatially from the centre to the periphery, as well as that a narrowing political space to questions around democratic

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rights and governance should be ascribed to an Abyssinian culture of authoritarian rule. In the final part of this introduction, I contend that a more productive way to study state-society relations requires shifting discussions about state power from the level of political culture to the formation of the political subject. Revisiting discussions about state power and the problem of subject formation illustrates a perspective on state formation as a largely uncoherent and unfinished process, one that requires constant reiteration of institutional practices. A focus on the political subject provides a more nuanced understanding of state power as not only acting on the subject but, at the same time, enacting the subject into being. The formation of the political subject produces questions about the mutual constitution of structure and agency in state formation. Subject formation is a perspective that allows the movement of structure to be captured, while maintaining an open perspective on agency. Drawing on post-structural theories, I take a perspective on state power as both forming the subject and creating the conditions of possibility for a radically conditioned agency. I find this is a productive avenue through which to provide a less than deterministic reading of the wide range of negotiations and contestations within which the political project of state formation under EPRDF is enmeshed. Digging into the problem of subject formation elucidates how conflicts in society reflect a wide range of processes of identification, claims to legitimacy, and dynamics of inclusion and exclusion as the most defining features of state-society relations. This has important implications for how to read ethnic identification under EPRDF, as well as for how to revisit discussions about authoritarian governance under the developmental state without resorting to culturalist interpretations of state power. The problem of subject formation when invested by power is one of the most widely debated topics in social and political theory, alongside another of the cornerstone discussions regarding the question of violence in political philosophy.¹⁸ I situate my approach within post-structuralist and feminist theories engaging with the problem of subjection through the lens of performativity, meaning how power invests the subject through the reiteration of practices. I draw on Judith Butler’s theory of discursive-based performativity (1993; 1997; 2015), which reconceptualizes the problem of subject formation within the realm of reiteration. Performativity elucidates a perspective on state-society relations in which state power acts and enacts the political subject into being through discursive and material practices. I read the complex web of negotiations, contestations, and identifications that I

¹⁸ This classical question has been debated for a long time in political philosophy, following Spinoza, Sieyès, and Schmitt. More recently it was articulated in the work of Antonio Negri, Andreas Kalyvas, and Ernesto Laclau, among others. In particular, situating subject formation in relation to state power is a question about the nature of sovereignty, and the relationship between its two, mutually reinforcing dimensions: constituent power—defined as the force of legitimacy—and constituted power—the institutional configuration of sovereign power in terms of authority. Also relevant here is the work of James C. Scott and his studies on domination and resistance (1985; 1990).

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have depicted through fieldwork as significant, and yet ambivalent, expressions of how beneficiaries of state policies and development programmes have navigated constraining material and representational forces of state power under EPRDF. Judith Butler’s influential theory of performativity (1990; 1993; 1997; 2015) stands on the philosophical view that what we know about the world, in both material and immaterial forms, is always mediated by practices generating ‘knowable effects’. The implication is that entities do not exist in isolation, but that we produce our reality through experiential practices. Examples of knowable effects discussed by Butler include sex, gender, work, and organizations. Knowable effects are performative in that they are constituted through regulatory frames that are reproduced through power relations, routines, and norms. As far as our discussion is concerned, one could say that the developmental state is the knowable effect of practices, routines, and norms as they have been performed in Ethiopia in the 2000s and 2010s, rather as an entity per se. Butler’s work emphasizes the role of reiteration to understand how these knowable effects articulate socially. Performativity ‘must be understood not as a singular or deliberate “act”, but, rather, as the reiterative and citational practice by which discourse produces the effects that it names’ (Butler, 1993: 2). With performativity, Butler interrogates the relation between power and the subject within the realm of reiteration. More specifically, Butler reflects on the notion of ‘subjection’ (1997; 2015) to explore the social nature of performativity, which describes the ways in which subjects are constituted through processes of recognition. Subjection, she contends, ‘signifies the process of becoming subordinated by power as well as the process of becoming a subject’ (1997: 2). Power, as subordination, is a ‘constitutive outside’ (Butler, 1997: 129) in that it sets the conditions of possibility that precede the subject, forming the subject from the outside through recognition. At the same time, power enacts the subject into being because there is no subject that is prior to the effect of power as a form of subordination. In this sense power is what makes the subject possible, and what is reiterated by the subject in its own acting: ‘power is both external to the subject and the very venue of the subject’ (1997: 15). Butler distinguishes two mutually constituting forms of power in subject formation: power as subordination sets the conditions of the subject’s existence; power as agency defines the conditions of possibility for the constitution of identity. For Butler, the notion of power that subjection mobilizes confronts us with a paradox: ‘If there is no formation of the subject without a passionate attachment to those by whom she or he is subordinated, then subordination proves central to the becoming of the subject’ (1997: 7). What I take from Butler is the centrality of reiteration to characterize power relations. Power requires constant reiteration to produce the effects that it names. Revisiting the debate about authoritarianism away from political culture requires an empirical focus on those practices of state power that name the political subject in the everyday.

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The first part of Butler’s argument—how power acts on the subject—points at a view in which the reiteration of power practices, rather than structures per se, is key to understanding subjection. The five case studies of this book discuss how state policies and development initiatives under EPRDF mobilized a wide range of institutional practices in which reiteration is key to understanding the working of power in the everyday. One example common to all chapters is about the political mobilization of small groups as the basis of development implementation. This reflects a notion of collective, rather than individual, participation to development as being the key logic informing the EPRDF understanding of the developmental state’s scope. Policies of resettlement, land registration, agriculture commercialization, small business development and industrialization all had the mobilization of groups of people at their centre. This comes out clearly in chapter five, when discussing the creation of small enterprises in peri-urban Addis Ababa. The notions of group collateral and compulsory saving to establish and pay back loans contracted by a small enterprise elucidate this well. The key logic of group mobilization for business development is that beneficiaries share both developmental and political responsibilities.¹⁹ The emphasis on the mobilization of groups is also evident in the two chapters discussing land policy and agriculture commercialization. Here the creation of development groups, one to five networks and other institutional clusters to streamline agricultural initiatives was a key practice of power describing the capillary reach of the developmental state experiment. The mobilization of people to be targeted for resettlement and industrial employment follows a similar logic. The compilation of beneficiary lists was largely planned and implemented by local state offices, at the level of kebele and woreda. The mutually reinforcing developmental and political scope of development initiatives emerges clearly when looking at the system of models (model farmers, model workers, etc.) and other figures such as the development agents deployed in both urban and rural areas to streamline development implementation. The political mobilization of people around development is a distinguishing characteristic of the developmental state in Ethiopia, which relied on the significant reiteration of power practices at the level of the everyday state. Other examples of institutional practices mobilized through development implementation include the particular emphasis the EPRDF has put into the organization of political, party, and development meetings to engage the public around the project for the country’s socio-economic transformation. These include, as discussed in chapter two, cyclical party evaluation sessions known as gingema. In chapters three and four, I consider how specific power routines, such as land measurement and the distribution of agricultural inputs, assume ¹⁹ The blurring of political and developmental priorities in development implementation is a theme that this book shares with recent scholarship. See for instance Lefort (2012), Mehdi Labzaé and Planel (2021), and Daniel Mulugeta (2019).

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both developmental and political roles. In chapter five, I discuss how the repeated organization of technical and vocational trainings to instil a culture of saving, group work, and entrepreneurship is a distinctive characteristic of the performance of power mobilized by the EPRDF to pursue small business development. The concept of graduation from development initiatives, something that beneficiaries were expected to achieve within specific timeframes (usually three to five years), elucidates further the temporal scope of reiterative practices of power. Performativity explains why development policies assumed a particularly important role in producing the state-making effects the political leadership intended to pursue. It points to a view of the developmental state as a social engineering project of state-building which has required violent enforcement, the repetition of stylized acts, routines, and norms. Authoritarian governance under EPRDF needs to be understood in terms of the reiteration of historically contingent practices of power in specific localities. From this perspective, state policies and development programmes reflected the largely unfinished attempt of the EPRDF political elite at institutionalizing state power through the political vision on state managed capitalism that emerged in the 2000s. Performativity provides an explanation as to why the mobilization of people around development under EPRDF cannot be read in isolation from the extension of mechanisms to further political control and monitoring, without resorting to culturalist explanation of state power. In a recent book analysing marginality in urban Ethiopia, anthropologist Marco Di Nunzio (2019) engages with the problem of how to characterize power relations in EPRDF Ethiopia. He locates the experience of marginality in Addis Ababa’s inner city under the developmental state in the tension between action and living. He contends that the experience of the urban poor can be best described as the search for open-endedness in a context of enduring subjugation and exclusion. The act of living marks the attempt of marginalized urban subjects to become something else, ‘living meaningfully through marginality and exclusion’, and provides a powerful explanation of why authoritarian politics in Ethiopia ‘need[s] to be constantly reiterated, reworked, recrafted, improved, expanded, and … violently enforced’ (5). Di Nunzio’s analytical focus on the ‘long and undocumented history of endurance’ of urban poor hinges on the problem about how to characterize power relations, and he firmly positions the act of living as the attempt to go beyond the ‘temptation to understand agency as made of an act of resistance’ (27). This brings me to the second part of Butler’s argument about subject formation. This is about how to conceptualize not only how state power forms the subject, but also how, at the same time, it enacts the subject into being. Di Nunzio points to a broader problem in Ethiopian studies literature, which is about how to unpack power relations in EPRDF Ethiopia beyond a view of state power as an all-encompassing force. This is about how to characterize the wide range of state-society interactions with the significant power mobilized under the developmental state aimed at singularizing social, political, and economic life. The work

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of Butler is again helpful to frame this problem. On the one hand she contends that subjection defines the subject’s condition of possibility; power forms the subject. But if subordination defines the conditions for formation, how is it then possible that it is also central to definition of agency? Or, as put by Butler, ‘[i]f subordination is the condition of possibility for agency, how might agency be thought in opposition to the forces of subordination?’ (1997: 10). Here Butler grapples with the familiar problem of how to escape, from an analytical perspective, the ubiquity of power relations. This is a particularly important question for discussions about authoritarianism in Ethiopia: if the EPRDF period has marked a new high in the way state power penetrated society, then how do we re-inscribe social change within state power without resorting to culturalist explanations, or, as put by Di Nunzio, to a generalized notion of resistance? For Butler, the problem of how to characterize agency is about how to address the circularity of power relations in which the subject reiterates the norms and practices of its subjection. Butler engages with this problem by arguing that, in relation to the subject, power serves two functions: Power not only acts on a subject but, in a transitive sense, enacts the subject into being. As a condition, power precedes the subject. Power loses its appearance of priority, however, when it is wielded by the subject, a situation that gives rise to the reverse perspective that power is the effect of the subject, and that power is what subjects effect (Butler, 1997: 13).

For Butler, how power acts and enacts the subject at the same time constitutes the ‘bind of agency’ (1997: 13). This is also a paradox because the very conditions of subjection set, at the same time, the conditions of possibility for agency. Key to understanding why this is the case is the concept of recognition, and the lack thereof, that subjection mobilizes. ‘If conditions of power are to persist, they must be reiterated; the subject is precisely the site of such reiteration, a repetition that is never merely mechanical’ (1997: 16). The bind of agency points to a view of identity formation as both retaining and resisting subordination, one that requires a detailed empirical focus on the reiteration and discontinuity of power practices. Here, the key insight that I take from Butler is that reiteration provides a framework within which to understand subordination as a dynamic condition, which is transient, unstable, and less than certain. Butler calls for the temporalization of the conditions of subordination, which cannot be found in static structures. At the heart of agency, she contends, there is a reiterated ambivalence between the ‘already-there and the yet-to-come’ (1997: 18). I take that the temporalization of the conditions of subjection is a perspective that emphasizes state-society relations as an emerging field. This points to a view of identity formation in which questions about becoming assume a central role. Understanding the nuances of

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power relations in the everyday require a temporal focus on the becoming subject, on the human potential that emerges in the process of being acted and enacted by power. Capturing empirically the bind of agency, i.e. how to account for the movement of agency within structure, requires a focus on recognition. The second form of power discussed by Butler, how power enacts the subject, is key for conceptualizing identity formation. Drawing on these insights in this book, I discuss how state power enacts the political subject by attending empirically those mundane practices that describe how people live alongside and despite the constraining power of the state, when their claims to legitimacy are dismissed or remain unacknowledged. The five empirical chapters of this book discuss a wide range of situations in which, against the normative frame of the developmental state, policies and development programmes failed beneficiaries. In these instances of everyday life, which are central to identity formation, state power enacts the subject into being, liberating its political potential and creativity. The experience of failure among my fieldwork subjects is the entry point I use to characterize agency within the movement of structure. Generally, government programmes failed beneficiaries due to organizational and planning issues resulting from top-down implementation, and the difficulties connected with translating ambitious policy objectives into actual practices. The development programmes analysed—resettlement, land registration, agriculture commercialization, entrepreneurship development, and industrialization—largely ignored specific contextual conditions and disregarded the contingent histories within which interventions were enmeshed. Confronted with failure and unfulfilled expectations, beneficiaries and local state officials employed a wide variety of strategies and political repertoires to make the most of limited opportunities and, more often, to minimize risk and consequences threatening their social, economic, and political reproduction. Although open dissent remained rare throughout the period under review, only to manifest abruptly with the set of events that led to the regime change in 2018, strategies that I depict through fieldwork include diversion, manoeuvring, false compliance, and occasionally more overt forms of open contestation. These practices of power describe how the discontinuity of recognition enacts the subject as a political subject in the everyday. The case studies of this book show how implementation of development initiatives generated profound societal transformations, including the restructuring of land and labour relations, growing inequalities and social differentiation in both urban and rural areas, and dynamics of incipient class formation. These transformations are the background against which significant conflicts, contestations, and reconfiguration of everyday politics took place. Tensions over the EPRDF political project have not only simmered in society for a very long time, but they are also central to understanding how state power invested the political

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subject through the reiteration of practices, setting the parameters within which public authority was produced and contested in the period under review. A focus on the political subject provides an entry point for discussing identity formation while avoiding culturalist interpretations of state power. Performativity allows for a perspective on identity formation moving on from questions about belonging to questions about becoming. It locates identification within the indeterminate constitution of the subject in the process of becoming acted and enacted by state power. The case studies of this book discuss a wide set of identifications and claims to recognition in the period under review. Navigating ambitious and yet poorly designed development programmes, beneficiaries reconstituted themselves, and their means of social and economic reproduction, in a variety of ways. First, they attached new meanings to land, place, and home. Confronted with land policy initiatives threatening their socio-economic reproduction, Arsi and Wolaita farmers (chapters three and four) reconstituted land as the backbone of their identity. Social differentiation and incipient class formation between a minority of farmers exploiting the opportunities of land registration and agriculture commercialization contributed to further politicize the ways farmers identified with land. This highlights the inherent contradiction of a land policy attempting to preserve the smallholder model to sustain national food self-sufficiency and to limit mass rural-out migration, and, at the same time, to induce dynamics of rural capital accumulation via selected commercialization and enclosure schemes. Beneficiaries reconstituted their place of origin as the stronghold of their identity when, as discussed in chapters two, five, and six, they had to deal with exploitative and poorly designed resettlement, entrepreneurship, and industrialization initiatives. Particularly important here is the material dimension of these initiatives in reproducing marginality and exclusion. These case studies show that while beneficiaries initially embraced the socio-economic upliftment prospected by these initiatives, they then faced the problem of how to find different avenues to cope with economic uncertainty, the lack of opportunities to make a living, and wages below the cost of reproduction. Second, the experience of failure reinforced existing dynamics of ethnic identification. Beneficiaries reconstituted themselves as ethnic subjects when the developmental state failed to name the ambitious socio-economic expectations it set. Ethnic identification is one important avenue to which beneficiaries resorted in order to cope with, and make sense of, growing uncertainty and significant economic strains. Poorly designed development initiatives reinforced the ethno-national categories set under ethnic federalism. This finding emerges with most clarity in chapters three and four, where the outcome of policies of land registration and commercialization of agriculture resulted in a sedimentation of an Oromo and Wolaita ethno-national identification channelled through a generalized anti-government sentiment. Chapters two and five highlight how development initiatives often disregarded existing ethnic tensions in the specific

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contexts of implementation, the borderland between Amhara, BenishangulGumuz regions, and Sudan in the case of resettlement, and the borderland between the metropolitan region of Addis Ababa and the Oromia region in the context of entrepreneurship initiatives. The EPRDF managed to contain the centrifugal forces of ethnonationalism as long as it maintained a strong grip on power through the display of a variety of means of social and political control. The events that led to the political transition to Abiy Ahmed in 2018, and later to the tragic escalation of conflict in different parts of the country, including the open confrontation between the Federal government and the TPLF in Tigray that has been ongoing since November 2020, appear to have let the genie of ethnonationalism out of the bottle. Whether this is an inevitable outcome of ethnic federalism is a difficult question to address, and I will try to unpack it in the conclusion. What my fieldwork findings suggest is that tensions and conflicts have simmered in the Ethiopian society for most part of the EPRDF period, and that rather than seeking an explanation to the current crisis on the model of ethnic federalism per se, one should look at the dramatic socio-economic transformation, including the impact of selective liberalization of the economy, that took place under the developmental state. A perspective on state power as both acting and enacting the political subject restores an ethical perspective to fieldwork which casts the struggle for openendedness as a central concern to the study of social change. The stories of beneficiaries and local officials narrated in this book point to the problematics of how to cope with the constraining discursive and material forces of state power. A focus on subject formation enables us to locate these conflicts and struggles within the boundaries between state and society through an empirical focus on their mutual becomings (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987). It is through the experience of failure that people re-enact state power in unexpected ways: they seek new forms of recognition, and imagine and perform alternative futures, even when they fail, as often happens, in their intent. Providing a characterization of the everyday state through performativity reflects a methodological perspective that privileges a focus on the social production of difference in the world. It emphasizes the contradictory practices of power that escape conventional representations of state formation as a singularized time and suggest open-endedness in the ways the political subject takes shape. A focus on the social production of difference entails departing from a theory reliant on the production of similarity—subsuming social phenomena into aggregates, repetitions, and models—to produce an explanation of the social and the political. An empirical focus on the state-society interface makes visible those practices of the everyday that defy quantification as a dominant way of reading social life and narrating the human. It is a focus on the singular and the partial, on those mundane practices that we tend to discard because they simply do not fit meta-narrations of state formation. This restores a role for qualitative

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fieldwork and its indispensability to study state formation as epiphenomenal to social change.

1.4 Structure of the Book This book reviews three decades of state policies and development programmes in Ethiopia between 1991 and 2018. Empirically, the book draws on five casestudies in the country’s four most populous regions—Amhara, Oromia, SNNPR, and Tigray—and the capital city Addis Ababa, through in-depth qualitative fieldwork that I conducted over the course of twelve years between 2006 and 2018 (see Figure 1.1 for the study area locations pertaining to each chapter). The five case studies can be read as standalone essays in that they present specific arguments and discuss contingent histories that articulate state-society relations from the perspective of the everyday. Each chapter focuses on specific policies—resettlement and humanitarian interventions, decentralization and land registration, agriculture commercialization, job creation, and industrialization—that reflect practices of institutional mediation by a wide set of actors describing the mutual constitution of state and society. Approached as a collection, the five empirical chapters illustrate the broader argument of the book about the conceptualization of state formation as epiphenomenal to social change, providing a broader perspective on how ethnic federalism and the developmental state paradigm emerged and institutionalized

Chapter 6 Chapter 2

Chapter 5

Chapter 4

Chapter 3

Fig. 1.1 Location of study areas by chapter. Map prepared by the author.

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over time. The chapters follow a periodization of the years 1991–2018 within three, largely overlapping, phases. The first (1991–2001) spans from the end of the Derg regime to the 2001 political crisis within the EPRDF/TPLF inner circle, the main outcome of which was the decision to open-up to capitalist development (discussed in chapter two). The second phase (2002–2012) is characterized by the elaboration of the developmental state and had an important moment of acceleration after the contested 2005 elections (discussed in chapters three and four). This phase ends with the premature death of late Prime Minister Meles Zenawi in 2012. The third period (2012–2018) is set during the leadership of Hailemariam Dessalegn and is characterized by a strategy of transformation relying on a more decisive shift to policies of selective liberalization of the economy (discussed in chapters five and six). In chapter two I discuss the case of a resettlement programme in Waag Himra (Amhara region) that the Ethiopian government implemented in the course of the 2000s. Intended to relocate rural households to less densely populated areas for humanitarian purposes, the programme entailed an increased deployment of the state apparatus in rural areas under a new political impulse on productivism. While the programme generated considerable initial expectations—despite the controversial legacy of resettlement during the Derg—most beneficiaries returned home within months after facing conflict, drought, and a lack of basic infrastructure. The chapter describes the ways in which returnees tried to make the most of limited opportunities, diversify risk, and reconstitute themselves as social, economic, and political subjects. Resettlers tried to navigate the limited opportunities offered by the programme, facing significant strains both in the relocation sites and then when they returned home. The chapter conceptualizes resettlement as a form of development-induced displacement, which is one of the defining features of state-society interactions under EPRDF. By categorizing the rural population in groups based on relative wealth, and hence creating a group of ‘chronically food insecure’ people to relocate, resettlement generated significant dynamics of rural social differentiation, which contributed to further marginality, inequalities, and socio-economic exclusion. In chapter three I discuss the implementation of a national programme of rural land registration in Siraro, Oromia region, since the mid 2000s. Motivated by concerns over increasing the productivity of smallholder agriculture, the capitalization of land, and uncapping land rental markets, the programme was implemented as part of an ambitious set of policy reforms providing for the decentralization of service delivery and resource management from central to local government. Empirically the chapter discusses the set of practices and tactics of manoeuvring land registration, which local government officials and farmers performed to tackle insecurity, conflict, uncertainty, and the ensuing threat of dispossession that came with the programme. The chapter discusses the ways in which Oromo farmers, against a long and controversial history of exploitative land

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relations, reconstituted material and symbolic values towards the land after land registration threatened their socio-economic reproduction. Land registration generated dynamics of social differentiation, with a minority of entrepreneurial and politically connected farmers making the most from the land rights’ formalization, while others experienced social and economic marginalization. An important outcome was the politicization of an Oromo identity in opposition to what was perceived as a top-down, centralizing state policy. Chapter four addresses the case of a failed commercialization scheme in Wolaita, SNNPR. Under the impulse of global capital to produce fuel from renewable sources, and in the context of a changing government strategy oriented to allow injections of foreign investments in agriculture for the first time since the 1970s, commercialization schemes for the production of biofuel crops were attempted in Wolaita for about a decade from the mid-2000s. Empirically the chapter addresses the practices of subversion, manoeuvring, and differentiation that farmers performed in the context of poorly planned and exploitative commercialization schemes. The chapter discusses the ways Wolaita contract farmers attempted to re-establish and secure access to means of social reproduction, after commercialization proved unsuccessful. Farmers’ claims to recognition are expressed here in relation to the symbolic and material values of the land, in a context of profound social and economic uncertainty. Following unsuccessful commercialization, farmers tried alternative avenues to re-constitute themselves as political subjects, sometimes succeeding and most of the time failing to improve their condition. Chapter five addresses the promotion of entrepreneurship schemes in Kolfe Keranyo, one peri-urban sub-city of Addis Ababa. Against a context in which, towards the end of the 2000s, addressing unemployment in rapidly expanding urban centres became an urgent political and economic priority, the Ethiopian government implemented a comprehensive policy of job creation relying on the promotion of micro and small enterprises. Empirically the chapter discusses the practices through which young entrepreneurs manoeuvred the few opportunities mobilized by these schemes, such as access to credit, to perform other side and informal businesses that allowed them to make up for their social and economic reproduction which state-mandated enterprises were not able to deliver. The political subject is mobilized here through a subtle and quite sophisticated performance of power. Entrepreneurs diverted time and resources from statemandated enterprises because the formal businesses they were asked to enrol were not productive (in this way contributing to their failure), but without openly dismissing the demand by the state to participate in such development. In the process of enacting themselves as political subjects, aspiring entrepreneurs opened up new opportunities for themselves, without dismissing the policy of job creation, which, because of their informal work, could still be regarded by the Ethiopian government as a success story.

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Finally, in chapter six I address the labour dynamics emerging within a global textile value chain in Tigray’s capital city Mekelle that has been rapidly growing since the mid-2010s. In the context of an ambitious industrialization policy urged to sustain export-led economic growth, reduce dependency on agriculture and services, and to address pressing political problems such as rising urban unemployment, the Ethiopian government managed to attract global production networks around newly established industrial poles, primarily geared towards manufacturing. Due to a number of historical, political, and geographical factors, by the mid-2010s Tigray was at the forefront of this development. The rapid consolidation of the textile industry in the area around Mekelle generated a new labour question: the coexistence of labour shortage around the textile industrial hub and a large population seeking employment. Empirically the chapter discusses the stories of young workers and trainees navigating textile work against the contrast between significant expectations about industrialization and wages well below reproduction. Workers enacted a number of practices, including absenteeism, turnover, and tardiness when the incomplete transition to industrial labour forced them to seek reproduction through a combination of scarce and poorly remunerated wage employment, self-employment, and other survival activities at the intersection between the formal and informal economy. While some of them managed to make the most of the opportunities generated by industrialization, many others remained dependent on their household of origin for their social and economic reproduction.

2 Returning from Resettlement: Rural Modernization in Waag Himra 2.1 Introduction This chapter is set in the mid-2000s, when the Ethiopian government embarked on a country-wide resettlement programme as part of a revised food security policy in rural areas. Empirically I address the stories of people who returned home shortly after resettlement. I examine the set of practices of manoeuvring resettlement which returnees enacted to make the most of limited opportunities, diversify risk, and cope with conflict that ensued with relocation. Resettlers returned home after their claim to participation in the plan for economic development under the EPRDF did not materialize at the level of practice. The chapter contributes to discussions about the politics of development-induced displacement and its implication for local state reforms in Africa. I argue that resettlement policies, far from constituting a technical matter, reflect the significant rescaling of state power and authority relations. Resettlement as a form of development-induced displacement is an important theme in the project of social and economic transformation under the EPRDF period (Cernea, 2005; Piguet and Pankhurst, 2009). Piguet and Pankhurst (2009: 14) argue that development-induced displacement in contemporary Ethiopia has four main drivers: construction of dams to expand hydropower; agricultural development projects, particularly large-scale agricultural commercialization schemes; national parks and other forms of conservation, and; investments to expand urban centres. Along with the more recent emphasis on industrial manufacturing, all these represent what the political elite considers as key features— ‘flagship’ programmes—of the developmental state (Arkebe Oqubay, 2015). The ‘Voluntary Resettlement Programme’, officially implemented between 2002 and 2007, was designed to address one long-standing problem about land in Ethiopia. This was how to improve the productivity of smallholder agriculture while preserving the system of state ownership of land that was established during the Derg with the 1975 land reform. This proved to be a very difficult task for the EPRDF: seventeen years of socialism left a legacy of profound economic depression and the rural areas remained exposed to the effects of recurrent droughts. Periodic land redistributions were implemented to accommodate a rapidly growing rural population, although this contributed to increasing Everyday Practices of State Building in Ethiopia. Davide Chinigò, Oxford University Press. © Davide Chinigò (2022). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192869654.003.0002

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fragmentation of plots. Large sections of the countryside remained vulnerable to food shortages, even in those years when rains were more favourable. In the first decade of EPRDF government, a majority of rural development planning focused on how to address humanitarian crises through emergency food aids initiatives. Over time these initiatives became the backbone of state assistance and rural welfare. According to a local official interviewed in Sekota in 2006, ‘food aids are not about emergency, they are part of normal development planning, and people expect them every year’.¹ Initially opposed by the EPRDF because of the dark experience of forced relocation in 1985–1986 during the Derg, the Ethiopian government conceived the resettlement programme of the mid-2000s as a policy tool to solve several problems including relieving landlessness and addressing recurrent food crises, while at the same time turning productive agricultural areas that the government deemed underexploited. Even international donors, who initially met the programme with hesitation, embraced resettlement as a policy to relieve the dependency on emergency food aid of a stagnant agricultural economy. From an analytical perspective, the 2002–2007 resettlement marked the emergence of a political discourse on productivism, which I argue has been a key driver of development-induced displacement throughout the EPRDF period. I discuss three central features of productivism. Firstly, it reflects an emerging consensus in the political elite at the beginning of the 2000s towards a modernization strategy aiming to uncap the country’s productive forces. Secondly, it relies on an aesthetic of state efficiency that justified significant social engineering in the name of national development. Thirdly, it reflects an understanding of economic development as an eminently political process and as a collective, rather than individual, endeavour. Productivism was the result of an important policy shift at the beginning of the 2000s that came as a result of two important factors. Firstly, from a political perspective the shift must be contextualized in terms of the events that followed the war with Eritrea (1998–2000) and what is referred to as the 2001 split in the TPLF/EPRDF inner circle. The new course saw the emergence of a consensus in the EPRDF over pursuing a long-term strategy geared towards seeking integration in the global economy through progressive market liberalization. This was an epochal shift for Ethiopia, which gave way, in the following years, to pursue a strategy of rapid economic growth relying on strong state interventionism. In the rural areas, the shift was most evident in the reinterpretation of the Agriculture Development Led Industrialization Strategy (ADLI), the strategy for the structural transformation of the Ethiopian economy introduced soon after EPRDF took power. ADLI aimed to engender the structural transformation of agriculture, the country’s largest economic sector, to diversify the economy in the

¹ Interview with a rural development officer, Sekota, November 2006.

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long run (FDRE, 1993: 1). In the 1990s ADLI entailed policies of economic development using agriculture to pursue two main objectives: achieving national food self-sufficiency (Lefort, 2012: 681), and creating capital accumulation to promote the economy’s long-term diversification (FDRE, 1993: 5). The shift of the early 2000s marked an important change in the way ADLI was to be interpreted. Earlier concerns about smallholder agriculture became progressively reformulated within a strategy privileging large-scale agricultural commercialization, entrepreneurship schemes, and manufacturing industry. Secondly, consensus over resettlement emerged contextually with the elaboration of a new policy approach to food security. The new productionist imperative marked a shift from emergency relief intervention and post-war reconstruction initiatives to a more systematic planning of food security initiatives, partly driven by considerations around the need to improve the productivity of agriculture and the efficiency of local administration. Under the Food Security Programme (FSP), of which resettlement was one of three components, people were grouped under three categories, each targeted by specific policies. The Voluntary Resettlement Programme (VRP) targeted the most vulnerable people, defined as ‘chronically food insecure’. Resettlement was driven by the concern about securing the livelihoods of marginal rural people, while uncapping smallholder agriculture in areas where land was considered to be underexploited. In the following years, development induced displacement—of which the resettlement programme of the 2000s was one important example—became an important feature of the political elite’s new consensus on productivism, which I argue is a central characteristic of what was at that time still an emergent developmental state paradigm. Empirically this chapter addresses the case of Waag Himra in Amhara region, relying on a fieldwork conducted in late 2006 exploring the stories of people who returned from resettlement within months from their relocation (see Figure 2.1). Resettlement was intended to relocate entire households, particularly those who had no land or other assets, and who faced greater risk of destitution. However, beneficiaries seldom decided to break away from their context of origin completely. Rather they tried to retain strong relations, for instance by sending only some household members to resettlement. This was meant as a risk diversification strategy, in which preserving claims to the land in the location of origin was considered to be as important as scouting for new opportunities through resettlement. Ultimately, people tried to make the most of resettlement, in a context in which the programme did not achieve the intended results. In Sekota woreda, a majority of beneficiaries that departed for resettlement in 2004–2005 came back within months after relocation. No more encouraging was 2005–2006 when, at the time of fieldwork in late 2006, two thirds of the households relocated had already returned. Because of the lack of reliable aggregate data, particularly on the long-term impact of the project on beneficiaries, it is difficult to generalize on the overall

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Federal Level

N. Gonder Metemma

Waag Himra Sekota

W. Gojam

Regional Level

Jawi

Fig. 2.1 Location of study area in Amhara region. Resettlement routes from Waag Himra special zone. Map prepared by the author.

impact of resettlement at country level. Rather, I use resettlement as an entry point to discuss how state power acted and enacted the political subject into being. On the one hand resettlement was an important aspect of the modernization strategy upon which the political elite embarked to institutionalize power in the context of post-socialist transition. The implementation of resettlement entailed the extension of the state apparatus, strengthening the capacity of the EPRDF government to consolidate its power across the countryside. On the other hand, returning from resettlement describes the ways beneficiaries navigated constraining material forces of state power. People tried to make the most of a difficult situation, manoeuvring resettlement to their advantage when possible while being careful not to disrupt their relations with a state apparatus they depended upon, in a context characterized by profound uncertainty.

2.2 Development Induced Displacement and Resettlement in Africa Development-induced displacement and resettlement (DIDR) has emerged as a distinct field within the broader discipline of migration studies already conducted in the course of the 1950s, in the context of scholarships assessing the socio-economic impact of large-scale infrastructural projects (Terminski, 2013).

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Typical examples are the constructions of dams, such as the Great Dam of Aswan in Egypt (opened in 1970), the Kariba Dam on the Zambezi (opened in 1959), and the Akosombo Dam on Lake Volta in Ghana (opened in 1965). Focusing on the root causes and consequences of involuntary mobility DIDR takes a multi-dimensional perspective on displacement, intersecting studies on forced migration, refugees, and internal displacement (Stanley, 2004). DIDR problematizes accounts of human migration that rely exclusively on economic explanations, on the ground that they omit other immeasurable social aspects, including environmental and climate factors which have been largely marginalized by migration theorists, at least up until the 1970s (Terminski, 2015). DIDR took a rapid hold in the course of the 1980s. In 1980 the World Bank released the first guidelines of involuntary resettlement, followed by influential publications such as Michael M. Cernea’s (1991) edited volume Putting people first: sociological variables in rural development, which paved the way for more systematic analysis of involuntary mobility. In the course of the 1990s, a critical strand of literature on conflict-induced displacement gained traction and was slowly popularized as a specific take on forced migrations, putting into sharp focus the salience of several themes in internal displacement (De Jesus, 2018; Adeola, 2021; Hammar, 2014). These included the relation between internal displacement and security, human rights, and economic development; gender and ethnicity; mitigation strategies and humanitarian assistance; the social, political, and cultural challenges of integration of displaced people in resettlement communities, including the question about refugee camps, and; the relations between internal displacement and stability, conflict, and post-conflict peacebuilding. Recent literature distinguishes at least four root causes of internal displacement: conflict-induced displacement; environmentally induced displacement; disaster-induced displacement, and; development-induced displacement (Terminski, 2015; Satiroglu and Choi, 2015). Studies focusing on the latter—the specific topic of this chapter—trace a distinction based on two notions of displacement. The first refers to the eviction of people from their habitual homeland without adequate compensation, guarantees, or mechanisms of social support. The second refers to the initial phase of a process of resettlement, mandated by specific state policies and associated with physical relocation of people from their homes. However, the case-study analysed in this chapter thus shows the inherent overlap between these two definitions and the extent to which displacement entails broader social conflicts reconfiguring the parameters of state power. In the most extreme cases displacement may entail the violation of fundamental human rights, and in others it may result in socially desirable allocation of limited resources. As noted by Robert Chambers (1969: 11), the political salience of resettlement policies reflects the ambiguity of two key interlocked dimensions: ‘A movement of population; and an element of planning and control’. The technical dimension of relocation always underscores its political motivations and implications beyond

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a mere technical understanding of resettlement as physical and pre-planned relocation, combined with appropriate support mechanisms—including social support—in the new location. Literature identifies a number of drivers of DIDR (De Jesus, 2018; Terminski, 2015; Couldrey and Peebles, 2019; Adeola, 2021; Satiroglu and Choi, 2015). As the case discussed in this chapter shows, population redistribution schemes through ad hoc policies remain an important driver of DIDR today. For instance, state-mandated schemes aimed at social engineering were a distinctive feature of socialist policies implemented in countries such as Ethiopia under the Derg regime, Mozambique under FRELIMO, and Tanzania under President Nyerere (Lorgen, 1999). Dam building, hydropower plants, irrigation projects, artificial reservoirs, and canals are often mentioned as the most significant cause of DIDR worldwide (Terminski, 2013). Some of the largest projects carried out in Africa in recent years include the Gibe III Dam in Ethiopia, the Merowe Dam in Sudan, and the Lesotho Highland Water Project. Still in the realm of infrastructure, development of transportation, such as construction of roads and rail lines, has garnered attention as one of the largest scale drivers of displacement (Dalakoglou and Harvey, 2012). DIDR is thus associated with rapid rates of urbanization, and transformation of the urban space. In recent years, this has been an important driver of displacement in the African continent (Pieterse and Parnell, 2014). In 2015 more than 50% of Africans were living in urban areas. According to the OECD, by 2035 Africa’s population is projected to double to 2.5 billion people, and its urban areas will be home to an additional 950 million people.² Extractive industries, including mining, are another important source of DIDR. A well established body of literature documents the impact of expanding extractive industries in countries rich in mineral resources such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, and Mozambique (Owen and Kemp, 2015; Sigismond, 2019; Vogel and Raeymaekers, 2016). In agriculture, deforestation and the associated expansion of the areas dedicated to intensive agricultural practices is reported as another important source of DIDR. In the course of the 2010s, an increased emphasis on large-scale land investments in Africa has accelerated this trend, putting into sharp focus trade-offs between concerns of governments to leverage commercial agriculture for economic growth and the generation of localized livelihoods (Hall, 2011; De Schutter, 2011). Ethiopia is a main point in case. I will address this topic more specifically in chapter four. Other studies point at conservation and the creation of national parks and reserves as a driver of DIDR. At least since the 1990s there has emerged a significant body of literature on Southern Africa highlighting the potential and challenges of conservation in relation to migration and the dynamics of exclusion and inclusion connected to the establishment of conservation areas (Lunstrum et al., 2016). ² See http://www.oecd.org/africa-urbanisation/ [Accessed on 14 September 2020].

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This chapter discusses a number of themes that have been addressed in recent studies, looking at forced displacement from the perspective of the nexus between mobility, livelihoods, and socio-economic transformation. Addressing the case of the Buduburam refugee settlement in Ghana, Omata (2017a) argues that displacement is increasingly associated with multi-directional movement and multilocality, as well as the formation of complex social networks at the intersection between the formal and informal economy. Movements and networks with sending and relocation sites—a finding that the case of Waag Himra presented in this chapter shares—are essential features for understanding the implications of resettlement polices and the reconfiguration of state power. These multiple relations are thus a driver of social differentiation, creating opportunities for dynamic, politically connected, and wealthier individuals, while reproducing the social, economic, and political marginalization of settlers with a weaker asset profile. Multi-locality and social differentiation point at the broader question about self-reliance in the context of DIDR. Easton-Calabria et al. (2017) find that humanitarian assistance usually takes a definition of self-reliance from a mere economic perspective, usually focusing on the support to entrepreneurship schemes as a main tool to sustain livelihoods in the long run. They argue that focusing on a purely economic definition of self-reliance fails to capture diverse personal circumstances and the plurality of strategies and social and political networks in which displaced individuals engage to make a livelihood. A narrow perspective on the economic dimension of forced displacement tends to obscure broader social, cultural, and political issues behind the success and failure of relocation policies— a finding that emerges clearly in the case of Waag Himra as presented in this chapter. Another important theme emerging in recent scholarship is the local interface between settlers, groups in the surrounding of the relocation sites, and local officials in charge of resettlement implementation. Resettlement is usually presented as a technical tool to move people to sites that are better endowed to sustain their livelihood and security. At the level of implementation, local officials have a specific stake in discouraging political activity, presuming that the needs of settlers can be effectively taken care of through ‘relocation packages’. Analysing the case of a refugee camp in Liberia, Omata (2017b) contends that the de-politicization of refugees contradicts the principle by which relocation is meant to advance forms of participation and agencies that are acknowledged at the level of policy-making and research. This raises questions about the democratic representation of displaced groups, bringing into focus the need for research to analyse the micro-politics within which relocation and settlement are enmeshed—including dynamics of formalization and informalization, and the participation to social and political life. Pointing at similar issues, in a recent article Easton-Calabria and Herson (2020) conceptualize the humanitarian implications of displacement through the concept of ‘dispersed dependencies’. This concept sheds light on the disruptive experience

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of displacement, bringing to light the complex relations and networks between displaced people, hosting communities, local and national state officials, and international humanitarian agencies. Displaced groups’ dispersed dependencies point at the multi-dimensional relationships that determine the success of relocation policies, including the role of material and immaterial goods, social and cultural relations with the place of origin, and contingent histories which determine the success and failure of state and humanitarian assistance.

2.3 Resettlement under the EPRDF It is estimated that over 190,000 households, or 626,000 people, departed for resettlement in Ethiopia between 2003 and 2007 (MoFED, 2007). The Voluntary Resettlement Programme (VRP) implemented under EPRDF was larger in magnitude than even the resettlement promoted by the Derg in 1985–1986, which it is estimated entailed the displacement of approximately 600,000 people. Resettlement under the Derg was characterized by forceful relocation, coercion, and poor planning (Pankhurst, 1992; Clapham, 1988; Cliffe, 2004). Devised as a measure to address the catastrophic 1984–1985 famine, the programme ended up exacerbating the already precarious livelihoods of some of the most vulnerable rural households, rather than providing an effective way out of the crisis. Studies have addressed the complex economic, social, and political challenges experienced by returnees in the course of the 1990s in various parts of the country (Bassi, 1997; Gebre Yntiso, 2002; Pankhurst, 1991). Eventually, the programme exacerbated the political crisis of the Derg, alienating the regime of an already weakening rural consensus in favour of the TPLF-led liberation movement. TPLF/EPRDF not only opposed resettlement during the armed struggle, but reaffirmed its negative attitude towards this policy once in power after 1991. It came as a surprise, therefore, when there was a sudden decision at the beginning of the 2000s to elaborate a new resettlement policy as part of the revised Food Security Strategy (FSS). Pankhurst (2009: 142) argues that several factors contributed to the emergence of a new consensus over resettlement in the early 2000s. These include increasing population pressure over land, a sense that periodic redistributions in the 1990s were ineffective to address the problem of land shortage, the inability of extension services and humanitarian intervention to secure livelihoods, and the demand for voluntary resettlement in some areas. In addition to these, I argue that resettlement under the EPRDF reflected a broader shift in the way the political elite conceptualized the country’s modernization strategy at the beginning of the 2000s. This shift had political origins, including the war with Eritrea and the 2001 TPLF/EPRDF political crisis, and unfolded through the adoption of the first two Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) in 2002 and 2005 (discussed in the next two sections).

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Like in the mid-1980s, the early 2000s saw a new increase in the numbers of rural households facing a food crisis and at risk of destitution. The 1998– 2000 war with Eritrea had left thousands killed on the ground, slowed down the post-Derg economic recovery, and aggravated the humanitarian crisis, including the displacement of thousands of refugees. Perhaps the most serious droughts since the EPRDF took power hit the country in mid-2002, affecting an estimated 13.2 million people (De Waal et al., 2006). The country’s highlands were most affected, and the crisis that ensued required an intensification of humanitarian intervention by international development agencies. It is against this background that the Ethiopian government started regarding resettlement not only as a potential policy option, but even as a necessary measure to address chronic food crises. While resettlement as a policy to seek a way out of the food crisis was already mentioned in the 1999 Five-Year Development Plan, the 2002 Sustainable Development Poverty Reduction Programme (SDPRP) was the first document to outline the measure coherently. Remarking upon the distance from the past experience of forced relocation under the Derg, the SDPRP highlighted that resettlement was a policy option to be implemented on a voluntary basis and to be ‘used to alleviate land shortages as well as helping to develop hitherto uncultivated lands’ (FDRE, 2002: 54). The emphasis was on both pursuing food security and making a more efficient use of available resources. Resettlement was meant to address landlessness and make the most of unexploited productive forces. What did not work out during the Derg, it was contended, was not the policy of resettlement in itself, but how it was implemented. In the mind of the government, resettlement could work if implemented voluntarily, providing adequate support in coordination with regional development planning, and implemented within the boundaries of each region to avoid inter-ethnic conflicts. In addition, the government contended that a consensus over resettlement had emerged from consultations at regional and woreda levels. The humanitarian crisis of 2002–2003 led the government to reassess its food security strategy. This is the specific policy context in which resettlement emerged. As noted by Pankhurst (2009: 140), the government convened a workshop with international donors in June 2003, for the first time addressing resettlement in a high-level meeting, and presenting the figure of 440,000 households, or 2.2 million people, to be relocated in the next three years. While the scale, scope, and timing of the initiative raised significant concerns among international donors, the following months saw the elaboration of a more concerted plan in which resettlement was incorporated within a more holistic approach to food security. A report entitled the New Coalition for Food Security in Ethiopia (NCFSE) was released in December 2003, providing the framework for the VRP. The NCSFE built on a pilot scheme that provided the resettlement

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of 45,000 households across three regions in 2002–2003 and that the document described as successful in establishing a better livelihood for beneficiaries (NCSFE, 2003: 1). In the Plan for Accelerated Development to End Poverty (PASDEP), the government’s second strategic document for 2005–2010, resettlement was given a more central role. Emphasizing once again the voluntary nature of the programme, the document reported that 50% of the 2.2 million people targeted were already successfully resettled by the end of 2004–2005, the rest to be completed within the end of PASDEP (FDRE, 2005b: 95). While acknowledging some implementation problems during the first year, PASDEP described resettlement as a reliable initiative to ensure food security for vulnerable households. The VRP was incardinated into a larger package of initiatives as part of the Food Security Programme (FSP). The FSP relied on four pillars: the Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP), the Household Asset Building Programme (HABP), the Complimentary Community Investment (CCI), and the VRP. From a policy perspective these initiatives highlighted two overlapping priorities: attaining food security by strengthening the capacity of the state to provide better infrastructure, education, and services, and stimulating mechanisms to sustain rapid economic growth. In the government’s mind these were two mutually reinforcing objectives: securing rural livelihoods was regarded as a precondition for rapid growth, as much as economic development was considered as a main pathway out of poverty. Quite revealing was the concept of ‘graduation’ that informed the design of all these programmes. Beneficiaries enrolling in one of these initiatives were expected to achieve ‘graduation’, meaning independence from further assistance, within a pre-established timeframe. In the case of the PSNP, households were to achieve a status of ‘food security’ within three to five years. The notion of ‘graduation’ applied to the resettlement policy as well, in this case indicating the stage at which beneficiaries no longer required basic support. Although this was recognized as a main post-settlement challenge, the PASDEP Second Annual Progress Report for 2006–2007, reported that 88% of beneficiaries had graduated successfully (MOFED, 2007: 6)

2.4 The 2001 Political Crisis Consensus over resettlement in the early 2000s emerged along a broader shift in the strategic vision of the government over the meaning of modernization. While in the 1990s achieving national food self-sufficiency was the government’s main objective, a new consensus emerged in the 2000s towards embarking on a rapid economic growth model. This shift, which in the long run marked the consolidation of a developmental state ideology, had its origin in what is known as the 2001 political crisis in the TPLF’s inner circle.

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Politically, the new strategy must be contextualized through the events of March 2001 when the TPLF Central Committee split for the first time since the party gained power in 1991. The crisis took place in the aftermath of the 1998–2000 war with Eritrea and was followed by months of profound uncertainty that culminated with the purge of many senior members of the TPLF leadership, and later of the EPRDF and the army. Initially the dispute between the two factions broke out over the conduct of the war, opposing those who advocated for the continuation of the military operations until a clearer victory was achieved, and those, led by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and under the impulse of the international community, who backed an early end of the conflict. The crisis reinforced the dominance of Meles over both the TPLF and EPRDF, and marked the beginning of a significant process of internal reform in the party organization, as well as a broader reformulation of the country’s long-term strategy of transformation. As noted by Medhane Tadesse and John Young (2003: 392), the unfolding of the crisis produced a shift in the ruling elite’s long-standing radicalism in two ways. The first was the opening-up of the party political base, originally a coalition of peasants guided by a revolutionary intelligentsia, to the national and urban-based bourgeoisie. The second was a more decisive step towards economic transformation through the decision to seek integration into the global economy. These two elements laid the ideological and political ground for what was dubbed a few years later as a developmental state strategy, combining the long-standing commitment of the political elite to state interventionism, and drawing upon its Marxist-Leninist ideology, with selective economic liberalization as a driver of rapid growth. The purges following the 2001 political crisis were part of a process called tehadso (‘renewal’) that took place within a consolidated political practice in the governance of the TPLF/EPRDF known as gingema.³ In Amharic, gingema means ‘evaluation’ and as part of it party cadres and state employees at all levels face sessions of ‘self-criticism and criticism’, normally on a biannual basis. The war with Eritrea that broke out in 1998 interrupted the gingema, with the process being resumed in May 2000 after the two countries signed the cease-fire (Paulos Milkias, 2001: 5). When the process resumed, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi addressed the TPLF’s Central Committee with a paper on ‘Bonapartism’, which denounced the party leadership becoming progressively distant from its main constituency, the peasantry. The debate that ensued sharpened the division between the two opposing factions. What was at stake was the way ahead for the political leadership to bring forward revolutionary democracy. This included the role of class struggle and the meaning of what ought to be a proletarian party in the aftermath of the war with Eritrea. Meles used the discussion to his advantage, launching an offensive against the dissidents, which were accused of factionalism, threats to the existence ³ For more details about gingema see Mehdi Labzaé (2021).

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of the EPRDF, and violation of democratic centralism. The broader debate about the party’s future role was soon put aside, and the main issue became the charges of corruption and anti-democratic practices in the TPLF and EPRDF leadership. While in my reading the crisis laid the foundation for the developmental state ideology that became dominant in the following years, another outcome was a shift in power from Tigray to Addis Ababa, and from the TPLF Central Committee to Meles Zenawi (Medhane Tadesse and Young, 2003: 389). This shift did not alter the substance of democratic centralism, nor the authoritarian character of the Ethiopian state model, as the outcome of the 2005 elections was to show few years after. More broadly, the crisis highlighted a central tension in the post-Derg development strategy (what the political elite referred to as the ‘Weyane Development strategy’): how to conjugate the evolution of the Ethiopian economy towards fullfledged capitalism without relinquishing revolutionary democracy and the basic principles that had guided the TPLF/EPRDF ideology since its inception in the 1970s. This tension, which for Meles had only one solution—pursuing rapid economic growth—was one of the key issues in even the most recent crisis that led Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to take power in 2018. This tension was also most evident in the ways one’s think at the contents of the ADLI strategy. The decision to seek full integration in the global economy, and acknowledging the need to fully embrace capitalist development, gave rise to what can be defined as a shift to productivism. In the following years, achieving rapid economic growth became an imperative that the political elite sought with determination. Accepting the presence of a national bourgeoisie, and providing for a progressive liberalization of the economy, the political elite did not relinquish its support for the development of an autonomous national economy in which the state retained a major role. This shift did not mean that the EPRDF decided to move away from its Marxist-Leninist underpinnings entirely. In key areas such as national self-determination, federalism, state ownership of land, the vanguard role of the TPLF and EPRDF, and democratic centralism, the ruling party did not shift position.

2.5 Productivism and the 2002 Sustainable Development Poverty Reduction Programme (SDPRP) The 2001 crisis opened up a new political phase, in which decision-making and the country’s strategic direction was dictated more decisively by Meles Zenawi and his political entourage. One important outcome, following the new policy priority of seeking integration in the global economy, was the decision to adopt, under the impulse of international donors, the country’s first PRSP. In 2002 Ethiopia adopted the Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction Programme (SDPRP), followed in 2005 by the Plan for Accelerated Development to End Poverty (PASDEP).

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The content of these two strategic documents was expression of the new policy direction following the 2001 crisis. They reflected a strategy that drew upon a mixed discursive repertoire based on both market liberalization principles (despite the political elite’s refute of neoliberalism), and the continuation of statist policies inherited by the previous regime responding to the Marxist-Leninist origin of the political elite. This was meant to enable a progressive liberalization of the economy to achieve rapid growth, while allowing the state to preserve its control over strategic sectors of the economy in which the free market was not permitted. The outcome of the policy shift was the new consensus on productivism. The 2002 SDPRP followed the implementation of an Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (I-PRSP) signed by the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development (MOFED), the World Bank (WB), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in November 2000 after the end of the war with Eritrea. One of the most remarkable features of the SDPRP, and later of PASDEP, is the stark contrast with the language the political elite used to discuss the strategic direction of the country, profoundly influenced by its Marxist-Leninist tradition. These strategic documents, elaborated with the aid of staff from the IMF and WB, were formulated using the neoliberal vocabulary of the 2000s, during the so-called PostWashington Consensus, in which strategic documents in developing countries were framed around the notion of good governance, and dominated by the priority of poverty reduction. Following this doctrine, the provision of international assistance was conditional to the implementation of policy reforms aimed at pursuing the joint objective to liberalize the markets and lay the ground for democratization. Up until the 2005 elections, the international perception of the Ethiopian trajectory was that the country, although experiencing difficulties inherited by its socialist past, was making important progress in both directions. The SDPRP was regarded as a first fundamental step to consolidating the country’s process of economic recovery. However, the political elite’s perspective was significantly different. The aid of international donors was welcome provided it didn’t interfere with the government’s plan to retain control over strategic economic assets. Where donors and Ethiopian government aligned was on the vocabulary of poverty reduction and food security, as well as on the design of measures that would provide a new impulse to the economy. The SDPRP envisioned an overall country strategy centred on rural development and based on the consideration that 85% of the country’s population were smallholder farmers. The fundamental goal of the strategy was ‘to build a free-market economic system’ (FDRE, 2002: 36), based on three main objectives: ensuring rapid economic growth; minimizing dependence on food aid, and; establishing redistributive mechanisms that provide economic growth to be equally shared. These objectives were to be pursued through four building blocks

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that, according to the document (FDRE, 2002: 38), had not to be viewed in purely economic terms. Although diluted in the neoliberal language of the good governance, the document maintained an understanding of the country’s development as an inherently political process of transformation. The four building blocks for the country’s transformation were: the Agricultural Development Led Industrialization (ADLI) strategy; the reform of Justice system and civil service reform; decentralization and empowerment, and; capacity building in public and private sectors. The SDPRP remarked on the principle whereby the Ethiopian modernization agenda was based on the ADLI strategy, which considered agriculture as the strategic source to generate primary surplus and sustain the growth of other sectors of the economy, primarily industry (FDRE, 2002: 38–40). In the SDPRP, smallholder farming constituted the economic backbone of the ADLI strategy. This was in consideration of the country’s shortage of capital and land, at least in relative terms, and of its abundance of labour (FDRE, 2002: 51). This interpretation of ADLI stood on a strategy of modernization based on a labour-intensive rather than capital-intensive production processes, meaning prioritizing the smallholder’s farming model. Investments in agriculture and rural development were regarded as essential ‘to ensure accelerated economic growth to the optimum benefit of the people at all levels, the freeing of the nation from aid dependency and the creation of a free market economy’ (FDRE, 2002: 48). This quotation reflects two main policy priorities of ADLI. On the one hand the strategy was intended to promote the modernization of smallholder agriculture to achieve national food security. This was in line with earlier concerns of the political elite to fulfil its commitment to support peasant farmers, which constituted the government’s main power base. While not questioning the system of state ownership of land, the emphasis of the SDPRP was on rural infrastructure development, education, the provision of extension services and rural credit, and the adoption of new technologies to improve agriculture productivity. Following the SDPRP, food security was an objective that had to be addressed at the level of the household and the local community. These priorities constituted the backbone of a revised Food Security Strategy (FSS), based on the new productionist rationale and aimed at targeting rural households. A main difference with earlier interpretations was that now ADLI had to give ‘recognition to the critical role of exports both in terms of growth of income and foreign exchange … [and to be] located within the context of progressive integration into the global economy’ (FDRE, 2002: 46). Therefore, the SDPRP marked an important shift from earlier concerns about achieving national food self-sufficiency and re-orienting the overall country strategy towards the objective of economic growth, to now be achieved through a focus on export. In the following years this laid the ground for the new policy emphasis on agriculture

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commercialization, entrepreneurship, and manufacturing industries (discussed in chapters four, five, and six). Under the 2005 PASDEP, these principles were reaffirmed and strengthened even further. The document envisaged a diversified rural development strategy tailored around the potentials of the country’s different agro-ecological areas. The four priorities identified were: (i) facilitating private sector initiative and commercialization, (ii) production volatility’s reduction, diversification away from food crop production, and boosting off-farm income opportunities, (iii) voluntary resettlement to more productive areas, and (iv) improving infrastructure and basic input and market systems (FDRE, 2005b: 44). The productionist shift that emerged following the 2001 political crisis can be regarded as one of the key drivers of an emerging developmental state ideology. It is against this background that resettlement became a central policy priority in the government’s modernization strategy. In the next sections I discuss the implementation of resettlement in Amhara region, before addressing the specific case of Waag Himra zone.

2.6 Resettlement in Amhara Region As noted by Pankhurst (2009: 142) regional planning for resettlement in Amhara region had already begun in mid-2000, much earlier than in the rest of the country. The regional government estimated that approximately 2.5 million vulnerable people were distributed across 48 woreda. In these pilot initiatives, resettlement was intended more as an emergency intervention to address chronic food crises, rather than as a lasting solution to exploit the region’s natural resources, which became a priority only after the implementation of the 2002 SDPRP. Initially, the Region’s Food Security Coordination Office identified three potential relocation sites within the woreda of Metemma, Dangla, and Tsegedie Armachio. Later on, the site of Qwara was added after implementation had started. What these sites had in common was a location in the less populated lowlands of the region. Land was more abundant in these areas, although two important reasons for that were that conditions for agriculture were less ideal and malaria was endemic. Quite remarkable was that these sites, while formally within the boundaries of Amhara region, were all located on borderlands inhabited by groups from different origins. Metemma, Dangla, and Qwara covered areas bordering with Benishangul-Gumuz region, and Tsegedie Armachio with Tigray. Although the resettlement was planned to take place within the same region to avoid the interethnic conflict that characterized the experience of the 1980s, the choice of these sites exposed the programme to similar risks. This issue was raised by a team of international experts visiting the site of Metemma in March 2001, who contended

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that, beside infrastructure, a main impediment to the programme was potential conflict with Gumuz residents (Pankhurst, 2009: 142). The principle of ethnicity underpinning the organization of the Ethiopian state under ethnic federalism was certainly not conducive to relieve tensions between different groups. While the movement of people had been a constant feature in the history of modern Ethiopia, the system of governance established under EPRDF had the disadvantage of funnelling conflict along ethnic identification. One example was the crisis of Internally Displaced People (IDP) that broke out in the early 2000s, and that in Amhara region added layers of complexity to the plan for resettlement. Clashes in East Wellega, Oromia region, between Oromo residents and historical Amhara settlers sparked at different times in the second half of 2000 (Tesfaye Tafesse, 2007).⁴ The conflict can be regarded as a clear manifestation of the politicization of ethnicity under ethnic federalism (see Aalen, 2011). The crisis resulted in 12,000 Amhara assembling at an emergency camp in West Gojjam of Amhara region, at a site in Bure woreda. This caused the regional government to revise its plan and the Amhara returnees became a priority of the resettlement programme. Returnees were relocated in April 2001 to a site known as Jawi in Dangla woreda (Tesfaye Tafesse, 2007). While the government reported that relocation was successful, Tesfaye Tafesse (2009: 863) contends that a number of Amhara that were relocated to Jawi made their way back to Wellega because they did not find suitable conditions in the new resettlement site, thus fuelling the initial conflict that led them to seek relocation. Despite all these concerns, when resettlement was endorsed federally after 2002 and the Voluntary Resettlement Programme was incorporated as part of the new food security strategy, the Amhara government drastically scaled up its ambitions. The initial plan was to resettle 20,000 households, estimated to hold approximately 100,000 people. Shortly after the official start of the programme in February 2003, this figure doubled. Pankhurst (2009: 144) reports that Amhara was the regional state setting the highest target for resettlement (200,000 households) in the overall period of 2002–2007, followed by Oromia and SNNPR (100,000 households), and Tigray (40,000 households). Of the total 440,000 target, the programme implemented resettlement for approximately 193,000 households countrywide, or 44% of the target. Amhara and SNNPR were the two regional states scoring the lowest success, with 59,563 (29.8% of the target) and 28,122 (28.1% of the target) households resettled. Despite the initial expectations, the Amhara government

⁴ The migration of Amhara people in East Wellega took place over the course of over half a century, and was driven by several factors including land scarcity, environmental degradation, population pressure, entitlement decline, vulnerability and chronic food crisis, and kin pressure (Tesfaye Tafesse, 2009). The conflict sparked disputes around land claims, contractual agreements over sharecropping, and use of forest resources, and questions regarding the status of the Amhara settlers in Oromia in the context of ethnic federalism.

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implemented resettlement for only less than a third of its initial plan. In particular, the programme was radically scaled down after 2006. One can speculate that the 2005 elections and the political crisis that ensued played a role in the drastic change of plan. After 2007 discussion about resettlement was virtually absent, including impact evaluation on beneficiaries. Because of the lack of detailed monitoring and evaluation assessment, it is quite difficult to gain a sense of what happened to beneficiaries after relocation on the large scale. A number of in-depth studies on specific locations highlight that resettlement often did not entail the relocation of people on a permanent basis (Kassahun Berhanu, 2009; Gebre Yntiso, 2004). Some beneficiaries continued to maintain connections with their place of origin to maximize economic opportunities, while some others came back soon after relocation. This is a central finding that emerged in Waag Himra.

2.7 The Waag Himra Special Zone When I first arrived in Sekota as an intern for the Italian NGO COOPI in September 2006, I realized immediately how issues around rural development and food security, the topic of my MSc project, were not only important contingencies for many people but also heavily politicized issues with important national and international ramifications. Officials from the Agriculture and Rural Development Office (ARDO), my main source of official information, were often busy in meetings where they were learning new political directives. The federal government was demanding a change of gear in the implementation of rural development initiatives after the controversial 2005 elections. Late 2006 was also a period characterized by unstable international relations in the Horn of Africa. The rise to power of the Islamic Court Union (ICU) in Somalia, which ended warlord control in Mogadishu and increased the influence of Islamists groups across South and Central Somalia, was regarded as a threat by the Ethiopian government. Addis Ababa was concerned about the influence that radicalism may have had on the already volatile Ethiopian Somali region. Backed by US intelligence, in December 2006 Ethiopia opted for a military intervention in Somalia to crush the ICU. Domestic politics was no less chaotic. The wound opened by the May 2005 elections was still burning. Casting a shadow on the potential of multi-party democracy, the political crisis that accompanied the elections had left a sense of urgency in the political elite to move ahead with a plan of transformation driven by rapid economic development. All these tensions were not circumscribed to Addis Ababa, but rather reverberated all across the country, even in areas as remote as the country’s highlands, such as Waag Himra, where the consensus for the EPRDF was among the highest.

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Waag Himra is located right at the heart of the Ethiopian highlands. The zone traces Amhara’s northern border with Tigray, between North Gondar and North Wello. In 2006 it had a population of just over 426,000 (FDRE, 2007) of which only approximately 29,000 resided in urban areas. Over 90% of people were smallholder farmers engaged in mixed production for subsistence and the local market. During the Imperial period part of the Waag Province, Waag Himra played an important role in the liberation struggle against the Derg. It was among the first areas in Amhara to be liberated through a successful military campaign in 1982 conducted by former members of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party (EPRP) and supported by the TPLF. The military success brought the liberation movement to convene the first conference of the Ethiopian People’s Democratic Movement (EPDM), in November 1983, at a site known as Jerba Yohannes. This bore fruit in the aftermath of the political transition of the early 1990s. At its third conference in 1994, the EPDM changed its name to Amhara National Democratic Movement (ANDM),⁵ marking a significant transition from being a pan-Ethiopian movement to an ethno-nationalist party, and becoming a key member of the EPRDF. The centrality of the Agew/Kamyr leadership in nurturing the ANDM’s forerunner brought significant privileges when ethnic federalism was set up in the 1990s. Following a conference held in Sekota in 1994, Waag Himra was established as an autonomous administrative entity, or ‘special zone’. Under ethnic federalism, special zones were meant to preserve the rights to ‘self-determination’ of specific sections of the population based on their distinct ethnicity (Vaughan, 2003: 240). Amhara region established three such special zones, the rationale being preserving the rights to autonomy of non-Amhara enclaves within the regional borders. In the case of Waag Himra, it was the Agew/Kamyr. Quite paradoxical here is that while Waag Himra played a central role in the institutionalization of the ANDM, it was then granted a special zone status based on its being recognized as an ethnically different entity to Amhara. At the time of this fieldwork, just over 50% of people living in the zone identified as Agew/Kamyr, the bulk of the remaining as Amhara, and a minority as Tigrigna. Seasonal migration to Tigray for harvesting was a consolidated practice. As noted by Vaughan (2003: 239), the Agew/Kamyr had always lived intermixed with their Tigrigna and Amhara neighbours, and very little difference between these groups existed in terms of history, economy, dress, and shared culture. Special zone status came with considerable advantages. This allowed the zone to incorporate an additional administrative level of elected legislature and executive, entailing privilege in terms of federal transfers and autonomy in budget disbursement. As noted by Vaughan (2003: 240) its per capita budget figures were already significantly

⁵ At its 12th congress in Bahir Dar in September 2018, the ANDM changed its name to Amhara Democratic Party (ADP).

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higher than the region’s average in the 1990s. By the time of my fieldwork in 2006, Sekota, the zone’s capital, had experienced a dramatic growth driven by investments in infrastructure, a new hospital and zone and woreda office buildings, as well as highly visible housing for civil servants. Despite its privileged status, in the mid-2000s Waag Himra was characterized by significant challenges. The area has been described as one of the most impoverished and remote agriculturalist regions of Ethiopia, vulnerable to recurrent climatic shocks and famine (Holt and Lawrence, 1993). The 2002–2003 drought had aggravated the situation of many people dependent on humanitarian intervention and weakened the productive assets of an already fragile smallholder farming economy. As land could not be transacted, the most vulnerable households had resorted to the distress sale of cattle, particularly the much-needed oxen, employed to power the traditional Ethiopian plough. As the last land redistribution in the zone took place in 1991,⁶ rapid population growth and lack of employment alternatives had put exceptional pressure on land. Landlessness among youth was at its highest, and out-migration was an option that only a few privileged could afford. The zone’s average plot size was 0.75 ha, although there was considerable difference between the three agro-ecological regions of Dega (above 2,300 metres), Woina Dega (1,500–2,300 metres), and Kolla (below 1,500 metres). Due to more favourable agricultural conditions, population pressure was higher in Dega, where plots averaged 0.5 ha, and lower in Kolla areas, where malaria was endemic and land less fertile.

2.7.1 The Food Security Programme in Waag Himra Against this background the Food Security Programme was implemented in Waag Himra in 2004. Officials from ARDO explained that under the new course what would be changing was the overall approach to food security. Under EPRDF a majority of rural development interventions had until then focused on emergency food aid distributions, and the construction of basic infrastructure to reach out to the zone’s mountainous inland. These initiatives were coordinated under the New Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Policy (NDPPP), launched by the government in 1995. In coordination with international donors, the NDPPP consisted of the formulation of emergency plans on a yearly basis and the distribution of humanitarian aids as often as twice per year organized at woreda level. The number of people dependent on humanitarian intervention at the time of fieldwork in late 2006 could be estimated at over 50% of the zone’s population. The economic depression left behind by years of war against the Derg regime, a local economy entirely dependent on rain-fed agriculture, and increasing population ⁶ In the rest of Amhara region, comprehensive land redistribution took place in 1997.

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pressure over land were among the most pressing issues for a flourishing food aid economy. A recurrent theme in interviews was about the impact of periodic aids distribution on the local economy. One official explained that ‘people are so dependent on food aids that they regard them as a right … they expect food aids to come every few months and plan accordingly’.⁷ The introduction of staple crops for free on a fragile and poorly integrated local economy reflected a tension between short-term contingency and the long-term plan for the country’s transformation. Food aids were competing with a smallholder farming sector that in the mind of government not only had to feed the countryside, but also had to provide for the diversification of the country’s economy as a pathway towards modernization. In Sekota, food aids affected the local market in a number of ways. The most obvious was that they distorted the price of staple crops, in some cases providing disincentives for farmers to produce for the market. A related effect was that beneficiaries did not always use humanitarian packages for their own consumption. Aids were regularly sold in the local market, providing little incentive for the local economy to grow and diversify, and making the fortune of ruthless middlemen and intermediaries. The stark contrast between the government’s ambition and the economic reality in Waag Himra embodied many of the contradictions the EPRDF leadership was facing in the early 2000s. On the one hand, in impoverished agricultural contexts like Waag Himra it was becoming increasingly clear that a strategy for the country’s transformation based solely on smallholder farming was unrealistic. On the other hand, the EPRDF was heavily indebted to the political support of the peasantry, which constituted the government main power base and had played a central role in the country’s liberation from the Derg both ideologically and materially. One central concern of the government, shared by international donors, was how to break the dependency trap of periodic food aids distribution. In particular, it was contended that aids were unable to tackle the deeper roots of rural poverty. For this reason, in 1996 an important, although relatively marginal, policy response had already been the implementation of food for work schemes under the Employment Generation Scheme. The rationale of this policy, which was part of the broader NDPPP, was to link the distribution of humanitarian packages to public works, such as the maintenance of roads and other infrastructure. In the same direction of food for work, a more decisive change in the approach to food security came after 2004. Officials of ARDO explained that under the new Food Security Strategy incentivizing productivity and economic growth was considered an important precondition to achieving food security in the long run. For this reason, thorough and long-term planning of rural development interventions was necessary. In the language of humanitarian actors such as the staff of the Italian NGO COOPI by ⁷ Interview with a rural development officer, Sekota, November 2006.

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whom I was hosted for my research, a shift was required from ‘emergency’ to ‘capacity building’. Through the cascade system of local administration, and starting from the kebele level, the population was divided in three broad categories: ‘better-off ’, ‘food insecure’, and ‘chronically food insecure’. Households were used as the central unit of analysis. Criteria were not standard across the zone, but main parameters included the amount of land owned, the number of oxen and cattle, the ability to purchase fertilizers, and the existence of sharecropping arrangements, as well as other sources of livelihood. In the first year of implementation the wealth of households was calculated in terms of their relative ‘food gap’, while from the second year asset endowments assumed a more central role. A household in Sekota woreda was considered as ‘better-off ’ when it had at least one hectare of land and a pair of oxen. But the most relevant distinction for our discussion here was between ‘food insecure’ and ‘chronically food insecure’. The general principle was that households under the former category were regarded as potentially able to achieve a status of independence from assistance in a relatively short time span. In the latter category were included households whose productive forces were severely constrained by structural conditions and required more specific and long-term assistance. According to figures obtained at the zone ARDO, in the year 2005–2006 only 21.5% of households fell under the ‘better off ’ category, 36% were ‘food insecure’, and 42.5% were ‘chronically food insecure’.⁸ What is important to keep in mind about the distinction between ‘food insecure’ and ‘chronically food insecure’ is that it came about due to the productionist shift discussed above. It was the result of the principles emerging after the 2001 political crisis and the 2002 SDPRP that saw a shift in the strategy for rural development targeting the rural population as a whole and based on humanitarian intervention, to one focusing on households that were regarded as potentially productive as an engine of economic growth. In the political ideology of the EPRDF, this shift was of epistemological proportion. The new strategy marked an important move away from an all-encompassing approach to food security. The ‘collective participation’ towards the country’s development was now premised on the recognition of different roles for different categories of people. Most importantly, for the first time since it took power the political leadership was admitting that the most vulnerable strata of the rural population could be sacrificed in the name of national development. This was a necessary cost if the country had to seek integration in the global economy. In Sekota woreda, ‘food insecure’ households were targeted through a number of programmes. The most important was the Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP),⁹ an evolution of the food for work schemes of the previous decade, which ⁸ Data collected at the ARDO office, Sekota, November 2006. ⁹ Amhara was the only regional state that initially implemented the PSNP on ‘middle-income’ households only (the ‘food insecure’ category). In the other regional states, the PSNP was extended to the chronically insecure category from the very beginning.

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essentially consisted in a comprehensive plan of assistance in exchange of public works. The scheme was implemented between January and June, the months of the year that required less agricultural labour, and when households’ food deficit was more severe. The local slogan of the programme was ‘protecting the households’ assets while building assets for the community’. Beneficiaries could decide whether to be remunerated in cash or food, with many preferring the latter because they considered the cash equivalent to be worth less than the food package provided by the programme. Households were enrolled in the programme for periods of 3 to 5 years, and after that they were expected to achieve ‘graduation’, meaning independence from further assistance. The PSNP was accompanied by other initiatives part of the livelihood programme, the most relevant being the Household Asset Building Programme (HABP). Offering trainings and credit to beneficiaries, the HABP’s objective was to create new assets and competences at household level, with the aim to increase income and complement livelihoods by supporting off-farm activities and small businesses. In Sekota woreda, the HABP promoted initiatives such as beekeeping, cattle and chicken rearing, pottery, and other petty trade activities. These schemes very seldom became the driving force of economic development the government’s strategy envisioned. I will address the issues constraining the development of entrepreneurship schemes, and their overall significance in the architecture of the developmental state, in chapter five. What is important to emphasize here is that at the heart of their development lies the productionist shift of the early 2000s, and that they represented an important source of rural welfare that the state was otherwise unable to provide. In the rest of this chapter I will focus on the ‘chronically food insecure’, those that even in the mind of the government could not be regarded as the countryside’s productive forces to sustain the developmental state in the long run. Resettlement became the door that the government left open for these people.

2.8 Returning from Resettlement in Sekota Woreda At the time of my fieldwork in late 2006, the Voluntary Resettlement Programme (VRP) in Sekota woreda had already undertaken two cycles. In 2004–2005 the programme targeted 106 households, or 530 people, a number that decreased in 2005–2006 to sixty-eight households, or 340 people. The programme was discontinued the following year, when an even smaller number of households enrolled. While initially my research focused on broader issues about humanitarian intervention, resettlement captured my attention when I learnt that a vast majority of beneficiaries in both rounds returned from the VRP soon after relocation. Virtually all of the people that departed in the first year returned within a few months after relocation. In the second year things went slightly better, although 75% of people

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were already back by December 2006. The following discussion is based on a sample of twenty indepth interviews conducted with returnees from the programme, supplemented by data, interviews, and group discussions collected at several zone and woreda offices, primarily the ARDO. As explained by a local official, the VRP was a central component of the new Food Security Strategy to target ‘chronically food insecure’ households. Implementation was guided by four main principles: beneficiaries had to enrol voluntarily; relocation had to take place on underutilized land; host communities had to be properly consulted and involved, and; particular attention had to be paid to preparation and post settlement support (see also Pankhurst, 2009: 146). Through lists compiled at kebele level, the VRP targeted households that had little or no land, and lacked other productive assets, particularly livestock. As explained by one official, these were the most vulnerable people, the ‘poorest of the poor’, chronically dependent on humanitarian intervention. Beneficiaries were usually people in their twenties, who were too young to get any land at the time of the last redistribution in 1991. Young households were also regarded as those with the most potential for adaptation in the new environment. These people normally relied on occasional labour, especially during the agricultural season’s peak, and, in a minority of cases, engaged in sharecropping arrangements with relatives, or within the broader community, which in the area of Sekota were normally regulated on a 50% crop-sharing basis. These land-hungry youths regarded resettlement with interest. In addition to transport, beneficiaries were promised two hectares of cleared farmland, two oxen, housing, and other basic amenities in the resettlement site, and up to one year of post-settlement support in terms of food packages. In addition, if their experience was not satisfactory they retained the possibility of returning for up to three years after relocation, after which they were demanded to sign a ‘document of clearance’ from their kebele of origin. As explained by one young returnee, these stipulations raised considerable expectations among landless youth that had little to lose and everything to gain. Those who decided to join the programme did it voluntarily, but under significant constraints. The ability to make independent choices was constrained by several factors. Desperation resulting from drought, land shortage, lack of alternatives, and destitution constituted important pushing factors. Rumours that food aids would be discontinued in the future, and pressure from government officials and peers to enrol, also played a role in people’s decisions. There were elements of indirect compulsion during the implementation of resettlement in Sekota, and in a minority of cases of outright coercion. As explained by one informant, the concept of voluntariness meant very little for the marginalized people that were targeted by the programme. Beneficiaries had little room for independent decision-making. Beneficiaries that enrolled resettlement in Sekota woreda were relocated to a site in Metemma woreda in Semien Gonder zone. Located at the border with Sudan,

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Metemma is part of Amhara region’s lowlands, with average elevation between 500 and 1600 metres, where malaria is endemic. The area is known as a commercial agriculture region for the production of cotton. The woreda has been the recipient of historical Amhara migration in what used to be an area inhabited by Gumuz people. While it was chosen to fulfil the principle of intra-regional relocation provided by the VRP to avoid ethnic conflict, tensions between highland and lowland groups had not been uncommon in the recent history of this borderland region. At the time of this fieldwork, Metemma hosted a number of groups: Gumuz, Tigrigna, and Agew Awi. This is directly connected to the question of whether Metemma constituted an ‘underexploited’ region as required by the VRP. While population density was certainly lower than in the region’s highlands, it could definitely not be regarded as an empty land. What was undoubtedly different was the method of cultivation. The Gumuz and other lowland groups practiced a form of farming based on shifting agriculture that allowed the area that had just been cultivated to be left fallow for regeneration while new areas were prepared. The idea that Metemma was underexploited was therefore based on the perspective of the intensive form of agriculture practiced in the highlands and can thus be regarded as an inaccurate assumption. Dessalegn Rahmato (1988) has also noted that the widespread availability of underexploited land was also overemphasized in relation to the 1980s resettlement, an element that constitutes an interesting continuity between the resettlement policy implemented during the Derg and EPRDF. Resettlement did not only have implications for lowland groups that had to withdraw from settlement areas. For the beneficiaries interviewed in Sekota, Metemma presented climatic, agricultural, and cultural conditions that were very different from their context of origin. This is the reason why a vast majority of beneficiaries returned from resettlement within months after relocation. In particular, beneficiaries lamented a mismatch between expectations and the actual conditions they found in the site. As no scoping trip was conducted prior to departure, beneficiaries relied on information provided by the government officials who organized the relocation. One returnee noted: Like other people I was very excited about the programme … I was eager about getting land and oxen of my own. Although the government did not give us much time to decide … so I did not think too much, I thought this was a great opportunity.¹⁰

Pressed by the lack of alternatives, beneficiaries embraced resettlement convinced that the programme would have a positive impact on their life. While all of the ¹⁰ Interview with a resettlement returnee, Sekota, December 2006.

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interviewees contended that the conditions of transport via bus were satisfactory, expectations were soon frustrated once they arrived at the relocation site in Metemma. Here they were met by the harsh lowland environment, which as highlanders they were not used to, and found adaptation extremely challenging. Malaria and other health diseases were mentioned among the main problems. From an agro-ecological perspective the lowland environment presented settlers with highly unfamiliar conditions as compared to their home areas. As explained by one official, besides shifting cultivation, the lowlands were more suitable to a large-scale, irrigated, commercial type of farming, which required expensive machineries, fertilizers, and other infrastructure, rather than the small-scale, rain-fed, and labour-intensive mode of cultivation of the highlands, which farmers carried out through the oxen-powered plough. The climate in Metemma was thus conducive to growing only a small number of the crops resettlers were used to cultivating at home, mostly sorghum, beans, and maize. Lowland environment was also extremely harsh for livestock, which were reported to be more prone to lethal diseases. Tension with other groups was another reason mentioned by beneficiaries influencing their decisions to return to Waag Himra. For lowland people such as the Gumuz, the resettlement programme was regarded as a form of intrusion that threatened their ability to make a livelihood. High-density settlements, intensive forms of land exploitation, and pressure upon other resources such as water and fuel wood, which entailed the clearing of large areas, were certainly not conducive to good relations. For this reason, while consultations with representatives of host communities took place, it seems there was little room for voicing discontent and refusing to endorse the programme. Host communities were informed, rather than properly consulted, about the programme, and were left with little option but to comply with decisions taken by government. Tensions also emerged with other resettlement beneficiaries coming from other areas of Amhara. Here competition was for securing better quality land, livestock, and other assets as part of the post-settlement package. This can be depicted in the following: The land was not of very good quality … Rather than two hectares they gave us one, and only one ox. … They told us we had to share with other people … it’s not easy, this is not what I was expecting.¹¹

This quotation brings us to addressing in more detail the issue of post-settlement support. The lack of appropriate planning and support was an important reason mentioned by interviewees to return from resettlement. The first factor is that beneficiaries were not given enough time to prepare for relocation. This meant not only that the decision was rushed, but also that people had little time to sell their ¹¹ Interview with a resettlement returnee, Sekota, November 2006.

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assets before departure. Three interviewees, for instance, reported that they had to sell their livestock at a much lower price than the market average. Beneficiaries also lamented that they were given little space for bringing enough belongings with them. In the first year (2004–2005), the lack of appropriate planning was significant. One beneficiary noted: When we arrived, we realised that the relocation camp barely existed … Only a few houses were ready, and the health clinic was still under construction and could not be used … Many people were coming and there was a problem in the distribution of food packages.¹²

Beneficiaries that departed in the second year (2005–2006) reported that the infrastructure in the settlement site had significantly improved. The main problems they experienced were connected to the poor quality of land offered, the availability of agricultural inputs, and veterinary support for livestock. The case of Sekota woreda shows that implementation of resettlement had complex social and economic repercussions for the local economies of both the sending and the receiving districts. In relation to the goals set by the government, it achieved mixed results. While some beneficiaries performed well and benefited from it, many others faced significant challenges and their conditions did not improve in any notable way.

2.8.1 Resettlement as a Risk Diversification Strategy Beside its developmental impact, resettlement as a form of development-induced displacement reflected important dynamics of the negotiation of state-society relations. Moved by the new productionist imperative emerging in the early 2000s, and part of a new approach to food security, the political elite regarded resettlement as an important component of its strategy for rural modernization. When read against the decision to seek integration in the global economy, the programme embodied an aesthetic of state efficiency that the political elite considered necessary to achieve rapid economic growth. At the same time, resettlement was based on an understanding of ‘development’ as an intrinsically political process that underlined collective rather than individual participation in the country’s transformation. Implementation of resettlement in the case of the Sekota/Metemma route reflected a conflict between the political elite’s vision of development and the meanings given to the programme by beneficiaries. Such conflict was rooted in differences in perspectives and visions of the future, in the meanings and values ¹² Interview with a resettlement returnee, Sekota, December 2006.

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attributed to the programme itself, and what had to make way for it. There are at least two areas in which the programme produced effects that were not intended by government, and that illustrate how significant negotiation of the state from below was at play. Firstly, while moved by ideas about uncapping the potential of smallholder agriculture and providing a long-term response to recurrent food crises, the VRP often ended up reproducing the same dependency dynamics from government support that it was supposed to be addressing. Beneficiaries who decided not to go back remained heavily dependent on humanitarian packages for their daily livelihood, just as they were in their context of origin. This can be depicted empirically in the following: The reasons why a large number of beneficiaries decided to return in the second year, when resettlement site was fully working, is because they did not see the move as an improvement in their life … they remained dependent on government support … and at the same time lacked the network of social and economic support they had at home.¹³

Implementation revealed that resettlement was just another initiative to face emergencies, rather than constituting a realistic pathway for rural modernization. In this regard, the programme was not radically different from the earlier approach to food security based on humanitarian intervention. For sure this was the meaning that beneficiaries gave to the programme. They regarded it as one of the aid policies they relied on to make a living in a context characterized by significant uncertainty. The fact that the programme was then abruptly discontinued in 2007 shows that the government also realized this, despite officially reporting that it had been a success story. An important dimension of the ‘dependency trap’ was connected to the issue about preserving claims to the land in the context of origin. When beneficiaries realized that the actual conditions in the resettlement site were significantly different from the prospect that they were given initially, many considered moving back because they could rely on a more established network of kin. Even those who did not have land at all considered that giving up the possibility to benefit from future redistributions, or accessing land through other mechanisms, was a better strategy than remaining in an environment that was alien to them. Uncertainty about the legal status of their residency one year after relocation was an additional reason. This emerges in several interviews, such as the following: Farming in the hot weather is difficult, and land is not as good as it is here … Here I have no land but I sharecrop one timad [~0.25 ha] of land belonging to my aunt ¹³ Interview with a rural development officer, Sekota, December 2006.

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… If you go away you give up your chance to get land in the future … through inheritance or government redistribution.¹⁴

This quote shows that if state ownership of land was an important mechanism to defend marginalized rural dwellers against distress sales, at the same time it constituted a formidable force constraining rural change and, as a consequence, reproducing the dependency on humanitarian intervention. The second area in which the programme produced effects that were unintended by the government is a direct consequence of the broader condition of uncertainty faced by many beneficiaries. Against a context characterized by significant challenges, many beneficiaries decided to enrol in resettlement under the pressure of government and peers, and moved by the threat of destitution and the lack of alternatives. This does not mean that these people were passive recipients of decisions taken by others, although their margin for manoeuvre was limited. One finding that emerged in all interviews is that beneficiaries navigated resettlement as they did with other development schemes. They enrolled in the programme under more or less direct forms of compulsion, and tried to make the most of it, but without disinvesting in their context of origin. This is why beneficiaries never broke relations with their community of provenance completely. Rather they did all they could to preserve a link with Sekota. The fact that such a significant amount of people returned from resettlement can be partly explained as being motivated by this. Households maintained links to their context of origin to diversify risk. The programme explicitly targeted entire households rather than individuals. This was meant to incentivize the settlement of people in the long run, while relieving population pressure over land in the context of origin. However, beneficiaries often circumvented this rule in a number of ways. The most direct one was leaving behind some household members to preserve a claim on the land and other assets. This was not always possible, as it was one of the criteria project managers monitored the most. However, delimiting a household’s perimeter was easy in theory, but very difficult in practice. Households were seldom stable and coherent units, and were constantly being reconstituted depending on life circumstances, overlapping layers of kinship, and claims to the land. People could easily circumvent the provision by which an entire household had to seek relocation simply because an unambiguous definition of what constituted a household was never applied in practice. This came out clearly in interviews such as the following: I enrolled for resettlement because I was in the kebele list, and I was told that I could get land and a better support … but part of my family stayed behind … and ¹⁴ Interview with a resettlement returnee, Sekota, December 2006.

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From a household perspective, resettlement constituted one piece of a broader puzzle to diversify risk in a context of profound uncertainty. This does not mean that households’ decisions were all coherent and that resettlement was ultimately without implications. The return of beneficiaries to their context of origin was characterized by tensions with other household members that stayed behind, and that benefited from the additional assets that were now available, particularly land and oxen. Intra-household conflicts, an understudied phenomenon in Ethiopia, was never manifest, and rather unfolded in terms of resentment and the renegotiation of the distribution of resources in an environment of scarcity and profound vulnerability. This can be empirically depicted as follows: When we came back, some people were happy, but some others were not …. They told we should have stayed there [i.e. in the resettlement site] because here there is no enough land for all … And initially we were unsure whether to tell the kebele that we were back, we were afraid this could have had consequences.¹⁶

This excerpt shows that the experience of returnees was considerably challenging from a social and economic perspective. While many had invested time and resources of their own in the new venture, when they returned they often found themselves in a position of further marginalization. The lack of clarity about their legal status was often coupled by significant social stigma, from both peers and local officials, for not having been able to make it. Their re-integration in Sekota was not easy. Returnees had to struggle to retrieve their assets and, in the cases in which they had left any, their land.

2.9 Conclusion In this chapter I have discussed the Voluntary Resettlement Programme implemented by the Ethiopian government between 2002 and 2007 as a form of development-induced displacement. I have argued that resettlement reflected an emerging political discourse on productivism at the beginning of the 2000s. Such narrative emerged as a consequence of the 2001 political crisis in the TPLF/EPRDF and took shape through the implementation of the first two PRSPs that the country implemented between 2002 and 2005. The case of Waag Himra zone in Amhara region highlights how resettlement generated complex social, political, and economic effects beyond its intended developmental objectives. ¹⁵ Interview with a resettlement returnee, Sekota, November 2006. ¹⁶ Interview with a resettlement returnee, Sekota, October 2006.

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Implementation revealed a broader conflict between the vision behind resettlement, and the actual meaning and values that beneficiaries gave to the programme. Conflict had important state-making effects, constituting a central aspect in the negotiation of state-society relations in contemporary Ethiopia. The vision of the political elite was to use resettlement as a permanent fix to tackle chronic emergencies, while making a more efficient use of ‘underexploited’ areas. Resettlement was imbued with a political repertoire about sustaining rural modernization through significant social engineering and the mobilization of the local state apparatus. In retrospect, the resettlement policy of the early 2000s can be regarded as containing the seeds of what in the following years became the developmental state ideology. Its emphasis on collective participation in the country’s development, geared along lines of strong state intervention, was coupled by the new priority regarding productivity and economic growth. The case of Waag Himra demonstrates that beneficiaries interpreted the programme in very different ways. Primarily they tried to make the most of resettlement as part of a risk diversification strategy in a context of great vulnerability and uncertainty. A significant number of beneficiaries returned from resettlement months after relocation took place, and many never intended to leave permanently in the first place. While the conditions of dependency on state support never really improved in the resettlement site, upon returning many beneficiaries experienced further marginalization and destitution. The case of Waag Himra shows that resettlement had mixed effects, and ultimately became yet another emergency programme, despite the fact it was initially intended as a pathway for sustained rural development. The VRP was drastically scaled down between 2006 and 2007, and was prematurely phased out by the end of 2007. At that point the Amhara government had relocated less than a third of the 200,000 people it initially aimed to target. An unknown number of the people that departed for resettlement made their way back to their place of origin within months, as the case of Waag Himra presented here shows. The termination of the programme also marked a regrouping of the categories of ‘food insecure’ and ‘chronically food insecure’. The PSNP and the other components of the new Food Security Strategy were extended to ensure the selection of the most marginalized households. However, this did not mean the end of the political emphasis on productivism to sustain the country’s transformation. As I will discuss in the next chapters, the failure of resettlement to boost the rural economy convinced the political elite to undertake a more decisive step towards agriculture commercialization, the promotion of entrepreneurial initiatives, and, ultimately, manufacturing industry. This meant opening up the doors to the private sector and international investors: the breaking of yet another taboo in the Marxist-Leninist ideology of the EPRDF political leadership. That opening up to the private sector was the new way forward had already become increasingly clear during the implementation of the

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2005 PASDEP. The 2006–2007 PASDEP progress report (MoFED, 2007) outlined a vision whereby resettlement sites across the country had to become centres where investors, settlers, and other residents involved in agro-processing and other off-farm activities as a driver for regional and national development. The sudden rise and fall of resettlement as a policy tool for rural development in the course of the 2000s is an example that illustrates the negotiation of statesociety relations under EPRDF. The case of Waag Himra shows how considerable state power was mobilized in rural development implementation, but how, at the same time, this was also generative of new openings and social formations.

3 Manoeuvering Land Registration: Decentralization of Land Administration in Siraro 3.1 Introduction The relationship between the Abyssinian highlands and the southern, western, and eastern lowlands is a recurrent theme in the long history of the formation of modern Ethiopia. The project of centralization of state authority initiated by Menelik II in the mid-nineteenth century was characterized by a violent history of military conquest and subjugation of these territories, and today remains largely incomplete and politically contested. The question of land access and control lies at the core of present-day contestations around the nature of the Ethiopian state. A consolidated historiography relying on the centre-periphery framework reads these dynamics in terms of the historical project of state formation pursued by the Abyssinian core and the significant resistance against centralization mobilized by peripheral groups (Dessalegn Rahmato, 2009). Oromia, the setting for the case study of this chapter (see Figure 3.1), effectively epitomizes many of these discussions. A growing body of Oromo historiography casts resistance against incorporation in the Abyssinian Empire as a defining feature of the modern history of Oromo nationalism. However, Oromia has never been a centralized or unitary polity. Organized along a decentralized clan structure known as the Gadaa-Qaalluu system (see Asmaron Legesse, 1973), the project of a unified Oromo nation emerged in conjunction with the imperialist ambitions of the Abyssinian empire, the exploitative system of absentee landlordism that came with military conquest and, more broadly, with opposition to authoritarian governance. In this chapter I discuss the question of land and authoritarianism in Oromia through important policy reforms providing for the decentralization of land management and administration under the developmental state since the 2000s. Empirically I discuss the implementation of a programme of rural land registration in Siraro, West Arsi. The chapter contributes to debates about the relationship between the formalization of land rights, decentralization of land administration, and the production of local state authority. I argue that decentralization reforms illustrate the significant scalar dynamics within which the Everyday Practices of State Building in Ethiopia. Davide Chinigò, Oxford University Press. © Davide Chinigò (2022). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192869654.003.0003

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Study Area

Federal Level

Siraro West Arsi

Regional Level

Fig. 3.1 Location of study area in Oromia region, West Arsi zone. Map prepared by the author.

developmental state project is enmeshed. On the one hand, decentralization of land administration resulted in a significant deconcentration of power to the local party/state complex, effectively re-centralizing political authority. On the other hand, the significant power mobilized through decentralization generated a wide set of conflicts, manoeuvring, and contestations that describe how Oromo farmers tried to make the most of limited opportunities and to minimize risk threatening their social, economic, and political reproduction. One important consequence was the politicization of Oromo and Arsi identities, channelled through a generalized anti-government sentiment. When the EPRDF took power in the 1990s, decentralization was one of the cornerstones of ethnic federalism as it was attributed the important and yet ambiguous role to accommodate claims to self-administration while at the same time preserving federation unity. In the first decade of EPRDF rule, the main objective of reforms was fiscal decentralization and the repartition of prerogatives between federal government and the nine regional states (Keller and Smith, 2005). The 2000s marked a more ambitious plan known as woreda level decentralization, which relied on a system of ‘block grants’ being transferred to district level directly (Dom and Lister, 2010). Land management and administration, the specific topic of this chapter, is a crucial aspect of decentralization reforms in Ethiopia. While the 1995 Constitution reaffirmed the system of state ownership of land established under the Derg

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with the radical 1975 land reform, a number of important reforms established a decentralized system of land administration in the course of the 2000s, including federal and regional land proclamations. Rather than a genuine devolution of powers, decentralization of land administration entailed the deconcentration of federal prerogatives to regional and lower level bodies, while re-centralizing authority over land allocation via the system of accountability of the party/state administrative structure. A significant component of re-centralization of authority over land takes place through a capillary network of micro-institutional clusters that is found below the surface of formal state apparatus. I will show how these institutional networks, existing in the twilight of the state-party complex, play an important role in extending and thickening state power in the rural milieu (see also Asebe Regassa et al., 2019; Côte and Korf, 2018), making farmers and resources legible to the state (Scott, 1998), and configuring state-society relations. Empirically the chapter addresses the case of Siraro woreda, in West Arsi zone, where I conducted fieldwork between 2009 and 2010. I discuss decentralization of land administration in relation to a federal programme of rural land registration. Land registration was launched in Tigray, Amhara, Oromia, and SNNPR in the late 1990s. The programme aimed to distribute formal land use titles to each farming household and create a comprehensive rural land registry. Land registration began with a titling programme in Tigray in 1998, followed by one in the Amhara region in 2002. The programme was not implemented in Oromia and SNNPR until 2004. According to the Rural Land Use Directorate of the Ministry of Agriculture, over 90% of farming households in these regions had received land certificates by 2012 (MoARD, 2013). Land registration had the objective to strengthen the productivity of smallholder agriculture, to increase the capitalization and long-term investments on land, and to incentivize the marketization of agricultural products. The impetus for land registration in Ethiopia reflected an evolution in the political ideology of the EPRDF leadership. The aftermath of the controversial 2005 elections, when land registration became a government priority and implementation was speeded up, had profound effects on the ways the political leadership understood the country’s trajectory of transformation. In rural areas, achieving rapid economic growth meant departing from the strategy of horizontal support given to agriculture in the 1990s (see chapter two), and supporting instead the ‘structural transformation’ of the countryside required to realize an agrarian revolution. At the same time, economic growth required redistributive mechanisms. In the mind of the EPRDF, this meant avoiding excessive capital accumulation in the hands of ‘rent seeking elites’ (Mesfin Gebremichael and Vaughan, 2013), as well as limiting as much as possible the deterioration of peasant smallholders into a class of under-employed urban proletarians. State ownership of land, the EPRDF political leadership contended, was an important tool for protecting smallholder agriculture in a context in which the market was to play a greater role. Providing

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for the formalization of land use rights, land registration had the double objective of consolidating the smallholder structure of the countryside while pushing the productivity revolution that agricultural policies of the 1990s had failed to deliver. In the 2000s, the argument for land registration reflected a broader international consensus among donors and financial institutions, based on macro-economic considerations inspired by neoliberal ideas, about the formalization of land rights as a main pathway to economic growth and rural modernization in Africa. These ideas were inspired by economist Hernando de Soto’s (2000) book The Mystery of Capital, in which de Soto contends that the low productivity of agriculture in Africa has its deep roots in the lack of clear and enduring property rights over land.¹ This configured land registration as a new wave of land reform aiming to formalize land tenure, although without modifying existing agrarian structures (Deininger and Binswanger, 1999: 651). The argument for promoting the registration of land rights is that formal titles improve ‘individual security of tenure’. Greater security is meant to boost productivity, land rental markets, and investments on land improvements (World Bank, 2008: 139–141). According to Deininger and Binswanger (1999: 249), ‘secure individual property rights to land would therefore not only increase the beneficiaries’ incentives and provide collateral for further investment but … would automatically lead to socially and economically desirable land market transactions’. Land registration was sponsored as a low-cost mechanism of land reform, whereby a clearer demarcation of land borders was thus expected to reduce land conflicts. The productionist argument of neoliberal land reform behind land registration was premised by ideas about a minimal state—‘rolling back the state’—to enable market forces to deliver economic development. This was certainly not the case in Ethiopia. On the contrary, a central finding of this chapter is that land registration in Ethiopia marked a new high in the level of intrusion of the state in rural affairs. This marks some degree of continuity between decentralization of land administration and previous approaches to land reform and rural development oriented to centralise state authority. The case of Siraro shows how significant recentralization of political authority over land and the expansion of federal state power in the rural milieu took place through the network of micro-institutions implementing land registration. More specifically, I argue that recentralization of authority took place at the intersection between Land Administration Committees (LACs)—the body in charge to undertake registration—the Development Agents (DAs), and the Oromo People’s Democratic Party (OPDO). Land registration became a tool for the state to make resources and people legible, capturing the profit of smallholder agriculture while intensifying the monitoring and political control of rural areas. ¹ For de Soto customary land rights cannot be used as collateral in access to formal credit, and they provide strong disincentives for land-related investments. By emphasizing that land becomes a dead capital, de Soto establishes a link between formalization of land tenure, rural modernization, and productivity increase.

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In Siraro, land registration entailed an increase in the land tax rates, as well as an improved ability of local administrative structures to levy such tax. While quantitative studies have reported a decrease in land conflicts as a result of registration (Holden et al., 2010), the case of Siraro shows that land conflicts often remained under the surface, to re-emerge eventually in terms of anti-government resentment and mistrust. Land conflicts manifested with particular intensity over land that was already disputed between one or more farmers. Higher incidences of conflict were recorded where land had greater value, both in terms of agricultural potential and in being close to the district centres and small towns. An important source of conflict was the registration’s lack of a clear and unambiguous delimitation of land parcels. Land demarcation was conducted by identifying landmarks or objects (such as trees or stone) in the plot, and measurement took place with rudimentary instruments such as ropes that sometimes were of different sizes. This increased local officials’ room for manoeuvre during the process of registration, including the potential to reward kin and political allies. Farmers in Siraro were not passive recipients of land registration. They rather tried to navigate the process of registration to their advantage, making the most of the opportunities that the programme opened up. The lack of clear demarcation created both opportunities and challenges. While it generated advantages for the most dynamic and entrepreneurial farmers, and for those farmers who were close to the OPDO, it exposed the most marginalized farmers, or those who were critical of government, to greater insecurity and uncertainty over their land use rights, sometimes including threats of eviction. One example is that the registration process generated pressure towards land that historically was used as communal land for grazing purposes. Cases were reported of farmers attempting to validate claims to community land via loose registration. While encroachment to communal land has deep roots in rapidly increasing population pressure over land and growing landlessness, land registration provided the tool for some dynamic farmers to secure and institutionalize their claims. Sometimes this generated significant tension with herders, fuelling historical tensions between Oromo Arsi, practicing sedentary agriculture, and pastoralist Oromo Guji. I argue that the set of practices, the tactics, and the acts of manoeuvring that land registration describes all illustrate the trajectory of state-society relations in a context in which land registration put at risk their socio-economic reproduction as well as their sense of identity in relation to land. Thus the long history of authoritarian land relationships between the central state and Oromo Arsi farmers configured land registration as merely the last in a long list of intrusions limiting farmers’ independence. The politicization of the land question, and the significant transformations generated by land policy, including threat of displacement and changing conditions of production, exacerbated existing tendencies of ethnic identification along an Oromo national identity forged in opposition to what was perceived as a top-down, centralizing state policy. It is important to note that

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farmers often welcomed the distribution of land certificates. The reason was that they believed the title could leverage their position in case of dispute with the state, for instance allowing claims to better compensation in case of expropriation. However, while registration was helpful in formalizing land rights that were not disputed, the programme was less effective in settling on-going conflicts over land. For instance, land registration usually did not take place when land was disputed between two or more farmers. While these tensions simmered under surface for a long period of time, Siraro, and West Arsi zone more broadly, became one of the epicentres of the 2016–2018 government protests that led to the historical change in the EPRDF leadership in 2018. The historical question of land clearly played a role in bolstering anti-government unrest. The chapter concludes that while the economic impact of land registration remains difficult to assess, it nonetheless generated important social and political transformations in state-farmers relations in Siraro. Far from being a technical matter, the institutionalization of land use rights in Siraro reflected a highly political and contested process of negotiation of local state authority. Land registration phased out some formal aspects contributing to farmers’ sense of ‘tenure insecurity’, while adding new dimensions of uncertainty and insecurity, which stem from a long history of authoritarian land relationships in Oromia. The chapter is based on qualitative methods of data collection and analysis conducted through several fieldwork visits to Siraro between 2009 and 2011. These included the collection of around seventy semi-structured interviews with farmers, local officials, and civil society organisations, as well as focus group discussions, and participant observation.

3.2 Experiences of Decentralized Land Administration in Africa Decentralization can be defined as the transfer of powers and authority from central government to lower levels in a political-administrative and territorial hierarchy (Ribot, 2004: 17). This can take two main forms. Deconcentration, or administrative decentralization, refers to the transfer of functions to lower-level bodies who are upwardly accountable to the central government. On the contrary, devolution, also known as political decentralization, involves the transfer of authority and decision-making to local bodies and downwardly accountable actors, such as elected local institutions. The extent to which devolution is effective depends on the degree of democratic representation and accountability of local authorities to their constituency (Alden-Wily, 2003: 11). Discussing the case of Kenya post-2013 elections, Cheeseman et al. (2016) show that decentralization reforms can be effective in creating a more representative political system, although in a context in which the recalibration of local political authority opens up spaces for corruption and ethnic tensions.

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Depending on the nature of local institutions and the powers devolved, the literature usually refers to at least three broad models of decentralization of land administration (Alden-Wily, 2003; 2006; Olowu and Wunsch, 2003; Cotula, Toulmin, and Hesse, 2004; Crawford and Hartman, 2008). A first option is appointing administrative bodies from above. The composition of land-specific bodies varies greatly throughout Africa, and usually they are appointed by central government or other federal ministries, to which they remain accountable. Examples of such institutions are Namibia’s Communal Land Boards, the District Land Boards and the Sub-County Land Committees in Uganda, Botswana’s Land Boards, and Land Commissions in Niger (Meinzen-Dick and Di Gregorio, 2008: 11). Appointed bodies may lack legitimacy, especially when their prerogatives overlap with existing customary rules (Cotula, Toulmin, and Hesse, 2004: 11). Setting up new institutions is also costly and requires time before they become fully operational (Ribot, 2002: 61). A second option is electing local government institutions. This is the case in Village Councils in Tanzania, as provided for by the 1999 Village Land Act (Pallotti, 2008). In Ethiopia woreda and kebele councils are elected institutions. Nonetheless, other appointed government bodies, such as the Agriculture and Rural Development Office (ARDO), hold de facto authority for land administration. Elected institutions are usually more accountable to their constituency (Ribot, 2002: 61). Nevertheless, the concentration of authority for land administration and allocation within elected local administrative structures can create opportunities for corruption and patronage (Paulos Chanie, 2007). A third option is providing customary institutions with a formal role over land administration. Catherine Boone (2014) has argued that this increasingly prominent model configures ‘neo-customary’ land tenure regimes. Empowering customary authorities through the decentralization of power has improved rights and reduced conflict over land in some countries (Alden-Wily, 2003). Customary authorities usually hold greater legitimacy than new bodies in local communities. This option enables the state to save the money that would be used to set up new land authorities. Customary authorities may also ease the integration of customary land rights and formal law in the long run (Cotula and Mathieu, 2008: 79). Despite these advantages, formalizing customary law may reproduce economic and power inequalities within the formal legislation—for instance over minority groups and women’s land rights (Alden-Wily, 2006: 19). Customary authorities’ involvement can vary. Some have no role, whereas others actively participate in land management and even have recognized land tenure responsibilities (Meinzen-Dick and Di Gregorio, 2008: 8). In Ghana, the Constitution directly empowers local chiefs with land management responsibilities (Ribot, 2002: 6). In Malawi, chiefs are salaried local officials vested with significant powers over land allocation and administration (Eggen, 2011). The Ethiopian Land Administration Committees in charge of the implementation of land registration are composed of both state officials and local elders.

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Whilst the literature distinguishes between elected and appointed bodies, and between existing and new institutions (Ribot, 2002: 16–25), the case of Ethiopia shows that the extent to which powers are transferred—and whether accountability is directed either to the federal government or to the people—is not exclusively dependent on the nature of local bodies. In Ethiopia, the federal government exercises control through a variety of tools (Paulos Chanie, 2007; 2009; Aalen, 2011). First, the federal government retains ultimate ownership over all land. Second, the local administrative structure in Ethiopia is dominated by a de facto single party rule, whereby the EPRDF and its affiliates play a dominant role in rural affairs. As I will show in the case of Siraro, the system of local administrations overlaps considerably with the party structure at the local level. Decentralization has contributed to blurring the boundary between administrative and political roles. Local officials implementing development initiatives are the same as those convening political meetings for the local party branch. Finally, local institutions largely depend on transfers of budget from the federal government. This strengthens the central government’s grip on local administration. These issues configure decentralization of land administration in Ethiopia as an example of deconcentration of state power, enabling the re-centralization of political authority over land.

3.3 Decentralization of Land Management and Administration in Ethiopia How the EPRDF understood the historical land question is an important theme defining the scope of ethnic federalism and its articulation through the developmental state model. As noted by Dessalegn Rahmato (2009: 347), in Ethiopian history the ability of any regime to stay in power was strongly affected by its relationship with the peasantry, which often meant violent conquest, assimilation, and coercion. While ethnic federalism marked a discontinuity with the Derg’s project to build a unified Ethiopian nation under the impetus of a socialist state, the EPRDF shared a similar view to its predecessor on the land question. After taking power, the EPRDF retained the system of state ownership of land established with the 1975 land reform. As result, the relationship between land and the politico-administrative structure is today politically charged. Markakis (2011: 356) contends that ‘the real issue behind the debate on federalism, which ostensibly focuses on power sharing between centre and periphery, is the perennial concern with access to land’. Article 40 of the 1995 Constitution affirms that land and natural resources are common property of the ‘nations, nationalities and people of Ethiopia’, and explicitly prohibits land sales and any other form of exchange such as mortgage. Farmers and pastoralists are entitled to use rights free of charge for cultivation and grazing, and the Constitution explicitly recognizes that they cannot be dispossessed

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of these rights (FDRE, 1995: 12). By allowing renting in and out of both land and labour, the use of the land is more liberalized than during the Derg and inheritance rights have been strengthened. The Constitution provides for a decentralized system of land administration: while legislative power over land and natural resources—a prerogative that effectively concentrates extensive power in the government and its executives—is assigned to the federal government, land administration is formally vested with the National Regional States (NRS). By the early 2000s, federal and regional legislative production was intended to fulfil these constitutional provisions. The 1997 Federal Rural Land Administration Proclamation established the general framework to transfer authority, particularly land redistribution, on land administration to the NRS (FDRE, 1997). Decentralization of land administration was part of the broader process of deconcentration of financial resources and capacity from federal to districts that was started in the early 2000s, also known as woreda-level decentralization (Dom and Lister, 2010). Under this system, block grants were allocated directly to the district level under a shifting variety of criteria. Woreda-level decentralization was also supported by international donors through various programmes. Among these was the Public Sector Capacity Building Program (PSCAP), started in 2003 by a joint collaboration between the Ethiopian government and the World Bank.² A main component of PSCAP was to strengthen district level decentralization and rural local government structures by making service delivery more efficient and accountable (Vaughan and Rafanell, 2012). The NRS of Amhara and Oromia issued land laws a few months before the federal proclamation was enacted to then add revisions respectively in 2000 and 2002. Tigray issued its land law in 1997, and then amended it in 2002. SNNPR enacted its land law in 2003. Nonetheless, a few years later the legislative framework of land administration changed once again. This came as a result of a significant turning point in the recent political history of Ethiopia: the May 2005 general elections. In the next section I will give a general background to the events of 2005 before going back to discuss the implications for land administration.

3.3.1 The 2005 General Elections The May 2005 general elections constitute a landmark in the recent political history of Ethiopia. Characterized by an initial opening to genuine multi-party competition, unexpected opposition performance brought the EPRDF to close off the democratic space in authoritarian fashion, while months of instability and violence ensued. One important outcome of the 2005 elections was an acceleration of the ² Details about PSCAP can be found at http://www.worldbank.org/projects/P074020/publicsector-capacity-building-program-support-project?lang=en [Accessed on August 2020].

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reform process that the political leadership initiated with the 2001 TPLF crisis (see chapter two). The 2005 elections consolidated in Meles Zenawi’s mind the idea that the developmental state was the only model possible to fulfil revolutionary democracy (Meles Zenawi, 2012). The months preceding the elections were characterized by unprecedented opportunities for political expression. The EPRDF’s confidence of retaining a widespread electoral backing, especially in rural areas, was coupled by considerations that holding open elections would boost the country’s international legitimacy. State-controlled medias were opened up for the first time to debates between EPRDF and opposition candidates, stimulating a great deal of interest among those people who had access to television. This was not without contradictions. Discussing a case in rural Amhara region, René Lefort (2007) noted that many rural dwellers were not used to hearing public criticisms of the government and interpreted this democratic opening as a sign of weakness of the EPRDF, which generated significant uncertainty. The opening up of the democratic space favoured the formation of two large rival coalitions to the EPRDF: the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD), and the United Ethiopian Democratic Forces (UEDF). Combined these two opposition groupings effectively contested over 80% of the parliamentary seats, with the EPRDF facing competition from the opposition in three of Ethiopia’s five most heavily populated regions (Harbeson, 2005: 152), a remarkable achievement considering that all opposition parties had started structuring across the country only months before the ballot. The CUD was an Amhara-led coalition with strong appeal among urban middle-class voters, which built a significant share of its consensus in multi-party debates aired on television and radio. Remarkably, the CUD won all twenty-three Addis Ababa seats, later leading some observers to analyse the electoral results in terms of a significant polarization of the vote between cities, where the opposition fared better, and the countryside, where EPRDF still retained significant support. The CUD political agenda challenged the EPRDF on two key points. Firstly, the CUD regarded ethnic federalism as a threat to national unity, effectively a political schema for the country’s political fragmentation, or ‘Balkanization’. Underlying a view of institutionalized ethnicity as a centrifugal force fostering political fragmentation was a deep resentment among CUD leadership for the loss of Eritrea in 1991. The CUD had in its ranks some of the most fervent supporters of the 1998– 2000 war with Eritrea who would have welcomed its continuation until a clearer victory. Secondly, the other main diverging point with EPRDF was land policy. The CUD was against the system of state ownership of land established by the Derg and advocated for its reform in favour of individual freehold tenure. From this perspective the CUD was aligned with international donors’ views supporting the liberalization of land tenure as a driver for long-term rural modernization and economic development.

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The UEDF, the other main opposition coalition, differed from the CUD on the fundamental issue about federalism. The UEDF argument on ethnicity was radical. In its view ethnic federalism was a political project that the EPRDF had until then pursued on paper only. The establishment of an ethnic confederation had not changed authoritarian centre/periphery relationships, and significant devolution of powers to ethnically defined administrative units. Despite this significant difference, CUD and UEDF had amicable relationships, shaped along the common objective to defeat EPRDF, and during electoral campaign both coalitions claimed they would be ready to join together in a government should they collectively receive more seats. The UEDF was a cluster of political formations that claimed a more democratic distribution of power within the federation, a claim that resonated well with many Oromo nationalists. Two important legs of UEDF were the Oromo National Congress (ONC), a moderate party led by Addis Ababa University Professor Merera Gudina, and the Oromo Federal Democratic Movement (OFDM). Despite its late appearance on the electoral campaign, lack of funding and poor organizational capacity, the OFDM performed particularly well in the elections because it represented the more radical claims of Oromo people. As stated by Charles Schaefer (2012: 195) the OFDM ‘was not viewed as antagonistic to the Oromo Liberation Front’, which by 2005 the government had already declared to be a terrorist organization. The months immediately before the elections were characterized by a growing momentum for the opposition. As this became clear the EPRDF leadership took unprecedented measures to mobilize its supporters through the party/state political machinery. These included harassment and intimidation of opposition candidates, as well as threats to people to vote for the EPRDF and its coalition parties. Schaefer (2012: 199) noted that in Oromia significant political mobilization took place through the newly established micro-institutional networks of the garee and gott.³ Tensions culminated after election day, when credible charges of fraud surfaced, along with doubts about the impartiality of the National Election Board (NEB). While state media aired declarations of EPRDF officials claiming victory, the government moved quickly to ban demonstrations after acknowledging the loss of Addis Ababa to the CUD. Provisional results were announced on 21 May. Nonetheless, hundreds of claims of election irregularities came from both EPRDF and opposition parties and the provisional results were delayed until 8 June, officially to allow the NEB to fully investigate the irregularities. Between 6–8 June, security forces killed thirty-six protesters and incarcerated thousands, after the government accused the CUD of being responsible for organizing illegal

³ Gotts and garees refer to groups and sub-groups of households below kebele level, in principle organized to coordinate development activities. I will address these micro-institutions later in this chapter when discussing the implementation of land registration in Siraro, and in chapter five.

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demonstrations in Addis Ababa, an allegation the CUD leadership rejected with force. Following a vote recount the NEB gave the victory to the EPRDF. The opposition had done immensely better than in previous elections: in 2000 the opposition was able to win only 12% of the seats (Abbink, 2006). On 9 August the NEB released official results, with the ruling EPRDF being cast nearly 56% of the total seats (Harbeson, 2005: 17). This was then confirmed in September when the final results were announced. EPRDF retained the government’s control with 327 seats, or 59% of the vote. Opposition parties won 174 seats, nearly 32% of the vote, with a remarkable performance by the CUD, which alone won 20% of the vote (Abbink, 2006: 23). Both the CUD and UEDF rejected the result, alluding to the fraudulent nature of elections. Irregularities were also denounced by a number of international observer groups, such as the European Union Election Observation Mission. The following months were characterized by significant instability that culminated in a new wave of nation-wide demonstrations. The government took strong repressive measures, leading to over 100 casualties among demonstrators in Addis Ababa at the beginning of November. Soon after, repression reached independent media, civil society organizations, and opposition parties’ leadership. Members of the CUD leadership, including the newly elected Addis Ababa mayor, were arrested on charges such as attempted genocide and instigation of violence. Tronvoll and Hagmann (2012: 18) estimated that about 20,000 to 30,000 members of opposition were arrested and detained for variable periods of time. The 2005 elections remain today a traumatic moment in the political history of Ethiopia that many observers regard as a significant turning point. For the sake of discussion in this chapter, the elections had one important consequence. They consolidated the EPRDF conviction, in Meles Zenawi particularly, that the country required embarking upon a rapid strategy of economic transformation through a revised land administration strategy. This brought an unprecedented expansion of the state/party apparatus across the country based on the argument about making development implementation more effective. The 2005 elections contributed to the blurring of political and development objectives, which is a distinguishing feature of what was then an emerging developmental state ideology.

3.3.2 Decentralization of Land Administration after 2005 The 2005 elections proved crucial to shaping land administration reforms that the government had initiated few years before. As noted by Dessalegn Rahmato (2009: 191), while elections were unfolding, and amid realizing the strength of the opposition, the government decided to pass two important legislations in the last days of the legislature. A new Rural Land Administration and Use Proclamation (FDRE, 2005a) was adopted, as was a proclamation ruling on the Expropriation

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of Landholdings for Public Purposes and Payment of Compensation (EoLPP) (FDRE, 2005c).⁴ While reaffirming state ownership of land, these important legislations introduced three broad principles that shaped significantly the country’s land policy in the following years. Firstly, Articles 15–17 took decisive steps to speed up decentralization of land administration. Article 17 states that NRS ‘shall establish institutions at all levels that shall implement rural land administration and land use systems, and shall strengthen the institutions already established’. In the following years important prerogatives over land administration were transferred to the levels of woreda and kebele. These included land redistribution, implementation of land registration, and agricultural extensions. Beside kebele and woreda councils, which are elected institutions, the Agriculture and Rural Development Office (ARDO), the Environmental Protection and Land Use Authority (EPLAUA), and the Food Security Office (FSO) took on important prerogatives over land administration. These bodies are the physical extension of different federal ministries and other government-led institutions, which hold powers of appointment and dismissal in the rural areas. However, in the post-2005 elections context, bringing development implementation closer to people and tightening the grip of the government in the rural milieu became two parallel, and yet not easily discernible, priorities of decentralization reforms (Dessalegn Rahmato, 2009: 192). Secondly, the federal land proclamation revamped rural land registration and set new targets for its implementation in the four most populous regions (Amhara, Tigray, Oromia, and SNNPR). Article 6 of the proclamation empowered Land Administration Committees (LACs) with even more ambitious tasks: performing as court of first instance for land dispute resolution, and setting out land-use and environmental protection planning. The 2005 elections had an important role in giving a new impulse to land registration. By establishing a system of certification that offered the equivalent of long-term leasing rights, land registration was the EPRDF response to the opposition argument (particularly the CUD) against state ownership of land. Land registration can be regarded as a political compromise meant to configure a land policy aligning with internationally backed views supporting the individualization of tenure, while preserving state ownership of land. The EPRDF continued to resist full privatization on the ground that larger producers would overwhelm smaller ones, sharpening inequality while dampening growth. Thirdly, the proclamation established rules that for the first time allowed the acquisition of rural land for commercial agriculture and industrial purposes (Article 5), easing the procedures for public authorities to promote land ⁴ In the following years the NRS were required to revise their regional laws in accordance with the new federal proclamation. Tigray and Amhara were the first, issuing the new Land Administration and Use Proclamation in 2006 (TNRS, 2006; ANRS, 2006), followed by Oromia and SNNPR in 2007 (ONRS, 2007; SNNP, 2007).

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expropriation for generic ‘development purposes’ (Article 9) or when land is not ‘properly protected and conserved’ (Article 10). This prerogative was reinforced by the 2005 EoLPP, which affirms that the competent authorities have the power to expropriate rural and urban landholdings for public purposes or when the land is required for ‘a better development project to be carried out by public entities, private investors, cooperative societies or other organs, or where such expropriation has been decided by the appropriate higher regional or federal government organ for the same purpose’ (FDRE, 2005c: Article 3). In Oromia, the regional land law confirmed that land use rights could be terminated if the land is required for more important public uses or when it is not properly conserved (ONRS, 2007: 7–8). In the following years these three land policy directives became among the most recognizable features of the Ethiopian developmental state model. In the rest of this chapter I will focus on the first two (decentralization and land registration), while in chapter four I will address agriculture commercialization and the role of foreign investments in land. The case of Siraro shows how in the post-2005 context decentralization and land registration were associated with growing authoritarianism, and the significant expansion of the party/state apparatus in the rural context. To understand their implications for state-society relations, one must read the scope of these reforms against the long and controversial history of the incorporation of Arsiland within the Ethiopian nation-state, a history in which the quest for land access and control is a recurrent and defining theme.

3.4 The Historical Land and National Questions in Arsiland: the Case of Siraro In this section I argue that when Siraro was incorporated into the Ethiopian Empire by the late nineteenth century, decentralization and land titling were two key policies that imperial authorities employed to centralize state authority. These policies continue to shape the relationship between Arsi Oromo and the Ethiopian state to this day. Siraro is a rural woreda of West Arsi Zone in Oromia Region. At the time of the last available population census in 2007, the district counted close to 146,000 people. Smallholder farming is the predominant economic activity, official documents characterize 60% of the district as having medium to high potential for agriculture, and the agro-climatic conditions are suitable for the production of cereals. Maize is by far the largest crop, followed by horse beans, haricot beans, sorghum, and teff.⁵ Siraro has a high population density (214 people per km2 ), ⁵ Data gathered at the Agriculture and Rural Development Office (ARDO) in Loke Heda, Siraro.

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and a fragmented pattern of landholding, with households on average farming between 0.5 and 0.75 hectares of land. Households are usually large (five to six people) and agricultural produce is consumed rather than marketed. Nonetheless, commercialization of agricultural produce is an expanding phenomenon.⁶ Siraro forms the south-western edge of West Arsi, along the Great Rift Valley, and a large tract of its territory is delimited by the Bilate river, which also marks the regional border between Oromia and SNNPR. Over 80% of people in the district are Arsi Oromo practising Islam. Siraro borders with Kambatta and Hadiya in the west, with Wolaita in the south, and with Sidama in the east. Pockets of people identifying with all these groups, as well as Alaba and Amhara, constitute the main minorities present in Siraro. Siraro is part of the historical Arsi Oromo country, a polity extending over present-day Arsi and Bale regions, organized through a social system known as the Gadaa-Qaalluu,⁷ and territorially structured through decentralized governance clans called Gosa. Oromo scholars describe the Gadaa-Qaalluu as a system of social organization based on values of egalitarianism, justice, and democracy (Asmaron Legesse, 2000), although this also reflects a romanticized view of historical Oromo society. In his recent book, Abbas Gnamo (2013: 138) effectively explains that ‘[i]f a word could summarize modern Arsi Oromo history it would be resistance, which includes military, political and cultural’. The history of incorporation of Arsi Oromo into the Abyssinian Empire by the end of nineteenth century is indeed one of the most violent, bloody, and controversial in the modern history of Ethiopia. The war of conquest was met with unprecedented Oromo military resistance. Arsi people were then governed through an exploitative and despotic system that Abbas Gnamo has defined as a ‘Ethiopian feudal-colonial system’. This was characterized by feudal socioeconomic relations such as serfdom and forced labour, a repressive judiciary, and administrative apparatus dominated by an Amhara absentee landed aristocracy, composed of melkenya (administrative officers) and neftenya (soldiers), and crafted along the institution of balabbats, coopted local agents/leaders appointed to oversee a system of indirect rule. The quest for land control, and the competition for the profit that could be reaped from the land, shaped this violent history of domination and resistance, leaving a profound legacy that continues still in the form of a national Oromo identity crafted in opposition to policies of state centralization. As lucidly summarized by John Cohen ‘[t]he result of fierce Arsi resistance was borne by their descendants’ (1986: 50). ⁶ For further details see the report ‘Physical and Socio-Economical Profile of Siraro Woreda’ available at the Agriculture and Rural Development Office (ARDO), Loke Heda, Siraro. ⁷ Asmaron Legesse (1973: 8) defined the Gadaa as a ‘system of classes (luba) that succeed each other every eight years in assuming economic, political and ritual responsibilities. Each Gadaa class remains in power during a specific term (Gadaa) which begins and ends with a formal power transfer ceremony’. While Gadaa encompasses rituals, politics, social organization, and military activities, Qaalluu identifies the spiritual authority underlying Gadaa.

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It took over ten years (1882–1892) for the armies of Menelik II to win against the harsh resistance of Arsi Oromo. This was the single most protracted war of conquest undertaken by Menelik II in building modern Ethiopia. Despite the superiority that European fire guns gave to the Shoan army, Menelik was on the brink of capitulation after losing at least three important battles, narrowly escaping death on two occasions. The fate of the military campaign was always uncertain, at least until Arsi were defeated on 6 September 1886 at Azule, costing the lives of over 12,000 Oromo fighters in one single day, as well as the mass mutilation of men and women to win morale. The military defeat did not bring resistance to an end. At least up until 1918, Oromo Arsi remained hostile to the physical presence of Amhara migrant farmers and soldiers, who in turn resided in garrison towns (katama) to avoid security risks. In this period Arsi territory was controlled through an administrative apparatus similar to the British indirect rule in which melkenya (imperial officials) and neftenya reached the Arsi through the balabbats. After 1919, and with even more vigour after the Italian occupation of 1936–1941, the imperial state progressively centralized administration and established a system of absentee landlordism. One important outcome of the imperial conquest was the end of the socio-political organization provided by the Gadaa-Qaalluu system (Cerulli, 1922; Braukamper, 1984). The heavy price paid by Arsi Oromo for attempting to maintain their independence, including the collapse of their social organization, had two important consequences. Firstly, the particularly harsh system of administration and predatory confiscation of resources established in the aftermath of military victory can be partly explained as a retaliatory measure for the fierce opposition of Oromo to incorporation. Secondly, this consolidated a view among the Oromo nationalists that although they had been defeated militarily, resistance to subjugation and Amharization would have continued through different forms in the generations to come. One important example is the Arsi Oromo mass conversion to Islam in the years following their capitulation (Cerulli, 1932). The war had left a profound trauma that the political economy system established thereafter significantly amplified. Italian explorer Cerulli (1932: 142) estimated that by the 1930s around 75% of the Arsi Gosa had become Muslim. Islam in Imperial Ethiopia was regarded as an anti-establishment religion in opposition to Orthodox Christianity. As noted by Abbas Gnamo, conversion to Islam was ‘a reaction to military subjugation and the ensuing colonial political economy and policy of the Ethiopian Empire’ (2013: 138). The social and cultural disruption generated by the decline of the Gadaa-Qaalluu system explains why Islam was so quickly picked up by the Arsi Oromo after they were incorporated into the Empire. Islam provided a new form of cultural expression, establishing social cohesion in a context of profound uncertainty and heightened transformation.

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3.4.1 State-farmer Relationships Like other newly incorporated territories imperial authorities classified Arsi as periphery (Dar Ager) (Brotto, 1939). However, the peripheral character of Arsi was neither geographical—most of the region is less than 100 km away from Addis Ababa—nor economic, since the region had large tracts of prime agricultural land. Distance should rather be interpreted in relation to the region’s subordination within the imperial hierarchy of power, which over time shaped cultural, ethnic, and religious identities. The peripheral status of Arsi was crafted along feudal-colonial relations based on a new land tenure system, which was characterized by extremely exploitative production arrangements and extensive land dispossession. Until then Arsi had practiced pastoralism and scattered agriculture through a tenure system whereby clan members had equal rights to use land over a definite geographic area. Social differentiation took place alongside the ownership of cattle, which farmers exchanged in different ways following the Gaada system. Beside economic interests, land was expropriated as a reward to soldiers for the service they had rendered to the Emperor during the war and to incentivize further conquest, as well as to exercise effective control over the newly incorporated territories (Pankhurst, 1966: 137). The institution of balabbats was initially motivated by the need of imperial authorities to establish a link with Arsi people that heavily resisted any physical presence of settlers. While many Arsi refused to undertake this intermediary role, the Amhara often appointed as balabbat anyone who described himself as the legitimate representative of a given group of people. The institution of balabbat among the Arsi thus established a new class of imperial gatekeepers who were not necessarily representative of the social order before incorporation. This presents striking similarities to the system of indirect rule established by the British elsewhere in Africa that Mahmood Mamdani (1996) has characterized as a decentralized despotism form of governance. In exchange for their services, balabbats were administered a share of land on behalf of the people falling under their jurisdiction through a policy of land seizure known as Siso. Under Siso imperial authorities confiscated one-third of a newly conquered territory, leaving the remainder under the control of local people. Abbas Gnamo (2013: 215) notes that in the case of Arsi, imperial authorities exploited the ambiguity of the term Siso, which literally means ‘one-third’, to claim much larger shares of land, which could reach up to three-fourths of the total. In the same way, state officials often used their power to bring under their control additional land by persuading, or rather forcing, balabbats to renounce their land rights through different mechanisms, such as a legal pretext called wirsh (inheritance) (Abbas Gnamo, 2013: 215). Over time these and other more or less formal mechanisms of land dispossession combined to configure an exploitative system of absentee landlordism and tenancy, known as the Gabbar system. Arsi Oromo continued to farm the same

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land as before, but they now had to pay heavy dues to their landlords and taxes to the state. Tenant-landlord relationships in Arsi were regulated through different share-cropping arrangements. The most common were Irbo and Siso, by which tenants, while providing for inputs and oxen by themselves, handed over onefourth and one-third respectively of the produce to their landlord. Under Ekul this share went up to one-half, but in this arrangement the landlord was responsible for input and oxen provision. In addition, tenants were liable to Asrat, the tax in lieu of tithe, which normally amounted to one-tenth of the gross produce. Although this tax was abolished in 1941, it seems that state officials in Arsi continued to collect it until 1974. This reflected the extent of the power that local officials exercised in peripheral regions such as Arsi. The period between 1941 and 1974 marked a new high in the project of centralization of state authority through despotic land relations. This also entailed significant reconfiguration of the administrative boundaries of Arsi province. Until the 1960s, Arsi province had extended as far as Kambata. In an attempt to consolidate the presence of Amhara people in the south, in 1966 imperial authorities incorporated large tracts of Arsiland along the Rift Valley region and Shashemene areas into Shoa. The Arsi Gosa of Siraro then fell under Shoan jurisdiction. The readjustment was deeply resented by Siraro Arsi Oromo, who now felt stripped of yet another important part of their identity. At the time of my fieldwork in the late 2000s, this episode was still imprinted in the collective memory of many Siraro elders. This administrative configuration remained largely unchanged until the early 2000s, when West-Arsi zone was formed out of districts previously under Arsi, Bale, and East Shoa zones.

3.4.2 Land Registration in the Imperial Period The allocation of land provided by the state to the balabbat through Siro relied on a measurement of the land called ayna gamad, meaning ‘eye measurement’ or ‘eye rope’ (Abbas Gnamo, 2013). I will discuss in the following sections how the land registration programme implemented in Siraro in the 2000s was characterized by striking similarities. While measurement was in theory taken through a rope, officials usually ended up guessing the size of the land, quantifying it in terms of gasha, a measurement that approximates to 40 hectares (Abbas Gnamo, 2013: 233). While this clearly provided for a less than standardized measurement, land units were also classified depending on the topography of the area, the quality of the soil, and the agro-ecological setting. This initial mechanism of land measurement was later followed by a more institutionalized one called qalad, which in Arsi was imposed at least three times in 1919, 1924, and 1930 (Abbas Gnamo, 2013: 234). Following the implementation of qalad, the land tenure system in Arsi was not very dissimilar to individual freehold based on private property titles. There are several reasons why the imperial government moved in this direction. Firstly, collection of tributes was

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easier under a system of clearly identifiable land parcels. Secondly, by enabling land transfers imperial authorities tried to encourage migration from the densely populated highlands in the north to the more sparsely populated south. Demographic, political, and cultural factors were behind the government’s desire to support migration. For imperial authorities, migration was a tool to consolidate state authority and to pacify the newly conquered territories, limiting the likelihood of local uprisings, as well as spreading the language, culture, and tradition of Orthodox Christianity. In addition, migration to the fertile lands of the south was expected to generate additional revenues for the state. The qalad measurement was deeply resented by the Arsi people for different reasons. In their view land measurement was just another instrument the imperial government adopted to further land alienation and to create conditions favourable to the migration of Amhara people. Abbas Gnamo (2013: 233) notes that each time imperial officials implemented a new qalad measurement they were met by significant protests, typically leading to the arrest and harassment of many Arsi farmers. This was because significant abuses, corruption, and favouritism took place alongside land measurement, which became an important instrument for imperial authorities to alienate land from Arsi people. One example reported by Abbas Gnamo is about the tirf meret, translating as ‘excess land’. Under this practice surveyors could confiscate land that was judged in excess of what a standard parcel ought to measure. Through this mechanism each re-measurement could mean a loss of part of Arsi people’s plots because this ‘surplus’ land was liable to expropriation. De facto privatization of land ownership following land dispossession and measurement was reinforced after the introduction of Maria Theresa Thaler as a means of exchange. All these elements combined favoured the emergence of a land market. While initially Arsi peasants were reluctant to buy land because they were historically used to trading in cattle only, rapidly growing land value increased land transactions on a significant scale. This not only marked increasing economic inequalities between landlords and tenants, but to an extent generated social differentiation within the Arsi. For instance, balabbats benefited considerably from their power of intermediation. As land was measured and put in their name, initially through receipts obtained after paying the land tax, farmers that occupied the land without written evidence about their claim often ended up becoming tenants on land that balabbats now owned on an individual basis. Similar cases were reported when groups of farmers that bought land together had paid taxes in the name of one owner only.

3.4.3 The Late Imperial Period and the 1974 Revolution These and other land-related conflicts became increasingly frequent as the value of land grew significantly after World War II. Arsi was one of the provinces

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where dispute over land was higher, particularly when mechanization was introduced in the 1960s. Agriculture mechanization picked up quickly in Arsi following the introduction of a programme called Chilalo Agricultural Development Unit (CADU), which was established through an Ethio-Swedish cooperation agreement. Arsi presented ideal agro-ecological conditions for mechanized agriculture, and the opening up of the land market had favoured private land investments. By 1971, mechanized farming had already extended over 29,262 ha of land, and accounted for 119 commercial enterprises (Cohen, 1986: 198). Mechanized farming had two important effects. Firstly, it boosted agricultural production, increasing the capacity of the imperial government to centralize revenues, and accelerated existing dynamics of land and capital accumulation. For a handful of rich commercial farmers, mechanization generated significant opportunities. Secondly, for marginalized Arsi peasant farmers and tenants making a living became increasingly difficult after mechanization. Spiking land prices heightened the dynamic of land alienation, putting increasing pressure on common resources including grazing land. As land under mechanized farming became more profitable than pasture, an essential component of many Arsi peasant farmers’ livelihood was put under stress. Both tenants and small farmers required oxen under traditional agricultural practices, and the livelihood of many marginalized households was significantly dependent on cattle rearing and breeding. In addition, while mechanization generated a number of farm worker jobs, it was certainly responsible for growing unemployment because the most intensive agricultural activities, such as threshing, made tenant labour redundant. In Siraro, mechanization of agriculture accelerated the sedentarization of farming, the transformation of some peasant farmers into farm workers, as well as the clearing of significant tracts of forest and shrub land. Mechanization in Siraro was primarily driven by the establishment of the Bilito Sinqile farm in 1961, later also known as Siraro-Bilito. Bilito Sinqile was integrated into a cluster of six farms in the region under the Hawassa Agricultural Development Enterprise (HawADE), the other five being Belate, Abaya, Arba Minch, Mito, and Wendo Tiqa. In 1970, HawADE, which following some accounts was responsible for the rapid transformation of Hawassa into a major urban settlement, had 23,000 ha of land under mechanized cultivation, including 9,000 ha assigned to maize, as well as cotton, coffee, haricot beans, and other food crops (Alemu Asfaw and Vivero, 2000: 8). After 1975 Bilito Sinqile was nationalized and managed under the direct control of the state.⁸ The 1974 revolution represented a new traumatic moment of disruption in the agrarian trajectory of Arsiland. ⁸ With the new EPRDF-led government, and following Proclamation No.146/1998, the farm became a share company controlled by the newly established Privatization and Public Enterprises Supervising Agency (PPESA) of Ethiopia. Although its size varied over time, Bilito Sinqile currently has a total holding of 3,800 ha divided into two units called Bilito and Siraro. In March 2012 the US-based Morrell Agro Industries made an offer to buy Bilito Sinqile for six million dollars, with a 50% upfront payment

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With the implementation of 1975 radical land reform, all lands were nationalized and managed through newly established Peasant Associations. The political slogan ‘land to the tillers’ that was put into practice through Proclamation No. 31/75 eradicated private tenure systems (article 3), banned land sale, lease, and mortgage (article 5), abolished tenancy (article 4) and abolished all the obligations peasants had to fulfil under previous tenure arrangements. Because of the history of despotic land relationships discussed above, the land reform was particularly popular among Arsi Oromo farmers. In the immediate aftermath of the revolution, land redistribution meant that marginalized Oromo peasant farmers and tenants could retain a significantly larger share of their agricultural produce, which previously they had to devolve to their landlords in the form of feudal sharecropping arrangements and other taxes. The land reform had radical effects for the Arsi Oromo to the extent that it abolished the feudal system of absentee landlordism, upsetting the power hierarchies established after their incorporation into the Empire (Dessalegn Rahmato, 2009). However, the positive impact on the local economy and the widespread feeling of social justice did not last long. Socialization policies implemented by the Derg soon after taking power—such as the creation of marketing and price boards, the constitution of producer cooperatives, and later the infamous forced resettlement and villagization—proved to be disastrous for the national economy. Siraro was no exception to this general picture. Socialization practices included periods of compulsory labour on Bilito-Sinqile state farm. Productivity of both commercial agriculture and peasant farming fell drastically, and the vibrant local economy of the years before the revolution collapsed sharply. Equally important to our discussion is that centralization of state authority under the Derg reached a new high that Arsi Oromo resented as a new form of Amharization, and which yet again contributed to shaping an Oromo identity in opposition to the central state. This controversial history of state/society relationships constitutes the background of decentralization reforms implemented since the 1990s.

3.5 Recentralization of Political Authority: a Micro-Institutional Perspective In this section I contend that the argument in which decentralization policies implemented since the 1990s resulted in greater autonomy and self-government for Arsi Oromo must be problematized. The case of Siraro shows that decentralization of land administration became an important tool for the EPRDF government to re-centralize political authority through the constellation of micro-institutions and the balance to be paid in three and half years, although it remains unclear whether the deal was finalized.

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connected to the party/state structure. Decentralization as a form of deconcentration enabled the federal state to extend its presence in Siraro, while making farmers and resources more legible (Scott, 1998). For this reason, these administrative reforms represent an element of continuity, rather discontinuity, with the history of authoritarian relationships outlined above. At the beginning of the 1990s, after a century of despotic policies beginning with the incorporation of Arsi into the Abyssinian Empire and culminating with the high modernist vision of the socialist state, the new political course generated considerable expectations among Oromo people for a new role in the structure of power of the Ethiopian state. During the war of liberation, no organization embodied these claims and aspirations better than the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF). The OLF was one of the ethno-nationalist movements that, along with the TPLF, contributed significantly to the country’s liberation from the Derg. However, the OLF never became part of the EPRDF: regarded by the new TPLF political elite as a threat to the new order, it was soon after declared illegal and was later identified as a terrorist group. Yet it continued operating under the surface as a clandestine organization, and through Oromo diaspora groups. Except for the brief period before the 2005 elections when parties such as the ONC and the UEDF were allowed to campaign, and amid the authoritarian closure of the political space after the vote, local politics in Siraro, as elsewhere in Oromia, was dominated by the Oromo People’s Democratic Organization (OPDO), the political party clustered to the EPRDF in the region. Local OPDO officials also controlled the local administrative structures of kebele, woreda, and zones. As also noted in other studies, at the level of the local interface very little practical distinction existed between party and state structures. As noted by Lefort (2007), the notions of state, party, and government all translates to the Amharic word of ‘mengist’. Decentralization policies implemented in the 2000s played an important role in solidifying the ties between administrative and party structures in the local interface. Particularly after 2005, decentralization reforms served two important priorities. Firstly, as noted by one local official, decentralization was meant to make ‘development intervention more effective’, by ‘bringing its implementation closer to people’.⁹ The unexpected outcome of the elections had consolidated the view that achieving rapid economic development through the collective mobilization of the rural population was the only way possible for the EPRDF to secure political support in the long run. Secondly, the scope of decentralization was virtually indistinguishable from questions around political control. This was motivated by the need to prevent a new security crisis from erupting, including by the agency of so-called ‘anti-democratic forces’ and ‘terrorist’ groups (including the OLF). Following this view, decentralization was meant to establish an effective local state to fulfil ‘revolutionary democracy’ by extending the reach of ⁹ Interview with a rural development officer, Siraro, 23 November 2009.

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the state/party apparatus. This reflected a broader, country-level trend of securitization through mobilization. Aalen and Tronvoll (2009b: 115) have noted for instance that elections were followed by a country-wide EPRDF campaign to expand party membership, which increased from 760,000 people in 2005 to 4 million in 2008. In Siraro, the re-centralization of political authority through decentralization can be illustrated by discussing the role of some key local institutions. Decentralization entailed the extension of the party/state structure in two main ways (addressed in the next two sections). Firstly, local state institutions in charge of land management and rural extension services were empowered with significantly more ambitious tasks and prerogatives. Secondly, a number of institutional networks at the intersection between the formal and informal party/state structure emerged as result of decentralization.

3.5.1 Decentralization up to the Kebele No institution elucidates the scope of decentralization reforms in Siraro more effectively than the Development Agent (DA). Sherif is one of the DAs appointed under the Agriculture and Rural Development Office (ARDO), the physical extension of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MoARD) in rural areas. At the time of this fieldwork in 2009, Sherif was 29, and although he identified himself as an Oromo, he was not from Siraro but from Addis Ababa, where he had a wife and one small child. Sherif was deployed to Siraro in 2008 to serve on a four-year shift, after which he hoped to find a better job elsewhere, possibly in Addis Ababa. He explained that ARDO in Siraro was organized hierarchically through offices found at the level of the zone, woreda, and kebele. ARDO is generally in charge of agricultural extension services, and of other specific rural development schemes, such as the Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) and the Household Asset Building Programme (HABP). Sherif contended that DAs under ARDO constituted the main political and administrative link between farmers and mengist, the state/party/government apparatus, on land and agricultural related issues. Unlike woreda and kebele officials, DAs are appointed state officials who are not removable from elected local Councils: they are exclusively dependent on their supervisor at the ARDO, who has the power to decide on transfers and turnovers of employees. Sherif explained that, like him, a majority of the DAs were strangers to the kebele where they were posted, and they were assigned to new destinations every few years. For this reason, people perceived DAs as state agents, with very little stake in local affairs, effectively bureaucrats primarily accountable to the ARDO. Dom, Carter, and Agazi Tiumelissan (2011) contend that DAs are found at the frontline between two different worlds: they are at the same time agricultural

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extension agents and they act as conduits of state power by discharging political duties. DAs have to hold at least a Grade 10 qualification at school and must have completed at least a few years of further specialization. Sherif contended that all the DAs in Siraro were also party members. DAs were usually ambitious young men, between twenty and thirty years old, who take their post as an opportunity to climb up the social ladder. They occupied a low rank within the MoARD structure, taking their job as a temporary measure, in the hope of finding better employment opportunities, preferably in town, and if possible in Addis Ababa. Sherif explained this as follows: I am here only to make some experience … I worked for an NGO before, but if you want to make career in government jobs, there is no option but starting from the countryside … Hopefully in few years I will be back to Addis Ababa.¹⁰

At the time of this fieldwork, in Siraro there were three to four DAs in each kebele. Their interaction with farmers usually consisted of the organization of training and meetings. For many Siraro farmers, DAs embodied the physical intrusion of government in rural affairs. Farmers typically contended that DAs’ knowledge of the local context was generally limited, and training was regarded more as an imposition, a political demand they could not really escape, rather than a real opportunity. Farmers usually complained that training was either too specific, for instance focusing on expensive agricultural techniques they could not apply, or too general. DAs played important role in influencing farmers’ decisions, such as on the purchase and use of fertilizers and inputs, which constituted a significant share of their investment capacity. Other offices in charge of land management and administration worked in a similar fashion. These included the Environmental Protection and Land Use Authority (EPLAUA), which by organizing Land Administration Committees at kebele level was in charge of implementing land registration. Similarly, the Food Security Office (FSO) coordinated food aids distribution and other emergency initiatives. Decentralization reforms significantly strengthened the discretionary power and prerogatives of local bodies in charge of land management and administration, which are the physical and political manifestations of the state in the countryside. Beside land registration (discussed in detail below), ARDO and EPLAUA retained significant power over the management, use, and conversion of communal land and the expansion of urban settlements into rural land, as well as over environmental protection regulations. Other important prerogatives included more discretionary power over the implementation of key development initiatives such as the PSNP and the HABP. The following story serves to further illustrate this point. ¹⁰ Interview with a DA in Ropi, Siraro, February 2010.

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Sherif explained that ‘putting land into productive use to improve rural development implementation’ had become a main political priority after 2005 elections. This generated pressure on woreda and kebele offices in Siraro to make land available for commercial agriculture, small agri-business projects, and the establishment of micro and small enterprises, among other initiatives. At the same time, high population pressure over land in the district made it difficult for local officials to meet these demands from above. Sherif contended that this was a main problem for local officials: they were in the uncomfortable position of having to mediate between demands from upper levels of government, based on plans and ‘good wishes’, and a much more complex local reality. Sherif explained that over time this resulted in the allocation of significant tracts of land that historically kebeles had used communally for grazing purposes. During my fieldwork, I visited some of such projects on the Bilate river, along the regional border with SNNPR, which were previously known to be particularly important for the watering and grazing of cattle. Sherif explained that the de facto conversion of communal into commercial land, although on a temporary leasehold basis, had created significant tension, and in some cases conflict both between farmers and between farmers and herders. Sherif thus implied that beneficiaries of these schemes were usually individuals close to the OPDO leadership, and that these initiatives were used selectively to reward political support. This example further elucidates the scope of decentralization reforms in Siraro. While opening up new spaces of political manoeuvre, and sometimes corruption, decentralization charged local officials with the task of satisfying an increasing number of, often unpopular, demands from above. The new emphasis on productivism that became dominant after 2005 elections to fulfil the ‘developmental state’ project accelerated the process of deconcentration of prerogatives from federal to district administrative structures. Significantly, decentralization transferred the burden of development implementation, and the political responsibility accompanying it, onto local administrative structures that were often poorly endowed. At the same time, decentralization strengthened upward accountability of local bodies by making them increasingly dependent on government transfers. A senior local official interviewed in Siraro noted:

… the woreda has little budget autonomy to effectively run … an increasing number of development initiatives dictated by government … Decentralization meant more responsibilities and that our performance is always under scrutiny … But we always depend on the transfer of budget from the federal government.¹¹

¹¹ Interview with a Capacity Building Office’s official in Loke Heda, Siraro, 4 February 2010.

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As also noted by NGO staff,¹² local administrative structures in Siraro lacked capacity to effectively carry out a number of increasingly ambitious development initiatives. According to available data at woreda level, at the time of this fieldwork 90% of the total budget of Siraro came from federal cash transfers through the ‘block grant’ formula.

3.5.2 Decentralization below the Kebele At the time of this fieldwork, the other important manifestation of decentralization reforms in Siraro was the emergence of a number of micro-institutional networks below kebele level, which, particularly after 2005 elections, played an increasingly important role in cementing the capacity of the state/party apparatus to mobilize people for political and development purposes. Constituting the transmission belt of state/society relationships in Siraro, the functioning of these micro-institutions helps elucidate how authority is re-centralized through decentralization, contributing to the thickening of the state in the rural milieu. The discussion of these important institutional networks requires two important premises. Firstly, the reason why I label these networks as ‘informal’ is because no official government document nor any government strategic development plan explains their functions. This feature makes it quite difficult to describe fully their interactions, and, most importantly, their geographical scope and manifestation, although research documents their presence across space and in both urban and rural areas (Lefort, 2012; Emmenegger, Sibilo Keno, and Hagmann, 2011; Schaefer, 2012; Chinigò, 2019; Asebe Regassa et al., 2019). Secondly, as result of this, my knowledge of these networks is largely anecdotal and derives from accounts of people attending political meetings and trainings. These networks played a central role in the party/state strategy of political mobilization of the rural areas. Although studies in Oromia document these networks to already exist at the time of the 2005 elections (Schaefer, 2012: 199), it was not until 2008–2009 that knowledge spread to Siraro where these networks took the form of farmers’ organizations. At the time of my fieldwork, in Siraro there were at least three different types of networks. The first is the gott (also referred as neighbourhood), which refers to a group of sixty to ninety households in which each rural kebele is divided. The second is the garee misoma (literally ‘development group’), which is a group composed of twenty-five to thirty farmers from the same gott with the task of ‘promoting social, economic and political development’.¹³ The third is the shanee (‘one to five’ network), consisting of a group of six farmers where one of them is the adda

¹² Interview with a staff member of a local NGO in Ropi, Siraro, 8 December 2010. ¹³ Interview with a local official of the woreda ARDO, Loke Heda, Siraro, 17 April 2012.

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duree (model farmer), who represents and is responsible for the group with local government. Local officials interviewed listed a variable range of functions of these institutions. One local official of the woreda noted that these institutions are meant to rationalize agricultural activities, for instance making more effective input distribution, and piloting new development projects. Another official explained that their objective is improving the ability of government to ‘help’ the farmers, easing tax collection and ‘spreading development’ up to the individual farmer. In general, their prerogatives can vary considerably depending on specific circumstances, ranging between development implementation, input distribution, and tax collection, as well as mobilization of farmers for security purposes. While these structures are not necessarily ordered hierarchically from larger (gott) to smaller (shanee) units, the role of model farmers (MF) can elucidate their political significance further. The MF is a key figure in this re-organization of the sub-kebele structure, and his role has both developmental and political values. The MF has the responsibility of assisting the other five farmers for agricultural purposes, for instance by providing them with seeds and fertilizers from the Rural Saving and Credit Cooperative (RUSACCO), introducing new agricultural techniques, and piloting new development schemes. The MF is also responsible for collecting the land tax in his shanee. Although this must not be intended as a full legal responsibility for tax collection, but rather as a form of political and moral accountability or obligation. The political role of MFs elucidates the connection of sub-kebele networks to OPDO party structure. MFs in Siraro are at the same time party militants. Their role is to mobilize the other farmers for political meetings and trainings, for security reasons (such as reporting anti-government behaviours), and to guarantee a steady chain of information with the kebele. The MF is the transmission belt between farmers and local government institutions and can be nominated in different ways. In some cases, MFs are expressed by the shanee. However, this decision has to then be validated by the DA, who retains some form of supervisory power. Interviews in Siraro show that MFs are selected according to a number of criteria including their relative wealth, education, land farmed, availability of oxen and cattle, productivity and ability ‘to keep relations with local authorities’.¹⁴ MFs assist the DAs in their daily tasks and therefore act as conduits of state power. For instance, MFs are among the first to be selected by the DAs when it comes to piloting new development projects. The DAs usually select the most dynamic and innovative farmers, and particularly the most politically receptive, who take both the burden and the benefit of implementing government-initiated policies. Lefort (2012: 691), addressing a case in Amhara region, contends that EPRDF used enrolment of MFs as a means of massive recruitment to the party. Lefort distinguishes ¹⁴ Interview with a local official of the woreda ARDO, Loke Heda, Siraro, 17 April 2012.

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the economic role of MFs from the political function of ‘vanguard’, the latter being the most important criterion for selection. The DA/MF system reveals how decentralization policies in Siraro had implications that extend far beyond the formal state structure, or the deconcentration of prerogatives from federal and regional governments to woreda and kebele. The micro-institutional networks below kebele level provide the framework through which state authority is re-centralized through decentralization. The DA/MF system is based on multiple levels of upward accountability. The DA is responsible for his actions only before his supervisor at woreda level. His performance, and therefore his ability to climb the social ladder, is evaluated only in regard to his ability to discharge as fast as possible government-initiated tasks. At lower levels, the DA relies on MFs for implementation. Given the ambiguity of the relationship between MF and DA—i.e. being developmental and political at the same time—upward accountability (and therefore the power of the state) is also reproduced at the local level. Finally, the MF is responsible for implementing government-initiated policies within his own shanee and garee network. By the late 2000s, decentralization in Siraro was characterized by a local administrative structure heavily dependent on the party apparatus, a system of new farmers’ organizations strengthening upward accountability relationships, and the lack of administrative capacity of local bodies. This had the effect of strengthening the already hierarchical system of local administration and thereby served to further extend the power of the federal state in the rural milieu. In the next section I will discuss the implication of this in relation to rural land registration.

3.6 Land Registration in Siraro in the 2000s Since the late 1990s, international donors such as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the World Bank, and more recently the United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID), have sponsored and substantially funded several programmes of rural Land Registration (LR) as a low-cost, decentralized model of rural land management and administration in Ethiopia.¹⁵ LR was implemented in the four most populous regional states—Amhara, Tigray, Oromia, and SNNPR—and consisted of the distribution of land-use certificates to farmers and the establishment of decentralized land registries at kebele and woreda levels. LR does not alter the system of state ownership ¹⁵ In 2005 to 2008, USAID sponsored the Land Tenure and Administration Program (ELTAP), which worked with woreda-level land administration committees to pilot second-level land certification process (ELTAP, 2008). This programme continued under the Ethiopia Land Administration Program (ELAP) between 2008 and 2013. The United Kingdom invested 72.7 million GBP on the Land Investment for Transformation (LIFT) programme running between 2013 and 2020, to implement Second Level Land Certification (SLLC), and improved Rural Land Administration Systems (RLAS) in Tigray, Amhara, Oromia, and SNNPR. According to USAID/ELTAP, Tigray Regional State started issuing second level landholding certificates to farmers on 12 July 2011.

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of land established through the 1975 land reform. For instance, land transfers are limited to short-term leases. LR followed two stages of implementation. Under the first, started in the late 1990s and accelerated considerably after the 2005 elections, plot demarcation was implemented through so called ‘traditional tools’. The second, entailing more comprehensive cadastral survey through aerial and satellite imagery and Global Positioning System (GPS) technology, was piloted in 2005, implemented on a limited scale in 2008 to 2013 by USAID, and then scaled-up after 2013 mainly through a large UK-funded programme called Land Investment for Transformation (LIFT). The following discussion is based on primary evidence collected in Siraro in relation to the first stage of registration, whereas information on the second stage is derived from secondary sources, primarily media and LIFT progress report documents. In Siraro, like in many other parts of Oromia and SNNPR, the distribution of land certificates has been slow and characterized by problems such as the fragmentation of landholdings, shortage of resources, the redefinition of administrative boundaries of kebele and woreda, and, more recently, by political unrest ensuing from the 2016 to 2018 anti-government protests.¹⁶ In particular, implementation of stage one was delayed by the split of Siraro from Shala woreda in 2005, and the redefinition of kebele boundaries along the regional border between Oromia and SNNPR, which took place through a local referendum in 2009.¹⁷ For these reasons, implementation of LR in Siraro did not start until 2008. Land Administration Committees (LACs) were created at kebele level to survey land parcels and distributed certificates in the name of both the spouses of a household, in the form of a small book called a ‘user book’. LACs were variably comprised of local officials from ARDO and EPLAUA, including participating DAs, as well as elders and MFs, whose role was especially important when land demarcation was disputed by one or more parties. LACs played a pivotal role during the implementation process, because they had the difficult task of ensuring strong local participation and mediating potential conflict during surveying. As LACs served a variety of different tasks, their actual status was quite ambiguous in Siraro. They served as a technical body in charge of land surveying, retained administrative prerogatives over setting up, and updating, the land registry, but they were at the same time the regulatory body in charge of land use and environmental protection planning, as well as retaining judicial power over land disputes arising from demarcation (as court of first instance). Considering the blurring of the state/party ¹⁶ See for instance S. Holden and Theodros Tefera (2008: 32). LIFT annual progress reports for 2017 and 2018 point at ‘unpredictable social unrest, including violence, property damage and displacements’ as generating delays in implementation. Annual progress report can be accessed at https://devtracker. dfid.gov.uk/projects/GB-1-202900/documents [Accessed on 27 September 2019]. ¹⁷ Based on the peoples’ demand and their settlement in 2009, five kebeles were incorporated into SNNPR in Misrak Badawacho woreda through a referendum held by the House of Federation. Since the 2009 referendum, the included kebeles have been politically administered under Misrak Badawach in Hadiya Zone. Currently, there are 38 kebeles under the Misrak Badawacho woreda administration.

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complex outlined above, LACs were clearly not independent from the OPDO party structure either. For these reasons, many farmers perceived land registration as a political exercise, and often as a new form of intrusion of the central state in rural affairs, which, as discussed above, in Oromia had a controversial history. In some elders’ minds, the memory of episodes narrated by their fathers about the exploitative qalad implemented in the 1920s and 1930s were still vivid, which furthered the dispossession of Oromo land and subjugated people through an exploitative system of land relationships. To other farmers land registration brought back memories of the zemecha campaign, the land redistribution implemented in the late 1970s under the Derg, when Peasant Associations were first created. The considerable powers of LACs and the controversial history of LR in Siraro were coupled by a very ambiguous process of land demarcation. LACs were entrusted to conduct field surveys through so-called ‘traditional tools’ of demarcation. In Siraro this meant the use of ropes, or the identification of landmarks and other physical objects (such as trees or stones) on the plot. Sometimes borders were estimated only by sight. These data were then copied down to the ‘user book’ given to each farmer. There are striking similarities in the ways land demarcation was conducted less than a century before under the ayna gamad (eye measurement, or eye rope, as outlined above) and then the qalad system. Like in the imperial period, LR implemented in the 2000s was far from establishing a clear and undisputable system of plot demarcation. The lack of precise demarcation, while undermining some of the (neoliberal) arguments for registration, had also some advantages. Firstly, in many cases it enabled a fast and low-cost registration process. Secondly, it resulted in a mechanism of registration preventing many land conflicts from emerging, particularly border disputes. This has led Holden et al. (2010) to conclude that in Tigray land registration resulted in a reduction of border conflicts. However, the case of Siraro shows that this should be qualified more carefully. It is more likely that border conflicts reduced not because of registration per se but because titling was carried out without providing unequivocal measurements. In fact, for many farmers in Siraro the programme did not change the substance of the border relationships with their neighbours: what was different now was that their land use right over the same roughly determined piece of land was sanctioned by a state recognized certificate, a function that until then was absolved by the land tax receipt they paid every farming season. What stage one of land registration really formalized was not the exact extension and boundaries of land parcels, but the fact that land use rights were now clearly attached to individuals: the two spouses of a household. As noted by some studies, the recognition of women’s land rights represents one of the most progressive aspects of LR (Holden and Mintewab Bezabih, 2008; Holden and Tewodros Tefera, 2008; Holden et al., 2011; UN-HABITAT, 2008). However, the new system significantly reduced the flexibility of many non-formalized land-sharing arrangements,

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which often allowed more marginalized or landless farmers to retain forms of access to land as part of a variety of social, cultural, and economic relations. Registration limited the scope for these flexible arrangements, and rather incentivized the formalization of land transactions, usually through the formula of temporary leases regulated via cash or sharecropping arrangements. While the emergence of land rental markets has been pointed out as a main success of LR (Holden et al., 2011; Deininger et al., 2011) this also meant that some of the most marginalized land users lost their informal access to land and the livelihoods they could derive from it. At the time of this fieldwork, when stage two of land registration had not yet been implemented, these issues raised concerns about the polarizing social and economic effects stemming from further formalization.

3.6.1 Extending the Power of the Federal State Through Land Registration As part of his role as DA, Sherif was also a member of one of the LACs in charge of implementing LR in Siraro, covering Ropilinta and Demnelemen, two of the kebeles tracing the western regional border with SNNPR along the Bilate river. Sherif explained that the LACs were normally composed of seven to eight members from ARDO and EPLAUA, as well as MFs and elders on a rotational basis. A main distinction was between the technical staff in charge of land measurement, and the officials compiling the certificates. Sherif explained that members of the latter constituted the ‘political leg’ of the LAC, in charge of verifying the identity of land-use holders, ascertaining the land parcel under consideration had no other claim, and settling potential conflict. LACs staff undertook training sessions provided at woreda and zone levels. Sherif explained that trainings were useful to clarify the objectives of LR, although little attention was paid to details about measurement systems and how to solve potential problems and conflicts. He outlined the objectives of LR as follows: Land registration serves two main purposes. First it aims to improve agriculture productivity, making it easier for farmers to invest in land improvements, and rent the land out. Second, the titles protect farmers against arbitrary eviction. Thus, given that land use titles cannot be transferred but only inherited by other family members, and that the land is public property, land certificates inhibit land concentration and therefore protect the poorest strata of the peasantry.¹⁸

This explanation shows how effective the system of training provided by the cascade system of the federal state structure is and, in one way, how effective ¹⁸ Interview with a local official of the ARDO, Loke Heda, Siraro, 4 February 2010.

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decentralization has been in deconcentrating decision-making to the local state apparatus. The policy priorities outlined by Sherif are aligned with the broader, dominant discourse supporting land registration. Following Deininger et al. (2008: 1802–1803), land registration increases individual tenure security and, as a consequence, generates incentives for investments in agriculture, thus increasing land productivity. Land registration is therefore expected to improve short-term land rental market participation because distribution of certificates builds confidence of farmers to reclaim their land once the contract expires (Holden et al., 2011: 33–35). At the same time, state ownership protects the most vulnerable farmers from distress sales, avoiding putting land concentration in the hands of few powerful, in the language of EPRDF ‘rent seeking’, farmers. Sherif went on to explain that the distribution of certificates was neither systematic nor comprehensive. He explained that LACs received considerable pressure from woreda and zone offices to undertake distribution as fast as possible. When plot demarcation was straightforward and no competing claims were reported, land registration was implemented in a timely manner. However, this was not always the case, and often dealing with only a few controversies in one area could cost weeks, sometimes months, of delay in the work of LACs. In Siraro there were normally three types of conflict over registration. The first was about overlapping claims regarding a portion of land bordering two or more plots when major landmarks were absent, such as ridges and hillsides. Second, disputes emerged when a given land parcel had multiple claimants. This was usually the result of land parcels that, although with fairly detectable boundaries, had a history of multiple users, such as sharecropping arrangements, or was informally shared between two or more farmers. The third typology was conflict within a given household over who should be listed on the certificate as the legitimate beneficiary of the land use right. These cases were common when inheritance was pending or disputed between two or more siblings, and in cases of divorce. Polygamous households, which are very common in Arsi society, often presented the problem of how to capture multiple land claims during registration considering that the land certificate allowed for the registration of only one male and one female as land-use holders. An additional burden that LACs had to bear was in regard to the feasibility of constantly updating the land registry created at the agricultural office after registration was undertaken. Already within months after registration, the highly fragmented pattern of landholdings in Siraro, and the complexities of the inheritance system—for instance cases when land had to be shared among a large number of siblings—made keeping the registry up to date a very difficult task. One official of the woreda agriculture office noted:

Keeping the land registry up to date is probably the most challenging issue of the programme. Plots are very small in our district, and the pattern of landholdings

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changes fast due to the inheritance system … I am not entirely sure this is going to work, but we are trying our best.¹⁹

A rapidly evolving pattern of landholdings and conflicts that reflected land’s multiple economic, social, and cultural values raised concern about the longterm impacts of land registration and constituted a significant burden for local administrative structures. LACs officials were often in the uncomfortable position of having to mediate between government pressures for a timely implementation of certification, and a reality on the ground in which overlapping land claims were difficult to settle. Land in Siraro is bound to individual and collective identities that are not easy to codify in the language of land registration. LACs officials employed two strategies to escape the impasse generated by protracted land disputes. First, land registration was not implemented in those cases when land was disputed between two or more parties and LACs were not immediately able to find an easy way out. In these cases, land certificates were not distributed, or were delivered omitting the information constituting the source of conflict. For instance, one dispute over a portion of land used by three farmers I visited in Demnelemen was settled by releasing user books in which description of the contested boundaries was left blank. It seems delivering certificates with little information and skipping sensitive cases were common practices that came up during the process of registration, allowing LACs to meet government demands for speedy and low-cost implementation and at the same time preventing land conflicts. In more informal conversation, this led some local officials to question the broader rationale for registration if titling was taking place only on land whose ownership and boundaries were not in question. Secondly, pressure from above and challenges on the ground, including lack of resources, brought LACs to develop another coping strategy to get registration done. As explained by Sherif, LACs officials soon realized that the more accurate the measurement, the higher was the likelihood of conflicts to occur. For this reason, LACs often opted for loosening up the land surveying process. This presented two advantages: it enabled registration to proceed much faster, and it allowed local officials to retain a greater leverage over land allocation. Initially, surveyors undertook land demarcation by using ropes to quantify the land size and described borders by identifying landmarks or other objects in the plots. When surveying was sensitive and conflict was likely to erupt, LACs opted for very general description of land parcels, sometimes estimating their size based on information received by farmers. Over time, approximating the land size by sight became the most common procedure employed by LACs to undertake measurement. This provided for a less than standardized measurement but proved effective in speeding up registration while preventing conflict from erupting. ¹⁹ Interview with a woreda Official from the ARDO, 5 May 2012, Loke Heda, Siraro.

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However, these practices generated considerable room for manoeuvring the registration process in Siraro. LACs enjoyed considerable discretionary power over registration. This took place in a context in which land was an extremely politicized issue. At the time of my fieldwork in 2009–2010, the stain left by the 2005 elections was still vivid in Siraro. Administrative re-adjustments that took place in the course of the 2000s contributed to further politicize the relationship between land and Oromo nationalists that the sudden closing of the political space in 2005 had contributed to reviving. The splitting of Siraro from East Shoa zone in the early 2000s to create West Arsi zone had given back a sense of collective identity to Arsi Oromo people in Siraro. A few years later, in 2005, this was followed by a further re-adjustment that ruled the separation of Siraro from Shala woreda. This second split fulfilled some further claims to self-administration, enabling the OPDO leadership to manage more independent spending through the block grant system established under decentralization reforms. In 2008 elections were held to renew woreda and kebele councils. OPDO consolidated its dominant position in a context in which opposition parties, including the very popular OFDM in Siraro, did not participate due to intimidation of candidates and supporters.²⁰ An even more crucial moment came in 2009, when a referendum was held to reallocate a number of kebeles on the western regional border with SNNPR between Siraro and Alaba. The months before the referendum were characterized by significant mobilization of Oromo nationalists around the issue of land. Demonstrations took place in Ropi town and Senbete in support to the Oromo farmers in the kebele where the referendum took place. All these readjustments contributed to making land registration politically charged. For Oromo nationalists, land registration was just the last of a long series of intrusions by the federal state in local affairs. This sentiment built on the controversial history of incorporation of Arsi people in modern Ethiopia, which this time was expressed through a generalized anti-government sentiment. Against this volatile context, land registration served the purpose of consolidating the presence of the state/party apparatus in Siraro as well as the monitoring and control of people in rural areas. LACs often used their power over land registration to reward political allies and further patronage networks. LACs became a tool for local officials to solidify the presence of OPDO in the countryside. For instance, in some areas of Siraro land registration was implemented alongside campaigns to expand the party membership. This induced some farmers to believe that they could get their land certificate only after taking up the OPDO membership card.²¹ Aalen and Tronvoll (2009b: 115) have noted that expansion in the ²⁰ Aalen and Tronvoll (2009b: 114) have noted that ‘[t]he nation-wide strategy to intimidate, harass, and restrict the registration of opposition candidates resulted in the UEDF only managing to register 6,000 of 20,000 prospective candidates, while OFDM was only capable of registering 2 percent of the 6,000 candidates it wanted to put forward.’ ²¹ Interviews with farmers in Siraro, 15 November 2009; 12 February 2010.

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party’s membership after the 2005 electoral turmoil was a deliberate strategy pursued nationally by the EPRDF in order to secure consensus. While getting party membership was already a common practice for MFs, it seems that land registration enabled to scale up significantly the capacity of the local/party state structure to extend its reach in the countryside. Another important and related aspect is taxation. Although registration was not comprehensive, it significantly increased the capacity of the local state apparatus to levy taxes. The distribution of certificates created a new and more formal baseline along which the land tax could be collected. While some pre-registration land arrangements contributed to make some farmers invisible to the state, land use certificates introduced a more formalized system that clearly connected the two spouses of a household to a specific land parcel. Making people and resources legible through registration thus increased the capacity of the party/state apparatus to monitor and control increasingly volatile rural areas. Perhaps the area in which LACs had, and actively used, more discretionary authority was land disputes resolution. LACs partly replaced elders dealing with minor land cases requiring a simple conciliation. As some elders were also members of LACs, to an extent land registration enabled the formalization of their role and their incorporation within a statutory body. Loose techniques of land demarcation opened up significant spaces for LACs to influence dispute resolution. Thus, the need to speed up the programme often generated pressures on LACs to enforce, rather than negotiate, adjudication. LACs often used their judicial prerogatives to reward political allies or, more often, to punish anti-government behaviour of some farmers. This can be illustrated through episodes that took place in the period around the April 2008 local elections, when land registration was under implementation. Here, LACs served two important political purposes. Firstly, in the months before the elections the distribution of certificates was used by the OPDO for the political mobilization of farmers. Land registration was implemented contextually to the 2008 political campaign of the OPDO and alongside the national EPRDF priority to expand the party membership as a mechanism to secure consensus. LACs played a very ambiguous role: they were the technical bodies implementing land surveying, while some members were at the same time OPDO political activists, campaigning for re-elections. Sometimes this ambiguity led farmers to believe that land registration was a political activity OPDO implemented as part of the electoral campaign. This also explains why in some parts of Siraro land certificates were distributed alongside OPDO membership cards. In the most extreme cases, land registration was used as a tool to threaten dispossession: some farmers believed that failing to comply with registration would jeopardize their land rights. Connected to this is the second political role performed by LACs during the 2008 elections. LACs used land dispute adjudication prerogatives to punish farmers that were known to be close to opposition parties, and particularly the

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OFDM. The case of a border dispute between two farmers illustrates this point further. The two farmers were known as both being relatively wealthy, and actively participated in the political life of their kebele. One of them was also known for his sympathy for the opposition, as he actively campaigned for the OFDM in the 2005 elections. When the LAC came to survey the land, a dispute over a portion of land-sharing borders with the two farms emerged. This was a parcel of about 0.1 ha that historically farmers used for grazing, and that due to increasing population pressure some years before had been put into permanent cultivation. Its actual tenure status was unclear, and the land was managed through some informal sharecropping arrangements, it seems also by allowing other farmers to occasionally cultivate portions of it. When the LAC began surveying the area both farmers claimed this land parcel as part of their holding. The dispute that ensued was resolved outright by the LAC against the farmer that was known as being an opposition activist, and all the land was put into the name of the other farmer. An outright decision to allocate disputed land to one party had little precedent among Siraro Arsi Oromo, where elders’ negotiation power favoured decisions, especially when land was at stake, oriented to compromise. For this reason, the decision by the LAC was regarded by many as a punishment and, more broadly, as an unjustified intrusion of the state in local affairs. In the following months the second farmer became an OPDO member and was thus nominated as an MF. This case became quite popular in the kebele, and was interpreted by many farmers as a message that land was the ultimate issue at stake for government non-complaint behaviours. This brings us to now discuss how farmers navigated and manoeuvred land registration.

3.6.2 Meanings of ‘Tenure Security’ for Farmers in Siraro Land registration raised considerable expectations in Siraro. Farmers generally welcomed the distribution of certificates, and this is in line with what has been found by other studies in other parts of the country (Dessalegn Rahmato, 2009: 183). Precisely because by 2009–2010 land was politically charged, many farmers regarded land certificates as a way to secure their land rights, or ‘prove ownership’. This was for instance what Lencho, a farmer in his forties, believed. At the time of this fieldwork Lencho had five children, two living on their own, and was known to be a wise and hard working farmer in his kebele. He owned a pair of oxen, alongside some other cattle, a vital asset in the agricultural economy of Siraro. Farmers use oxen for a variety of purposes, including wealth accumulation and powering the plough. Lencho farmed approximately 0.75 ha of land, part of which he farmed along with one of his sons. Lencho contended that land registration generated initial expectations among farmers like him.

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I welcomed registration. Now I have a certificate showing that the land I cultivate belongs to my family … certificates help reducing land conflicts.²²

However, for Lencho the formalization of land rights that came with registration had no straightforward meaning. While sponsored by the government as an important milestone to improve agricultural productivity, land registration marked a new high in the level of intrusion of the state in local affairs. At the same time, more secure land rights meant more independence, potentially marking an important moment of discontinuity with a history of exploitative land relationships in Siraro. However, the common ground of all these views was that ‘tenure security’ was rarely regarded against the risk of dispossession due to potential market liberalization, but rather in terms of protection from eviction initiated by the state. Lencho maintained that historically the state was responsible for the dispossession of Arsi land, and now the main concern of farmers in Siraro was how to preserve a ‘good relationship with local officials’ to protect their land rights. The security Arsi farmers were after was security from the state. Lencho in fact believed that registration had not phased out the possibility of eviction, nor that it had reduced the power of local officials over land administration. While registration raised some initial expectations, the actual implementation proved that the nature of the relationship between farmers and the state remained the same. This can be depicted in the following statement: The fact that I now have a certificate does not change much my life … registration did not bring more land … the land certificate shows that this is my land, but before I could prove it with the land tax slip … but the government still has the power to take my land.

The multiple values that land registration had for Lencho shows how the notion of ‘tenure security’ was socially mediated and took on meanings that are entangled in a broader history of land and agrarian relations. Land in Siraro has both immediate economic meaning and also important symbolic value over a common Oromo identity, which has been shaped by a history of centralization policies deeply resented by many farmers. Farmers tried to navigate land registration in different ways, attempting to make the most of the opportunities that the programme presented, such as the possibility to monetize short-term land leases while minimizing the risks associated with the re-structuring of land administration. Most importantly, like for other government programmes, local officials demanded that farmers participate actively in rural development initiatives. Especially after the 2005 elections, the political mobilization of the rural population through development entailed that farmers ²² Interview with a farmer in Ropi, Siraro, 27 November 2009.

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had to engage in, and comply with, government-initiated programmes. Failure to do so was interpreted as a lack of participation in the collective effort of the developmental state to sustain the project of rural modernization, and hence as ‘anti-government behaviour’. In very practical terms for Lencho, this meant attending meetings, trainings, and political activities, as well as volunteering for public works such as terracing and road maintenance. He explained that land registration became an important instrument for local officials to regulate their relations with farmers. LACs used their power of land registration to reward farmers close to the OPDO and to discipline political opponents. Land was measured very inconsistently … officials [i.e. LACs] had very different measuring sticks, some farmers ended up getting more land, while some other farmers were punished because they had been politically active in 2005 … disputed land was not measured and people were left dealing with uncertainty.

It is against this context that Lencho explained how many farmers tried to limit their interactions with LACs to the indispensable. Although at the time of implementation the implications of not being able to receive a certificate were unclear, many farmers worried that lack of registration could expose their already tenuous land rights to additional risks. For this reason, they actively welcomed the distribution of land certificates: this was to show commitment to government initiatives, while enjoying an additional proof to secure their land right if needed. However, farmers were much more sceptical and suspicious about the actual process of land measurement. Farmers were wary of the discretionary power of LACs on land adjudication and preferred not to raise up controversies with other farmers they were historically used to dealing with through flexible land tenure arrangements. Lencho explained that this is the reason why many border disputes remained under the surface during demarcation, and why many farmers encouraged loose plot measurement. If for LACs the officials’ poor demarcation was convenient for accelerating the programme and retaining leverage on the registration process, farmers too had little incentive to obtain accurate land measurement. They wanted to avoid border disputes with their neighbours and, at the same time, to minimize their contact with LACs officials they regarded with suspicion. Paradoxically, while farmers regarded holding a certificate as a source of additional security, they often perceived unequivocal demarcation as a source of additional insecurity. This was especially true for the most marginalized farmers, who enjoyed informal access to land through mechanisms that registration put at risk.

3.6.3 Land Registration and Taxation Another significant dilemma for farmers was how to navigate land registration in relation to taxation. Land registration did not only improve the capacity of local administrative structures to levy taxes, but also took place side by side with

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Table 3.1 Comparison of Income Tax and Rural Land Use Payment in Proclamation No. 99/2005 and Proclamation No. 131/2007. Income Tax and Rural Land Use Payment (Proclamation No. 99/2005) Land size (Hectare)

Rural Land Use Fee (ETB)

Income Tax (ETB)

Total

< 0.5 0.5–1.5 1.5–2.5 2.5–4.0 >4.0

5.00 10.00 15.00 25.00 40.00

Exempted 10.00 15.00 30.00 40.00

5.00 20.00 30.00 55.00 80.00

Income Tax and Rural Land Use Payment (Proclamation No. 131/2007) Land size (Hectare)

Rural Land Use (ETB)

Income Tax (ETB)

Total

< 0.5 0.5–1.0 1.0–2.0 2.0–3.0 3.0–4.0 4.0–5.0 >5.0

15.00 20.00 30.00 45.00 65.00 90.00 120.00

Exempted 20.00 35.00 55.00 70.00 100.00 140.00

15.00 40.00 65.00 100.00 135.00 190.00 260.00

a significant increase in land and agricultural taxes. At the time of this fieldwork, the two main taxes payable by farmers, the rural land use fee and the agricultural income tax, were regulated by two consecutive regional proclamations issued in 2005 and 2007.²³ Both taxes are based on a progressive system dependent on the size of landholdings. While households holding up to 0.5 ha of land are exempted by the income tax, the land use fee applies to all land users. As shown in Table 3.1 below, Proclamation 131/2007 significantly increased the land tax rate applied to smallholder farmers operating under rain-fed agriculture. Farmers in the first category (up to 0.5 ha) saw their land tax tripling, while all the other categories experienced raises between two and three times the amount established by the 2005 proclamation. In Siraro the increase in the land tax rates was implemented side by side with land registration, as this is also demonstrated by the significant boost in local revenue generation in the year the reform kicked in. Data obtained from the ²³ Collection of land and other local taxes is prerogative of regional states, including establishing tax rates (see Azime Hassen, 2016). In 2005 Oromia NRS issued the ‘Rural Land Use Payment and Agricultural Activities Income Tax Amendment Proclamation No. 99/2005’, and in 2007 the ‘Proclamation No. 131/2007 A Proclamation to Amend Rural Land Use Payment and Agricultural Income Tax of Oromia Regional State’s Proclamation No. 99/2005’.

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woreda revenue office show that the rural land use fee increased from 358,320 ETB collected in 2006–2007 to 676,437.50 ETB in 2007–2008, after the tax raise came into effect. Similarly the agricultural income tax spiked from 177,902.50 to 292,582.50 ETB over the same period.²⁴ While these data need to be taken carefully, they are illustrative of a trend in which decentralization of land administration and land registration heightened significantly the capacity of the local state apparatus to capture value through the formalization of land tenure. Collection of the land tax was not only facilitated by the new rural registry established as part of land registration. The newly established sub-kebele structure of the shanee played a highly important role in bridging local state institutions with farmers. In particular, in many interviews and interactions with farmers it emerged that MFs held some degree of responsibility in making sure that the land tax was collected correctly in their shanee group (one to five network), reporting to the kebele eventual irregularities. However, responsibility should not be viewed from a legal perspective, but rather in political terms. This further illustrates the nature of the system of accountability, as well as the blurring of functions between the OPDO branch and local state institutions established through decentralization. Unsurprisingly, increased land taxation did not contribute to making land registration more popular. I addressed this with Robba, a farmer in his fifties, who had to sustain a very large family with only 0.5 ha of land. Robba explained that land registration and increased taxation had very different meanings for farmers. He contended: … land registration was very important … it certifies that Oromo land is owned by Oromo people … increased land tax is the bitter aftertaste you get in exchange of a bit more independence … this created problems because many farmers are poor and struggle to pay taxes.

The raise in the land tax that came with land registration created another dilemma for farmers. The quote above illustrates how farmers believed that obtaining the land certificate was important to securing their land rights against potential eviction and sometimes land disputes. However, the new land tax rates were a source of profound resentment in Siraro, which contributed to a broader perception of land registration as yet another mechanism the government used to limit farmers’ independence. Robba explained that farmers used different strategies to minimize the additional costs that land registration entailed. One strategy was to understate the size of landholdings during the process of demarcation with LACs. Loose land measurements turned out to be an advantage. Negotiating land parcels’ size to pay fewer taxes became very common, especially after estimating the land size by sight became the LACs’ standard practice of demarcation. Robba explained that this ²⁴ Siraro Woreda Socio-Economic Profile 2007/8. Loke Heda, Siraro.

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often led to actual extended negotiations between LACs officials and farmers, in which personal sympathies, political inclination, and past behaviours of farmers became all part of the ‘measuring process’. However, Robba explained that understating the size of the land could also be very risky. For instance, he reported a case in which other farmers, it seems in agreement with some LACs officials, took advantage of the situation by claiming part of the land of a farmer who had significantly understated his landholding measurement. It is in this way that farmers struggled to find the right compromise between visibility and invisibility: they sought engagement with local state institutions to secure their land rights, conforming only to the inescapable demands of local officials. The lack of accurate demarcation was in a sense helpful to preserving the status quo: it facilitated the distribution of certificates over largely undetermined land parcels, which were de facto managed through pre-registration informal mechanisms of access. However, this further increased the leverage that LACs officials could exercise during the process of demarcation. This shows how the actual process of land measurement reflected important dynamics of negotiation with local state authority. Ironically, both local officials and farmers had a vested interest in undermining the fundamental initial objective of land registration: providing for more easily identifiable land parcels through more accurate land measurements. This illustrates how manoeuvring of land registration produced state-society relations: both local officials and farmers undermined a central government programme by practices that ignored its intended goals. In the context of decentralization reforms, the relationship between land registration and taxation is illustrative of two distinct dynamics. Firstly, registration strengthened the capacity of the local state, particularly through the kebele and woreda, to assert a monopoly on the means of enforcement to make people and resources more legible. Taking the form of power deconcentration, decentralization enabled the re-centralization of state authority through the local party/state structure, and particularly the local OPDO branch, the LACs, but also the subkebele institutions and MFs system. Secondly, as the state increased its capacity for enforcement, this created the conditions of possibility for new openings by farmers, and to some extent local officials. This illustrates how beneficiaries and local state officials navigated and lived alongside constraining material and representational forces mobilized by state power.

3.6.4 Land Registration, Model Farmers, and Rural Social Stratification While land registration was associated with more or less overt contestation of the dominant discourse about decentralization, this does not mean that the programme had the same impact for all the farmers. The lack of clear demarcation

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created both opportunities and challenges, and, while some farmers managed to benefit a lot, some other ended up losing out. This reflected dynamics of rural social stratification, which elsewhere in Ethiopia René Lefort (2012) has characterized as state-induced differentiation, or kulakisation. Following this view, rural reforms implemented by the Ethiopian government in the 2000s favoured the emergence of a class of relatively wealthy farmers, identified in the MFs, under policies of selective liberalization and expansion of the local state/party apparatus. In Siraro, land registration generated similar dynamics. Getachew is a relatively wealthy farmer who at the time of my fieldwork was in his early thirties and farmed approximately 1.25 ha of land divided into two main plots. He received half of this land through inheritance, while he controlled the other half through other arrangements, including short term rentals, and on behalf of some older relatives. Getachew is one of those farmers in Siraro that can be referred to as highly capitalized. In addition to land, he owned four oxen, alongside a significant number of cattle, goats, donkeys, horses, and cows. Beside cultivating the land, he had a couple of relatively successful businesses, including renting out oxen to other farmers. He also had some regular daily workers who he employed when needed, and especially during the peak of agricultural season. For his entrepreneurial skills and political involvement with the OPDO, he had been recently nominated as an MF. He was not only the leader of the shanee but also the chairman of the garee misoma, which he explained comprised of about sixty-five farmers in his area. As one of the most prominent MFs in his kebele, Getachew had close relationships with the ARDO. He explained that the role of MF came with responsibilities, such as exposing other farmers to new government initiatives and reporting antigovernment behaviours, but also with some advantages. As MF he was often selected to pilot new NGO projects, which are usually well remunerated through cash per diem, as well as agricultural and entrepreneurial trainings organized by the woreda, and sometimes by the zone. One important advantage was benefitting from timely access to agricultural inputs, as well as easier access to credit from the Rural Saving and Credit Cooperatives (RUSACCO). Through some loans he obtained from micro-finance institutions, Getachew set up a cattle-fattening business, and was considering establishing a second one, namely beekeeping, in the future. Getachew explained that land registration brought a lot of benefits to Siraro. The most important for him was not really tenure security in the sense outlined above, ‘security from the state’, but in relation to new opportunities for expanding his farm business by tapping into short-term land rental market. Getachew contended that before registration the possibility of acquiring additional land was limited to a relatively small circle of kin who shared land and other resources depending on the circumstances, and involved entering into more or less formalized sharecropping arrangements. Land registration opened up new opportunities to enter short-term

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land rental agreements, as the certificate protected landowners from claims on the land they rented out. In 2010, only two years after land titling had been completed in his kebele, he had already arranged to lease an additional 0.125 ha to expand his cattle-fattening business and grow some cash crop (haricot beans) to sell on the market. Getachew explained that other farmers like him had entered into similar arrangements. Getachew argued that land registration constituted an important step to transforming agriculture in Siraro from ‘subsistence’ to ‘business’. He explained that he was lucky enough because the process of registration did not only allow him to consolidate his landholdings and have access to additional land through land rentals, but also to access some kebele land that he described as ‘unused’ and ‘underdeveloped’. The plot in question was a highly valuable strip of land along the Bilate river, which held considerable potential because it could be irrigated. This was in fact a portion of ‘community land’ that was historically shared by farmers in the kebele for grazing purposes. Access to the Bilate river’s water was extremely important, especially for those farmers who relied on livestock rearing as their main source of livelihood. Among these, the agro-pastoralist Oromo Guji were one of the minority groups in Siraro more dependent on access to pastureland and water.²⁵ Getachew secured access to this land in two ways. First, after obtaining a loan through micro-finance together with some other farmers, he established a small horticulture enterprise producing cash crops through irrigation for the local market.²⁶ To incentivize business development, and under the impulse of the government’s productionist rationale, the kebele allocated a parcel of community land upon a very convenient and long term lease. Second, when land registration was implemented, he demanded the LAC to issue a certificate over this portion of land. While distribution of land certificates on communal land used for commercial purposes was not common—neither it seems was an entirely legal practice—Getachew used his influence with kebele and OPDO officials and ultimately managed to get a certificate in his name. Although at the time of this fieldwork the legal implications of this remained unclear, Getachew referred to this parcel of land as his own. His prominent position in the local structure of power made it very difficult for other people to argue otherwise. This episode illustrates further how the actual implementation of land registration created considerable room for manoeuvre, which some powerful individuals used to their advantage and to the detriment of other farmers. Although at the time of this fieldwork social stratification remained low in Siraro, land registration became an ²⁵ Unlike the Arsi, Guji are known for their semi-nomadic lifestyle based on cattle farming and camel herding, although in recent years government policies and agro-ecological change has accelerated their sedentarization. ²⁶ Micro-finance and micro and small enterprises (MSEs) are discussed in more detail in chapter five.

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important component of a set of reforms potentially signalling incipient dynamics of rural class differentiation between a minority of state supported and relatively capitalized farmers, and a majority of subsistence-oriented, peasant smallholders.

3.7 Conclusion In this chapter I have situated state-society relations in Siraro, discussing the contingent politics and history of programmes of decentralization of land management and administration implemented in the course of the 2000s. The chapter has addressed the set of practices and tactics of manoeuvring land registration which farmers performed to tackle insecurity, conflict, uncertainty, and the ensuing threat of dispossession that came with land registration. These strategies describe the ways in which Oromo farmers, against a long and controversial history of exploitative land relations, reconstituted material and symbolic values to the land after land registration threatened their socio-economic reproduction and identity. The negotiation of land registration from below illustrates a view of the developmental state as a project that entails the significant rescaling of the rural space. I have discussed how global priorities about the formalization of land rights were mediated within federal government agendas about state-led development, and then further re-articulated within decentralization reforms and the scalar dynamics within which these reforms were enmeshed in Siraro. This chapter made three moves. First, I discussed reforms of decentralization of land management and administration implemented in the course of the 2000s under the EPRDF-led government. I have argued that, especially after the controversial 2005 elections, decentralization policies enabled the thickening of the local state apparatus while re-centralizing political authority over land. Second, the chapter contextualized current state-society relations in Oromia against the history of Arsi Oromo people integration in modern Ethiopia. Third, to address the implications of decentralization for state-society relations, I discussed the implementation of a programme of rural land registration in Siraro. The implementation of the programme illustrates the scope of state power to shape state-farmer relations, while at the same time creating new openings and space for manoeuvre, which describe how state power enacted the subjects of land policies into being. It is in these instances of everyday life that the scope of state-society relations under the developmental state needs to be contextualized. An important outcome was the further politicization of an Oromo identity in opposition to what was perceived as a top-down, centralizing state policy. The chapter suggests that the politicization of identity in EPRDF Ethiopia should be located within the significant inequalities and scalar dynamics generated under the developmental state plan for socio-economic transformation.

4 Making the Most of a Failed Biofuels Project: Agriculture Commercialization in Wolaita 4.1 Introduction This chapter discusses the strategy of agriculture commercialization pursued by the Ethiopian government since the mid-2000s, addressing the case of biofuel crop production through contract farming in Wolaita, SNNP region (see Figure 4.1 for the location of the study area). I engage with discussions about the role of foreign land investments in shaping relationships between the state, governance, and authority over land in Africa (Margulis, McKeon, and Borras, 2013; Wolford et al., 2013). I argue that contract farming arrangements designed to avoid the displacement of smallholder farmers present threats similar to the plantation model in terms of disproportionate social, economic, and environmental costs to local livelihoods. After the 2001 political crisis and the controversial 2005 elections, the EPRDF re-oriented the strategy for rural modernization, opening up to foreign investments in agriculture for the first time since coming to power in 1991. Taking place through significant state intermediation, primarily the system of state ownership emerging out of the 1975 land reform, agriculture commercialization became an important driver of rural transformation. Driven by the imperative to pursue rapid economic growth geared towards achieving ‘middle income status’ by 2025 (FDRE, 2015), agriculture commercialization generated a number of significant transformations in the ways the EPRDF political leadership interfaced with its main political constituency, i.e. smallholder farmers. Empirically the chapter is based on fieldwork conducted in Wolaita, one of the administrative zones of the SNNPR. Wolaita is the place of origin of former Prime Minister Hailemariam Dessalegn, who led the EPRDF government between 2012 and 2018. Commercialization initiatives were attempted in Wolaita for about a decade, from the mid-2000s to the mid 2010s, in the field of biofuel production. Commercialization gained momentum as a result of a number of scalar factors. Internationally, the early 2000s marked a renewed interest in land investments in Africa for the

Everyday Practices of State Building in Ethiopia. Davide Chinigò, Oxford University Press. © Davide Chinigò (2022). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192869654.003.0004

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Study Area

Federal Level

Wolaita

Kindo Koysha

Damot Woyde

Regional Level

Offa

Fig. 4.1 Location of study area in SNNPR, Wolaita zone. Map prepared by the author.

production of fuel from renewable sources. Biofuels gained traction in connection to spiking oil prices and concerns over energy security, as well as intersecting with a discourse about the transition to renewable energy sources and prospects for a new impulse to utilize the rural economy of countries with undercapitalized land. Constituting an important aspect of the ‘global land rush’ in Africa (Borras et al., 2011; Hall, Scoones, and Tsikata, 2015), biofuels were regarded as a ‘miracle crop’.¹ Following the neoliberal argument in support of large-scale land investments, biofuels were expected to provide a technical solution to a variety of local, national, and global development problems. The emergence of biofuels has been regarded in terms of the intersection of different socio-material and discursive factors, effectively a ‘global assemblage’ (Smith, 2010). This international context was met by favourable internal conditions. The EPRDF’s new political imperative, under the developmental state, about pursuing commercialization had concerns about the economy at its centre. By the mid2000s, Ethiopia was desperate to attract foreign capital. The lack of a strong manufacturing sector put significant pressure on the country’s balance of trade, which was facing a growing deficit due to rapidly increasing import. It is against this context that the Ethiopian government laid the ground for attracting international ¹ See for instance https://www.scidev.net/global/farming/opinion/reality-check-for-miraclebiofuel-crop.html [Accessed on 15 September 2020].

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capital by setting very favourable conditions for foreign investors. Agriculture became the most obvious target of these investments, followed by manufacturing industry (addressed in chapter six). Incentives to foreign investors included tax holidays, favourable import duties, long-term and affordable land rentals, as well as the commitment of federal and regional governments to support business development in a number of ways, the most important being labour mobilization. The case study discussed in this chapter is set against this international and internal context. In 2006–2007, the federal government struck deals with two foreign investors, the Israeli/German Global Energy Ethiopia (GEE), and the British Sun Biofuels, for production and processing of biofuels in Wolaita. The case of Wolaita is interesting from several perspectives. Firstly, commercialization was undertaken through a mixed system, relying on both Contract Farming (CF) arrangements with individual farmers and a core estate along the lines of a plantation model. Secondly, by the mid-2000s, Wolaita was one of the most densely populated agricultural areas in the entire country, and the transition from traditional food crops to biofuels raised both considerable expectations for a rejuvenation of the local economy as well as profound uncertainty that this would undermine local food production. Thirdly, experiments of agriculture commercialization through biofuels in Wolaita failed spectacularly over the course of less than a decade. This allows for a dissection of the main challenges of commercialization as it was envisioned and put into practice as an important government policy, as well as an analysis of the factors contributing to failure on the ground. The two dynamics combined suggest that the agriculture commercialization policy was central to the negotiation of state-society relations. Fourthly, as soon as the ‘financial bubble’ around biofuels deflated globally in the early 2010s, an important component sustaining the effort at agriculture commercialization in Wolaita backed off. This is an example of how in the course of the 2000s the Ethiopian state was largely incapable of mediating the adverse impact of speculative financial cycles of capital accumulation, despite the political elite’s refuting of neoliberalism, and the claim in which the developmental state is an effective model to counter the effect of neoliberal policies (Arkebe Oqubay, 2015). The case of Wolaita shows how commercialization of agriculture, which relied on a radical reinterpretation of the ADLI strategy (discussed in chapter two), was no more successful in supporting agrarian transformation than the policies implemented in the first decade of EPRDF rule. Quite interesting here is the notion of CF, which reflected a sort of middle ground between the policies of direct state support to peasant farming of the 1990s and the plantation model of large-scale commercialization that the opening to foreign investments had enabled in other parts of the country. I argue that CF embodies a key tension of the developmental state project. That is the political leadership’s largely unsuccessful attempt to induce commercialization through injection of foreign capital, while retaining control over the process of agrarian transformation and preserving a society of smallholders as the government’s main power base.

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In Wolaita, foreign investments were channelled in cash crops for biodiesel production and transformation. GEE operated in Wolaita and the neighbouring Gamo Goffa zone on behalf of an Israeli/German financial conglomerate that also owned other commercial agriculture projects elsewhere in Ethiopia. Farmers were involved in the production of castor beans (ricinus communis) through CF arrangements. Under the pressure of local government and promises of great success, contract farmers shifted part of their production to castor, which the company committed to buy at a fixed price. GEE and the British Sun Biofuels thus struck deals with the government to produce biofuel crops, castor beans and jatropha, on state land through a plantation. Additional urban land was allocated for building a processing plant in Sodo, Wolaita’s capital. Analysis of the case study revolves around three main issues. Firstly, the topdown and authoritarian system of implementation was a main reason behind the failure of these projects. This hierarchical system builds on a controversial history of authoritarian relationships over land following the incorporation of Wolaita into modern Ethiopia by the end of nineteenth century. Foreign investors left the zone as soon as they realized that the business was not as profitable as expected, generating significant losses for the contract farmers involved in the scheme. The dysfunctional aspects characterizing the project reflect the tension between bureaucratic centralism and economic liberalization. This can be read as yet another example of the complex scalar dynamics within which the political leadership’s attempt at institutionalizing state power is enmeshed. Secondly, practices of subversion, manoeuvring, and differentiation compounded pressures from above, and reflected the attempt of contract farmers at re-establishing and securing access to means of social reproduction. Left with little option but to comply with government demands, and while trying to make the most of available opportunities, contract farmers attempted to manoeuvre commercialization initiatives to their advantage, ultimately contributing to their failure. While for a majority of them the project generated significant losses, some of the most dynamic and entrepreneurial farmers—as well as those with the best political connections—were among those benefiting the most, or losing the least, from the programme. This shows how social differentiation can take place even in absence of formal land dispossession, and in the context of unsuccessful commercialization (Hall et al., 2015: 474–475; Smalley, 2013). Thirdly, the dire legacy of these initiatives added fuel to already politicized questions of rural land and labour, contributing to deteriorating relationships between local government and Wolaita farmers. The programme generated pressures among local authorities, particularly kebele leaders and woreda officials, as they became the target of farmers’ resentment. When it became clear that the project had a disruptive impact on the local economy, some local officials joined farmers’ protests, and this generated new tensions between the local

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administrative structures and higher levels of government. When read against the 2016–2018 political turmoil leading to the historical change in the EPRDF political leadership, one may concur that conflicts that ensued following failed commercialization constituted the micro-political terrain within which broader national anti-government protests unfolded. Even more recently, a politically charged debate about statehood recognition has emerged in Wolaita following a parallel claim by neighbouring Sidama, which by mid-2019 had gained significant prominence in the national political debate. Whatever the outcome of these dynamics, this chapter signals that failed commercialization, alongside a history of authoritarian relationships over land, played a significant role in the unfolding of current ethno-nationalist claims. Contract farmers and rural development officers manoeuvred commercialization after facing significant economic and social strains as a result of exploitative and poorly planned schemes that the state had encouraged in the first place. Following the failure of commercialization—which, like in chapter three, reflects tensions in the ways symbolic and material values are attached to the land— contract farmers tried alternative avenues, seeking alternative ways to re-constitute themselves as economic, social, and political subjects, sometimes succeeding and most of the time failing to improve their condition. The chapter concludes that the questions of land and labour remained a central source of tension in the project of rural modernization pursued by the EPRDF government in the course of the 2000s. State ownership of land had for a long time allowed the political elite to avoid dealing with such problems. On the one hand, the model of smallholder farming served as a shock absorber for the lack of diversification of the rural economy. On the other hand, it disincentivized rural out-migration, preventing rapid urbanization and the need to deal with rising urban unemployment. The shift to a model of commercialization by the mid-2000s, although mediated by the state, was characterized by a number of contradictions. The case of Wolaita points at the challenges that the political leadership faced in promoting a commercialization strategy that would not affect the social structure of the countryside, and hence the EPRDF power base. The chapter is based on qualitative methods of research analysis and data collection. Multiple periods of fieldwork were conducted in Wolaita between 2010 and 2012. The bulk of primary evidence presented draws on fifty in-depth interviews with farmers, companies’ extension workers, and government officials.

4.2 Foreign Land Investments in Africa Following decades of largely failed experiments at bringing a ‘green revolution’ to Africa, the early 2000s have been characterized by a renewed interest in large-scale

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investments in farmland in many parts of the continent. Part of a new ‘global land rush’ (Borras et al., 2011), farmland investments have prompted scholars to draw parallels with past colonial and post-independence developmentalist schemes supporting large-scale commercialization, this time under the significant impulse of global financial markets (Baglioni and Gibbon, 2013; Hall, Scoones, and Tsikata, 2015). The rapid surge of land investments has gained traction under the impulse of a narrative about the availability of large tracts of unutilized or underutilized land (and labour) in Africa which could be put into production with benefits to be shared across different actors—local communities, national states, and investors—effectively a ‘win-win’ scenario (FAO, 2009). The extent to which underutilized land is available has been questioned by studies highlighting how informal use and customary rights to land are usually not taken into account in the design and implementation of large-scale commercialization schemes (Edelman et al., 2015). The rights to land of pastoral and semi-nomadic communities is a point in case, leading some scholars to argue that land investments have been functional for broader historical processes supporting sedentarization for a variety of purposes, including political control (Gabbert et al., 2021). The construction of a narrative about Africa as a terra nullius—effectively an ‘empty land’—thus echoes earlier colonial narratives justifying new forms of appropriation and exploitation of land and other natural resources (Geisler, 2012). Farmland investments have taken a variety of forms. In some cases commercial farms have been established in former state farms and colonial estates (Sulle and Smalley, 2015); in regions where commercial investments did not exist before, such as in parts of Southern Ethiopia (Gabbert et al., 2021) and in Northern Ghana (Tsikata and Yaro, 2015); in outgrower schemes with smallholder farmers, including contract farming, such as the case discussed in this chapter (Oya, 2012; Cotula and Leonard, 2010), and; for small and medium scale commercial farmers investing in agriculture through off-farm sources of capital and usually supported through specific state policies (Hall, Scoones, and Tsikata, 2017; Cotula et al., 2015). The opportunities and challenges presented by all these models have been debated widely in the literature. For instance, studies have debated the relative merit of small versus large scale commercialization (Collier and Dercon, 2014), the implication of increasing land and capital accumulation to patterns of agrarian change (Hall, Scoones, and Tsikata, 2015), dynamics of land and labour commodification and the generation of rural livelihoods (Oya, 2013), trade-offs between local food security and large-scale commercialization (McMichael, 2015), dynamics of social differentiation and class formation and the role of the state (Wolford et al., 2013), and the displacement of specific categories of land users, including agro-pastoralist populations (Gabbert et al., 2021). The rapid surge of large-scale land investments in Africa in the course of the 2000s has thus prompted a growing scholarship interested in conceptualizing political reactions, and the lack thereof, to these schemes (Hall et al., 2015). Some

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of the most influential approaches draw on collective action, Marxist, and social movement approaches. Drawing on neo-classical economics, collective action theory is premised by a view of individuals as rational actors and conceptualize resistance as an individual choice determined by self-interest (Roscigno and Hodson, 2004; Khawaja, 1993; Ayanian and Tausch, 2016; Siegel, 2011). As individuals seek to minimize risk, and collective resistance is a risky endeavour which can lead, for instance, to repression and lost time, collective action theory regards resistance as the exception rather than the norm. Individuals act as ‘free-riders’ in that they try to weigh the potential benefits of resistance action against its potential adverse effects—missed opportunities in the job market, for instance—and tensions with local state officials. Collective action theory is thus generally sceptical about the potential of class action because of the absence of individual economic incentives to sustain collective forms of resistance (Olson, 1965). Rejecting the thesis by which resistance is an exception, Marxist theorists conceptualize resistance within the realm of social action as an inevitable outcome of oppression, exploitation, and grievance. Resistance is the structural effect of economic inequalities and configures a wide range of politics and political projects, including ‘class consciousness’. Using the Marxist paradigm, the current wave of large-scale land investments in Africa marks a new frontier of capital accumulation driven by significant land and labour commodification (for instance Kelly and Peluso, 2015). Both the Marxist and collective action theories have been criticized by social movement scholars on the ground that an exclusive focus on individual motivation misses important dynamics of identification that take place along resistance, for instance based on kin, ethnic, and religious lines. Social movement theory puts into sharp focus dynamics of collective identification beyond economic motivations that shape the trajectory of resistance and its absence (Tilly, 1986; Rosset and Martı´nez-Torres, 2012; Meszaros, 2013). Recent studies have focused on forms of political reactions ‘from below’ to the recent wave of land investments (Borras and Franco, 2013; Hall et al., 2015). While interested in scoping broader dynamics of agrarian change, these studies maintain that political conflict arising in conjunction with land investments takes a variety of forms, of which resistance is only one manifestation. ‘Political reactions from below’ identify a wide range of responses to land investments that vary ‘from mobilizations seeking to improve the compensation for people’s expulsion from their land to demands to be inserted into land deals as workers or contract farmers to counter-mobilizations against land deal resisters’ (Hall et al., 2015: 467). Another significant implication identified by these studies is the emergence of broader national and transnational networks that shape the trajectory, claims, and political relevance of localized reactions to land investments (see, for instance, Gingembre, 2015). The impact of land investments cannot be generalized, and varies depending on a number of factors. One important dimension is labour. When schemes

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require land only, dispossession is likely to entail the creation of a ‘relative surplus population’ (Li, 2011) in which former land users are pushed to seek off-farm employment elsewhere. However, in other cases land investments require labour, and former land users may be integrated into corporate enterprises as workers, or via outgrower arrangements. Hickey and du Toit (2007) have coined the term ‘adverse incorporation’ to discuss the ways in which people are subsumed into corporate agri-business arrangements while at the same time being excluded from processes of capital accumulation. Contract farming is a point in case, with contractual arrangements working to incorporate small-scale farmers into global value chains, while externalizing to them production risks, including social and environmental costs. Adverse incorporation points to the exploitative character of social relations of production inherent in land investments, and thus raises the question about the actual responses and reactions from people involved in these schemes. In other words, the commodification of labour is an important aspect of the dynamics of the structural transformation that accompanies land investments. The case of Wolaita presented in this chapter digs into the economic, social, and political repercussions of adverse incorporation, including changing state-contract farmers relations. In line with the literature discussing ‘political reactions from below’, in this chapter I discuss the wide set of everyday practices of manoeuvring, differentiation, and open conflict that contract farmers enact in the context of poorly planned contract farming arrangements. The discussion pays particular attention to the ways contract farmers have attempted to secure access to means of social reproduction, re-casting themselves as political subjects, amid profound uncertainty and economic insecurity. The empirical discussion examines conflict that occurs at the intersection between the local state, contract farmers, and investors and that illustrates the negotiation of public authority relations in their everyday changes over time. A growing number of studies acknowledge the need to unpack the role of the state in land investments. While national governments are almost always implicated in the negotiation of land investments (Wolford et al., 2013)—usually emphasizing potential benefits in terms of export revenues, the modernization of agriculture, and job creation—it is at the level of the everyday state that the actual implementation of land investments usually becomes politically sensitive. Local state bodies are usually in the delicate position of having to mediate between national government, investors and landed elites, and villagers. Conflict is unlikely to arise only between people and corporate capital, although with notable exceptions, such as in the case of Cambodia (Diepart et al., 2019). Conflict between the local state and villagers has been widely studied in relation to the timely framework introduced by James Scott on ‘everyday forms of peasant resistance’ (1985), such as in the case of Ghana (Gyapong, 2019), Ethiopia (Tsegaye Moreda, 2015), and China (O’Brien and Li, 2006). Other studies have documented more organized

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forms of agrarian movements’ mobilization, such as in the case of Philippines (Ocasiones, 2018). Besides more ‘visible’ forms of conflict, a concern of this chapter is the more mundane political reactions and implications of land investments. This brings into focus how different groups of people navigate land investments, trying to make the most of the opportunities they present and cope with uncertainty and new socioeconomic conditions. For instance, a growing body of studies highlights how land deals are associated with dynamics of social differentiation and conflict between different groups along class, ethnic, gender, and religious lines (Hall et al., 2015). The impact of land deals triggers new and revitalizes old forms of identification through which people reconstitute themselves as political subjects seeking new forms of recognition. While the most marginalized people are less likely to engage in open forms of resistance (Mamonova, 2015), they are at the same time those who usually suffer the most from the impact of land investments, especially when investments are poorly planned, as the case of Wolaita clearly points out. Other, more entrepreneurial, politically connected, and resource endowed individuals are likely to be able to navigate changing socio-economic conditions and make the most of new economic opportunities. The lens of the everyday state allows discussion of how social conflict often reflects not only mobilizations against land investments, but also claims to inclusion. The ambivalence of political reactions to land deals has for instance been discussed by Larder in the case of the Malibya project in Mali (2015). Claims to inclusion are more likely to be prevalent in the absence of livelihood alternatives and sustained by more or less forms of coercion, typically performed by local government structures, such as in the case of Wolaita. As noted by Hall et al. (2015: 471), this is likely to pit the interest of different groups seeking inclusion and independence, potentially generating new poor-on-poor conflicts. These conflicts, which often remain invisible to external observers, thus have important implications for the trajectory of state formation and state-society relations. Another important dimension of conflict occurs in relation to the re-negotiation of the terms of incorporation into land deals. The case presented in this chapter shows that changing international prices for oil and local agricultural products after 2007–2008 led Wolaita contract farmers to demand better contractual conditions. These conflicts ‘within land deals’ have been documented in other cases, for instance in northern Mozambique (FIAN, 2012), and reflect claims to job opportunities or better contractual arrangements.

4.3 Agriculture Commercialization and State Formation in Ethiopia No policy more than agriculture commercialization reflects the significant scalar dynamics that took place under the developmental state project for

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socio-economic transformation. In the period under review, the EPRDF implemented a three-tier strategy of agrarian transformation. First, a wide range of policies and programmes targeted smallholder agriculture, the sector historically employing a vast majority of the population. These initiatives, which as discussed in chapter three include land titling and decentralization of land administration, have been particularly prominent where peasant farmers historically had direct access to land and population pressure is higher, and are aimed at filling the gap between local and vernacular production with national and international markets. Second, large-scale commercialization initiatives via the injection of foreign capital have selectively targeted vast areas of the country’s lowlands where population pressure is historically less prevalent. Critics of government policy have pointed to the violent enforcement of these schemes which resulted in the displacement, resettlement, and forced sedentarization of smallholder farmers and agro-pastoralist groups (Korf, Hagmann, and Emmenegger, 2015; Asebe Regassa and Korf, 2018; Abbink et al., 2014; Gabbert et al., 2021). As noted by Lavers (2016), rather than undermining national sovereignty, land investments in Ethiopia must be regarded as central to state formation, and more precisely as a key mechanism to institutionalize state power in specific contexts. Third, a relatively overlooked model which I address in this chapter is the commercialization of agriculture through contract farming arrangements in which smallholders are integrated into global value chains but retain formal control of the land (Wedekind and Chinigò, 2021). This model, which can be considered as a sort of middle-ground between the first two, illustrates the largely unsuccessful attempt at inducing a structural transformation of the rural economy without resorting to formal land dispossession under the developmental state. At least since the mid-2000s foreign direct investments in Ethiopia have grown at a steady pace. As reported by UNCTAD, by 2008 the agricultural sector accounted for approximately 32% of the total country inflow (UNCTAD, 2008: 254). The Ethiopian government was quite successful in attracting investments by implementing a number of reforms and incentives. These included the reduction of the minimum capital requirement for foreign investors and provisions deregulating the repatriation of asset sales and profits. To manage the growing inflow of investments in agriculture, the Ethiopian government instituted the Agriculture Investment Support Directorate (AISD), and the Federal Land Bank (FLB). AISD served as the institutional body for negotiating land lease agreements above 5,000 hectares. The FLB was the official repository of land designated for largescale investments constituted through a quota system from each regional state and lower levels of the institutional apparatus (zones, woreda). Following the MoARD (2009: 11), by 2009 approximately 3.31 million hectares were listed under the FLB. As noted by Fouad Makki (2014), this accounted for a landmass that is equivalent to half of the total land under smallholder farming. A large majority of the land allocated to investors came from the regional state of the eastern and western lowlands,

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SNNPR, Benishangul-Gumuz, Gambella, and Afar. The institution of these land management bodies at federal level re-centralized the authority over land administration, a responsibility that earlier legislations at federal and regional levels, as well as the Constitution, indicated as a clear prerogative of regions (see also Lavers, 2012). International media and scholarship have regarded the wave of land investments by foreign and domestic private sector actors that have affected Ethiopia since the mid-2000s as a significant case of ‘land grabbing’, although mediated by a developmental state (Lavers, 2012). Studies from different disciplines have comprehensively covered many economic, social, political, and cultural implications of the recent wave of land deals. These include the state’s development strategy and discursive repertoire (Dessalegn Rahmato, 2011; Fana Gebresenbet, 2016; Cochrane and Skjerdal, 2015; Tilahun Weldie Hindeya, 2018), socio-cultural and agro-ecological dynamics (Abbink, 2011b; Gabbert, 2018), food security and land rights (Abbink, 2017; Husen Ahmed Tura, 2018; Tsegaye Moreda, 2015), democratization (Daniel Ambaye, 2015; Husen Ahmed Tura, 2018), ethnic-based conflict and violence (Dessalegn Rahmato, 2014; Fana Gebresenbet, 2016; Meckelburg, 2014), internal displacement and migration (Pankhurst and Piguet, 2009; Fratkin, 2014; Korf et al., 2015), and new agro-industrial labour relations and resistance (Mengistu Assefa, 2015; Andreas Admasie, 2018). Methodologically, this growing body of studies reproduces the schematic state formation distinction operated by Markakis (2011) between ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’. As noted by Abebe Gizachew Abate (2020), this framing has produced a significant misconception, i.e. that significant reconfiguration of relationships over land is only taking place on the periphery of the state through forms of large-scale land dispossession. This view is problematic for two reasons. First, it obfuscates important dynamics of land appropriation and land use change in areas where political authority is centralized, such as expanding urban centres, and at the intersection between central and peripheral areas, where land conflicts have proved quite significant. Secondly, it overlooks the implications of land investments attempting to vertically integrate smallholders within globalized commodity markets, such as through outgrower schemes. Wolaita is illustrative of both tensions: located in a peripheral area of the country from the perspective of the centre-periphery framework, Wolaita is one among the smallholder agricultural areas with higher population pressure on land in the entire country, and in recent years it has been the target of ambitious programmes aiming to significantly restructure relationships over land. I argue that commercialization of smallholder agriculture via vertically outgrower arrangements in Wolaita is a clear example of the developmental state as a scalar project of socio-economic transformation. Critics of large-scale land deals in Ethiopia often argue that contract farming can potentially suit smallholders as it represents a socially just alternative to plantation production, provided that the state acts in the interest of smallholders. This is for instance the perspective of international development organizations, such as the

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World Bank and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Following this view, CF is not only promoted as an alternative to ‘land grabs’, but often even as an inclusive ‘business model’ in which the interests of individual producers are not necessarily misaligned with those of corporate capital (see Cotula et al., 2009; Little and Watts, 1994; Oya, 2013). CF is a specific configuration of outgrowing, which entails the development of processing facilities that incorporate small producers into commercial value chains (Porter and Phillips Howard, 1997). The stipulations of contracts linking capital and outgrowers determine the scope for accumulation by smallholders, with institutional arrangements determining more or less advantageous conditions (Little and Watts, 1994; Oya, 2012; 2013). Like in the case of Wolaita, outgrowers are often linked to a processing firm holding a nucleus estate connected to a processing plant. Both permanent and seasonal job opportunities supplement the contract farming value chain not only at the level of processing but also on the nucleus estate. As noted by several studies, stipulations of specific contracts vary considerably from context to context (Smalley, 2013; Oya, 2012; 2013), determining distributions of risk and benefits as well as new dynamics of rural class formation. Normally, tight arrangements bind outgrowers to produce for the buyer estate for a number of years only, while loose contracts leave greater freedom for producers to move in and out of supply agreements. Outgrowers are normally smallholder farmers using their own labour and land for production, although additional labour inputs are sometimes sought outside the immediate social network (e.g. the household). Commercial arrangements tend to cover output marketing and input supply. In Ethiopia, the potential of CF to share benefits resonates with important ideas about the role of the developmental state in sustaining agrarian transformation. In the mind of the EPRDF leadership, commercialization initiatives centred around smallholders are meant to allow the Ethiopian state to retain political control over the process of economic transformation, while avoiding land dispossession, and therefore preserving smallholders as one of the government’s main social bases. This connects to broader discussions about the relative merits of large and small farms, and their ability to sustain land productivity, labour generation, and livelihood creation (see for instance World Bank, 2008; Deininger and Byerlee, 2011; Baglioni and Gibbon, 2013). In Ethiopia this debate is framed around ideological concerns about engineering a process of agrarian transformation from above. A recent country-wide study pointed at the existence of an inverse relationship between farm size and yield, and a positive association between yield and land fragmentation (Paul and wa Gĩthĩnji, 2018). Conversely, the Ethiopian political leadership appears to be strongly attached to the implementation of flagship grand schemes (such as dams and industrial parks), echoing a high-modernist ethos behind the developmental state project (Mosley and Watson, 2016). Another important angle through which to look at the relationship between CF and state formation in Ethiopia is the agrarian question of labour.

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CF in Ethiopia echoes important features of what Henry Bernstein has defined as the model of petty commodity production (Bernstein, 2002; 2004: 131–134). Bernstein argues that petty commodity producers are a structural outcome of the incomplete transition to agrarian capitalism in Africa, whereby rural dwellers are forced to seek their social and economic reproduction at the intersection of increasingly globalized patterns of capital accumulation in agriculture, while still using the land for their own sustenance. Contemporary agrarian transitions in Africa are often characterized by incomplete processes of structural transformation from a predominantly rural agrarian society and economy into an increasingly industrial one (Bernstein, 2007; 2016). Under the global wave of large-scale land investments, this raises the question about the extent to which African states have the capacity to diversify their national economy to a scale that can absorb the surplus labour population which market-driven agricultural commercialization necessarily unleashed. This is precisely the political dilemma that the Ethiopian political elite faced in the design and implementation of developmental state policies, and its rural modernization strategy in particular. On the one hand, an important objective was to use commercialization of agriculture as a tool to diversify the rural economy away from semi-subsistence farming and sustain rural capital accumulation. On the other hand, this created the risk of generating a potentially politically dangerous surplus population, comprised of unemployed urban youths and landless smallholders. Against this potential trade-off, commercialization of smallholder agriculture through CF, and under the umbrella of state-ownership of land, represented a political middle-ground to facilitate rural diversification while avoiding the excessive social differentiation of peasant farmers into a distinct, and potentially politicized, class of labour. In fact, given the sensitivity of preserving a delicate balance between rural transformation and livelihood reliance on land (Mulugeta Gebrehiwot, 2014), it must be stressed that ‘in Ethiopia, the imperative of structural transformation was linked to rapid job creation’ (Oya, 2019a: 255), as a way to control rural-urban migration and urban unemployment. Commercialization in Ethiopia reveals the attempt of the country’s political elite to actually engineer an agrarian transition from above as a way to pursue rapid agro-industrial growth.

4.3.1 Contract Farming for Biofuels in Ethiopia The experience of contract farming has historically been very limited in Ethiopia. This is especially true if compared to the slow but steady growth of agricultural wage labour since the 1950s, and the significant role played by cooperatives, especially during the Derg regime. Notable exceptions were the Wonji-Shoa outgrower schemes for sugarcane production established under Haile Selassie in the 1950s by the Dutch company HV Amsterdam (Bahru Zewde, 2008). Nationalized during the socialist government, when the EPRDF took power these schemes were

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transferred under the Ethiopian Sugar Corporation, one of the EPRDF’s stateowned conglomerates. Conversely, cooperative farming has played a much more prominent role in the commercial production of agricultural goods for both the domestic market (e.g. grains) and for export (e.g. coffee). Cooperatives gained momentum in connection to the agriculture’s socialization and collectivization measures promoted under the Derg, as well as the re-organization of the local state apparatus through Peasant Associations. In fact, contract farming was fully institutionalized only in the late 1990s, following the release of Proclamation No. 147 for The Establishment of Cooperative Societies (FDRE, 1998). In the first decade of EPRDF rule, outgrower arrangements remained highly varied and largely experimental. It is not until the enactment of the Agricultural Cooperative Sector Development Strategy (2012– 2016) (FDRE, 2012) that the government made more explicit the connection between foreign direct investments and smallholder agriculture. If until then the primary function of smallholder agriculture was to achieve national food selfsufficiency, under the new strategy smallholder farmers were to play an important role in agriculture commercialization. As result, the 2010s have seen a wealth of concerted efforts to promote contract farming for specifically selected food crops such as sesame (see van der Mheen-Sluijer, 2010) as well as for agro-fuel and flex crops such as jatropha and castor. The consensus on promoting agriculture commercialization through outgrower schemes found fertile ground in connection to the emerging global discourse around biofuels. In 2007 the government released the Biofuel Development Utilization Strategy (MME, 2007; Anderson and Million Belay, 2008), which emphasized the opportunity to combine rapid development of smallholder commercialization and national energy self-sufficiency. The strategy, which also emphasized the potential of biofuel production on plantation farming, set particularly ambitious targets for the small farming sector, for instance contending that ‘with the participation of 1.25 million farmers in biodiesel production program, the import of 1 billion litres of petrol diesel can be substituted with biodiesel’ (MME, 2007). The same principles were reiterated in the Growth and Transformation Plan I (2010–2015), in which the government commit to ‘support and motivate private investors to get involved in the biofuel development activities in a short period of time and to involve smallholder farmers in production and supply of biodiesel by coordinating the involvement of agriculture and rural development extension services’ (FDRE, 2010: 39).

4.4 Biofuels Production in Wolaita At the beginning of the 2000s, Wolaita was one of the most populated rural areas of Ethiopia, with an average density of 600 persons/km2 (Abbink, 2010: 87). Under the combined effect of rapid population growth, limited opportunities

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for out-migration, and an economy predominantly based on agriculture, Wolaita farmers cultivated any piece of land available, including the steep hillsides of Mount Damot. Despite these efforts, Wolaita was hit by recurrent food crises, an agrarian paradox shared with other agricultural areas in Ethiopia. With an average farm size constantly decreasing to accommodate a growing number of young claimants, by the time of this fieldwork local safety net structures, including the production of enset, a root crop constituting an important part of a household’s food reservoir, were so overtaxed they were often unable to absorb the shocks generated by recurrent production failures. Against this grim background, in 2007 became popular domain that two major international investors had signed a deal with the Federal government to produce and transform biodiesel and intended to operate in the zone. Under the first, 3000 ha of state land in Offa woreda were allocated to the British Sun Biofuels PLC for the production of jatropha through a plantation. An experimental plot of 150 ha was put in cultivation in 2009, but it was never scaled up. The second deal struck by the government was with the Israeli-funded Global Energy Ethiopia to produce castor beans. GEE was operational between 2007 and 2012 in three woreda in Wolaita (Offa, Kindo Koisha, and Damot Woyde), as well as in parts of the neighbouring Gamo Goffa zone. The coming of these investments generated mixed reactions. Many regarded them as an opportunity to rejuvenate the local economy, creating new job opportunities in agriculture and along the biofuel value chain. The news also raised concerns about the impact to the local economy of diverting a significant amount of land from food production for local consumption to bioenergy.

4.4.1 Historicizing Agriculture commercialization in Wolaita Quite significantly, this was not the first time that initiatives aimed at promoting the commercialization of agriculture were attempted in the recent history of Wolaita. This history intersects important themes relevant to contemporary commercialization initiatives, including the relationship between land, domination, and political authority, as well as patterns of social differentiation. From the eighteenth to the nineteenth century, Wolaita was an independent and centralized kingdom dominating the wider southern Ethiopia region, and put up fierce resistance to the expansion of the Abyssinian empire (Aalen, 2011: 60). Alongside other Omotic-speaking societies in Southern Ethiopia, Wolaita was organized around traditional kinship groups or clans referring to a common lineage. Wolaita society was traditionally stratified with a centralized polity headed by the king (kawo). Stratification manifested along clan lines, with the royal clan (kawonnata) at the top, followed by free landlords or goqa, and by commoners

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or free peasants (Aalen, 2011: 65). Outside the clan structure were lower status groups such as craft-workers and slaves (aylé) (Abbink, 2010: 88; Chiatti, 1997). Two main features of Wolaita social and political organization were limited accumulation of land and social stratification. First, most of the clans did not follow clearly defined territorial lines, thus preventing significant centralization. This for instance reflected the extent to which all the clans had until today a common language (wolaitigna), but also a certain degree of clan rivalry and elite infighting. Second, as noted by Sabine Planel, the land tenure system prevalent in the Wolaita society, the Mayza-Maiya Gadya, prevented the accumulation of large land parcels and rather favoured fragmentation and dispersion by means of periodical redistributions within each clan (Planel, 2008: 123–124). However, unlike the rist system in the Abyssinian highlands, land rights were transferred via patrilineal descent only, which allowed some greater degree of land concentration. Yet the land collectively belonged to the lineage, and outsiders and lower status groups were prevented from having access. In 1894 Wolaita was conquered by the forces of Menelik II and incorporated into the Abyssinian Empire. Although the defeat opened a profound cultural, economic, and political wound, until 1974 Wolaita maintained a relatively autonomous status under the name of Wolamo awaraja (province). However, Wolaita was made ‘personal fief of Menelik’ precisely to weaken the centralized system of governance that allowed the kingdom to fiercely resist the conquest (Aalen, 2011: 72–73). Of the twelve ruling governors ruling until the 1950s, only two were Wolaita (Aalen, 2011: 73). Wolaita society was subordinated to the rule of highlanders. However, this only marginally affected the clan structure and its hierarchical organization. The incorporation of an already relatively stratified society reflected in the co-optation of Wolaita elites (balabbat) into the imperial administrative structure and the provision of rights to the land in exchange for administrative duties. These have been described as de facto gult rights over land, meaning land rights granted by the Emperor to imperial officials as a form of compensation for administrative duties (Planel, 2008: 149). Therefore, the exploitative system between landlord-tenants (gabbar) that characterized much of the newly incorporated imperial provinces included both local and Abyssinian melkenya (administrator) along with Abyssinian neftenya (soldier). Peasants became de facto tenants in their own land, and were required to pay tribute by giving up part of their agricultural production to landlords. This exploitative system of relations have shaped meanings of the relationship between land and political authority that affect commercialization to this day. From the early period after the incorporation, soil degradation, population growth, and land alienation became three interrelated and self-reinforcing issues characterizing the agrarian trajectory of Wolaita. One important outcome was that many Wolaita started migrating to commercial farms along the Rift Valley, seeking seasonal or permanent employment (Aalen, 2011: 79). In 1971 the

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Wolaita Agricultural Development Unit (WADU) became one of the World Bank integrated development projects implemented in Ethiopia aimed at sustaining agricultural growth through the promotion of modern inputs, and credit and extension services. Such an approach to agricultural modernization mirrored the broader attempt, largely inadequate and ineffective, of the late imperial period to promote rural development by sustaining agricultural productivity since the 1960s. WADU was closed in 1984. Following the administrative reorganization promoted by the Derg regime after 1974, Wolaita became part of the Sidama Province, a larger political unit in southern Ethiopia. The coming of the socialist regime marked the decline of commercial agriculture more broadly. The 1975 land reform had profound impacts on the agrarian structure of Wolaita. It dismantled the strata of landowners and indigenous leaders of the imperial period, which also included a minority of successful large-scale commercial farmers (Abbink, 2010: 89). Thus the reform provided for the redistribution of all lands and had radically equalizing effects. It resulted in a society constituted by self-labouring farmers, a condition that still largely characterizes Wolaita until today. Land was allocated to individual farmers through the newly established Peasant Associations and since then periodical redistribution became the main means to accommodate new generations’ access to land. Over time the fast growth of the rural population exacerbated the vulnerability of a rural economy offering few job opportunities outside agriculture. Agriculture was at the same time quintessential to the project of socialist state formation. State ownership of land and a centralized and hierarchical bureaucracy served the double purpose of controlling the peasantry and creating a society of smallholders (Lefort, 2012: 682). Between 1979 and 1988, Producer Cooperatives were established throughout Wolaita alongside the introduction of a quota system for grain delivery. Socialization policies climaxed with the implementation of forced resettlement and villagization schemes, especially after the devastating 1985 famine. In Wolaita in 1983–1984, a crop disease attacking enset aggravated the effects of the drought generating the famine. The years after the famine are remembered as the most traumatic of the Derg period. Violent protests against government officials and party members were reported throughout Wolaita, which led to the intensification of repressive measures (Aalen, 2011: 82–84). The military regime also converted existing commercial farms into state farms, employing mechanization and modern inputs as an attempt at large-scale commercialization. State farms proved disastrous: collectivization of labour constrained productivity and low wages provided disincentives to workers’ efficiency. Investments in mechanization never translated into economies of scale, despite the fact that state farms absorbed a very high proportion of the capital available for agricultural development (Cohen, 1986: 84). Dessalegn Rahmato defines the condition of agricultural stagnation in Wolaita by the end of the socialist period

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in terms of self-reinforcing dynamics of population growth, land shortage, and progressive soil degradation (Dessalegn Rahmato, 2007: 17). When the EPRDF/TPLF took power after 1991, Wolaita was initially included in the North Omo zone, and then achieved the status of separate zone in 2000, following linguistic and ethnic disputes with neighbouring groups (Abbink, 2010: 90). In Wolaita the first decade of EPRDF policies did not bring drastic changes to the overall agrarian structures provided by the 1975 land reform, if not in terms of more flexibility in renting out the land for short periods of time and hiring labour outside the household. Yet the transition in Wolaita did increase peace and stability, and improved humanitarian assistance in times of food shortages. Throughout the 1990s rapid population growth provided little opportunity for rural out-migration, and limited off-farm jobs resulted in the increased fragmentation of land plots into micro-parcels, as well as a growing landless population, which mainly consisted of youth. Yet, at least in its initial phase, the re-organization of the state architecture along ethnic lines hindered seasonal migration to agroindustrial estates along the Rift Valley. For a majority of Wolaita seasonal workers, the principle of ethnicity following the re-organisation of the state under federalism meant decreasing opportunities for temporary migration to areas such as Wonji, Metehara, and the Awash valley to harvest cotton and maize (Bevan and Pankhurst, 1996: 12). Wolaita embodied many of the tensions and contradictions of the federal system based on ethnicity (Vaughan and Tronvoll, 2003: 118). Following the change in the EPRDF political leadership in 2018, and following a similar claim to self-determination by neighbouring Sidama, Wolaita nationalism was articulated along a politically charged debate about statehood recognition, and formulated alongside demands to establish a separate administrative entity elevating its zone status to region.

4.4.2 Commercialization via Contract Farming and State-Society Relations When GEE and Sun Biofuels invested in biofuel production, this was the first significant attempt at promoting agriculture commercialization in Wolaita since the mid-1980s. Sun Biofuels operated only briefly through an experimental field of jatropha of 150 ha, which was never scaled up. GEE adopted a mixed model. Individual contract farming arrangements were stipulated with over 10,000 smallholder farmers, covering approximately 7,000 ha of land, to buy castor beans at a fixed price. Initially GEE also struck a deal to establish a core estate of 2,925 ha of ‘state land’ at a rent of 47 Ethiopian Birr (ETB)/ha/year, although it never followed up on this project. In 2009, Wolaita zone granted some extra land to GEE in Sodo town to build a processing plant for castor oil that, however, was never developed.

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Its advocates contend that CF constitutes a decentralized model of commercialization that enables farmers to retain some degree of independence because it avoids direct land dispossession. This was clearly the view of the Ethiopian government and its attempt at pursuing a commercialization model geared towards rapid economic development, but without affecting the social structure of the countryside. However, commercialization in Wolaita was characterized by significant tensions between the federal government, local administrative structures, investors’ extension workers, and contract farmers, which generated conflict. One important dimension of such conflict was the top-down implementation of commercialization. The project was moved by concerns about achieving rapid rural modernization through CF, an objective that intersected with the interest of corporate capital to seek quick return from land investments. The deal was signed by the Israeli investor with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. This meant that very limited or no consultation at all took place with local administrative units over modalities, arrangements, and potential challenges. The regional and zone governments were involved at a later stage only, when it became necessary to allocate the land and to select potential farmers. GEE hired 300 employees for administrative duties to interface with local government and to work as extension workers. Similarly, no consultation took place with farmers. Like for other development initiatives, farmers were targeted through lists that were created by local officials of the Agriculture and Rural Development Office at kebele level, and then sent to the upper levels of woreda and the zone. Farmers were exposed to the project through dissemination initiatives organized by extension workers and local officials. They were in theory free to decide whether or not to join the project, as well as how much land they would commit to the production of castor beans. However, precisely because targeting and selection was conducted by local officials, many farmers felt the only choice they had was whether or not to comply with a political decision of government. Officials were the very same people running political and party structure and coordinating other local development initiatives. One farmer noted: You are asking me if I was free to decide … When it comes to development activities we are only asked to trust government … you can’t run the risk to do otherwise.²

This quote highlights that for farmers the prospected economic profitability of the project was often a second order concern: at the level of the local interface the difference between a business activity and a political project was irrelevant. Many farmers felt compelled to join the programme as one of the political activities ² Interview with a farmer in Wolaita, 23 April 2012.

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organized by the EPRDF. As one extension worker explained,³ in a context of profound uncertainty and lack of opportunities, very few farmers could take the risk to not enrol in a programme when the government directly sponsored this. In fact, implementation and selection took place through the very same modalities of other development programmes not meant for business, an element that contributed to the blurring of political and economic rationale of the project. Like for other development initiatives, farmers were not consulted about agronomic techniques, potential challenges, and in general sharing their indigenous knowledge and experience. This is also considering that castor beans are an indigenous crop in Wolaita traditionally used in a number of ways, including for the production of oil and fencing, and that are therefore familiar to many. Rather, trainings that were conducted by extension workers followed the typical top-down approach and were meant to ‘instruct people about modern agriculture’.⁴ All these factors contributed to the perception of the project as just the last in a long list of development initiatives imposed from above, which farmers had to navigate while trying to make the most of potential opportunities and minimizing costs (see also Planel, 2014). Nonetheless, many farmers joined the project with enthusiasm, truly believing this would be transformative for Wolaita, and hoping it would change their life. The top-down model of implementation thus reflected the proposition in which biofuels were not in competition with other food crops because they could grow on ‘marginal’ or ‘unutilized’ land. For instance, the Ethiopian Biofuels Strategy contended that a main objective of the government was ‘to ensure the production of biofuel without affecting food self-sufficiency, import substitution and improve balance of payment’ (MME, 2007: 1). However, the notion of ‘marginal’ or ‘unutilized’ land requires careful scrutiny. The case of Wolaita is quite emblematic in this regard for two reasons. Firstly, farmers planted castor where they were previously growing food crops. They were not using additional idle land, which was a scarce asset anyway in Wolaita, nor were they provided with extra land by the local administrations. Yet many farmers shifted castor production to their best land precisely because they were expecting higher yields and a significant monetary return. This emerges in several interviews, such as the following: I have two timad of land (~0.5 ha), and I share another two timad with one of my sons. We shifted half of it to castor crop. We decided to employ our best land because we were ambitious, and we were expecting good money.⁵

Secondly, the claim about the availability of ‘marginal’ or ‘unutilized’ land reflects a central narrative legitimizing commercialization. That is the modernist ³ Interview with a former GEE extension worker, Wolaita, 10 April 2012. ⁴ Interview with a former GEE extension worker, Wolaita, 12 April 2012. ⁵ Interview with a farmer in Wolaita, 23 April 2012.

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view whereby commercialization constituted an improved land use that justified appropriation in the name of the greater good. For instance, this legitimized putting into cultivation state or communal lands that residents in Wolaita used for different purposes, including for grazing. I will discuss in more detail later in the chapter how this generated significant resentment, and how ultimately biofuel companies never started production on state land they received in order to establish a plantation. The specific stipulations of individual contracts highlight the exploitative nature of out-grower schemes at another level. Farmers were demanded to commit at least half of their land to castor production and were bound to sell the entire produce to GEE for the initial six years. As land was often the only source of income, this meant that households became significantly dependent on the fate of the project for their daily survival and future prosperity. However, the same level of commitment was not demanded of the investor. Contracts did not bind GEE to any specific production time frame and could be terminated at any time. Thus no stipulation to compensation was made in case of harvest loss, a burden that was left entirely on farmers. This means that CF allowed for capturing the bulk of production value addition, with profit located at lower level of the value chain, while externalizing the risk of failure to farmers (such as those arising from droughts), as well as responsibilities towards labour (such as social security and salaries). This feature is highlighted by Scott (2012: 93), for instance, who contends that CF represents a new frontier of labour exploitation of contemporary capitalism standing on the premise of externalizing the risk of production and the cost of managing labour, while allowing capital investment to rip the bulk of the profit. On its side, GEE committed to providing seeds and fertilizers, but it retained the price from the final payment to farmers after the harvest. Thus the company committed to buy the entire yield at a fixed price. CF is based on ideas about a ‘win-win’ scenario for both contractors and contracted, in which commercialization generates benefits for all actors involved. The brief history of biofuels in Wolaita not only shows that benefits were not shared equally, but that, when initiatives failed, farmers were left with the bulk of longterm social and economic costs. From a purely economic perspective, three main factors contributed to the failure of the project: overestimation of castor yields, changing prices for biofuel crops, and the cost of fertilizers and inputs. Many farmers were initially excited about the project because of the opportunity to diversify their income and cultivate a crop they often regarded as marginal. Thus, GEE agronomists, who were presented by extension workers as ‘scientists’, suggested that castor crop had the potential to yield 70–120 quintals/ha, depending on specific conditions. These estimations turned out to be largely speculative, with one extension worker noting for instance that the company decided to start an experimental plot only after CF arrangements were signed with farmers. Another extension worker noted that the company ‘based … trainings to the farmers on

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information they found in books’.⁶ The experimental plot later showed that the productivity of castor was eight to ten times lower than predicted: 8–10 quintals/ha, compared to the 80–100 expected. This was in line with what farmers managed to harvest in the first year. In Damot Woyde, where GEE estimated a yield of 70–80 quintals per hectare, the most productive farmer managed to produce forty-eight quintals, but this was a rather isolated case.⁷ The gap was confirmed in Offa in interviews with local officials and former extension workers, and by other studies (Kassaye Tekola Moges, 2010). Overall, the productivity of castor turned out to be seven to ten times less than that predicted by the company. The mismatch between projection and actual production angered many farmers, generating significant mistrust in extension workers. Some decided to quit, while others decided to continue, hoping for a better harvest the following year. The changing structure of prices for agricultural crops between 2007 and 2008 contributed significantly to the failure of the project. This came as the result of a number of factors. Initially, GEE set a price of 1 ETB/kg of castor which farmers considered acceptable considering the projected yields. However, beside the fact that yields turned out to be considerably lower, rising international and national food prices in 2007–2008 made traditional crops such as sorghum much more remunerative for farmers. In Wolaita, the fact that a significant number of farmers had shifted production away from food generated an even greater upward pressure on prices of staple crops. Castor turned out to be less productive than expected while its market price was significantly less than that paid for other food crops. Partly acknowledging these issues, in the second year GEE decided to raise the price paid for castor beans to 1.8 ETB/kg. GEE also attempted to introduce techniques to boost productivity, such as crop rotation and intercropping. However, farmers obtained modest improvements only. Ultimately, poor rains and more or less overt acts of subversion and manoeuvring (discussed below) contributed to yields lower than the previous year. A factor connected to the dynamic of prices had to do with the cost and distribution of fertilizers. GEE committed to distributing inputs on credit, retaining the cost from the final payment after harvest. Many farmers complained that, especially in the first year, fertilizers were distributed too late. In Offa woreda, farmers suggested that in the second year inputs were of worse quality than those received in the first year; in Damot Woyde other farmers received less fertilizers and seeds than the previous year. Thus the cost of fertilizers rose three times in the course of the three years that GEE operated in Wolaita. According to some estimates, in 2007–2008 one sack of DAP (50kg) ranged from 200 to 300 ETB, while in 2011– 2012 the price increased to 700–800 ETB.⁸ But despite this the company continued

⁶ Interview with a former GEE extension worker, Wolaita, 13 April 2012. ⁷ Interview with a former GEE extension worker, Wolaita, 13 April 2012. ⁸ Interview with a local official of the zone ARDO, 20 April 2012.

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to buy yields at a fixed price, resulting in a significant loss for farmers, who saw a greater amount of their payment retained. All these issues brought GEE to suspend operations in 2011, and soon after the company left Wolaita. Only a few farmers were still willing to continue producing castor beans. GEE discontinued contracts of extension workers at short notice, while many of them left the project prematurely.

4.4.3 Reactions from Below to Agriculture Commercialization The project resulted in a failure and generated a significant loss for the farmers involved. The authoritarian model of implementation mirrored a largely unprepared company management and poor decision-making that disregarded local knowledge and the structure of the local economy. However, the farmers that enrolled in the project were not passive recipients of these decisions from above. Practices of more or less overt contestation and manoeuvring played a significant role in determining the premature end of the project. Farmers tried to make the most of available opportunities to ensure their subsistence in the face of low yields and speculative strategies by the company. They tried to minimize the cost that the failure of a project they largely perceived as an imposition from above externalized on them. I concur with Tsegaye Moreda (2015) that studies on foreign land investments in Ethiopia seldom address localized responses to land acquisitions, responses which play an equally important role in determining the trajectory of agrarian change. Addressing the case of Benishangul-Gumuz, Tsegaye Moreda contends that displacement, or the threat thereof, is only one of the reasons behind localized contestations from below. More or less overt forms of opposition and conflict are rooted in the lack of involvement of Gumuz people in emerging employment opportunities, and the lack of fulfilment of promises that came with such investments. Manifesting as a response to marginalization, contestations from below are an important form of negotiation of local state authority, in which what is at stake are claims to inclusion in agriculture commercialization. The wide set of contestations, manoeuvring, and differentiations that commercialization generated are regarded here as a more or less intended outcome of the unresolved question of rural labour (Watts, 1994; 2012). Against a context of incomplete transformation of peasant farmers into wage labour, formalized contract farming limited farmers’ flexible mode of production, which allowed them to adjust to continuous shocks and changing crop and inputs prices. From a farmer’s perspective, staple crops like sorghum and root crops traditionally farmed in Wolaita, while on average less remunerative, represented the safest investment because of their relative stability in face of changing circumstances, including their use for direct consumption. Conversely, castor production was by definition a

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high-risk investment. It bound farmers to sell to one buyer only, leaving farmers without real alternatives in spite of rapidly changing market conditions. Therefore, contracts represented a significant source of tension between farmers, the company, and local government. The following story about distribution of inputs illustrates how such dynamics unfolded in practice. Ashenafi, a male in his forties, was one of the farmers that entered into a contractual agreement with GEE. When I met him he was married with four teenage children, and farmed 0.5 ha of land, part of which is jointly held with a brother. Ashenafi learnt about the biofuel project at a dissemination meeting in his kebele that was jointly organized sometime in 2007 by the company’s extension workers and woreda officials from the ARDO office. The meeting raised considerable expectations, he explained, because the company prospected a significant monetary return in exchange for castor crop. Ashenafi contended that ‘we were told that castor, which traditionally we use for fencing, could suddenly become an important source of money’. Following the meeting he was included in the list of potential participants, and just a few months after entering the contractual agreement with GEE he was committing to farm castor beans on half of his land. Ashenafi explained that a key stipulation of the agreement was that the cost for inputs was withheld from final payment after harvest. As soon as it became clear that the first harvest generated yields considerably smaller than predicted by the company, Ashenafi explained that the question about who had to bear the cost of fertilizers became extremely sensitive. Together with other farmers, he voiced a complaint to the kebele leader, asserting that farmers should not be charged because the company ‘was grossly overestimating the potential harvest’.⁹ The company perspective was very different: extension workers claimed that low yields were rather due to farmers not following the company instructions. In a communication between GEE and the woreda, the company expressed this view as follows: Those farmers that worked based on our instructions got a good result … We faced many problems with those farmers that got DAP (chemical fertilizer) in credit for the castor and they used it for other crops. Many of the farmers tried to grow the castor in the same management as if they were growing maize and obviously they got very bad results.¹⁰

GEE argued that farmers were simply taking advantage of the inputs with which they were provided. This points to a central practice of manouvering that ultimately contributed to the economic failure of the project. While probably both versions of the story hold some truth, the manoeuvring of fertilizers became an ⁹ Interview with a farmer in Wolaita, 13 April 2012. ¹⁰ Internal communication report between GEE and zone office, June 2009.

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important tactic, more or less overt and intentional, and especially during the second year, that farmers used to navigate the project. Surprisingly, Ashenafi was quite open in admitting that he and other farmers used fertilizers to grow other crops such as maize and sorghum. Rather, he regarded this practice as a legitimate compensation for his losses. Many local officials and some extension workers, although not overtly, sympathized with this view. Ashenafi expressed his frustration as follows: How could they charge us for fertilizers and seeds when production was so low? … The company was responsible for that, not farmers … They didn’t give us compensation, and we did not pay fertilizers back.¹¹

This point of view also explains why, despite the failure of the first year, many farmers decided to enrol in the project in the following year. This was the case for Ashenafi, for instance. While he did not have any trust that production would improve and was rather angered about the ‘empty promises’ of extension workers, Ashenafi decided to continue farming castor crop in the second year. One important reason is that he wanted to benefit from distribution of fertilizers, whose price in the local market was growing sharply. Farmers like Ashenafi knew that it would have been very difficult for the company to claim the cost of inputs back upon another failed harvest. Yet, Ashenafi was also aware that many local officials shared this view and tacitly allowed such behaviour. Everyone was aware how bad was the harvest, and many complained with kebele and other leaders … They were of the view that we should get compensation and they offered to discuss this with the company.¹²

The line that Ashenafi was not ready to cross was to disengage from the project completely. Remaining formally enrolled in the project was meant to comply with the government demand for ‘participation in development’, a demand that it was very difficult to escape as I have argued earlier. This was expressed as follows: Everyone knew that the project had no future, but nobody was allowed to say it … We were part of the project without being part of it … Mistakes were made initially and after that no one had trust in company workers.

As a result of this situation, in which many farmers were still formally part of the project but without committing their labour to it, the second harvest was set up for failure. GEE complained not only that farmers seldom used fertilizers ¹¹ Interview with a farmer in Wolaita, 25 April 2012. ¹² Interview with a woreda official in Wolaita, 27 April 2012.

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to grow castor crop, but also that they often farmed less land than they actually claimed. This probably reflected the fact that already at this time farmers had started reconverting land they had previously committed to castor crop to production of traditional food crops. Farmers put little effort into generating successful yields of castor, while trying to make the most of the (limited) opportunities the project provided. Manoeuvers included selling fertilizers in the local market, using them to boost the productivity of traditional crops, and entering sharecropping arrangements. Ultimately, Ashenafi contended that through these ‘tricks’ farmers managed to cover only a fraction of what they had lost, which included the loss of production for two consecutive years and the work needed to reconvert the land from castor to traditionally grown crops. Ashneafi concluded that from being presented as a ‘blessed crop’, castor became a curse: ‘Today there is a new saying in Wolaita … if you want to wish bad luck to your neighbour, you wish him castor trees to grow on his land’.¹³

4.4.4 Model Farmers and Social Differentiation The case of Ashenafi points at key dynamics of manoeuvring of the project from below. However, not all the farmers had the same experience. Commercialization generated opportunities for a minority of contract farmers that managed to make the most of given circumstances. These were individuals close to the local state/party bureaucratic apparatus that used their position as gatekeepers between the company, government, and farmers. I illustrate this by addressing the role of Model Farmers. In chapter three I have already discussed how MFs play an important role in the day-to-day working of the local developmental state, in terms of the political mobilization of the rural population and their connection with the party structure (see also Lefort, 2012: 696; Kassahun Berhanu and Poulton, 2014). In this section I will show how MFs managed to make the most of agriculture commercialization in Wolaita. This points at the very diversified impact of unsuccessful commercialization, which includes dynamics of social differentiation and incipient class formation. Efrem is one of the MFs in Offa woreda that was selected to participate in the production of castor beans for biofuel production. When I met him, he was in his thirties, with three children, and has a considerable amount of land for Wolaita standards. He cultivates 1.25 ha of land on his own scattered across four different plots, and shares an additional 1 ha with two of his brothers on behalf of an elderly relative. Efrem is known to be quite a successful farmer: he is able to sell a significant amount of produce to the local market and hires a few daily workers not ¹³ Interview with a farmer, Wolaita, 12 April 2012.

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only during the labour-intensive harvest season but also during the rest of the year to run a small cattle-fattening business he set up in the past couple of years. For his ‘entrepreneurial skills’ he was nominated to be a MF, as which, he explains, he is responsible for keeping communication with local officials at kebele level, and passing relevant information, trainings, and disseminate opportunities to a network of farmers in his area. MFs like Efrem were selected by GEE to pilot CF arrangements and undertake training on how to cultivate castor crop effectively. MFs were then in charge of passing this knowledge to the other farmers selected for participation. MFs directly interfaced with the company’s extension workers and local officials from the ARDO office. Their role at the intersection of state-society relations elucidates how they managed to make the most of an unsuccessful project. The nature of MFs’ position was both of a political nature—the ability to engage in multiple networks through the local party/state apparatus—and of an economic nature—in terms of their actual involvement in initiatives that allowed access to land, technology, agricultural inputs, and earning some cash. Efrem explained that local government involved MFs to pilot the biofuels project. Meetings with GEE’s extension workers and local officials were organized already in 2007. During these meetings, which Efrem does not hesitate to define as ‘political’, MFs were exposed to the overall project’s goals and were asked to mobilize farmers to become contract farmers. Local officials compiled lists of potential contract farmers to be involved through the recommendations of MFs. Efrem thus contended that initially GEE committed to provide trainings and economic incentives (50 ETB) to all the farmers joining the scheme. This was meant to compensate farmers for the initial work of clearing and preparing the land for the new crop.¹⁴ Despite this initial promise, only MFs, with few other exceptions, were selected for trainings and given initial economic incentive, which included the provision of equipment such as raincoats, boots, and hand tools. Through trainings organized by GEE, Efrem was exposed to new farming techniques intended to maximize the productivity of castor, including how to apply fertilizers, an experience he judged instructive, and for which he received per diem payments. Efrem contended that MFs had an important role in motivating other farmers. He felt this was an important responsibility considering that agreements committed farmers to shift half of their production to castor crop, making their livelihood highly dependent on the company’s success. At the same time Efrem felt responsible towards the party/government to fulfil his role in mobilizing farmers for participation in development. This reflects how ideas about ‘collective participation’ and development as a highly political endeavour were deeply entrenched in the implementation of commercialization in Wolaita.

¹⁴ Interview with a former GEE extension worker, Wolaita, 10 April 2012.

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The power of intermediation by MFs was not limited to the selection of participants. MFs were also put in charge of seeds and fertilizer distribution to all the farmers. The only exception was with pesticides, which were administered by an agricultural officer of the kebele. Efrem contended that one advantage of MFs was that they were the first to receive seeds and fertilizers, as well as being exposed to relevant agronomic techniques in advance. Planting castor and applying fertilizers in the correct time proved crucial for successful production. Efrem noted that those farmers who did not receive seeds and fertilizers in time were also those who experienced more significant losses. In his view a main problem was that the company did not put enough effort and resources into planning and training, and rushed implementation. In this context, MFs were in a position of relative advantage because they benefited from a more direct flow of information, received trainings, and, more broadly, they were the farmers that were best equipped to adapt to rapidly changing circumstances. Efrem expressed this as follows: Shifting a lot of land to cultivation of castor required a lot of labour. This was a challenge for many farmers, especially if they could not afford workers to help … Changing production techniques required time, not all the farmers were quick in adapting.

Therefore, it seems that the most vulnerable farmers were those who experienced more problems, and ultimately suffered greater losses. Efrem reported several cases of farmers who accrued debts as a result of the lack of revenue arising from lower production and the shortage of food they would have grown in the absence of the biofuel project. Without over exaggerating the disparities, MFs like Efrem had a very different experience not only because they proved more adaptable but also because they could count on resources that facilitated the transition from traditional food crops to castor. For instance, Efrem explained how MFs were often the only farmers able to hire labour force outside of the household, and in some cases were even renting extra land to put more castor crop into cultivation. Although productivity never reached the standards forecasted by the company, it seems that farmers like Efrem had a specific interest in expanding their commercial production. A woreda official of the agriculture office estimated that due to privileged access to agricultural inputs and labour, MFs were often five to seven times more productive than ‘normal’ farmers. Yet MFs such as Efrem were among the few that had an overall positive perception of the programme and felt that its early end was a ‘missed opportunity for Wolaita’. When asked to give an overall comment about the project, Efrem noted: I wish that the company could have stayed. Production was much lower than expected but at least this gave us the opportunity to channel products to the market, and earn some cash… In the future I welcome more projects like this.

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The programme was therefore perceived differently by different categories of farmers. Although the commercialization experiment lasted for a few years only, it seems that a main outcome of the combination of economic liberalization and bureaucratic centralism was an incipient dynamic of rural class formation. In Bernstein terms (2002), MFs can be regarded as an incipient stratum of (successful) petty commodity producers emerging as a structural outcome of the (largely unsuccessful) state mediated strategy of commercialization in Ethiopia. Their advantage stemmed from their position at the centre of rural development implementation, which provided a privileged access to inputs, credit, and trainings. Their entrepreneurial skills and political connections placed MFs at the intersection between investors and the local state/party apparatus, a position potentially quite remunerative. Therefore, MFs reflected significant dynamics of social differentiation in Wolaita, which, however, remained largely incipient because the project failed shortly after they started manifesting. When after the first harvest paying back fertilizers farmers took on credit became sensitive, Efrem explained that he found himself at the centre of the dispute between the company and contract farmers. Company’s extension workers put pressure on MFs to get credit back, while many farmers complained that they obtained yields smaller than expected, claiming some form of compensation. Efrem explained that in the second year GEE attempted to rectify the situation by transferring the responsibility for fertilizer distribution from the MFs to the kebele manager. However, by mid-2010 relationships with farmers were already compromised. Efrem noted that the effect of this decision was to pit against each other the interests of the company and its extension workers on the one hand, and the farmers on the other. Tension escalated to the point that extension workers sometimes refused to visit the field because they felt threatened by the farmers.¹⁵ This marked the beginning of the end of biofuel production in Wolaita.

4.4.5 Rural Unrest and the End of Biofuel Production Deteriorating relationships between the company, extension workers, and farmers escalated into rural unrest in connection with issues about allocation of communal land to produce biofuels on a plantation. Next to CF arrangements with individual farmers, GEE as well as another biofuel company, Sun Biofuels, stipulated agreements to lease communal land for large-scale production of castor beans and jatropha. The conflict that ensued between investors, residents, and local government highlights significant tensions and contradictions in the project for rural modernization embarked on by the EPRDF since the mid-2000s. ¹⁵ Interview with a former GEE extension worker, Wolaita, 18 April 2012.

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Assefa is one of the officials of the ARDO that interfaced with the biofuels investors in Wolaita. At the time of our meeting he was in his fifties and before working as civil servant he also served as elementary school teacher. Assefa was caught by surprise when he learnt that foreign investors were interested in establishing biofuels business in Wolaita. While he was excited about the prospect of new job opportunities, ‘especially for young landless people’, he was concerned about shifting land from food to biodiesel production because ‘so many people’s livelihoods depend on agriculture’. He contended that ‘land was already a scarce asset in Wolaita, and a very political one’. Assefa was not particularly surprised by the fact that the zone government was informed about the land deals only after the investors signed agreements at federal level, because ‘this is how it works in Ethiopia’. Assefa explained that relationships between farmers and biofuel investors started to become tense soon after the CF project started, but that conflict really escalated only after the first harvest. One of the reasons behind the mounting tension was that side by side CF, both GEE and Sun Biofuels struck deals with the government to farm biofuels on 5,000 ha of land in two separate locations. Most of the land allocated to the two companies was communal land between the kebeles of Mancha, Esho, and Esho Sere in Offa woreda. From a legal perspective the land was catalogued as ‘state land’, and formally administered by the zone administration. Assefa explained that farmers of the three kebeles had historically used communal land jointly for grazing purposes. While the area was not farmed on a permanent basis, it certainly constituted an important economic asset for many people. He also explained that communal land played an important political role in balancing rivalries between different Wolaita clans, and hence was vital for local stability. Protests started as soon as investors began to set up experimental plots in 2009. Initially farmers lodged complaints through kebele leaders demanding an explanation about the extent of the land granted to investors. In the following months protests expanded, and at the beginning of 2010 a demonstration involving ‘many farmers’ gathered in Gesuba, the woreda centre of Offa. Assefa explained that, quite interestingly, two kebele leaders first joined and then led the protest, voicing complaints up to zone level.¹⁶ The two plantation projects closed down soon after, officially because the companies found out that castor and jatropha were not productive enough. Nonetheless, it seems that protests played a role in the two companies’ decision not to follow up with the plantation projects. Assefa contended that at a later stage, sometimes in 2011, higher levels of government also withdrew support from the programme, and GEE, which at that point was the only company left in Wolaita, was persuaded to leave. Nevertheless,

¹⁶ Interview with a local official of the zone ARDO, 20 April 2012.

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this was a source of embarrassment. A significant fact is that the kebele leaders joining the protests were then induced to resign from their office. Assefa noted: Local institutions played a marginal role in the decision-making process leading to the programme’s design. Woreda and kebele were simply asked to grant logistical support … without having a say on how the programme was supposed to be implemented. When local bodies started realizing that the programme was a disaster for the farmers, and after receiving complaints, they withdrew their support.¹⁷

Protests in Offa woreda protracted for several months between late 2009 and the middle of 2010, and induced the federal government to take distance from its initial involvement in biofuel production. All these factors, including institutional pressures, induced GEE to leave Wolaita in 2011. Contracts of extension workers were discontinued at short notice, and farmers were left with the burden to reconvert yet again castor beans production to traditional crops. The grim epilogue of biofuel production in Wolaita illustrates at least two tensions confronting the commercialization strategy the Ethiopian government embarked on in the mid-2000s. The first is about the relationship between agriculture commercialization and rural modernization. While in the mind of the EPRDF political leadership such a relationship was consequential, the case of biofuels in Wolaita shows that in practice commercialization was dense with obstacles and challenges. The second is the tension between economic liberalization and bureaucratic centralism that characterizes the project for agrarian transformation under the developmental state. In a context in which the state plays a major role in the mobilization of rural population, commercialization initiatives based on CF arrangements created a disproportionate cost for participants. Many dysfunctions are not dissimilar from those experienced in other humanitarian interventions, but with the crucial difference that the ultimate purpose of land deals with private investors is profit. Both tensions manifested with particular force at the level of the interface between private sector actors, farmers, and local administration. Assefa contended that the most difficult task of his job was mediating between different, and often irreconcilable, positions. While local officials had little voice in the design of commercialization initiatives, they were left with the burden of mediating between several conflicting priorities. Firstly, they had to comply with decisions of the federal government, which were based on ideas, plans, and visions that seldom took into consideration the complexity of the local context. Secondly, local officials were confronted with the actual practice of commercialization on ¹⁷ Interview with a NGO worker, Wolaita, 7 April 2012.

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the ground, and particularly the pushes from powerful foreign investors seeking quick economic return. Company extension workers found themselves in a similar position, although after resigning or being fired they did not have to deal with the long-term impact of failed commercialization. Thirdly, local officials were then confronted with farmers’ demands and expectations and became the target of resentment and frustration when commercialization did not deliver promised results.

4.5 Conclusion In this chapter I have discussed the wide set of practices of negotiation, manoeuvring, and differentiation that took place in conjunction with the implementation of agricultural commercialization in Wolaita. The transformations that characterized the implementation of commercialization reflect the scalar scope of the developmental state, and its intrinsic tensions and contradictions, in a context in which, by the mid-2000s, the Ethiopian political leadership was attempting to institutionalize power through agriculture commercialization. Manoeuvring, contestation, and differentiation must be inscribed within tensions around the questions of rural land and labour. Peasant farming was no longer a model that satisfied the political elite’s urgency for rapid economic growth and rural modernization. At the same time, agrarian transformation was not possible without inducing dynamics of rural social differentiation. The case of Wolaita shows that commercialization was dense with obstacles, even when it tried to preserve the agrarian structure of smallholders established through the 1975 land reform. Transforming the millions of peasant farmers constituting the government power base into productive smallholders producing for the market was easy in theory but extremely difficult in practice. Bureaucratic centralism proved largely ineffective to mediate the adverse effects of economic liberalization at the local level and, in the process, generated contradictions of its own. Second, the strategy of agricultural commercialization implemented under the developmental state underscored an increasing politicization of the land issue. One central aspect is the relationship between projects for the political mobilization of the rural areas based on bureaucratic centralism and the ruling elite’s nature of political consensus, traditionally founded on smallholders as its main power base. If commercialization is to engender patterns of state-induced rural social differentiation, a main political concern for the ruling elite will be whether and how such stratification will change the nature of its consensus in the rural areas. Related to this is the question of whether in the long run the new wealthy farmers will share the same views when it comes to issues such as land ownership and whether this will create a difference in orientation with the rest of the farmers. However,

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smallholders remain a fundamental political subject in the current project for agricultural commercialization that, under certain circumstances, is able to influence the local political process and decision-making. As put by Dessalegn Rahmato (2009: 347), the government is ‘well aware of the latent power of the peasantry’, and for this reason, even if subtly, it sometimes has to accommodate certain demands.

5 Performing Entrepreneurship: Job Creation in Kolfe 5.1 Introduction In this chapter I address the topic of small business development, discussing a number of initiatives promoting entrepreneurship and microfinance in Kolfe, one peri-urban site in Addis Ababa (see Figure 5.1). I argue that the policy of job creation promoted by the Ethiopian government since the mid-2000s is a distinctive feature of the Ethiopian developmental state, which entailed the significant rescaling of the peri-urban space. Following a period of transition that started with the 2001 TPLF political crisis (discussed in chapter two) and reaching an apex with the controversial 2005 national elections (discussed in chapter three), the promotion of micro and small enterprises (MSEs) and state-sponsored micro-finance schemes became an important pillar of the Ethiopian government’s strategy of economic transformation. The chapter engages with discussions about urban unemployment and job creation in Africa. The chapter finds that policies of job creation generated tendencies of both formalization and informalization of the urban economy, characterized by rising inequalities, social differentiation, and multi-directional migration in and off the peri-urban space. In the course of the 2000s and 2010s, Ethiopia experienced rapid economic growth and urbanization (CSA, 2013b). Driven by expanding services and the agricultural sector, the country underscored a yearly average growth of 10.8% between 2003 and 2004 and 2012 and 2013, compared with an African average of 5.3% (World Bank, 2015a). Despite this growth, the restructuring of the economy lacked the significant contribution of industry and manufacturing sectors, which, throughout this period, contributed to less than 16% and 5% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) respectively (Mulu Gebreeyesus et al., 2018). Thus substantial transformation was constrained by the lack of diversification of labour, which remained largely based on agriculture. Following the Labour Force Survey (CSA, 2013a), in 2013 still 72.7% of the 42.4 million employed people aged 10 and above were engaged in agriculture and related activities. Similar structural constraints characterized urban areas, in this case with a disproportionate reliance on services. In 2016, 71% of the 7.4 million people who had urban employment were based in service-related activities, the rest distributed among manufacturing (13.6%), construction (6.7%), and agriculture (6.8%) (CSA, 2016). Wage workers Everyday Practices of State Building in Ethiopia. Davide Chinigò, Oxford University Press. © Davide Chinigò (2022). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192869654.003.0005

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Federal Level

Addis Ababa

Kolfe Keranyo Regional Level

Addis Ababa

Fig. 5.1 Location of study area in Addis Ababa city administration, Kolfe Keranyo sub-city. Map prepared by the author.

constituted about half of urban employment (49.1%), a majority of whom were employed as civil servants or in state-controlled enterprises (22%), and in the private sector (20%). Significantly, self-employment accounted for 41.1% of the total urban working population, reflecting the informal nature of the urban economy (Mulu Gebreeyesus et al., 2018). The restructuring of the economy was accompanied by a dramatic expansion of urban centres, primarily the capital city Addis Ababa, but also secondary cities such as Adama, Hawassa, Kombolcha, Jimma, Dire Dawa, Mekelle, Shashemene, Jigjiga, and Debre Berhan, among others. In 2015 the World Bank (2015b) found that urbanization proceeded at a yearly rate of 5.4%, and was likely to increase even faster in the future. Following this study, the urban population was expected to triple by 2034, with 30% of the country’s people living in urban areas by 2028. Rapid urbanization became increasingly charged politically as it coincided with spiking urban unemployment. In 2016 the official unemployment rate in urban areas was 16.9% nationally, and significantly higher in Addis Ababa where it was reported at 21% (CSA, 2016). At the time of fieldwork in 2014, the unemployment rate in Kolfe Keranyo was even higher than the city average, estimated at 23% (CSA, 2014). Official statistics thus fail to capture rapidly changing peri-urban sites characterized by a significant number of people living at the intersection of the formal and informal economy. Disenfranchised youth living at the urban margins

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became an increasingly important concern for the Ethiopian government, as they constituted a threat to the country’s political stability (Mains, 2012; Di Nunzio, 2015; 2019). In rapidly expanding urban centres, addressing unemployment became a government priority in order to achieve a number of economic, social, and political objectives. Transforming unemployed urban dwellers into successful entrepreneurs within an increasingly diversified economy, relying less on agriculture and more on industry and manufacturing, was one of the cornerstones of the ambitious strategic development plans adopted in 2006, 2010, and 2015 (PASDEP and GTP I and II). Creating urban-based employment opportunities was also meant to prevent political unrest. Policies and initiatives of job creation became important tools for strengthening the capacity of the state to monitor, control, and policing increasingly unstable urban settings (Di Nunzio, 2019). Against a context in which rural smallholders constituted the historical EPRDF’s backing, job creation was thus expected to create a new urban catalyst of political consensus. Economic and political objectives geared a consensus around the promotion of entrepreneurship to mitigate undesirable effects of rapid urbanization, while making the most of opportunities to sustain economic growth. For instance, the policy emphasis on job creation reflected an increasing number of people targeted for MSEs in Kolfe Keranyo during fieldwork, from 23.000 in 2013 to over 27.000 people in 2014. MSEs were first regulated with the publication of the 1997 National MSEs Development and Promotion Strategy, which was then revised in 2011, and the establishment of the Federal Micro and Small Enterprises Development Agency. In addition, a number of other policies and strategies indirectly addressed entrepreneurship development. These included the 1998 Women Policy and the adoption of the Industrial Development Strategy in 2003, which gave further impulse to MSEs development, particularly by emphasizing access to finance as a key issue for effective economic development. Other policies include the 2004 National Youth Policy, the 2008 National TVET Strategy, the 2009 National Employment Policy and Strategy of Ethiopia, the 2012 Science, Technology, and Innovations Policy, and the 2015–2020 Education and Sector Development Program (ESDP). The political events that culminated in the controversial 2005 elections played an important role in reorienting government strategic planning and vision towards employment creation and the promotion of MSEs, which became another cornerstone policy of the developmental state. The emphasis on MSEs in Ethiopia drew on an international discourse emphasizing the promotion of entrepreneurship and micro-finance initiatives to support the diversification of the economy, to tackle poverty and sustain long-term growth and development in Africa (Amoros, 2009; UNOSAA, 2013; World Bank, 2013). Critical studies have highlighted that the framework of economic empowerment accounts for only one of the many aspects of urban marginality and destitution (Di Nunzio, 2019). Urban marginality is usually entrenched in broader power

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relations reproducing dynamics of social, economic, and political exclusion (Roy, 2010; Bateman, 2012). Other studies have noted that the argument for microfinance and small businesses cannot be regarded in isolation from wider processes restructuring global capitalism that reflect new strategies of market liberalization (Benerjee and Duflo, 2011; Weber, 2006). Recent studies conducted in Ethiopia have found that MSEs that were designed to extend the ruling party’s structures of political mobilization in the urban society (Di Nunzio, 2015) have played an important yet contradictory role in shaping the future for unemployed youth (Mains, 2012), that their success has largely depended on the closeness of beneficiaries to local administrative structures (Hundera, 2014), and that they have had a limited socio-economic impact on the majority of beneficiaries (Tegegne Gebre-Egziabher and Meheret Ayenew, 2010)—especially when businesses were operated by women (Eshetu Bekele and Zeleke Worku, 2013). Other observers point to the tension between rapid economic development and a poor human rights record, in a context in which the developmental state is simultaneously produced and challenged in the realm of local politics (Emmenegger, 2016; Di Nunzio, 2014a; 2014b). Empirically this chapter discusses how peri-urban dwellers manoeuvred entrepreneurial schemes after these proved largely inadequate to guarantee basic reproduction. People enrolling in poorly designed entrepreneurship schemes that were ‘set up for failure’ had to display a complex political repertoire, reflecting how state power, while constraining social life, enacts the subject into being. On the one hand, they could rarely avoid enrolling in state promoted schemes for fear of losing tenuous opportunities for social and political reproduction, and publicly displayed support and actively performed their state-mandated role as entrepreneurs. On the other hand, as these entrepreneurial activities rarely allowed them to make a living, beneficiaries used the little opportunities that formal entrepreneurship schemes offered, such as access to credit, to perform other side or informal activities that allowed them to make up for their social and economic reproduction. A focus on the formation of the political subject reflects here a subtle performance of power, which is key to understanding the nature of evolving state-society relations in peri-urban Addis Ababa. The manoeuvring of state-sponsored entrepreneurship schemes reflected the significant rescaling of peri-urban areas, characterized by new relationships between the public and the private, the formal and the informal, and the legal and the illegal. Under the significant power mobilized through the developmental state project for the socio-economic transformation of highly unstable peri-urban settings, state-society relations were continuously reconfigured through the institutionalization, subversion, and manoeuvring of entrepreneurship and micro-finance initiatives. The case of Kolfe shows that individuals joined government-sponsored MSEs not necessarily because they made economic sense, but because they allowed them to ‘keep good relations with the government’ and

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facilitate access to (individual) credit and loans. One paradox of the policy emphasis on entrepreneurship is that the government supported unsuccessful formal MSEs, which in turn were used to divert resources to informal businesses outside state-mandated sectors. In the first part of the chapter I show that MSEs reflect three important features of the construction of the developmental state in peri-urban Ethiopia: a policy of regularization and legalization; the promotion of group work, which reflects an emphasis on a collective rather than individual participation to development activities (Vaughan and Tronvoll, 2003; Bach, 2011); and, a specific focus on instilling a culture of saving through repeated trainings and other political activities to engender micro-dynamics of capital accumulation. The second part of the chapter presents evidence of how beneficiaries negotiated, challenged, and manoeuvred job creation initiatives. These practices of negotiation of entrepreneurial initiatives raise questions about how to delimit the perimeter of the developmental state approach to economic transformation, meaning questions around access to the infrastructure mobilized by the policy of small business development. Depending on whether or not peri-urban unemployed were registered in the kebele employment lists, were involved in party or other political activities, or committed to saving and credit through government microfinance institutions (MFIs), they were allowed to claim social, economic, and political space in very different ways. Young entrepreneurs navigated shifting boundaries between formal and informal, legal and illegal activities, by seeking validation for their claims in multiple ways, or simply by ignoring these rules and seeking creative ways to maximize their ability to make a living. The chapter concludes that while these dynamics of negotiation do not constitute a coherent process of structural refashioning, they have nonetheless contributed to the destabilization of the peri-urban space. A main tension of the developmental state project emerging in this chapter is between the collective idea of participation in the developmental state’s project of transformation and the extent to which practices to promote inclusion create at the same time dynamics of social, political, and economic exclusion. From an analytical perspective, the chapter supports the conclusion of an expanding body of literature showing that the dynamics of the constitution of state authority via territorialization are never conclusive, since they are constantly both constructed and reproduced, undermined and dissolved (Lund, 2006; Hagmann and Péclard, 2010; Lund and Boone, 2013; Korf et al., 2015; Emmenegger, 2016). The chapter draws on fieldwork visits conducted in November 2014, April 2015, and February 2016, including 48 semi-structured in-depth interviews and three focus groups in Kolfe Keranyo.¹

¹ Fieldwork in Kolfe Keranyo was conducted in woreda 8, 11, and 14.

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5.2 Entrepreneurship and Urban Development in Africa Throughout the course of the 2000s, economic growth in Africa has prompted international development organizations to emphasize how to uncap the continent’s potential to contribute to the global economy. Driven by what have been dubbed ‘Africa’s Lions’ (for instance, Bhorat and Tarp, 2016)—Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, and South Africa—economic growth in the continent averaged 5% between the mid-2000s and the mid-2010s (African Economic Outlook, 2014), raising discussions about the potential of an expanding middle class and closer integration with global value chains for socio-economic development (African Development Bank, 2011). This has in turn raised questions about the extent to which economic growth is actually shared and can lead to more inclusive labour markets, considering that in 2010 some 50% of Africans continued to live below the poverty line (African Economic Outlook, 2010), with rates of youth unemployment rising sharply across the continent and, most significantly, in rapidly expanding urban centres. Discussions about whether economic growth trickles down and creates more inclusive African societies brought many observers to adopt a new perspective on Africa’s large informal economy. In the course of the 2000s, dominant views among international donors casted the informal economy as the root cause of limited growth and economic diversification in Africa. For instance, organizations such as the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) emphasized that the continent’s informal economies remained the largest in the world (WTO/ILO, 2017), and that this constituted a significant drag on economic growth, significantly undermining the capacity to rip the benefits of globalization (Bacchetta et al., 2009, quoted in Meagher, 2016). Following this view, rapidly growing informal sectors were responsible for limited productivity and export diversification, exposing fragile African economies to the risk of sudden shocks. This narrative slowly reversed at the turn of the 2010s. A new discourse about ‘inclusive markets’, ‘financial inclusion’, and ‘inclusive growth’ started emphasizing the potential of global value chains for connecting poor people more directly to the global economy to address economic exclusion. As noted by Meagher et al. (2016), in the context of ‘Africa rising’, the informal economy started to be seen as a new potential source of capital and labour mobilization. This raised a new set of questions— including how to connect Africa’s large informal workforce to global value chains, and how to capture the contribution of largely informal entrepreneurial activities to economic development. International development organizations started emphasizing policy reforms that support entrepreneurship and self-employment in the informal economy and promoting the formalization of informal markets via links with the formal sector and access to capital and technology (African Economic Outlook, 2012; 2014).

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This new emphasis on entrepreneurship has specifically focused on youth (African Economic Outlook, 2012), and women (Guma, 2015; Kinyanjui, 2014). As noted by Meagher (2016; 2010), expectations that African informal economies would become a source of growth and economic development is connected to considerations about the existence of a ‘demographic dividend’ uncapping the potential of the continent’s young and growing labour force. Dolan and Rajak (2016) argue that the recasting of youth as a source of entrepreneurial talent is thus imbued with a narrative about the need to modernize underproductive African informal economies. In this sense, informality is no longer characterized in terms of disfunction and as source of economic underperformance, but as a new potential source of growth capable of overcoming decades of development failures. Designing initiatives that would free the productive forces of African informal economies thus reflects a new version of the neoliberal faith in the market and private sector to benefit the most marginalized segments of society. Simultaneously, the notion of inclusive business activities aims to capitalize on the individual energy and spirit of young entrepreneurs and incorporate them into broader dynamics of capital accumulation and labour circulation. Discussions about entrepreneurship are also connected to questions about the political instability of rapidly growing urban centres across the continent. Studies have shown that everyday dealings of uncertainty and informality is an enduring feature that characterizes the strategies of social and economic reproductions of young entrepreneurs in many parts of the continent (Thieme, 2018; Di Nunzio, 2017; Adom, 2014). In the 2000s and 2010s, the problem of youth unemployment became an increasingly important priority that many African governments confronted in relation to questions about political and social stability. Creating employment opportunities for a growing number of unemployed youth living in rapidly growing urban centres became a central political concern in governments’ political agendas for socio-economic development. Youth unemployment has been reported to grow steadily in many parts of Africa. Available figures show that youth unemployment in Nigeria rose from 6.8% in 2010 to 29.72% in 2018 (Atan and Effiong, 2020: 335). In South Africa, 37.5% of young people between 15 and 34 who were actively seeking work were unemployed in 2016 (StatsSA, 2016). Recent data from Kenya shows that in 2019 unemployment had the highest incidence for the aged 15–29 population segment (KNBS, 2020). Other countries show similar trends. A growing body of studies calls for a greater integration of informal African labour markets into global value chains as a main solution to tackle youth unemployment and under-employment (World Bank, 2013: 76). Yet these accounts often fail to acknowledge important structural dimensions: decades of unplanned urbanization generated new exclusionary dynamics and spatial inequalities that put into sharp focus questions about social and economic citizenship, and conflicts defining changing state-society relations.

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The renewed policy emphasis on economic inclusion has thus generated new discussions about the nature of the informal economy—and the actual distinction between formal and informal. Currently, a growing strand of studies with critical inclination highlights that the notion of informal economy overshadows how formal and informal livelihoods constitute one another, permeating diverse economic strategies that people enact to get by, move around, and seek recognition with the state and other institutions exercising public authority (Bolt, 2012; Meagher, 2010; Benjaminsen and Lund, 2002). This chapter contributes to this critical body of literature by discussing how the policy emphasis on entrepreneurship shapes the negotiation of public authority in rapidly growing African urban centres. Entrepreneurship initiatives generate opposing tendencies towards the formalization and informalization of the urban economy, entrenching new and reproducing old inequalities. The case of Kolfe Keranyo in peri-urban Addis Ababa is a point in case, showing a growing number of people relying on a combination of legal and illegal, prohibited and tolerated, accounted and non-accounted activities that shape the structure of the urban economy and determine, at the same time, patterns of identification, the negotiation of public authority, and dynamics of inclusion and exclusion. The interdependence of formalization and informalization in the urban economy is a topic that has received a growing attention in recent years. A recent collection of studies (Meagher et al., 2016) has demonstrated that efforts at including African workers within global economic value chains generate complex repercussions in the structure of employment, including entrenching new inequalities. The incorporation of African informal workers into formal sectors of the economy via entrepreneurship schemes and other arrangements ‘blur traditional distinctions between formal and informal, skilled and unskilled, free and unfree labour’ (Meagher et al., 2016: 478). Understanding the dynamics of African labour transformation under globalization requires transcending these binaries privileging a perspective on the mutual constitution of the formal and informal economy (see also Barrientos et al., 2011). This requires a focus on the ways African workers are defined as valuable in the context of globalized systems of capital accumulation. Evidence presented by Meagher (2016) suggests that an important outcome of increased formal-informal sector linkages in the labour market is connected to a growth of vulnerable employment rather than generating positive effects on the capacity of workers to earn better incomes or accumulate capital. A focus on the terms of incorporation of African labour is thus a helpful entry point to discussing how claims to legitimate work shape worker-state relations, the trajectory of public authority, and the scope of social and economic citizenship. Analysing the set of labour transformation on the South African-Zimbabwean border, Bolt (2012: 112) argues that understanding the salience of economic strategies to secure a livelihood among migrant workers requires a focus on the intersection

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between formal political authority and non-formal social authority. Entrepreneurship elicits an analytical focus on the interstices of state regulation, on those local arrangements that remain under the radar of formal state rules. Formal and informal economies are intimately connected to one another: as the case in this chapter shows the latter is usually complementary or even necessary to the former. Dolan and Rajac (2016) argue that, while ideas about grassroots capitalism are not new, a distinctive feature of the current focus on entrepreneurship is the wide set of disciplinary practices—such as trainings and the emphasis on skill development—that development initiatives envisage to transform unemployed people and informal workers into successful entrepreneurs. Trainings shift the view of informal workers from ‘job-seeker’ to ‘job-creator’, with two important implications. The first is the undermining of claims and struggles for formal employment. The second is that the urban poor are cast as broader agents of economic transformation in an economic and moral fashion: they become the embodiment of development. This version of disciplinary capitalism charges individuals ‘with the responsibility of bringing about a second order of moral transformation, that is, serving the wider societal project of “good growth”, a double moral injunction for the “poor to help themselves” in order to help the economy’ (Dolan and Rajac, 2016: 515).

5.3 Socio-Economic Structure of Kolfe Keranyo In the context of the country’s rapid transformation, driven by a decade of ‘doubledigit’ growth between the mid-2000s to the mid-2010s (World Bank, 2015b), Addis Ababa experienced an unprecedented expansion accompanied by profound socio-economic restructuring, and large infrastructural projects, including lowincome housing known as condominium, as well as the rapid expansion of the manufacturing industry. Kolfe is located on the western edge of Addis Ababa, covering a large tract of the border with Oromia Regional State. Regarded as a semi-peripheral part of the city, the area is characterized by its informal business activities. From an administrative perspective, in 2003 Addis Ababa was restructured into ten sub-cities (Kifle Ketema), with Kolfe included and constituting the historical core of Kolfe Keranyo sub-city. In 2016 Kolfe Keranyo had an estimated population of 543,567 (CSA, 2018a: 54) and was among the most densely populated areas of Addis Ababa. Bulecha and Akaki are perennial rivers and important physical landmarks of Kolfe. In 2004 Addis Ababa’s ring road was completed, splitting the sub-city into a west and an east side. While the infrastructure significantly relieved Kolfe from traffic congestion, the ring road also detached some neighbourhoods from important services, including marketplaces, churches, clinics, and schools. Other important landmarks include the grand Muslim’s cemetery, a police training centre known

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as Fetenoderash, and one of the largest second-hand clothes open auction markets in the country. Kolfe has been a strategic node for trade and business to the southern and western parts of Ethiopia since the early 1920s, although until the Italian occupation in 1936 the presence of settlers was limited, and the area was largely covered by forest and land controlled by few landlords. Kolfe became the location of a prison called Deposito, which in the mid-1950s was then converted into the police training centre mentioned above known as Fetnoderash camp (Feleke Tadele et al., 2006: 10). While Kolfe maintained rural features until the mid-1940s, when it became first accessible to cars, different waves of settlement have shaped the socio-economic structure of the area to this day. The first significant settlement was established during the Italian period when Kolfe was identified as a residential area for people that the new government relocated from inner Addis Ababa, for instance from the neighbourhoods of Arat Kilo, Kebena, Azage Badeg, Sengatera, and Degach Wube (Feleke Tadele et al., 2006: 9). Resettlement of people from the city centre continued after the imperial government went back to power in 1941. New residential settlements, for instance, were built to host inhabitants of Amhara and Gamo origins relocated from Kebena and Siddist Kilo. After the 1970s, Kolfe became an important business hub and undertook profound changes. Its population grew sharply as the area attracted a significant number of people from different parts of the country, especially from southern Ethiopia. This reflected its heterogeneous ethnic and religious composition at the time of this fieldwork. The four major ethnic groups are Amhara, Gurage, Gamo, and Oromo. Religious groups include Ethiopian Orthodox Christians, Muslims, Protestants, and Catholics. Rapidly increasing settlement was accompanied by high deforestation and progressive urbanization of the area. Weaving and other manufacturing cooperatives were established as part of the socialization policies of the Derg, and a few of them were then reconverted into small enterprises after remaining largely unproductive in the course of the 2000s. Weaving, practiced predominantly by Gamo migrant workers from Southern Ethiopia, suffered from increasing competition posed by cheap fabric and textile products imported from China. Since the early 2000s, the government has designated Kolfe as a manufacturing pole for wood and metal work small businesses. A manufacturing/industrial zone was established, hosting a number of small companies engaged in the production of small utensils. Other, although more marginal, economic activities include urban agriculture and vegetable production, such as through the Soramba and Lideta Vegetable Producers’ Cooperatives. In-migration accelerated from the mid-2000s. Alongside significant economic restructuring, the increased influx of people coincided with the growth in small business activities.² Trades of used clothes and street vending were by the time of ² Interview with the manager of woreda 8, Kolfe, 11 November 2014.

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this fieldwork among the most recognizable economic activities of Kolfe. A majority of businesses are illegal as they often escape taxation and other forms of state control, including unclear land tenure and illegal land occupation. Clothes and other goods are often contrabanded by powerful traders from other parts of the country. Politically, Kolfe has been characterized as an anti-establishment and highly volatile constituency. At the controversial 2005 political elections, the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) overwhelmingly won the seats for local and federal parliament in the area. At the time of this fieldwork in 2014, Kolfe was also characterized by migration to and from both the inner city and rural areas.³ The former was mainly driven by the rising cost of living in more central areas, as well as by government policies of relocating low-income people from the inner city (see also Gebre Yntiso, 2008). The latter was marked by an increasing trend of rural out-migration of people in search of job opportunities and more reliable public services in the expanding areas of the city (Tadele Ferede, 2009). This migratory pattern is not always permanent—people often commute from neighbouring ‘rural’ localities or take on seasonal and temporary jobs—and it does not necessarily involve the relocation of the entire household: often only one member moves in search of employment. A rapidly increasing informal economy in the sub-city formed the specific backdrop to the policy of promoting MSEs against a broader context in which the formalization of informal businesses became a central priority of the Ethiopian developmental agenda. In many ways one could argue that formal and informal became meaningful and visible categories as a result of the developmental state effort to promote formal business development. Physical, social, and economic boundaries in Kolfe are constantly redefined by increasing rural-urban interactions. Arguably, in these fluid contexts public authority is constantly redefined along the lines of access to resources and the construction of multiple identities, as well as being shaped by policies and development interventions targeting specific individuals or groups. The political processes underpinning the promotion of MSEs in Kolfe constitutes a privileged entry point—or, to use Hagmann and Péclard’s (2010) terms, ‘negotiation arena’— where some of the defining features of the developmental state project are more pronounced, as well as reflecting its inherent tensions and contradictions.

5.4 MSEs and the Construction of the Developmental State in Kolfe The EPRDF emphasis on business development has to be contextualized in the country’s post-socialist transition that has been ongoing since the 1990s and that ³ For a broader and more comprehensive discussion of recent migratory patterns in Ethiopia, see the edited volume from Pankhurst and Piguet (2009).

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gained traction with the reformulation of the long-term development strategy after the mid-2000s. Under the developmental state, employment creation in rapidly expanding urban centres became an important political priority to combat unemployment and sustain the capacity of the state to capture increasingly unstable peri-urban areas. Two important strategic policy documents formulated by government in collaboration with international donors outlined this strategy in 2010 and 2015: the Growth and Transformation Plans I and II.

5.4.1 The Growth and Transformation Plans The Growth and Transformation Plans I and II (GTP I and GTP II) are two strategic documents outlining the economic development priorities of Ethiopia in the course of the 2010s (GTP I on 2010/2011–2014/2015, and GTP II on 2015/2016–2019/2020). These documents are important because they are the ultimate expression of the strategic vision behind the developmental state, representing the political elite’s effort to put such vision into practice through a set of more or less coherent policies. Formulated as a follow up to the 2002 SDPRP and the 2005 PASDEP (discussed in chapters two and three), GTP I and II marked a clear departure from the state-driven model of economic development of the 1990s to more decisive steps to unleash market forces and private sector development. Under this vision, selective market liberalization had to take place under the supervision and strategic direction of strong state institutions. GTP I and II were formulated with the significant contribution of western donors—reflecting a language aligning priorities along the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—although were clearly influenced by a model of economic development drawing on the Chinese and the Asian tigers’ experience. Premised by the political priority of sustaining high rates of economic growth, GTP I and II envisioned a strategy of structural change of the Ethiopian economy diversifying agriculture into manufacturing and industry, with the declared objective to transform Ethiopia into a ‘middle-income country’ by 2025. GTP I was articulated into four main objectives: (i) sustaining a rate of average real GDP growth at 11% and attaining the MDGs; (ii) expanding access to quality education and health services; (iii) pursuing a nation building strategy geared to create a stable democratic developmental state, and; (iv) preserving macroeconomic stability to ensure the sustainability of economic growth. A distinctive feature of GTP I and II is that economic and political transformation are objectives that cannot be conceptually separated from one another. For the Ethiopian political leadership, the developmental state was both a political and economic project of sustained structural transformation. The contour of this vision was first

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delineated in GTP I and then fully flagged in GTP II. The policy relevance of GTP II to the country’s transformation was outlined as follows: The second Growth and Transformation Plan (2015/2016–2019/2020) is considered to be an important vehicle for Ethiopia’s renaissance. Accordingly, the Government as a developmental state is fully committed to mobilize the necessary resources including capacity for implementation of the Plan. Modernization in the development of the agriculture sector, expansion of industrial development with primary focus on light manufacturing, significant shift in export development are at the core of GTP II. (FDRE, 2015: 13)

The three pillars to achieve an Ethiopian renaissance (Arkebe Oqubay, 2015) as outlined in GTP II were to strengthen the links with an increasingly dynamic global economy, pursuing the SDGs and learning lessons from GTP I. From an economic perspective this strategy relied on making the most of existing competitive advantages of the domestic economy, increasing the competitiveness of export products and enabling new sectors to compete at national, continental, and global level. Adopting a fiscal policy to attract international investments and pursuing import substitution to unleash the domestic private sector were important ways through which state intervention was envisioned to create sustained growth. While agriculture remained an important priority, GTP II made decisive steps to introduce policy measures towards diversifying the economy to manufacturing industry, as well as supporting micro and small entrepreneurial initiatives. Under GTP II rapid urbanization had to be managed by unlocking the potential of the domestic private sector in terms of large-scale industrialization, as well as the development of micro and small businesses. The document planned an important role for state institutions to stimulate entrepreneurship development, including providing incentive packages, institutional and regulatory support, and access to credit. A specific milestone, which reflects the scalar scope of the developmental state, was thus to transform the domestic private sector ‘through promoting existing small manufacturing enterprises to grow and transition to medium and large-scale manufacturing enterprises … and nurturing their entrepreneurship and business management capabilities’ (FDRE, 2015: 79). Support for the agro-industrial compartment as well as the creation of a vibrant entrepreneurship environment were the instruments through which to achieve four objectives of GTP II. The first two were economic objectives: (i) achieving an annual average real GDP growth rate of 11% within a stable macroeconomic environment, and; (ii) and developing domestic capacity and improving the productivity of agriculture and manufacturing industries. Objectives three and four were of political nature: (iii) solidifying the public mobilization and organized participation to ensure public ownership of development outcomes,

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and; (iv) strengthening the developmental state by deepening ‘the hegemony of developmental political economy’. Under GTP II the promotion of MSEs was prioritized to achieve political and economic objectives. From an economic perspective, boosting the MSEs sector was expected to address growing urban unemployment and create the conditions for the national economy to grow steadily and diversify out of agriculture. Politically, the EPRDF leadership regarded MSEs as an important instrument for mobilizing, controlling, and securing consensus from a growing young—and potentially destabilizing—urban population. GTP II provided for the disbursement of ETB 21 billion (USD 904 million) in loans through MFIs, with the expectations to create 8.4 million jobs (EEA, 2015). In the following pages I will show how political and economic objectives contributed to configure state-unemployed relations in Kolfe.

5.4.2 MSEs and the Developmental State in Kolfe Under the ambitious plan of transformation outlined in these strategic documents, the developmental state had both material and ideological values. From a material perspective, it embodied the political elite’s attempt to promote a strategy of rapid economic growth by means of the collective mobilization of the plurality of people and groups in Ethiopia. The ideological dimension of the developmental state reflected the performativity of the political project behind it—‘changing the mind of the people’—which advocated for the creation of positive experiences of lasting change. Both these ideological and material logics articulated entrepreneurship and microfinance initiatives in Kolfe. Thus local administrative structures tasked with implementation further elaborated these broader policy principles along three main dimensions, which illustrates layers of institutional mediation of the developmental state through job creation schemes in Kolfe. A first element is a policy of regularization aimed at formalizing existing economic activities, creating new job opportunities, and enforcing the local party/state structures of social and political control (see also Di Nunzio, 2014a). As argued by one local official, job creation was aimed at combating behaviours labelled ‘social evils’, for instance ‘prostitution, illegal street vending, smuggling, and illegal tree cutting’.⁴ The policy of regularization was a response to the trend of rapid in- and out-migration in Kolfe, which accelerated in the 2000s. It entailed the promotion of MSEs to formalize and regularize a growing peri-urban population and to complement other government programmes, such as the resettlement

⁴ Interview conducted at the Women and Youth Affairs Office, Kolfe, 11 November 2014.

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and housing policies.⁵ Regularization can be regarded as both a strategy for economic development aiming to ‘turn unemployed people into businessmen’⁶ and as a tool for the social and political control of a rapidly increasing urban population. An important aspect of the MSEs policy in Kolfe was to provide for the registration of unemployed in the kebele employment lists, and hence ‘to keep track of who is moving in and out of the sub-city’.⁷ A second element is ‘group first’, the policy emphasis on the creation of small groups of unemployed people as a cornerstone of business development. In Kolfe, MSEs’ access to finance relied primarily on financial mechanisms based on group collaterals. Under these arrangements, the creation of small groups to perform business generated several layers of accountability. Paying back a loan in a newly government-sponsored MSE was primarily the responsibility of the group, which provided a guarantee against individual members by establishing a kind of moral and political, rather than merely legal or financial, sense of accountability.⁸ The centrality of the group to drive socio-economic transformation reflected an emphasis on the population’s collective, rather than individual, participation in the development process, which is a central characteristic of the developmental state model.⁹ The work of small groups aimed to pull together the joint efforts of poor people for common business projects and, at the same time, to facilitate access to financial services, primarily credit, by means of group collateral (Tegegne Gebre-Egziabher and Meheret Ayenew, 2010). A third dimension relates to the project for the socio-economic transformation of individuals’ attitude towards saving. ‘Saving first’, which is about instilling an attitude to saving through training and other activities, was a central element in the promotion and consolidation of MSEs in Kolfe. As explained by local officials, the socio-economic transformation of the sub-city had to be premised by ‘a structural change in the way people think about saving and approach business’.¹⁰ A similar concept informing the promotion of MSEs was the notion of kaisen. Kaisen, derived from Japanese, means quality production in the most efficient way and at the lowest cost possible.¹¹ In Kolfe, the idea of kaisen was taught during vocational training before the formation of MSEs, and particularly at the stage when business plans were being formulated. These three dimensions—regularization, group, and saving—are important aspects of how the broad policy principles behind the developmental state were operationalized by local officials tasked with implementing entrepreneurship

⁵ Interview conducted at the Women and Youth Affairs Office, Kolfe, 11 November 2014. ⁶ Interview conducted at the MSE Promotion Office, Kolfe, 18 November 2014. ⁷ Interview conducted at the MSE Promotion Office, Kolfe, 18 November 2014. ⁸ Focus group discussion conducted in Kolfe, 13 November 2014. ⁹ Interview conducted at the Labour and Social Affairs Office, Kolfe, 17 February 2016. ¹⁰ Interview conducted at the Labour and Social Relations Office, Kolfe, 19 November 2014. ¹¹ Interview conducted at the MSE Promotion Office, Kolfe, 22 April 2015.

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schemes in Kolfe. They also illustrate a performance of state power relying on reiteration of practices in the everyday. In the next pages I will discuss these principles, and their mutual relations, in more detail, taking as a frame of reference the institutional transformation of the everyday state in Kolfe in the course of the 2010s. The business development strategy had the effect of generating tendencies of both the formalization and informalization, in a context in which these two categories were made visible by an increasingly capillary presence of state/party structures in the peri-urban space.

5.4.3 Combatting Unemployment through Small Businesses By the mid-2010s, MSEs were an important pillar of the Ethiopian government’s poverty reduction strategy, and they complemented other initiatives, including the Productive Safety Net Programme, the Food Security Programme, the Household Asset Building Programme and the Voluntary Resettlement Programme. MSEs were regarded as a key instrument to the formalization and regularization of both urban and rural economic sectors. From an economic perspective, by nurturing small businesses the Ethiopian government expected to lay the foundation for medium and large export-oriented enterprises in the long run. Quite evident here is the attempt to emulate Asian experiences of rapid economic transformation, in primis the Chinese model. In Kolfe, the aftermath of the 2005 elections was a period of profound transformation in which the presence of party/government structures intensified significantly. Job creation through MSEs and the political mobilization of the peri-urban population, particularly unemployed youth, became overarching government priorities to prevent and mitigate growing political instability and social unrest. Unemployed youth, along with women, were identified as the main priority group to be targeted by government-sponsored MSEs from the very beginning. In Kolfe, MSEs were organized by the sub-city MSE office, as well as by local promotion offices at woreda and kebele levels. Local promotion offices functioned as employment agencies, and, coordinating with other offices, they compiled employment lists and recommended priority areas where potential new businesses were to be established. Another important responsibility of these offices was to provide technical and vocational training on a wide range of topics. While technical training sessions consisted of workshops teaching specific technical skills, vocational training reflected the transformational dimension of the political project behind MSEs. Vocational training was primarily aimed at promoting changes in individual attitudes towards saving (‘saving first’), as well as inculcating the primacy of group work over individual work (‘group first’). At the time when my fieldwork was conducted, a wide range of local institutions were constantly busy organizing vocational training sessions every few days. One vocational session I

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attended went on for over seven hours, with the convener repeatedly espousing the benefits of working in groups rather than individually—the ‘only way possible to make it successfully is through mutual help and by pulling together resources’—as well as the importance of saving money as ‘the only way possible to build a future without poverty’.¹² Depending on the number of members, MSEs were categorized as individual, shared companies, or small enterprises or cooperatives (more than ten members). Although in practice it was quite difficult to distinguish between cooperatives and small enterprises, a main difference in Kolfe was the requirement that enterprise members had to provide 20% of the initial capital themselves in order to be eligible for an 80% loan from an MFI. Another difference was the interest rate applied to the loan, which was sometimes lower for cooperatives. Equally important is the concept of ‘graduation’. Promotion offices monitored existing businesses, and, depending on the enterprise’s capital, ‘graduated’ successful enterprises. A business should achieve graduation within five years of its inception, meaning that it was then expected to be able to handle licensed activities autonomously. Enterprises were divided into four categories depending on their capital: micro or start-ups (up to 50,000 ETB); small (50,000–200,000 ETB); medium (200,000–500,000 ETB), and; industrial (above 500,000 ETB). MSEs operated in priority sectors dictated by the Kolfe Keranyo sub-city Promotion Office; these included manufacturing, construction, trade, services, and urban agriculture.

5.4.4 Beneficiaries, Leaders, and Groups As explained by a local official, vocational training was also the main tool through which promotion offices registered unemployed people and targeted new beneficiaries.¹³ Registration was carried out through a ‘door-to-door’ model and implemented by both the MSE office and other kebele offices.¹⁴ The ‘door-to-door’ model highlights the extent to which the vocational project of the developmental state was meant to have universal reach and target the entire peri-urban population. Awareness creation was based on what local officials in Kolfe referred to as the three ‘development alarms’¹⁵: that is, how different institutional levels engaged the unemployed and involved them in development activities. The ‘people’s community wing’ referred to MSE beneficiaries who performed advocacy activities to raise awareness about the benefits of establishing an MSE. The ‘government wing’ included all the offices providing training and advice on how to establish an ¹² ¹³ ¹⁴ ¹⁵

Excerpts from a vocation training discussion in Kolfe, 23 April 2015. Interview conducted at the MSE Promotion Office, Kolfe, 22 April 2015. Interview conducted at the MSE Promotion Office, Kolfe, 12 November 2014. Interview conducted at the MSE Promotion Office, Kolfe, 12 November 2014.

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MSE, including MFIs, technical and vocational schools, and promotion offices. The ‘political party wing’ covered members of the local EPRDF branch who recommended people who could establish an MSE, as well as sectors and specific activities. In practice, the boundaries between the three wings were much more blurred. As expressed by one beneficiary, ‘The very same people come on behalf of the EPRDF, of the MSE office, or as your neighbour … depending on what they have to ask you.’¹⁶ As noted by one informant, the ‘door-to-door’ model, which entailed the deployment of all three wings to advocate for the establishment of MSEs, reflected both continuities and discontinuities with previous job creation strategies. ‘What has not changed is the pressure of the government to control and promote business … The difference is that now the poor are expected to become businessmen in a short time.’¹⁷ The three wings operated on several institutional levels, starting from the woreda. The organization of these sub-units varied significantly from context to context, and no official document provided comprehensive information about how they interacted with the formal administrative and party structures. Starting from the lowest level, in Kolfe these included the block (no more than fifty people), the mender (composed of two or three blocks), and the katana or sub-woreda. A central characteristic of the Ethiopian model is that the local institutional structure was conceived to include and mobilize the entire population. Other institutional constellations mediating access to MSEs included the microinstitutional structures of the ‘one to five’ networks (and le hammest) and development groups (ye limat budin). These networks were the basis on which groups were formed for various purposes and have both political and technical value (see also chapter three). The ‘one to five’ is a group of six people where one was the leader or model and was responsible for passing relevant information from government offices to the other five, coordinating development activities, and collecting taxes. The development groups comprised 25 to 30 people and kept a record of individuals seeking new jobs, drew up unemployment lists, and identified potential jobs or professions where there was a shortage in a specific area. Development groups also performed other activities relating to neighbourhood security, political advocacy for the ruling party, and public works. Both of these networks aimed at ‘bringing and sustaining change through good governance activities’¹⁸ and explained ‘why today Addis is peaceful.’¹⁹ More broadly, these party-controlled networks played an essential role in terms of surveillance of the peri-urban population. While this reflected an effective outsourcing of state control to party members and affiliated individuals, they also played a key role in mediating access to MSEs and service delivery. ¹⁶ ¹⁷ ¹⁸ ¹⁹

Interview with a MSE beneficiary in Kolfe, 21 April 2015. Interview with a MSE beneficiary in Kolfe, 23 April 2015. Interview conducted at the Cooperative Promotion Office, Kolfe, 23 April 2015. Interview conducted at the Women and Youth Affairs Office, Kolfe, 11 November 2014.

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In Kolfe, new MSEs were sometimes formed in conjunction with ‘one to five’ networks. In four cases analysed in kebele 8 and 14, recently graduated students were first asked to form ‘one to five’ networks, and only then to submit to the promotion office their application to start an MSE. When an MSE had fewer than five members, the ‘one to five’ network was formed in conjunction with a neighbouring business. When an MSE had more than six members, more networks were formed as a consequence. In some cases, ‘one to five’ networks formed for MSE purposes did not necessarily require members to be neighbours. More broadly, these networks operated performance checks on individual businesses and were meant to be a forum for discussion on saving and entrepreneurship. The ‘one to five’ networks and the development groups also performed the very important role of keeping track of jobless people in each neighbourhood and recommending new potential beneficiaries to the MSE promotion office. As noted by an informant, ‘members of the one to five networks and development groups are your witnesses and can recommend you to the promotion office to get loans and establish MSEs’.²⁰ According to another informant, the role of these networks was to provide an opportunity for people to support each other, including with regard to finance, sharing knowledge and experience about their businesses, instilling the habit of living together, sharing work responsibilities, providing security in the neighbourhood, and maximizing business profits.²¹ As in the case of model farmers discussed in chapters three and four, central to all these institutional clusters was the role of leaders. Each network had one leader who bore the economic and political responsibility of the group members in relation to the local state institutions. The leaders of blocks and menders were individuals with a good reputation in the community and were selected through internal mechanisms. At the katana level, leaders had a much more prominent political orientation and were involved in the party organization. Group leaders within the ‘one to five’ networks and development groups were usually party members and were socially, economically, and politically responsible for the other members to the local state/party structure. In the case of MSEs, the key duty of leaders was to collect money to pay back loans. Leaders were meant to facilitate and coordinate knowledge sharing and information flows from and to local government institutions. And although leaders were normally chosen directly by other members, the kebele retained the power to dismiss the proposed leaders. The constitution of groups, networks, and associations of various kinds was a defining feature of the developmental state project for the political mobilization of the peri-urban population. The ‘three wings’, together with other local institutional configurations, constituted important arenas in which state–society relationships in Kolfe were negotiated in the promotion of entrepreneurship schemes. ²⁰ Interview conducted at the Labour and Social Affairs Office, Kolfe, 19 November 2014. ²¹ Interview with an MSE leader, Kolfe, 17 February 2016.

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5.4.5 MSEs and Micro-Finance The institutional arrangements providing access to credit for MSEs illustrate additional political processes illustrating the negotiation of state-society relations in Kolfe. The primary channel through which MSEs had access to credit was through local MFIs (see also Wolday Amha and Tekie Alemu, 2014). MFIs, whose growth in Ethiopia by the time this fieldwork was conducted was remarkable, were de facto public institutions with capital almost exclusively controlled by central government (Ebisa Deribie et al., 2013). In Kolfe, the main MFI was the Addis Saving and Credit Institution (ASCI), with the government holding 98% of the shares. Interest rates offered by ASCI were not significantly different from those offered by banks, and normally ranged between 12% and 15%. However, banks seldom granted loans to MSEs unless proper guarantees were in place. As explained by one branch manager, MFIs evaluated and approved the business plans of MSEs in conjunction with the promotion office, normally based on the criteria of feasibility, the skills required, and guarantees.²² There were different types of guarantee an MSE could provide, including private collateral, group guarantees, a letter of guarantee from a public institution, and the provision of seed money to make up part of the initial capital. The vast majority of newly established MSEs obtained credit through the group guarantee system (or group collateral).²³ In such a system, the group was liable for the collective amount of credit provided, although the payback was individual. Group collateral illustrates a key mechanism operationalizing the notion of ‘group first’. It reflects the ways in which a wider sense of political accountability could not be conceptually separated from the financial accountability underpinning the individual repayment of a loan. As noted by one informant, ‘MFIs are state-controlled institutions through which the government channels credit … to promote a business model based on political groups … that in one way or another are connected to the EPRDF.’²⁴ Similarly, other aspects of the relationship between MSEs and MFIs reflects the notion of ‘saving first’. Newly established MSEs were required to contribute an initial 20% (from savings or seed money) of the capital they intended to borrow (see also Mulu Berhanu Hundera, 2014). In addition, individuals were also required to save a variable amount of money every month—known as ‘compulsory saving’— before and after their MSE was granted a loan. Individual saving was meant to demonstrate the willingness and ability to save a certain amount of money for several months consecutively, as well as raising cash to be used as collateral. In addition, as noted by a local official, saving was meant ‘to change the habits of people towards their future … Saving is transformative because it changes the mind of people.’²⁵

²² ²³ ²⁴ ²⁵

Interview conducted at the Addis Saving and Credit Institution, Kolfe, 21 April 2015. Interview conducted at the Addis Saving and Credit Institution, Kolfe, 25 November 2014. Interview with a businessman, Kolfe, 19 February 2016. Interview conducted at the Cooperative Promotion Office, Kolfe, 23 April 2015.

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The notions of ‘saving first’ and ‘group first’ underlying the mechanisms of credit provision in Kolfe played both an economic and a disciplinary role. The policy emphasis on group saving reflected the political elite’s attempt to encourage virtuous cycles of micro-capital accumulation in order to achieve the developmental state project for the socio-economic transformation of Ethiopia. The disciplinary role reflected the fact that such a project was expected to promote a change in unemployed people’s attitudes through their participation in a number of state and party political networks. Ultimately, individual action was subordinated to the collective effort directed by the state at transforming Ethiopia and sustaining economic growth.

5.5 ‘Keeping Good Relations with the Government’: Individual Experiences of Group Work in Kolfe The promotion of MSEs was characterized by important institutional reforms configuring state-unemployed relations. The penetration of the party-state apparatus to peri-urban areas reached a new high in the course of the 2010s, and entrepreneurship schemes served such purpose. However, experiences of group work in MSEs highlight that beneficiaries actively manoeuvred, challenged, and casted in new ways the objectives, and the underlying norms, behind the promotion of entrepreneurship schemes. While not constituting a coherent process of structural refashioning, these dynamics took the form of diverse strategies of coping with and subverting the normative framework of the developmental state at the level of practice. The ultimate effect was that they contributed to destabilizing the peri-urban space, for instance by institutionalizing the boundary between formal and informal business activities.

5.5.1 Businesses Set Up for Failure In line with recent studies, many of the MSEs observed in Kolfe were not successful from an economic perspective (Di Nunzio, 2015; Tegegne Gebre-Egziabher and Meheret Ayenew, 2010). Through MSEs, members were at best able to obtain basic subsistence, but usually businesses were not financially sustainable. One of the reasons why MSEs often failed to become successful businesses has to do with the process of translation of ambitious policies into sound practices: beneficiaries tried to navigate what they felt was an imposition from above. Micro-businesses were usually not successful because they operated in economic sectors which were pre-established through government directives and, as a result, had little room for diversifying their products and services. In Kolfe, priority sectors included food and beverages, metal working, construction, woodcraft, and urban horticulture.

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Despite having business plans and capital in place, a vast majority of MSEs struggled to find a market. Competition between dozens of nearly identical startups providing the same services generated little competitive advantage to make entrepreneurship experiences successful. Thus many businesses, while formally in place, were de facto not operational. This was for instance the case in an MSE of five members who received financial support to establish a woodcraft business. The leader contended that the start-up closed for business only two months after being formally established, indicating that the costs for rent and equipment outweighed in a short time the capacity of the company to make a living for its members. Another example is a company that was operating in the metal working sector. Initially, the seven members of the MSE had a stable inflow working as subcontractors for a larger firm. Six months after the company was set-up, it was nonetheless closed off after the contract was discontinued. Although precise data are not available, many MSEs were already out of business upon entering the market. From an economic perspective, small firms faced the risk of being locked into a ‘small scale trap’ or into low-value-added positions. Local officials were aware of these challenges, which were normally discussed as follows. Early mortality rates of MSEs are a real concern. Many businesses compete with each other because they all produce the same goods and make very little profit. … Another problem is about scaling-up small businesses. While with business support we aim to create the conditions for micro-enterprises to stand on their feet, very few companies are sustainable after graduation.²⁶

The few successful cases reported were companies established in conjunction with contracts directly provided by the state, for instance in the construction sector. One case of a company contracted to produce bricks for the construction of a public building is a point in case. The MSE, which employed twelve workers, was operational as long as the initial contract was in place, but then was closed off immediately after the contract expired. While the company was formally still in place, the leader explained that all members had for the past year been employed as daily workers for larger construction companies, and he did not foresee the MSE to have better prospects in the near future. Companies in food and beverages, normally employing young women, were usually no more successful, despite a potentially higher demand in the sector. One case analysed involves an MSE of about thirty women which was established in conjunction with a public contract for the provision of injera to a school. The leader explained that without the school the MSE would not be operational, and she worried about renewing the contract every six months. ²⁶ Interview with a business promotion official, Kolfe, 14 February 2016.

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Aware of the shortcomings of small business activities, many beneficiaries were often reluctant to engage in state-sponsored MSEs for several reasons, including fear of contracting debts and unwillingness to engage in group business activities. In an interview, one young female articulated the following paradox: I have to get the loan because I am constantly told that saving is good … However, I am afraid to spend the money because then I do not know how to return them back … so when I get the loan I keep the money in a secret spot and then I return it back month by month … I have to be careful because if my son knows that I have the money he’ll ask to borrow it.²⁷

In a focus group discussion about the challenges of group saving, participants lamented that paying back the money in time was often very difficult. ‘Saving individually is much less risky … and what does saving mean in the end?’²⁸ A large majority of respondents were very sceptical about establishing groups and expressed their preference for individual businesses. ‘We work in [a] group because the government wants us to work in groups … but you don’t make money, you keep good relations with the government’.²⁹ This is further illustrated by cases in which MSEs were established with initial capital provided by local or international NGOs, where the formation of groups was a prerequisite to receiving the initial loan. As one beneficiary put it, ‘I did not know the other women before and I don’t know what kind of business we will do together … the reason why I joined the micro [i.e. MSE] is that they give us some money and you can get other loans’.³⁰ The main contradiction of many group initiatives was that they were not financially viable, with people often engaging in poorly remunerated labour only to meet the state demand for participation in the development process. Group work, especially in MSEs, was a driver of successful businesses only in a minority of cases. Beneficiaries often contended that they would prefer to work individually but the only way to get support was by establishing groups. Complaints included that it was often difficult to ‘put different heads together’, the free-riding of some group members, the inflexibility of promotion offices when deciding what businesses to undertake, and the time spent in training vis-à-vis actual work. From the perspective of local officials, beneficiaries’ resistance to establish MSEs was about the challenge of ‘changing the mind of people when it comes to saving’ and ‘creating a saving culture’.³¹ One official from the Women and Youth Affairs Office contended that loans were often spent first on household consumption, and much less frequently as investments for productive activities. Loans and group ²⁷ Interview with an MSE member, Kolfe, 15 February 2016. ²⁸ Focus group discussion conducted in Kolfe, 13 November 2014. ²⁹ Focus group discussion conducted in Kolfe, 13 November 2014. ³⁰ Interview conducted with an MSE sponsored by a local NGO, Kolfe, 24 November 2014. ³¹ Interview conducted at the Women and Youth Affairs Office, Kolfe, 23 April 2015.

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businesses in Kolfe at best performed the function of a social protection system— something that was largely absent in the peri-urban context—rather than creating real opportunities for business development.

5.5.2 Making the Most of an Unsuccessful Business However, a narrow focus on financial and economic viability obscures the social and political significance of the entrepreneurship strategy in Kolfe. While businesses were often unsuccessful, beneficiaries tried to make the most of the limited opportunities they offered to make a living, in this way manoeuvring unsuccessful entrepreneurship initiatives for other purposes. Access to credit is a point in case. MSEs played a very important role as they opened up new opportunities for access to credit for individual members, for the redistribution of resources from beneficiaries to party and government networks, and for assistance from government institutions and development organizations. Many of these issues can be illustrated in the life histories of beneficiaries who have been involved in the constitution of MSE groups, such as the following. Z.M. is a member of an MSE for which the initial capital was provided by the municipal government. The MSE was established some years before to gather together women selling tree seedlings and vegetables who had previously been engaged in illegal tree cutting. Despite being in place for quite some time, the MSE was not very successful from an economic perspective: with the profits, members were barely able to cover their current expenses. Nonetheless, Z.M. worked three days a week from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. for the MSE. Ironically, the motto of the association was ‘If we work, we will have hope’. She explained that the MSE was not for making a living; rather, through the association she was able to get an individual loan for what she called her own real business. The association provided the group collateral that each individual member required in order to apply for an individual loan at the local MFI. The MSE was organized into groups of eight women for credit and loans purposes. Each group had a leader, and Z.M. was the leader of her group. To make her living, her ‘real business’, Z.M. bought vegetables from the main market in Addis Ababa (Merkato) and sold them in her local neighbourhood market. She went to Merkato whenever she was not busy with the MSE. She worked four days a week in her own business and claimed she was able to make a profit of about 25–30 ETB per day.³² An interesting aspect, however, was that she had been taught to draw up a daily business plan in the training about saving that was performed by the kebele. Her profits did not include her daily salary, which she claimed was 15 ETB; as she explained, ‘This is the cost for the labour as if someone else would do the business on my behalf ’. She therefore was taught ³² At the time of the interview the equivalent of just above 1 US dollar.

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to consider herself an employee in her own business. The other peculiarity was that she claimed she could not use the current day’s profits, but only the profits she had made the day before. The reason for this was that she had been taught that the day’s profits had to be considered as insurance against any inconvenience or problem happening during the day. ‘I can’t use the profit I made today. I have to use the profit I made yesterday. The profit of today is the insurance in case I’ll get sick’. She was very proud of herself and happy about the training on saving that she received every few months at the kebele. ‘Saving transformed me, and it is important because [it] helps you when you are old’.³³ The story of Z.M. elucidates both the opportunities and the tensions of the project for economic development based on the promotion of small businesses and groups in Ethiopia. Because of the limited opportunities to succeed in other ways, beneficiaries tried to leverage participation in MSEs for other purposes. The case of Z.M. is an example of how unsuccessful MSEs ultimately pushed beneficiaries to engage in informal business activities. Participation in government initiatives played an important political and social role and was often the only possibility many peri-urban dwellers had to conduct other economic activities and to make a living. Even if this came at the cost of working for free for several days every week, as the case of Z.M. shows, this allowed beneficiaries to access to credit, licences, and other redistributive mechanisms. Like the case of Z.M. other beneficiaries leveraged their participation to unsuccessful MSEs for other ends. P.M. is a 23-year-old female performing several occasional jobs, including working as a cleaner for other families in her neighbourhood, helping a relative running a cafeteria, and selling vegetables on the street. About a year before our meeting she was selected in her kebele to undertake a training to establish an MSE. Although she was reluctant to participate—‘trainings eat time from work’—she ultimately felt she could not escape pressure from local officials. At the same time, she hoped her involvement in forming an MSE could create opportunities for her to get a more stable job. She was finally involved in establishing a cafeteria with three other women she did not know before. While the cafeteria never became successful—‘there are many other businesses like this in the surroundings’—the connection she established with the business promotion office paid off sometimes after. ‘I was indicated as a model in the training and because of that I was selected to participate in recruiting other people to form MSEs’. P.M. soon understood that establishing as many MSEs as possible was a far more important priority of local promotion offices than establishing sound and successful enterprises. While her liaison position guaranteed her also some occasional per diem payment, the most important outcome, she contends, is that after that she was able to access credit to continue the informal activities she performed before starting the state supported MSE. ³³ Interview conducted in Kolfe, 13 November 2014.

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The stories of Z.M. and P.M. illustrate how efforts at formalizing and legalizing the peri-urban economy through the promotion of MSEs often generated unexpected outcomes. Beneficiaries enacted a subtle and quite sophisticated performance of power. They diverted time and resources from state-mandated enterprises because the formal businesses in which they were asked to enrol were not successful and, in this way, contributed to their failure. However, they seldom openly dismissed the demand by the state to participate in the promotion of MSE schemes. This allowed young entrepreneurs to open up opportunities for themselves, without dismissing the policy of job creation, which because of their informal work could still be regarded by local officials as a success story. The promotion of entrepreneurship activities in Kolfe significantly transformed the ways many peri-urban dwellers engaged with the local state, and hence constantly negotiated the perimeter of what ought to be legal and illegal, formal and informal. People challenged such boundaries contributing actively to shaping state-unemployed relations under the developmental state. The following example of street vending helps elucidate this concept. F.S. is a street vendor in a very crowded street in Kolfe, selling petty merchandise that he keeps in a wooden tray with a neck strap. Despite the fact that he has no licence for his business, he explained that his activity was neither legal nor illegal; this depended very much on how and where he sold his goods. Selling to the cars queuing on the street was strictly illegal; he explained that this was often the most remunerative activity, but if he were caught by the police, they would normally take away his products and ‘you’ll have a very bad day’. Conversely, it was not really legal to conduct business on the pavement, but it was tolerated. Sometimes the police or other people controlling street businesses would say something and he would have to move somewhere else. His activity was, however, legal just outside the house where he lived, located in a secondary street. Here, he was allowed to conduct his business through the MSE that he had established together with his neighbours. Yet spending his entire day there meant ‘gaining nothing at the end of the day’. For this reason, ‘you have to be smart and find your own way on the street’. By this, F.S. meant that he had to negotiate the space where he could conduct his business on a daily basis, as being ‘tough’ was the only way he could make a living and be independent.³⁴ In a similar vein, G.S., another illegal street vendor, contended that he was allowed to perform his activity only at specific times. He explained that, until a few years earlier, there had been much more flexibility with regard to street vendors and, within certain limits, he was allowed to conduct his business at any time of the day. ‘Today things are different … in very crowded areas, where vending is more remunerative, you are allowed to sell only at certain times of the day … After 5 p.m. is always good as the traffic police officers are no longer around’. He also ³⁴ Interview conducted in Kolfe, 20 April 2016.

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mentioned that being ‘tough’ was a central requisite to navigate street business, because ‘what you can do and what you can’t do depends very much on who you are and who you know’. He also said that he had enrolled in the kebele employment lists, but that so far he had not been shortlisted for training or selected to establish a savings group. G.S. also mentioned that ‘MSEs are a good entry point to the system’ and that ‘once you are in it’s easier to do your own business’.³⁵ In rapidly transforming peri-urban settings, the boundary between formal and informal, legal and illegal, which the policy of job creation contributed to make visible, is constantly shifting. To get by, people continually challenge and negotiate the normative framework of the developmental state. From the government perspective, MSEs were allowed to perform their activities within certain spaces—in terms of physical location and specific business activities. In an interview, members of an MSE comprising five recently graduated students in Kolfe complained that the promotion office suspended their licence for selling oil and sugar—a business that enabled them to make a good living—and replaced it with a metalwork licence. While their complaint had little effect, the outcome was that they continued to conduct the oil and sugar business illegally, and, at the same time, they complied with the request of the promotion office ‘because you can’t break relationships with them’.³⁶ Social rules and boundaries are continuously negotiated and redefined, with political priorities sometimes adjusting to reflect a changing reality. Many of the peri-urban poor tended to have no licence for their business, did not pay taxes, and might or might not be enrolled in the kebele employment lists. To some extent, the employment list embodied the expectations and aspirations of peri-urban dwellers in their relationship to the developmental state (Mains, 2012). The modernist ethos of the developmental state provides a very powerful—and normative— vision of the future, embodied in the collective mobilization of the population to achieve broad-based economic growth and development. In such a context, waiting to be selected for an MSE, for training, and more generally for developmental initiatives reflected everyday encounters with the developmental state. Whether people were included—or not included—in the employment lists often reflected their relative position vis-à-vis local power, as did the length of time they had to wait before being involved in developmental activities that allowed them access to socio-economic mechanisms of redistribution. Once an MSE was established, the dominant temporality became the notion of ‘graduation’—the expectation that the business would become self-sustainable within a certain temporal span, normally five years. However, being enrolled in the employment lists or being part of government initiatives was very often time-consuming, and people were expected to perform a number of activities, including working for free and attending meetings ³⁵ Interview conducted in Kolfe, 21 April 2016. ³⁶ Group interview with three MSE members, Kolfe, 14 November 2014.

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and training sessions, and were also expected to respect some further rules. It was not uncommon to hear people enrolled on the waiting lists complaining that they did not benefit from government initiatives because ‘they were still waiting’. ‘Waiting to be employed’ and ‘waiting to graduate’ were only two examples of how the negotiation of state-society relations operated in the context of the policy of job creation in EPRDF Ethiopia. In the context of all these people living in the limbo of peri-urban Ethiopia, the MSE policy constituted the normative framework confronting peri-urban dwellers, one that was actively negotiated, challenged and reproduced. The border between legal and illegal, formal and informal, was constantly redefined through everyday negotiations of spatial and temporal boundaries in the context of the job creation policy. The everyday negotiation of the local developmental state reflected its central contradiction: that the dynamics of social, economic, and political exclusion operated simultaneously, despite the claim of the developmental state ideologues to be more inclusive than its neoliberal alternatives.

5.6 Conclusion The importance of peri-urban areas to national-level politics in Ethiopia came to the forefront during unprecedented anti-government protests that occurred in late 2015 and throughout 2016. The protests were initially sparked by the contested Addis Ababa master plan, a project seeking the integration of the metropolitan area with the surrounding Oromia Regional State as part of an urban development plan. After violent confrontations between protesters and security forces led to fatalities, in January 2016 the Ethiopian government announced that it was abandoning the contested integrated master plan. Despite this, in the following months the protests increased in magnitude and catalysed broader anti-government frustration with issues surrounding the democratic representation of ethnic groups within the Ethiopian federation, particularly the Oromo, youth unemployment, and corruption scandals at various levels. Increasing instability characterized by repeated episodes of violence led the government to declare a six-month state of emergency in October 2016. The fact that the anti-government protests originated in Addis Ababa’s periurban areas speaks to their key significance in the dynamics of production and contestation of state power in driving inequalities and social differentiation. While the policy of job creation underpinning MSEs was successful in extending the institutional apparatus of the developmental state, it was certainly less successful in providing unemployed youths with the prospect of a better future. A main conclusion, then, is that the claim that the developmental state constitutes an effective alternative to ‘neoliberalism’ on the grounds of its supposed

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inclusiveness is problematic and faces significant contradictions in reality. A significant tension in such a project is the extent to which a universal idea of participation in the country’s socio-economic development—entailing the collective effort of a plurality of people and social groups—is at odds with the way in which the job creation policy engenders dynamics of social, economic, and political exclusion.

6 Becoming a Worker: Industrialization and Textile Labour in Mekelle 6.1 Introduction In this chapter I address the set of policies promoting industrialization in Ethiopia under the impulse of global production networks in the 2010s. I address the case of the Textile and Garment (T&G) industry in the region around Mekelle, Tigray, and the problems that the transition from agriculture to manufacturing raised in relation to labour mobilization (see Figure 6.1 for the location of the study area). I argue that capital intensive global value chains in the course of the 2010s generated a new question of labour. This new question of labour, which reflects the significant interdependence between the agricultural and the industrial economy, and new migratory processes in and out of urban areas, was characterized by the inability of young industrial workers to achieve reproduction through poorly remunerated wage employment. For this reason workers had to rely on a complex combination of wage employment, self-employment, and other survival activities to pursue their livelihoods, which had household reproduction at their centre. The chapter engages with discussions about the role of manufacturing in supporting the transition from agrarian to industrial capitalism in Africa. It argues that rapid industrialization under the impulse of global value chains leaves open an agrarian question of labour (Bernstein, 2010) which reproduces significant dynamics of the exploitation and subordination of young female workers. This casts a shadow on the capacity of the developmental state to mitigate the negative externalities of global value chains development in the period under review. In the course of the 2010s, the T&G sector had become a main strategic priority of the Ethiopian industrial policy, which altogether was expected to significantly push rapid economic growth towards making Ethiopia a middle-income country by 2025. Global fashion brands and textile corporations delocalized production to Ethiopia attracted by a mix of incentives such as import and export duty breaks, and preferential trade agreements. In collaboration with international donors, Ethiopia launched an ambitious plan to establish industrial zones throughout the country. These were meant as a further stimulus to attract foreign investments as well as hubs to develop domestic capacity and know-how through the sharing of key resources and infrastructure, based on an industrial cluster approach (Ali, 2012; Ali et al., 2016). Everyday Practices of State Building in Ethiopia. Davide Chinigò, Oxford University Press. © Davide Chinigò (2022). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192869654.003.0006

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Study Area

Federal Level

Mekelle

Regional Level Qwiha Mekelle

Fig. 6.1 Location of study area in Mekelle city administration, Qwiha sub-city. Map prepared by the author.

Under the strategic impulse of GTP II, sectoral policies designed under the Ministry of Industry, and newly established government agencies such as the Ethiopian Investment Commission (EIC), the T&G sector experienced a remarkable expansion, attracting the attention of key foreign investors and buyers. By 2014 at least 36 internationally funded projects were licensed for a total capital investment of over USD 140 million (ETIDI, 2016a). The T&G compartment was thus indicated as a priority area of investment in the design of 15 Industrial Parks (IPs) that the government commissioned in the course of the 2010s with the support of international donors, particularly China and the UK. By 2016 over 130 medium and large-scale companies were operational in the segments of ginning, spinning, weaving, finishing, and garments (ETIDI, 2016b). Although data capturing the trajectory of micro and small enterprises in the textile compartment are not available, according to informants at the Ministry of Industry their growth was also significant. According to data collected by UNIDO, the entire T&G compartment recorded a remarkable growth in the number of people employed, from 72,000 in 2013 to 250,000 in 2016 (UNIDO, 2017). Tigray was at the forefront of this development. Mekelle Industrial Park was officially inaugurated in July 2017, and soon after a number of international textile companies and brands from India, Bangladesh, and Italy were either operational in the park or had established stand-alone factories. The textile compartment rapidly

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took root in the course of the 2010s, generating expectations for a structural transformation of the regional economy towards manufacturing industry. The most apparent reason for the significant growth of T&G was the low cost of labour compared to other textile hubs such as China, India, Pakistan, Vietnam, and Bangladesh,¹ where international brands had operated in the past decades. The availability of cheap water and electricity, two essential assets for textile operations, was an additional issue gearing momentum towards the delocalization of international companies to Ethiopia. Reasons more specific to Tigray included the proximity to the Red Sea, and significant investments by regional and the federal governments to improve infrastructure, such as an additional railway line connecting the regional capital Mekelle to the port of Djibouti. Considering that Djibouti was the only point of access to the sea for commercial traffic in Ethiopia, the creation of a dedicated railway line put Tigray at a significant advantage compared to the rest of the industrial parks in the country.² Commitment of the regional and federal governments to develop the textile compartment were other factors that favoured the rapid deployment of the industry in the region. Especially after 2016, when country-wide anti-government protests started erupting, international investors regarded Tigray as the region facing lower risk of political instability and the TPLF leadership a reasonable guarantee to their investments. This is remarkable in light of the tragic turn of events that culminated in a disastrous conflict between Tigray and the federal government that began in November 2020, two years after Abiy Ahmed became prime minister. The government regarded the rapid development of the textile industry as a flagship policy of the developmental state. Manufacturing was expected to promote a structural change of the economy away from agriculture and towards sustaining high rates of economic growth by uncapping export market opportunities. To attract international capital, the government took a number of investor-friendly measures, including tax breaks and controlled devaluation of the currency. In the long run, international investment was expected to create domestic capacity through technical and technological spill-over, and the progressive consolidation of Ethiopian textile firms that would compete on the regional and global scene. More immediately, by the mid-2010s the development of the textile industry in Tigray intersected existing trends of urbanization and incomplete transformation of labour from agriculture to manufacturing. From the perspective of textile corporations, one specific challenge was how to capitalize the comparative advantage ¹ At the time of this fieldwork an Ethiopian basic textile operator’s salary averaged one fifth of China’s and half of Vietnam’s. For a critical approach, see also the report by the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC, 2018). ² According to informants in the textile industry, costs of transport and delivery time remained exceptionally high in Ethiopia and constituted a main entry barrier to the development of the industry.

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of relative low labour costs into a competitive advantage for the industry, considering that productivity of the average worker was significantly lower than in other Asian textile hubs. For the government the textile compartment represented an ideal opportunity to create jobs for increasingly disenfranchised youth seeking urban employment (on this see also chapter five). The transition from agriculture to manufacturing would represent not only a radical recalibration of the regional economy, but also a major departure from a rural way of life in cultural and social terms. This set of transformations, and the tensions accompanying them, are the empirical object of this chapter. The chapter reads industrialization against the political trajectory of the TPLF beginning from the late 1980s. By the time it took power, the TPLF understood the agrarian question in terms of how to create job opportunities out of agriculture through the structural transformation of the regional economy (Young, 1997a; 1997b). I argue that the rapid consolidation of the textile industry in Tigray in the course of the 2010s generated an important shift. This was about how to source industrial poles with workers that were now dispersed across the countryside, with the prospect of initial salaries below basic costs of reproduction. This generated a paradox: the coexistence of labour shortage and a large population seeking employment. Global production networks in Tigray generated a new agrarian question of labour inscribing young female workers in complex reproductive dynamics which had the rural household at its centre. Taking a household perspective, I discuss how industrial workers navigated the material and representational challenges of industrial labour. Empirically the chapter articulates the agrarian question of labour along four main dimensions: expectations about industrialization; wages below reproduction; subsidization of low wages; and navigating factory work. The first finding of the chapter is that the rapid development of the textile industry in Mekelle, both in and outside the industrial park, forced the industry to source an increasing number of workers from neighbouring rural areas. A vast majority of workers were young women aged 18–25, with some education (at least grade 10), employed by international companies as basic operators. The average wage could be as low as 800 ETB per month (less than 1 USD/day), well below the cost of reproduction considering the cost of housing and basic standards of living. Low salaries and challenges connected to adaptation to a factory lifestyle resulted in high levels of turnover and absenteeism, as lamented by many industrial corporations, which reflect the challenges confronting the transition to industrial life. Nonetheless, industrial employment was regarded by many workers and prospective workers as the gateway to modern life, taking on a significant aspirational value. While entry salary was extremely low, with the lack of minimum wage legislation constituting an important pitfall, work conditions in international state-of-the-art factories were significantly better than average employment opportunities elsewhere in the region. Thus some of the most dynamic individuals made

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the most of a salary ladder that could be climbed quite rapidly. More broadly, the problem of low wages cannot be isolated from the question about labour productivity and the lack of skilled manpower. As soon as workers acquired new skills, they often looked for better salaries elsewhere, and in some cases attempted to open their own small business—something that was often valued much more in comparative terms to wage employment. The second finding of the chapter is that wages below reproduction forced young workers to pursue livelihood strategies at the intersection between the textile industry, the urban ‘informal economy’, and agriculture. This brings me to illustrate three core arguments. First, a majority of workers remained dependent on their household of provenance for their socio-economic reproduction, and established new social and economic relations at the intersection between the rural and the urban economy. By providing basic welfare to young urban dwellers, the countryside performed a social security function. As result, and this is the second point, industrial employment rarely provided a pathway to social and economic enfranchisement for young industrial workers. This inscribes labour exploitation in global value chains within the reproduction of household dynamics of subordination based on patriarchal and gender dynamics. Dependence on the household of provenance thus generated new fluxes of people and resources in and out of industrial poles. This problematizes the view of uni-directional migration from rural to urban areas in the context of rapid industrialization. Third, the vision and economic model of accelerated growth under the developmental state, based on attracting foreign capital by means of incentives and tax breaks, in the course of the 2010s was inscribed in complex dynamics in which agriculture still played a significant role. This reflects both continuities and discontinuities of the Ethiopian developmental state paradigm with previous models of controlled economy relying on the extraction of surplus from rural areas. The chapter draws on semi-structured interviews, informal discussions, and participant observation with industrial actors, government offices, trainees, and workers in the textile sector in and around Mekelle through repeated fieldwork visits between 2015 and 2018.

6.2 Manufacturing and the Transition from Agrarian to Industrial Capitalism in Africa In the last two decades, trends of economic growth in Africa have revitalized discussions about the potential of structural transformation to drive broad-based socio-economic development (for instance Busse et al., 2019).³ This intersects ³ For a broader discussion about recent industrialization efforts in Africa in comparative perspective, see Whitfield, Therkildsen, and Buur (2015). For a discussion specific to industrialization in Ethiopia,

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with a growing body of literature addressing the impact of global value chains on labour-intensive industries in the Global South. As an increasing proportion of global trade is today channelled through vertically integrated value chains dominated by transnational firms, this has prompted the expansion of agro-industries, manufacturing, and services in new markets. The role of manufacturing to drive structural transformation has garnered renewed attention in several African countries for additional reasons. Partly driven by Chinese investments in infrastructure in Africa (Alden and Large, 2018), Ethiopia, Rwanda, Ghana, and Nigeria have for instance significantly expanded their manufacturing capacity to fill both domestic and export markets in sectors such as textile and leather products. In Rwanda, Botswana, Ethiopia, and South Africa, manufacturing promotion strategies gained traction in conjunction with the elaboration of a developmentalist model of structural transformation advocating for an increased role of the state in the economy (Leftwhich, 2000), which thus carries a more or less explicit critique of neoliberal strategies advocating for a minimal state role in the economy (Arkebe Oqubay, 2015; Hillbom, 2011). Ensuing global and regional production networks are characterized by significant opportunities for the firms involved, including higher value production and diversification of supply chains, but also by challenges, such as meeting the quality standards and commercial demands required by international buyers. Global Value Chains (GVC) analysis has focused on questions around the governance of these value chains—for instance a focus on value creation, differentiation, and capture in production and distribution processes (Bair, 2009). In parallel, a growing strand of studies known as Global Production Networks (GPN) theory has focused on the social aspects of increasingly connected commercial operations, particularly mapping the wide range of stakeholders across the value chain that prompt global production (Gereffi, 2006; Gereffi and Kaplinsky, 2001). Critical studies addressing the impact of GPN in the Global South have thus emphasized questions around power relations between the actors dispersed across the value chain, and particularly focus on work and labour relations (Reinecke et al., 2018; Barrientos et al., 2011; Dunaway, 2014). In rapidly growing countries like Ethiopia, Angola, Rwanda, and Nigeria, global production networks raise questions about the scope of economic growth, its trajectory in the long run, and the extent to which governments are able to promote effective labour policies (Arkebe Oqubay, 2015). Mainstream economists usually define structural transformation as a linear process whereby the dualism between agriculture and non-agricultural sectors progressively dissipate over time. For instance, Timmer et al. (2012) characterize structural transformation as a set of processes in which the shares of employment and GDP in agriculture decrease refer to Chapter 5—‘Industrialization and Urban Development’—of Fantu Cheru, Cramer, and Arkebe Oqubay’s (2019) volume, The Oxford Handbook of the Ethiopian Economy.

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over time; rural out-migration to the urban economy increases sharply, urban based economy, including manufacturing and services, progressively replaces agriculture and other rural sectors, and demographic transformation is characterized by low birth and death rates. However, this pattern of sector and labour transformations does not always find a match with the reality of African countries. For instance, studies have shown how the marginal decline of the share of agriculture in GDP is usually connected to the rise in the share of services and construction whereas industry has largely lagged behind (Enache et al., 2016). In addition, there is a growing evidence to suggest that industrial growth has been largely driven by booming extractive and mining sectors in several parts of Africa, whereas the share of manufacturing has stagnated (Chen et al., 2015). This raises questions about the actual scope of structural transformation, particularly in relation to whether economic growth is able to sustain job creation, particularly wage labour, in the long run. These issues echo earlier concerns from scholars with a political economy orientation, who have tended to regard structural transformation in Africa—to the extent that it is proceeding and actually being attempted by political elites today— as a set of largely incomplete processes of structural change from a predominantly rural, agrarian society and economy into an increasingly industrial one (Bernstein, 2002; 2010; 2016). This has generated a debate about whether the European model of transition from agrarian to industrial capitalism (Byres, 2006; 2009) can be readily applied to disparate historical experiences in Africa (Moyo, 2004), considering the continent’s marginal position within the global economy. Deborah Bryceson has powerfully argued that the twin forces of market liberalization and structural adjustment since the 1980s have engendered processes of de-agrarianization in several parts of the continent, although without creating the conditions for sustained urban employment (Bryceson, 1999: 4). This chapter engages with GVC/GPN literature from two perspectives. First, I put into sharp focus how global and regional production networks intersect discussions around the ‘agrarian question of labour’ in the Global South. Following Henry Bernstein (2007; 2010), current waves of industrialization in the Global South are characterized by very different dynamics than earlier transitions in the Global North because they leave open an ‘agrarian question of labour’, which is about the inability of armies of labour to reproduce themselves under current configurations of global capitalism. A focus on the agrarian question of labour is meant to problematize the ways in which we scope the impact of global production networks to support the transition to industrial capitalism and, crucially in the case of Ethiopia, the role of the state in mediating such process. In particular, the condition of young women workers entering the textile industry in Tigray can be productively discussed with what Henry Bernstein has defined ‘classes of labour’ (2010: 110), which describes the pursuit of livelihoods through complex combinations of scarce and poorly remunerated wage employment, self-employment,

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and other survival activities in the domain of the ‘informal economy’. For Bernstein these working poor are entrenched within capitalist relations to the extent that their reproduction depends fully, directly, and indirectly on the sale of their labour power. In fact, they inhabit a social world of ‘relentless micro-capitalism’ (Davis, 2006: 181). Their reproduction reflects a condition ‘of growing income insecurity and “pauperization” as well as employment insecurity and the downward pressures exerted by the neoliberal erosion of social provision for those in “standard” wage employment’ (Bernstein, 2010: 111). Second, in order to situate the agrarian question of labour within GVN/GPN, I take household reproduction as a central unit of analysis. As noted by Elena Baglioni (2021), the household’s key role in social reproduction remains a largely unexplored theme in GVN/GPN theory. Household relations are usually an overlooked aspect of the labour process in global production networks, as these are mainly regarded as not pertaining to the production process and are relegated to the private sphere. However, as demonstrated by Bridget O’Laughlin (2013), households usually play an important role in filling the gap of hampered transitions in which workers remain unable to make a living through wage labour. Discussing the case of horticulture in Senegal through a class relational approach, Elena Baglioni (2021) adds that global production networks systematically externalizing the cost of reproduction to the workers reflect specific gender dynamics: the inherent conflict between production and reproduction at the bottom of the value chain results in the further fragmentation of women in classes of labour. This is thus in line with studies within the field of feminist political economy showing that the externalization of the cost of reproduction to gendered and racialized workers is a key component of surplus value extraction and capital accumulation (Dunaway, 2014; Mezzadri, 2016). The case of Tigray analysed here shows that the household not only plays an important role in the reproduction of young female workers, but also that the viability of the textile industry in the period under review relied heavily on the household via the subsidization of industrial wages below the cost of reproduction. This has two important implications. First, global production networks must be inscribed within broader dynamics at the intersection between the rural and the urban economy, beyond a view of the transition to industry as a linear process whereby wage employment substitutes agriculture. This reflects new labour regimes emerging along complex strategies of diversification in which the household remains a central unit of analysis for understanding the aspirational and material scope of the transition to industrialization. Second, in Tigray, industrialization efforts relied substantially on cheap female labour mobilization. Young female workers being employed in the garment sector embodies the tension between the productive rationale of global capital and the reproductive logic of the household (Fraser, 2016). This reflects labour regimes emerging along the complex interplay between dynamics of labour exploitation and discipling (Baglioni, 2018).

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Lacking claims to land and vesting a subordinate position within the household, young female workers become a disposable pool of industrial labour, the ideal workers to be exploited below their cost of reproduction. As a result, far from providing opportunities for social and economic enfranchisement, the exploitative logic of global production networks further reinforces gendered dynamics of subordination within the household. It is precisely against the multiple strategies through which female workers struggle to reproduce themselves at the intersection between the industrial and household economies that one must read the challenges confronting the transition to industrial life under the textile industry in Tigray.

6.3 Made in Ethiopia? Industrialization and the Developmental State Along with agriculture, mining, construction, urban development, trade, and tourism, the manufacturing industry was one of seven sectors prioritized by Ethiopia under the accelerated strategy of economic transformation envisioned by the second Growth and Transformation Plan II (GTP II), 2015–2020. The strategic document set the ambitious objective ‘to make Ethiopia a leading manufacturing hub in Africa and among the leading countries in the globe’ (FDRE, 2015: 136). Manufacturing was thus expected to promote the structural transformation of the economy, which was one of the cornerstones of the vision behind the developmental state. GTP II (FDRE, 2015: 136) elaborated this point as follows: [A]ccelerated growth of the manufacturing industry will be promoted through expanding new investments mainly in export-oriented manufacturing and improving the productivity and competitiveness of domestic manufacturing firms. The strategic directions during GTP II are improving the productivity, quality and competitiveness of both existing and new industries and ensuring structural change, building labour intensive light manufacturing industry that is globally competitive in terms of productivity, quality and price, transforming the medium and large manufacturing industry to become a reliable source of foreign exchange and building industrial engineering and technological capacity.

This strategy stood on the view that Ethiopia held a considerable comparative advantage in developing labour intensive manufacturing. The sector offered the prospect to generate employment to potentially volatile youth seeking alternatives to agriculture and informality in the urban economy (Di Nunzio, 2019). Manufacturing was expected to drive an annual growth in jobs created by 15%, from 380,000 in 2014–2015 to 758,000 by 2019–2020 at the end of the plan (FDRE, 2015: 95). In the mind of the EPRDF political leadership, economic

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and political objectives were mutually reinforcing. Under the developmental state paradigm, manufacturing was thus entrenched on a high modernist view of the country’s future as lying on industrialization and large-scale infrastructural projects (Mosley and Watson, 2016; Asebe Regassa and Korf, 2018). Wage labour opportunities in manufacturing was expected to sustain economic growth, while making rapid social transformation legible, and less politically risky to the state (Scott, 1998). Structural transformation was as much about economic development as it was about the political project of the developmental state, expected to drive the transition of millions of rural smallholders to urban, wage-based lifestyles. Under the impulse of this vision, the contribution of manufacturing to Ethiopia’s economic growth increased significantly in the course of the 2010s. For instance, in 2015–2016 the real GDP grew by 8.0%, driven by services (8.7%) and manufacturing (20.6%) (UNIDO, 2018: 9). However, in real economic terms, manufacturing represented the lowest share of national economy, which continued to be dominated by services and agriculture. Furthermore, in the course of the 2010s the emphasis on rapid industrialization under the developmental state continued to be characterized by significant scalar trade-offs. On the one hand, industrialization strategy relied on foreign investments, large-scale vertically integrated factories, and was primarily dedicated to exportation. On the other, the extent to which this model was capable of laying the conditions for import substitution relied on the expectations of rapid growth of small and medium domestic enterprises. Supporters of this approach contended that technology spill-overs and the transfer of know-how and skills would allow domestic industrialization to take root, and that a strong developmental state was precisely there to mediate and facilitate such process (Arkebe Oqubay, 2015). Critics emphasized that the opening to foreign investors was in fact a form of market liberalization allowing the penetration of international corporate capital to reap the benefits of natural resources and cheap labour without any apparent benefit to Ethiopia (Lavers, 2016).

6.3.1 Industrial Parks One important way government put the strategic vision of GTP II into practice was the creation of dedicated Industrial Parks (IPs), perhaps one of the most emblematic features of the high modernist ethos, and enchantment with infrastructure, under the developmental state. IPs were inspired by the experience of East Asian countries such as China, Taiwan, and Malaysia, which established IPs to attract foreign investments and boost domestic industrialization. The idea behind IPs was to establish industrial hubs to exploit the comparative advantage Ethiopia enjoyed

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towards other more established industrial economies.⁴ IPs were premised by significant investments in large infrastructural projects, which in the course of the 2010s reached up to 15% of GDP (UNIDO, 2018: 17). In 2014 Ethiopia established the Ethiopian Industrial Parks Development Corporation (IPDC), tasked to identify sites and develop plans and strategies to implement industrial zones across the country. IPDC was also mandated with the tasks of operating parks, providing for land, ensuring essential infrastructure, and overseeing pre-built sheds to host domestic and foreign investors operations. As reported on the website of the Ethiopian Investment Commission (EIC),⁵ Ethiopia offered a number of incentives to attract foreign investors. These included customs duty payment exemption on capital goods and construction materials. Investors were entitled to refund of the customs duty paid on inputs when sourcing from Ethiopian manufacturing industries. Further incentives included income tax exemption, which for manufacturing and agro-processing could be up to six years.⁶ Exporting investors operating within IPs thus enjoyed an additional two to four years income tax exemption. Tax holidays could be extended to a period of ten to fifteen years for investors involved in the development of IPs directly. Investors exclusively focusing on export were given additional incentives,⁷ including the remittance of profit, dividends, and interest payments on external loans. Investors could also access credit through the Development Bank of Ethiopia, based on a 70% loan for 30% own equity. Finally, investors operating within IPs benefited from minimal land leases—space was offered at a cost as low as 1 USD per square metre per month—as well as a number of other services, including on site custom. IPs drew on an economic model based on the principle of industrial clusters (Ceglie and Dini, 1999). For ‘late industrializers’ like Ethiopia, IPs were meant as aggregators and accelerators of industrial development by facilitating the clustering of individual enterprises that share infrastructure, minimize costs of utilities, and gain access to nearby skilled labour markets, educational facilities, research, and other critical inputs (Arkebe Oqubay, 2015). The government regarded IPs as a catalyst of foreign direct investments, of which the country was desperate to counter the negative pressures on the balance of trade as result of rapidly growing import of finished and semi-finished goods. Following UNIDO (2018: 18), Ethiopian IPs drew on the Chinese experience of Special Economic Zones (SEZs), which enabled China to attract ‘foreign investment, and help reform the economy ⁴ GTP II identified the following manufacturing industries as the areas in which Ethiopia held greater comparative advantage: textile and garments; leather and leather products; metal and engineering; meat, milk, and honey industry; chemicals and construction; agro-processing, and; pharmaceutics. ⁵ See http://www.investethiopia.gov.et/index.php/why-ethiopia/why-invest-in-ethiopia.html, [accessed on 15 January 2020]. ⁶ Income tax exemption for agricultural investments could be extended for up to nine years. ⁷ Export incentives included the Duty Draw-Back, Voucher, Bonded Factory and Manufacturing Warehouse, and Export Credit Guarantee schemes.

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through the processing of imported materials, compensatory trade, cooperative enterprises, joint ventures and enterprises based on foreign capital’.⁸ The Industrial Parks proclamation 886/2015 further details the role and scope of IPs. Under the proclamation any profit-making public, private, and publicprivate enterprise can be entrusted to run and participate in the establishment of IPs. IPs could be developed by the federal or regional governments, by the IPDC in collaboration with private actors, or by private corporations directly. While GTP I provided for the establishment of five IPs—two in Addis Ababa and one each in Hawassa, Dire Dawa, and Kombolcha—under GTP II this initial plan was significantly expanded. By 2019, fifteen federal, four regional, and four private parks were either operational, under construction, or planned.⁹ Ethiopia committed significant investments (1 billion USD/year) in IP development and sought funding of donors such as the World Bank, as well as benefiting from financial and technical assistance from China, the UK for federal IPs, Italy for the four regional agro-industrial parks, and indirectly other institutional donors and several UN implementing agencies. IPs already operational by the time of this fieldwork included Bole Lemi, in Addis Ababa, which under Phase I in 2014 opened over an area of 157 hectares and was funded with the support of the World Bank. Bole Lemi was operated by ten foreign owned manufacturing companies occupying twenty sheds. Hawassa IP became operational in 2017 covering an area of 300 hectares of land. The park was designed and constructed through the financial and technical assistance of the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC), and the UK government. Mekelle IP was finalized in July 2017 (more details discussed below), although it became operational only at the beginning of 2018. Kombolcha IP in Amhara, built by the CCECC with a USD 90 million investment, was also officially inaugurated in July 2017. Still in Amhara, in March 2019 Debre Birhan IP was inaugurated, following an investment of USD 71 million stretching over seventyfive hectares of land and with the prospect to create 13,000 jobs. In Oromia, Adama Industrial Park was officially inaugurated on October 2018, situated close to the Ethio-Djibouti railway line and dedicated to textile, apparel, vehicle assembly, and food processing clusters. Jimma IP in Oromia was inaugurated in December 2018 ⁸ See also Zhang and Zou (2012), quoted in the original UNIDO report. For a broader discussion about Chinese investments in Ethiopia, see Mebratu Seyoum, Renshui, and Yang (2015), and Seifudein Adem (2012). ⁹ Federal IPs were established/planned at Bole Lemi (Addis Ababa), Kilinto (Addis Ababa), Airline and Logistics Park (Addis Ababa), Addis Industrial Village (Addis Ababa), Hawassa (SNNPR), Mekelle (Tigray), Kombolcha (Amhara), Bahir Dahr (Amhara), Areti (Amhara), Debre Birhan (Amhara), Jimma (Oromia), Adama (Oromia), Dire Dawa (Dire Dawa), Modjo Leather City (Oromia), Aysha (Somali). Regional parks, entirely dedicated to agro-processing, were established/planned at Bure (Amhara), Bulbula (Oromia), Yirgalem (SNNPR), Baeker (Tigray). Parks run by private corporations were the Eastern Industrial Zone (Oromia), Huajian Light Industry City (Addis Ababa), Modjo George Shoe (Oromia), and Kingdom Linen (Dire Dawa).

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over an area of 75 hectares and expected to operate in the textile cluster. By 2019, IPs in Dire Dawa, Arerti, Kilinto, and Bahir Dahr were still under construction. Also operational were a number of private IPs. The largest was the Chinese-owned Eastern Industrial Zone at Dukem, in the eastern outskirt of Addis Ababa, which had been inaugurated already in 2007 (see Giannecchini and Taylor, 2018). Despite significant efforts and expectations, in the course of the 2010s IPs suffered from a number of challenges. Low entry salaries and a shortage of skilled labour were clearly the main problems. Potentially employable workers— especially young women—were often dispersed at some distance from industrial zones, with the lack of reliable infrastructure and transport making commuting or relocation difficult. Lack of skills reflected the inadequate education system, despite efforts to boost the capacity and quality of Technical Vocational and Educational Training (TVET), and there were challenges connected to the transition from agricultural to industrial life. The political imperative of rapid industrialization, which required hiring large number of workers very quickly, made labour shortage a particularly significant problem. These were just some of the dimensions configuring the new question of labour in the context of industrial development. In the next section I will discuss key features of the textile industry in Ethiopia before addressing more specifically the new question of labour in Mekelle.

6.4 The Textile and Garment Industry in Ethiopia The textile industry has a long history in Ethiopia dating back to the Italian occupation (1936–1941), when the first garment factory was established at Dire Dawa in 1939. The sector continued to play an important role when Haile Selassie went back to power after 1941. During the Derg regime (1974–1991), private factories were nationalized, and while many continued to be operational, production decreased sharply following the introduction of socialization policies. The textile industry was given renewed impulse by the EPRDF government in the 1990s for its potential to create economic growth and job opportunities, as well as synergies with lagging cotton production. While in the first decade the new government decided to maintain ownership of textile companies, in the mid-2000s a consensus over privatization and progressive liberalization of the sector emerged. Since the late 2000s, the textile sector has received further impulse, becoming a flagship sector to be targeted by dedicated policies under the developmental state for its potential to boost export earnings while driving a structural transformation of the economy. In the course of the 2010s, Ethiopia garnered increasing attention of the international fashion industry. Global industrial corporations started delocalizing production to Ethiopia, investing millions of dollars in facilities and developing

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human capacity.¹⁰ These included well known global brands such as Walmart, Calzedonia, H&M, Gerber, Primark, Tesco, TCP, Marks & Spencer, Decathlon, Phillips Van Heusen, Tschibo, VF Corporation, and Inditex. How did, in less than a decade, Ethiopia become a such global hub for T&G? The Ethiopian government prioritized textiles as one of the main manufacturing sub-sectors where the country enjoyed significant comparative advantage (see also Mekonnen Manyazewal and Admasu Shiferaw, 2019). With the formulation of GTP I, efforts to rapidly expand the T&G compartment by seeking foreign investments was streamlined through the Ministry of Industry (MoI). GTP I set the ambitious initial target to generate USD 1 billion worth of the industry’s export by the end of the planned period. This proved to be a gross miscalculation and in 2014–2015 exports were lagging at USD 98.9 millions (ETIDI, 2016a). T&G was then identified as one of the manufacturing sectors prioritized under GTP II. Investments in the sector were regarded as having considerable potential for job creation, with Ethiopia enjoying a significant comparative advantage due to its abundance of labour and low wages during the plan period (FDRE, 2015: 106). Another reason why textiles was prioritized under GTP II was the potential of the industry to generate spill-overs with other labour-intensive sectors, including upstream linkages with cotton production as well as with downstream industries such as accessories, chemical, and other inputs that Ethiopia imported. Under the impulse of dedicated IPs, GTP II envisaged the T&G compartment to manufacture USD 2.18 billion worth of production and earn USD 779 million in export revenue by the end of plan period. Average production capacity utilization of this subsector will reach 80% by 2019/20. In terms of employment, 174,000 job opportunities will be created in this subsector and it is set to reduce the carbon emission of the sector by 25% by the end of the plan period. (FDRE, 2015: 138–139)

These objectives are clearly over ambitious. As of October 2017, only about 40,000 workers were employed in T&G, and growth over the past several years has not kept pace with yearly targets set by GTP II (WRC, 2018: 8). Figures from March 2018 show that Ethiopia earned USD 68.5 million in revenue from T&G exports over the previous eight months of the Ethiopian fiscal year, a 23.1% increase compared to revenue earned in the corresponding period in the previous year, but still 50% below the government’s target (WRC, 2018: 8). The economic strategy underpinning the support of the textile industry relies on a theory of import-substitution in the context of the progressive consolidation and diversification of domestic industrialization efforts (Arkebe Oqubay, 2015). ¹⁰ See for instance http://www.intracen.org/news/Ethiopia-is-well-positioned-to-become-thetextile-and-apparel-manufacturing-hub-of-Africa/ [accessed on 4 March 2020].

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This strategy, known as Top-Down Pulling Strategy, had already been elaborated in the course of the 2000s in the circles of the MoI, and with the significant support of UNIDO, and was then streamlined in GTP I and II (ETGAMA, 2014). This strategy, which was expression of the vision behind the developmental state, was based on an approach to economic transformation casting a central role to strong state interventionism to sustain industrialization (Mekonnen Manyazewal and Admasu Shiferaw, 2019). From a macro-economic perspective, the strategy focused first on developing more labour-intensive segments of the value chain to allow industry to take root through foreign investments, attracted by the low cost of labour and favourable fiscal environment. In the case of textiles these segments were apparel and garment production, initially run by foreign investors and via import of capital-intensive goods such as machineries. The consolidation of the industry in the medium term was then expected to enable technology spill-overs and creation of know-how that would encourage domestic investments and the progressive diversification of connected industries. In the long run this was to lay the foundation for import-substitution. To assist the MoI in implementing this strategy, in 2010 the Ethiopian government established the Ethiopian Textile Industry Development Institute (ETIDI). ETIDI had the prerogative to monitor and facilitate initiatives in the textile sector, formulating dedicated sectoral policies, coordinating initiatives in different parts of the country and particularly with international investors. One sectoral study entitled ‘Textile and Clothing Value Chain Roadmap’, conducted by ETIDI in collaboration with the International Trade Centre (ITC), stated that the export of textile and garment in Ethiopia was projected to increase annually by 35%, reaching USD 320 million by 2020 (ETIDI, 2016b: 51). The study contended that over the period under consideration (2016–2020), over 200 new firms were expected to enter the sector, creating 45,000 new jobs and the establishment of 600 new production lines in yarn, textile, and apparel production. Export share of textile in 2016 accounted for 23.2% of total manufacturing and 3.5% of the total country export (ETIDI, 2016a). While domestic investments remained stable in the course of the 2010s, large international retailers investing in fully integrated factories had driven the transformation of the sector, generating a significant gap between Ethiopian small and low capitalized businesses, and government-supported large-scale foreign operators. As result, demand for skilled and unskilled workers to employ in large factories increased sharply. Beside strong government support and incentives, an additional factor that contributed to attracting foreign investments in the textile sector was the stipulation of agreements granting products made in Ethiopia preferential access to the European, American, and African markets (see also Staritz and Whitfield, 2019). Preferential trade agreements positioned Ethiopia at a relative advantage to other

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Asian competitors producing for western markets. As far the US market is concerned, in 2001 Ethiopia signed, along with thirty-nine other sub-Saharan Africa countries, the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). Under AGOA, Ethiopian products could be exported duty free and without quota limitations to the US market. Evidence collected by the Ethiopian Textile and Garment Manufacturers’ Association (ETGAMA, 2014) shows that in Lesotho, Swaziland, and Botswana, AGOA generated significant growth of the garment and apparel export. Similarly, Ethiopia was one of the forty-nine countries signing the Everything But Arms (EBA) agreement with the European Union in 2001, which qualified products made in Ethiopia duty free access to the European common market. EBA provided no quantitative restrictions to export and was not bound to specific time limits. The benefits of EBA were already significant: by 2016 over 80% of the textile Ethiopian export was earmarked to the European market, and particularly to Germany (75% of total export) (UNIDO, 2018). At a continental level Ethiopia was part of the countries that signed the Common Market for East and Southern Africa (COMESA). By the time of this fieldwork, additional agreements between COMESA, the East African Community (EAC), and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) were in the process of being developed. An additional factor driving the rapid expansion of foreign investments in textiles was the availability of key industrial inputs such as water and electricity. The availability of water and affordable electricity derived from renewable sources, primarily hydroelectric power, was a critical issue behind the decision of many international textile corporation to delocalize production to Ethiopia. In the language of the government this constituted a significant comparative advantage to other countries in the continent. By the time of this fieldwork the cost of electricity for business in Ethiopia was 0.04 USD per Kw/hour, which was significantly lower than many other global textile competitors, such as China (0.09), India (0.1), Pakistan (0.08), Turkey (0.1), and Bangladesh (0.11).¹¹ Since the 2000s, the Ethiopian government has invested significantly in building mega-infrastructure to boost the country’s energy producing capacity. The most significant examples are multimillion investments in large-scale dams, partly funded through international capital, such as the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile river, and the Gibe I, II, and III dams on the Omo river basin. These projects, which are often cited as another flagship policy of the developmental state (Verhoeven, 2013), were expected not only to satisfy the growing domestic demand for energy that industrialization generated, but also to position Ethiopia as the main power provider at regional and continental level. Particularly attractive to the global fashion industry was that hydroelectric power was not only affordable but also a renewable source of energy, allowing branding of final products as ‘green’ and ‘sustainable’, ¹¹ Prices are referred to as energy/fuel cost per kw/hour expressed in USD. Data retrieved from https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/ [accessed on 4 February 2018].

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and meeting high corporate social responsibility (CSR) standards. Ironically, the construction of large-hydraulic infrastructure generated significant concerns for their controversial social and environmental impact, including the destruction of cultural heritage, hindering pre-existing economic activities and access to water, and large-scale displacement of people (Fantini et al., 2018; Hodbod et al., 2019; Edegilign Hailu Woldegebrael, 2018). By the time of this fieldwork, despite these significant plans and investments, supply of water and electricity was not always stable, generating concern in the case of some industrial actors. Perhaps the most important factor attracting foreign capital to Ethiopia in the textile compartment was the availability of cheap labour. The T&G is among the most labour-intensive sectors in manufacturing, requiring a large number of unskilled workers to be employed as basic operators.¹² In the course of the 2010s, Ethiopia’s labour market was ripe. The increasing trend towards urbanization and the creation of job opportunities for thousands of unemployed youth seeking alternatives to farming, and to the informal economy, became an economic as well as a political priority of the developmental state agenda. By the time of this fieldwork, entry-level textile wages remained significantly lower than in other leading manufacturing countries. Barrett and Baumann-Pauly (2019: 9) found that textile entry salaries in the Hawassa IP were as low as 26 USD/month, significantly lower than other textile manufacturing countries such as Bangladesh (95 USD/month), Laos (128 USD/month), Vietnam (180 USD/month), China (326 USD/month), and Turkey (340 USD/month), but also of other competitors in Africa such as Kenya (207 USD/month) and South Africa (244 USD/month). The same study explains that low salaries result from at least two factors: the lack of minimum wage legislation, and the fact that, as result, the industry set the entry salary that was typically paid to entry-level Ethiopian public employees (Barrett and BaumannPauly, 2019: 12). The gender distribution of employment in the textile industry varied significantly depending on the size of companies. In Tigray, men dominated micro and small businesses, while basic operators in large industries were largely women. Another study, measuring costs per worker incurred by export manufacturers rather than salaries, also found that in Ethiopia labour was significantly cheaper than in Bangladesh (69 USD and 79 USD, respectively), Kenya (175 USD), India (180 USD), and Vietnam (201 USD) (Caria, 2019: 6). The same study also found that in the garment sub-sector differences were even sharper, with ‘average labor costs in Bangladesh and India … 20 percent and 128 percent higher than in Ethiopia, respectively’ (Caria, 2019: 6). Despite that the author concludes that low

¹² A study by the Central Statistical Agency (CSA, 2015) shows that the textile industry is the most labour-intensive manufacturing sub-sector in Ethiopia.

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productivity of labour makes the average added value per worker in Ethiopia significantly lower than in Kenya, India, and Vietnam, while firms in Ethiopia retain a competitive advantage with Bangladesh. Reports and studies conducted by international organizations and private companies mention low productivity of labour as the main challenge constraining the development of the textile industry (ETIDI, 2016a; ETIDI, 2016b; ETGAMA, 2014). Low labour productivity was partly due to the lack of skilled manpower, including poor educational outcomes. TVET colleges proved ineffective to prepare workers adequately with the demands of private industrial actors in mind (MoE, 2011). However, low entry salaries provided little incentive for workers to increase productivity. This is evidenced by high rates of turnovers and absenteeism in the industry (Staritz and Whitfield, 2019). Workers not only moved or quit when they acquired new skills or were offered better salaries, but also because the costs of reproduction (housing and living) were usually higher than actual wages. This reflected significant infrastructural challenges, including a lack of housing and transport in and around main industrial poles. By the time of this fieldwork many investors, donors, and the Ethiopian government were investing significantly in projects to strengthen transport services, as well as planning the construction of medical clinics, housing, and other services around main industrial poles.

6.5 Industrialization and the Historical Question of Labour in Tigray The current policy emphasis on industrialization to sustain socio-economic transformation in Tigray is deeply entrenched in the political history of the TPLF/EPRDF political leadership. Particularly, it can be traced back to the late 1980s, when the TPLF progressively consolidated power by playing a leading role in the coalition of ethno-nationalist parties forming the EPRDF. The TPLF leadership remained imbued with a Marxist-Leninist ideology understanding the revolution in terms of class struggle and regarding liberal democracy with profound suspicion. At the same time the transition had emphasized the contradictions of a regional economy relying on peasant agriculture and characterized by a steadily growing, and land hungry, population. The TPLF had already ruled out further land redistribution in the late 1980s for fear that plots would rapidly become uneconomic (Young, 1997b). This became an increasing source of tension for a growing number of young landless peasants who had invested their hopes in the liberation struggle against the Derg. The political transition also came with significant expectation for economic alternatives. However, the way ahead was not straightforward. Departing from a system of state ownership of land was out of the question for fear of land accumulation among a few wealthy and ‘rent seeking’ commercial farmers. This

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configured a new question of labour: with the rural economy overtaxed by a growing population and few potential avenues for diversification, the TPLF leadership was required to seek new avenues in the urban economy, despite its traditional aversion for the private sector and suspicion for middle-class development. It is with this in mind that the TPLF leadership started regarding industrialization as the solution to providing stable employment for the region’s growing and land-starved population (Young, 1997a: 85). Nonetheless, the long liberation war and the post-socialist transition from a planned to a market economy generated a number of additional problems. First, although the service sector in the early 1990s was making some significant progress, the few and cautious private investors regarded agro-industrial development as a risky enterprise, requiring significant capital inputs which were not readily available anyway. Second, federal state investments in industrial development were regarded with profound scepticism after the unsuccessful experience of seventeen years of planned economy under the Derg. Although the TPLF now played a prominent role in central government, in the years immediately after the transition a sense of economic self-administration was still prevalent in a majority of the TPLF political leadership (Young, 1997a). This was accompanied by a generalized sentiment regarding a largely Amhara-dominated central bureaucracy as an obstacle, or even a threat, to Tigray national interest. Third, Tigrayan peasant farmers could only produce minimal savings, and the countryside was unable to create the capital accumulation required to sustain rapid industrialization. For all these reasons a consensus emerged in the TPLF Central Committee to follow a different model, relying on the private sector but under tight control of the state and the party political leadership. This resulted in the creation of a community-based organization, the Endowment Fund for the Rehabilitation of Tigray (EFFORT). EFFORT was meant to support industrial development, producing profits for further growth, and sustain war veterans and their families. As noted by Young (1997a: 85), EFFORT started operating in Tigray in 1995 with a significant amount of capital drawn from (i) non-military equipment captured from the Derg, (ii) companies established during and after liberation by the TPLF, (iii) limited funds made available by the TPLF, (iv) financial contributions from supportive non-governmental organizations, (v) investment capital derived from joint ventures with private companies, and (vi) money borrowed from the state-owned Commercial Bank of Ethiopia against the Fund’s assets.

Expression of the TPLF Central Committee, with seven of its members initially appointed as managers, EFFORT was premised on an understanding of the failure of many state-owned companies as residing in their complete alienation from market logics and demands. Because of this, EFFORT was designed as a constellation of private enterprises, responding to market rationality, whose priorities

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had the socio-economic transformation of Tigray as their best interest. The logic underpinning EFFORT was not dissimilar from the approach to economic transformation that the country later upon embarked under the developmental state. In fact, EFFORT can be regarded as a microcosm of the developmental state’s approach to the relationship between the state/party structure and the private sector. By the time of this fieldwork, EFFORT controlled a number of companies operating across the country, including in the field of construction (Sur Construction PLC), shipping services (Express Transit Service PLC, and Guna Trading House PLC), transportation services (Trans Ethiopia PLC), pharmaceutical products (Addis Pharmaceutical Factory), commercial farming (Hiwot Agricultural Mechanization PLC), and tourism (Experience Ethiopia Travel). Following the 2001 split in the inner circle of TPLF (see chapter two), EFFORT was reorganized into five commercial business units: engineering and construction, manufacturing, services, agro-processing, and mining (Poluha and Elehu Feleke, 2016: 251). As far as specific plans for Tigray were concerned, soon after its creation EFFORT started investing in several projects, establishing a number of corporations which then became leaders in their respective sub-sector in Ethiopia. These included Sheba Leather Industry at Wukro,¹³ Messebo Building Materials Production,¹⁴ Ezana Mining Development,¹⁵ and Mesfin Industrial Engineering in Mekelle,¹⁶ as well as Saba Dimensional Stones, a marble and granite quarry in Adwa.¹⁷ Most importantly to our discussion here, EFFORT established a textile and garment factory in Adwa called Almeda Textile PLC, which became operational in 2000. Young (1997a: 88) contends that the initial decision to locate the textile industry in Adwa was at least partly motivated by the fact that a large population in the area suffered land shortage. Developing the textile sector was expected to reduce the traditional migration of peasant farmers to Eritrea, Addis Ababa, and southern Ethiopia in search of seasonal and permanent work. By 2018 Almeda employed over 2,500 people under vertically integrated lines for the production of knitted fabrics and woven products. Another fully integrated textile factory, ¹³ The factory was established in 1993 and is located some 45 km from Mekelle. The company had an initial capital of 10 million USD and created employment opportunities for more than 670 people. Main products are goat and sheep hides divided under two production lines, the tannery and the shoe factory. See https://directory.milkta.com/wukro/place/20/sheba-leather-industry [accessed on 23/1/2020]. ¹⁴ Messebo became operational at the end of 1999. The plant is 7 km from Mekelle city. The annual capacity of the factory is 900,000 tons employing over 2000 people. See https://ethiopiaconstruction. com/directory/company/messebo-cement-factory-plc/ [accessed on 23/1/2020]. ¹⁵ Ezana, located in Mekelle town, was established in 1994 to operate in the mining sector. ¹⁶ Mesfin was formed in 1993 and currently operates nationwide, with a current capital of more than 25 million USD, employing over 1,700 people. See https://www.mie.com.et/index.php [accessed on 23/1/2020]. ¹⁷ Saba was established in 1992 with an initial capital of 76 million ETB. It is involved in the extraction and marketing of various dimensional stone products to the international and domestic markets, employing over 200 people. See https://sabadimensionalstones.com/ [accessed on 23/1/2020].

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MAA Garment and Textiles, was established in 2004 at Qwiha, a locality in close proximity to Mekelle airport where today other international textile investments have also established their plants (such as the Bangladeshi DBL and the Italian ITACA/Calzedonia). MAA Garment, controlled by the Kebire Enterprises PLC, is a company owned by the Saudi billionaire Sheik Mohammed Hussein Al Amoudi, born from an Ethiopian mother. Like EFFORT, Al Amoudi benefited from his privileged position within the political leadership to build a vast cluster of companies operating across Ethiopia, which include for instance MIDROC and the Sheraton Hotel in Addis Ababa.¹⁸ By the time of this fieldwork, MAA employed over 1,600 people, 90% of whom were women between the ages of 18 and 25. In two decades, the EFFORT galaxy expanded steadily across the country benefiting from a flexible approach to business, a dynamic management, and foremost by significant government support. Critics emphasize how the rapid growth of EFFORT was largely due to the next-to-monopoly economic conditions which the conglomerate enjoyed alongside a few other corporations such as Al Amoudi’s MIDROC (Vaughan and Mesfin Gebremichael, 2011). Other private sector companies not connected to the political elite faced significant difficulties. Challenges included access to foreign currency, internet and communication services, and loans and other forms of credit (Sutton and Kellow, 2010; Vaughan and Mesfin Gebremichael, 2011). Arguably, until the 2010s the EPRDF/TPLF control of the economy significantly hindered the growth of industry and services. Lack of transparency and genuine competition between companies reduced the ability of private actors to get government contracts assigned, contributing to create a difficult business climate for potential domestic and foreign investors. Sutton and Kellow (2010) argue that lack of competition generated significant inefficiency and disfunction in service delivery and provision, because the ability to stay on the market was determined by the extent to which one company enjoyed state support. This context of relative adverse conditions for private investments changed suddenly in the course of the 2010s when, following the reformulation of the political priorities under the developmental state paradigm discussed above, the Ethiopian government opened the doors to foreign investors. Alongside Hawassa in SNNPR, Tigray, and Mekelle in particular, was indicated as a priority area for the development of T&G. By the mid-2010s, the government had signed a contract with the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC) to build the Mekelle Industrial Park some 5 km west of downtown. The IP was officially inaugurated on 9 July 2017, and companies started production lines in January 2018. Once fully completed the park was expected to extend over 1,000

¹⁸ MIDROC stands for Mohammed International Development Research and Organization Companies and is a global conglomerate which in Ethiopia operates as a private investment group, comprising forty-one companies by 2018. See also http://www.midroc-ceo.com/ [accessed on 23/1/2020].

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hectares of land over the course of four phases of expansion. Managers presented the IP as a world-class facility, meeting high environmental sustainability standards (‘eco-park’), and readily available for companies seeking quick relocation (‘plug & play’). The IP was endowed with essential infrastructure, including dedicated power substations and centralized waste treatment facilities (‘zero liquid discharge’). Foreign investors were also given the opportunity to take serviced land and develop their manufacturing premises. Rent rates for shed space were very attractive to investors. For the first four years rent was 2 USD per sqm per month, 2.5 USD for the subsequent three years, 2.75 USD on years eight to ten, and up to 3 USD for the following five years. In 2018 the park extended over 75 ha of land and was constituted by twelve sheds occupied for a vast majority of the time by three international corporations: Strathmore Apparel Manufacturing PLC, KPR Exports PLC, and SCM Garment Knit textile PLC. Strathmore was created as a subsidiary company to the Bangladesh’s Ananta Group. The company rented over 70% of the space available under phase one of Mekelle IP, meaning they occupied eight of the twelve sheds available. Strathmore started operating in January 2018 with an initial investment of USD 35 million for two product categories: men’s suits and sweaters. To reach full capacity the company required hiring over 10,000 workers in the course of the first three years of operations. KPR Exports, a company established under KPR Mill Ltd, started production in the summer of 2019 after a garment unit was officially inaugurated the previous May. KPR required an initial workforce of 700 people, and 1,500 to achieve full capacity. The company projected to produce up to 50,000 pieces of garment every day to be exported in the global market. Further to the development of the Mekelle IP, a number of other international companies had established stand-alone and vertically integrated factories in the area of Mekelle from the mid-2010s onward. The first of these ventures was Velocity, a subsidiary of Dubai-based Vogue International Agency, which launched production lines as early as 2016. By January 2018, Velocity was operating on one shed employing at least 1,450 workers, 1,250 of whom were women employed as basic operators. A majority of workers were below 25 years old and required to have achieved at least Grade 8 education. While most employees were sourced in the immediate surroundings to the factory, plans for expansion aiming to achieve a target of 10,000 required hiring people from elsewhere in the region. Anticipating this issue, by the time of this fieldwork the company was planning the construction of housing facilities nearby the factory, alongside a second workshop to host new production lines. Velocity specialized in manufacturing jeans and knit garments, supplying international brands such as Levi-Strauss, Vanity Fair, Zara, H&M, and Under Amour. The Italian Calzedonia Group, a global apparel manufacturer and retailer, created the subsidiary company ITACA Textile PLC in 2016, and completed the construction of its standalone factory in October 2018 at Ashegoda, near Mekelle

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city. ITACA’s production focused on ready-made garments to be exported in the international market. The company employed over 1,000 workers, a majority of whom were young women below the age of 25 and with basic education. The Bangladeshi DBL Industries PLC also established its subsidiary company in Ethiopia and constructed its own stand-alone facility, as a ‘private industrial park’, around Mekelle, committing a capital investment of USD 100 million. By January 2018, the construction, expected to extend over 78 hectares of land, was near completion. DBL planned to operate over two phases. Under the first production, lines of ready-made garment, printing, and accessories were to be established, followed by adding dyeing and knitting to the production cycle to achieve full integration. DBL planned to hire up to 12,000 workers to achieve full capacity. Although data are not accurate, following the Bureau of Trade, Industry and Urban Development in Mekelle,¹⁹ by 2018 over 10,000 micro and small enterprises in the field of weaving and garment were operational in Tigray. While officials also contended that the sector was rapidly growing, a majority of these enterprises were individual or family undercapitalized businesses, often operating the traditional Ethiopian handloom. By the late 2010s, the textile sector in Tigray was characterized by a significant disjunction between highly capitalized, large-scale, and fully integrated factories producing for export, and a magma of micro-businesses at the intersection between the formal and informal economy. Supporters of government industrial policy argue that the growth of large-scale operations was going to drive, in the medium run, the creation of new business opportunities for domestic companies in sectors such as accessories and complementary production activities (Arkebe Oqubay, 2015). Critics of this model warned that vertically integrated factories were unlikely to generate know-how and technology spill-overs in the local and national economy (Whitfield et al., 2015). They rather pointed at the significant environmental and social costs of the textile industry and the negative externalities of global corporate investments as a significant configuration of contemporary financial capitalism. The rapid expansion of the textile industry in Tigray in the course of the 2010s under the impulse of foreign investments had radically changed the question of labour as it was initially understood by the TPLF leadership in the late 1980s. Rapid industrialization had finally come, generating a significant demand for labour. While by the time of this fieldwork fluxes of people were still limited due to the fact that main industrial actors were still to produce at full capacity, industrial actors already lamented a shortage of skilled labour as a main constraint to the rapid consolidation of textile manufacturing. Demand for labour was thus expected to rise sharply in the coming years.²⁰ The new question of labour was

¹⁹ Interview conducted on 18 January 2018. ²⁰ In a study conducted by UNIDO (2018), the textile industry was expected to hire directly at least 20,000 workers by 2021.

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then no longer about how creating job opportunities out of agriculture, but was about how sourcing industrial poles with workers that were now dispersed across the countryside, with the prospect of initial salaries below basic costs of reproduction. This calls into question the relationship between industrialization and rural-urban migration, the topic of the next section discussing the experience of workers and prospective workers in the textile sector around Mekelle.

6.6 The New Question of Labour As noted by Oya (2019b: 670), ‘the process of building an industrial working class is uneven, protracted, and requires interventions and a range of important economic and social shifts over a sustained period’. This captures well the transformation that the area around Mekelle was facing in the course of the 2010s under the impulse of accelerated industrialization. A large potential workforce to be employed in industry was available across the region in the form of unemployed youth and landless (or land short) smallholders seeking an alternative to agriculture. By June 2018, urban unemployment in Tigray was reported at 21.5%, with significant disparities between men (17.1%) and women (25.5%), and in a trend of growth, although marginal, since 2012 (CSA, 2018b). A similar gender gap was reported in urban employment in the informal sector (18.9%), significantly more prevalent among women (26.0%) than men (12.3%) (CSA, 2018b). Signs of significant labour movement to industrial poles from the neighbouring localities in the countryside were thus already evident in 2017. These included the woreda of Degua Temben, Hintallo Wajirat, Enderta, Saharti Samre, Wukro Town, and Kilte Aewlallo. However, sustained industrialization was constrained by a shortage of labour. Manufacturers struggled to recruit the skilled manpower they required to run assembly lines, and rates of absenteeism and turnover were alarmingly high. This paradox, the coexistence of labour shortage and a large population seeking employment, traced the contour of a new question of labour, which in the course of the 2010s characterized the project of rapid industrialization under the developmental state paradigm. In the following pages I will illustrate four interrelated dimensions of the new labour question as they emerged in a thematic analysis conducted through qualitative fieldwork in the area of Mekelle in the course of 2017 and 2018. These are expectations about industrialization; wages below reproduction; subsidization of low wages; and navigating factory work. I argue that labour remained inscribed in complex reproductive strategies in which young female workers were forced to make a living through a combination of wage employment and other survival activities which had household reproduction as a central concern.

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6.6.1 Expectations about Industrialization and Lack of Alternatives A first dimension of the new question of labour emerging in interviews with workers and prospective workers is the identification of industrialization with the future of the country.²¹ Workers contrasted industrial jobs against other forms of employment in agriculture and the informal sector, highlighting their positive value through ideas of progress and modern life. This aspirational dimension of industrialization mirrored, and was usually a reproduction of, the master narrative of the developmental state about the centrality of manufacturing to make Ethiopia a middle-income country by 2025. This emerged in interviews such as the following with a youth trainee approaching the textile industry:

Textile development is important to build the future of Tigray … In a few years we will become a developed country so young people like me can enjoy the benefits of modern life … Many young people, even if they don’t say it, don’t like rural life … Agriculture is the past, textile is the future.²²

The modern value of industrial life was not only emphasized by young trainees, but also by more experienced workers. For instance, this was the case of F.G.,²³ a female in her early thirties who decided to quit her own small business—a small cafeteria she ran with her sister—to get employment in one international textile factory. Her initial salary as basic operator was lower than her average income as self-employed. Nonetheless, she explained that after working for some years in the cafeteria she did not see any prospect of personal growth, nor any future. ‘I was able to save some money, and the opportunity to work as textile operator came up … I decided to take it, although I knew the initial salary was very low … Now I want to acquire some skills and then start my own textile business’. For F.G., industrialization had a specific material and symbolic value. She regarded industrial employment not as an end in itself, but as an important step towards something else. Through employment in the textile sector she was expecting to acquire critical skills to open her own small business. In her mind this was more important than earning a better salary, but with limited prospects, in the immediate. F.G. thus highlighted that industrial employment offered a number of advantages that were absent in self-employment, including greater contractual stability and access to services such as the health clinic.

²¹ Out of the forty interviews conducted, thirty were young women aged between 18–25 with grade 10 education. Five were women employed in the industry for at least five years, and give were men aged below 30 years old. ²² Interview with a trainee (female, 22 yrs.) in the area of Mekelle, December 2017. ²³ Interview with a worker (female, 32 yrs.) in the area of Mekelle, November 2017.

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However, there was also a symbolic dimension that made industrial jobs attractive to people like F.G., even when they were paying less than other job opportunities. Working in the industry was seen as an investment in the future in relation to the advantage about achieving urban lifestyle, where people could access ‘modern’ services, such as shops and supermarkets. The aspirational value of transition to industrial life was often declined in the plural: people did not necessarily reflect on their individual experience in itself, but they were rather thinking more broadly about the prospects of industrialization to build a better future for Tigray and for Ethiopia. F.M. concluded her interview contending that ‘we can build a better future for Tigray only by working together’. This echoes the emphasis on ‘collective participation’ to development as discussed in chapter five in the case of the policy of job creation in Addis Ababa. The developmental ethos attached to the transition to industry can also be explained in terms of the lack of alternatives many young people had both in rural areas—where land shortage forced many to rely on casual jobs in agriculture— and in urban areas—where youth unemployment continued to grow steadily, also among graduate students. Industrial employment was regarded as a gateway to modern life. Young graduate students regarded industrial jobs as a possibility for enfranchisement not only from an economic perspective but also from a social and cultural one. For instance, this emerged clearly in the story of P.L.,²⁴ a recently graduated student in his mid-twenties approaching the textile industry as trainee. ‘Employment in the textile industry offers young people the chance to build independent life … it is very hard for many people to get married and start a family without land or without a job’. It is in this way that industrialization was associated with the rise of significant expectations about individual economic upliftment, and social and cultural emancipation, as well as a collective gateway to modern life. Jobs were valued for their ability to generate independence, and build independent families, as well as supporting households with additional cash-based income. Creating new employment opportunities was regarded in all interviews as one of the main priorities for Tigray. Conversely, youth unemployment and increasing costs of living were mentioned as two important challenges. For instance, some interviewees contended that completing basic education no longer increased the likelihood of young people to find a job. While civil service was considered as the safest long-term form employment, industrial jobs were regarded as an additional training step to further careers in other sectors in a context of limited opportunities.

²⁴ Interview with a trainee (male, 24 yrs.) in the area of Mekelle, December 2017.

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The aspirational value of industrialization emerged also in other interviews with trainees. A recurrent theme was that the salary expectation of a majority of prospective workers was significantly higher than what the industry was offering in reality. In some interviews trainees contended they were expecting even two or three times the entry salary of 800 ETB that the industry was actually offering. This expectation reflected several issues. Firstly, prospective workers associated industrial employment with some degree of social standing and had in mind salaries that reflected such expectation. Secondly, it was common knowledge to consider formative training, including training the industry offered for basic operators, as an entitlement for a salary as ‘specialized worker’ in itself. This is also the reason why many people undertook training despite having other jobs: what motivated them was not only the expectation of a better salary, but also the recognition of skills they could use elsewhere to find better paid jobs. For instance, this emerged in the following interview with H.D.,²⁵ a 20-year-old trainee. ‘I enrolled in the training because I will be given a certificate showing that I am a specialized industrial worker … I am not sure I will work in one of the textile companies, but having a certificate is important to prove that I am skilled and specialized’. Nonetheless, information about salary, contracts, and potential for achieving better paygrade were very obscure to many trainees. Many workers and prospective workers were generally ignorant about their rights and duties as workers and often felt that raising such questions was inappropriate. While the authoritarian nature of labour relations and people’s interactions with state officials in Ethiopia partly explained this, ignorance about duties and rights also reflected the nascent status of the industry and the incipient stage of corporate/workers relationships. These included the very low level of unionization of factories and, as mentioned earlier, the lack of minimum salary legislation and established tripartite labour relationships. One example is that many workers believed that failing to fulfil contractual agreements was punishable by the government and state officials directly.

6.6.2 Wages below Reproduction Low entry salary was mentioned in all interviews as the main concern of workers and prospective workers in the textile industry. Wages could be as low as 800 ETB/month for basic operators, although with the prospect of marginal increases over time. Employers contended that salaries complied with Ethiopian law, and low entry levels were motivated by the lack of skills and low labour productivity. In a context in which the cost of living in peri-urban Mekelle was rising sharply, ²⁵ Interview with a trainee (female, 20 yrs.) in the area of Mekelle, January 2018.

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interviewees lamented that wages were usually not even sufficient to cover immediate necessities. Industrial employment did not allow young employees to meet basic reproduction, from an economic perspective, but also from a social and cultural one. This had two important consequences. First, workers regarded industrial employment as a short-term strategy, and secondly they remained dependent on their family/kin network for meeting basic economic reproduction. The following stories serve to illustrate these points. S.G.²⁶ is a young female aged 22 who has worked as sewing operator for eight months in one large textile factory near Mekelle. Her monthly salary was approximately 800 ETB/month and, in addition to it, she explained she was entitled to lunch at the factory canteen and to use the health clinic. She relocated from her hometown, three hours away by bus from Mekelle, making daily commute impossible. For this reason, she rented a room closer to the factory together with two other friends originating from the same town. S.G. explained that with what was left after contributing 300 ETB towards the accommodation rent, she was barely able to buy food. She contended that industrial employment was only a temporary step towards something else. ‘I want to acquire skills and experience to find a better job, hopefully closer to my family … this is my first work experience in factory … initially I was very excited, but then I realized that work is hard and with the money I make you can’t do much’. Not much different was the perspective of G.F.,²⁷ a 19-year-old female living in Qwiha, a suburban area next to Mekelle airport hosting three large-scale textile manufacturers. G.F. earned a salary of 800 ETB and was still living in her family house together with her three sisters and her mother. She explained that her salary, although an important contribution towards family income, was remarkably low considering the tight schedule of factory life, even when compared to other activities in the informal sector. ‘When you run your own small business, no matter how small, you can do many different things while working … Working at the factory is hard to get time off even to go to church or attend a funeral … Salary can increase after some time, but does this justify living in isolation every day for most of the day?’ By isolation she meant that industrial employment limited her possibilities for cultural and social reproduction—isolation from her family, her network of kin, and her community—but also economic reproduction—inability to perform multiple activities at the same time. For people like G.F., industrial employment did not allow any form of saving, nor constituted an effective risk diversification strategy. G.F.’s perspective points at broader social and cultural challenges that come with the transition to industrial life, which I will address in the following pages in greater detail. G.F. regarded employment in industry as a short-term strategy that she pursued while waiting to find better alternatives. She also explained ²⁶ Interview with a textile worker (female, 22 yrs.) in the area of Mekelle, September 2017. ²⁷ Interview with a textile worker (female, 19 yrs.) in the area of Mekelle, December 2017.

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that very rarely did basic operators have a long-term perspective on industrial employment. While industrial manufacture required at least Grade 10 education as basic entry criteria, many young workers had completed full secondary education (Grade 12). Absence of significant job opportunities led many recently graduated students to opt for industrial jobs whilst they were waiting for better alternatives. This was the case of Z.D.²⁸, for instance, a young female from Mekelle, coming from a relatively wealthy, and urbanized, family. ‘Completing basic education is today not enough to secure a job … I decided to work as textile operator even though salary is very low … this is a temporary solution, the good thing about factory work is that shifts end early … I enrolled at the evening class to pursue my diploma degree’. Like in the case of Z.D., many recently graduated students took the opportunity to work in industry as a way to further their study. Workers enrolled in private colleges in Mekelle offering evening classes for diplomas and certificates. Z.D. contended that her salary was barely enough to cover the cost of her degree and that she had to rely on the support of her family for sustenance. She also explained that as work shifts were very heavy, studying and following class proved very hard, and she was wondering whether all that was worth it for the little salary she earned. Industrial employment was regarded as a short-term strategy even by urbanized and relatively more educated young workers, although the case of Z.D. shows that people tried to make the most of it in a context of limited opportunities. Salaries were thus eroded by a spiking cost of living in the course of the 2010s. Several years of rapid GDP growth had generated a significant increase in import, putting pressure on the national balance of payments. To counter these pressures, the Ethiopian government enacted devaluations of the Ethiopian birr. Currency devaluation reduced even further the real purchase power of cash-based industrial salaries. One of such devaluation was enacted by Ethiopia’s Central Bank in 2017 at the time of my fieldwork in Tigray. In this example, on October 10th the Central Bank devalued the Ethiopian currency by 15% in an evident effort by government to boost lagging exports. This was clearly welcomed by international industrial manufacturers, who saw labour costs dropping by 15% overnight. Conversely, the decision frustrated industrial workers who saw their already limited purchase power dropping even further. The devaluation was mentioned in interviews as yet another reason solidifying the view of industrial employment as a livelihood strategy with limited prospects. As the real purchase power of cash-based employment dropped, non-cash jobs, including agriculture and individual businesses, became more attractive because they allowed people safer risk diversification strategies. For instance, this emerged in an interview with M.F.,²⁹ a 25-year-old female who ²⁸ Interview with a textile worker (female, 23 yrs.) in the area of Mekelle, February 2018. ²⁹ Interview with a trainee (female, 25 yrs.) in the area of Mekelle, November 2017.

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had worked in a textile factory for the past eighteen months. She explained that when she relocated from her small town in the countryside, she had very high expectations about industrial employment. ‘Life is getting more and more expensive here in the city, it is difficult to live with a small salary … living in the countryside is cheaper and I have my family … prices for vegetables are now good on the market, I want to quit this job and go back’. Like in the case of M.F., many young women who approached the textile industry with expectations, and usually motivated by the lack of alternatives, soon after realized that factory work was much harder and immediately sought alternatives. The main takeaway point of this section is that people continued to seek employment in the textile industry despite wages being below the cost of reproduction. None of the interviewees regarded work in the textile industry as a long-term strategy, nor expressed the will to settle in the industry permanently. It seems that lack of alternatives was the main reason motivating many people to accept industrial jobs in the short run. Nonetheless, this did not mean that people disregarded the importance of industrialization for their future and for the future of Tigray and Ethiopia. Like for those students using industrial employment to pursue additional education, people tried to make the most of the limited opportunities that industrialization offered to them. Working in the textile sector was seen precisely as an investment in the future, one that entailed sacrificing immediate needs. Many young people thus saw this as a necessary step to approaching adult life and making a better living later on. In a context of heightened social and cultural transformation, and the rising cost of living, people still tried to make the most of the limited opportunities offered by industrialization. This had one crucial implication to the broader industrialization strategy, that is, wages of young workers were subsidized by the non-wage and predominantly agricultural activities of households in rural areas. To understand why people continued to work for the textile industry even when wages were below the cost of reproduction, one has to take a broader household perspective, the topic of the next section.

6.6.3 Subsidization of Low Wages: A Household Perspective Industrialization generated significant expectations in a context of limited opportunities. Young people attached to it individual and collective aspirations, including the search for economic independence, as well as social and cultural enfranchisement. Nonetheless, salaries below the cost of reproduction made it impossible for young workers to live an economically independent life. Young workers continued to depend on their household of provenance for their sustenance and other support, shaping new networks and relations of people and resources in the context of rapid industrialization. A recurrent theme emerging in interviews is that employment in the textile industry paying minimum wages did not make much

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sense from the perspective of individual economic reproduction. Nonetheless, industrial employment took on material and symbolic value when regarded from the broader perspective of a household reproductive strategy. This is particularly important for those workers coming from households with an agricultural background. For instance, this emerged in the story of K.L.,³⁰ a 22year-old female who had worked in one textile factory near Mekelle for the past nine months. K.L.’s father is a smallholder farmer and before finding job as textile operator she spent her life helping with the farm, while attending school up to Grade 8. I have two brothers and five sisters, the boys work the land of my father and sometimes sharecrop some of our neighbour’s land … One of my brothers tried to start a small business in town, but without success … Working as textile operator is important because it gives my family a cash salary, and allows us not to rely on agriculture only … sometimes you need cash to pay for things in advance, like seeds and fertilizers, and you have to get indebted if you don’t have cash at the right time of the year.

The story of K.L. is an entry point to a more nuanced perspective on the meaning and value people attached to industrial employment, and the small salaries coming with it. Like other young workers, her salary would not be enough to cover her basic sustenance, and yet it played an important role from the broader perspective of her household’s reproductive strategy. K.L. explained that to avoid paying rent she found hospitality with some relatives who lived in the factory’s surroundings. In exchange she performed a number of different tasks after work, including cleaning, preparing food, and babysitting. In this way she entered a new relation of exchange with her household in the countryside. She sent money back to her father when he was cash-short to purchase fertilizers and make some other investments in the land, and then received later on some money back after the harvest when agricultural produce could be sold in the market. K.L.’s cash income was an important component of the predominantly non-wage and agriculturebased sustenance strategy of her household. This also shows how, in a context of uncertainty and rapid transformation, people valued the diversification of income sources as a risk aversion strategy. K.L. concluded her interview contending that, despite mutual exchange, ultimately without the support of her family and network of kin, working as a textile operator would have been unsustainable. In a similar way B.G.,³¹ a female in her early twenties, explained that while depending significantly on her family assistance while employed as a textile worker, her hope was that such effort was going to eventually pay off in the future. ³⁰ Interview with a textile worker (female, 22 yrs.) in the area of Mekelle, October 2017. ³¹ Interview with a trainee (female, 21 yrs.) in the area of Mekelle, September 2017.

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All my siblings are employed in agriculture … but there is not enough land for everyone. My father encouraged me to find employment as textile operator, he said it was an investment in the future … he wanted me to learn and open a business so that all our family could benefit … Reality is very different, I am not sure I will ever make enough money to send back to my family.

The story of B.G. is again illustrative of the extent to which industrial employment takes on an important value when regarded as part of broader household planning—particularly an investment in the future. However, it also shows that young women with wages below reproduction are often subsidized by their household of provenance. This points at a broader paradox, that is, industrialization policy in the course of the 2010s, while it was intended to generate the structural transformation of the economy away from agriculture, relied on rural accumulation to make up for wages below reproduction. This has a precedent in the literature. Evidence from Bangladesh (Kibria, 1998) shows that migrant workers employed in the garment sector remained dependent on their rural households, supplementing their low factory wages with resources such as rice. In a seminal article, Wolpe (1972) has argued that in the case of apartheid South Africa the wages of rural out-migrants were subsidized by the non-wage activities of the household in the bantustans. As result, the rural areas performed a social security function providing welfare for young workers who were living at the intersection of urban and rural life. Some of these issues clearly resonated in the case of the textile industry of Tigray. To illustrate this point further we can look at risk diversification from the perspective of the broader transformation that transition to industrial life entails. Experiences of women seeking employment in the textile industry of Tigray in the course of the 2010s were part of household, rather than individual, decisions to diversify risk while making the most of available opportunities coming alongside industrialization. This was partly due to the gender profile of the industry, which largely privileged employing young women,³² but also to a context of increasing land pressure in agriculture and limited opportunities for young people to meet reproduction through farming. Industrial employment opened up opportunities for young women, who usually held weaker claims to land than men, to become an important asset for the household’s income diversification. Young women taking industrial employment, no matter how low the salary, allowed a household to maintain a claim to the land via the men working it, while generating an additional source of cash and, most importantly, keeping open opportunities that in the future could arise from industrialization and increased urban-rural interactions. It is in this way that young women employed in the industry become an ³² Available figures show that 85% of employees in textile are women aged 18–25 with a low socioeconomic profile (ETIDI, 2016a).

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investment in the future of the household, which although not productive in the short term could open up future opportunities. For instance, this was the case of F.R.,³³ a 23 year-old female coming from an agricultural background who had been employed in one textile factory for the past fifteen months. She explained that for generations her family relied on farming as the primary source of sustenance. Land redistributions in the past, and today the need to accommodate an increasing number of claims from young siblings, generated significant land shortage. She explained that by the time we met her father had 0.75 ha scattered across three different plots, which he was farming, alongside some other land leased from neighbours, together with her three brothers. The extent to which farming was enough to generate a stable livelihood for her family depended on many factors, including rains and the ability to buy fertilizers in advance, as well as highly volatile market prices for cash crops such as teff. F.R. explained that her household relied on a combination of production for direct consumption and for the market. It is against this context, she explained, that availability of cash was important to allow investments in advance of the agricultural season, as well as the ability to retain important assets such as oxen. ‘Working as a textile operator is very challenging, work hours are long, and I never make enough money … I hope things will change in the future, but right now there is not much alternative for me in the countryside … Cash income is important because to grow food you need cash in advance if you don’t want to get indebted’. A crucial aspect of the transition to industrial life in the course of the 2010s in Tigray was the imperfect marketization of agricultural produce, and particularly the fluctuation of agriculture commodity prices in different times of the year. Like in the case of F.R., many agricultural households relied on a combination of agricultural production for internal consumption and for the market. The ratio depended on many factors, and often on the relative wealth of the household and its ability to accumulate enough capital for strategic investments in productivity, such as fertilizers and oxen. Normally, households were relatively wealthy when they were able to store and sell high value cash crops, such as teff, at the right time, and were able to avoid distress sales when prices were low, particularly right after harvest. The important point emerging from interviews is that, in this context of significant fluctuation of agricultural produce prices, industrial wages had an important value symbolically—for pursuing future alternatives—and materially— as a coping strategy to meet immediate needs. As households were normally large, and farming dominated by men, wages earned by women, no matter how low, were regarded as an opportunity to facilitate capitalization in a context of partial and incomplete transition to a cash-based economy. By forcing young workers to seek reproduction both through industrial employment and through their broader kin network, low wages generated new interactions of people and ³³ Interview with a textile worker (female, 23 yrs.) in the area of Mekelle, January 2018.

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resources at the intersection between rural and urban areas. Women employed in the textile sector were forced to seek reproduction both as wage labour and through their network, relying on non-wage activities. The rapid expansion of the textile industry in Tigray was therefore inscribed in a number of socio-economic interactions, flows of resources, and migratory processes reflecting the complexity of the transition from agrarian to industrial labour. A study conducted by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) shows that the emergence of the T&G industry in Ethiopia intersected with not only domestic economic migration to urban areas, but also international migration patterns to elsewhere in Africa (e.g. South Africa), and to Europe (IOM, 2017: 12). In a context in which demand for industrial labour grew sharply, and workers could not be sourced in the immediate vicinity of main industrial poles, the trajectory of industrialization became increasingly dependent on labourers moving from distant localities. This highlights the tight link between transition to industrial labour and migration. As young women could not become entirely independent through industrial employment, these migration patterns were never uni-directional from rural areas to industrial poles, but rather inscribed in multiple movements of people and resources back and forth to their place of origin. This brings me to discuss the fourth aspect of the transition to industrial life configuring the new question of labour, which has to do with labour productivity, turnover, and absenteeism.

6.6.4 Navigating Factory Work: Turnover, Absenteeism, and Tardiness Blattman and Dercon (2016) argue that high turnover rates in Ethiopia’s manufacturing sector are the result of two distinct dynamics: what they define as ‘learning and matching’ and ‘workers response to shocks’. The first suggests a mismatch between the actual work experienced by basic operators in manufacturing and their expectations about industrial employment. Workers quit, normally soon after getting hired, because they do not have a clear understanding of the required effort and role in manufacturing. ‘Response to shocks’ points at a different explanation. Even when workers know that manufacturing jobs are unpleasant, they nonetheless accept them in absence of alternatives. These workers quit as soon as they find better opportunities either within or outside the manufacturing sector. These two aspects partly resonate with the experience of workers in the textile industry around Mekelle in the 2010s. However, the mechanistic explanation provided by Blattman and Dercon tends to overlook that high rates of turnover and absenteeism are also a manifestation of the profound social, political, and cultural transformations that came with industrialization—which I argue capture the trajectory of state-worker relations in Tigray in the period under review.

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The last dimension of the new question of labour in Tigray brings into sharp focus turnover and absenteeism as significant challenges of the transition to industrial life, reflecting how industrial workers navigated the expectations and challenges confronting the textile industry in the course of the 2010s. Industrial employers indicated high levels of labour turnover and absenteeism as the two most significant challenges of corporate/worker relationships in Tigray. Varying from company to company, turnover rates could reach up to 12% of the total workforce, with higher prevalence among unskilled workers, while truancy and tardiness were issues reported occurring on a daily basis for dozens of workers.³⁴ Turnover and absenteeism were connected in different ways to issues about labour productivity. First, the mismatch between expectations and actual factory employment reflected inadequate professional training system—primarily the TVET colleges—to prepare workers not only from a technical perspective, but also from the perspective of the social and cultural transition to industrial life. Some employers contended that they often preferred hiring individuals who did not come from TVET colleges because it proved harder to ‘change their mindset’ and ‘obsolete technical skills’. As I have discussed earlier, the lack of technical and soft skills was a main determinant of low labour productivity, which for employers justified low entry salaries. As in the ‘learning and matching’ category identified by Blattman and Dercon (2016), lack of adequate skills, low labour productivity, and low salaries are also an initial explanation behind the high rates of turnover and absenteeism in the textile industry around Mekelle. A second dimension is that salaries below reproduction forced many young workers to seek complementary sources of income/livelihood. These included additional jobs after their shift in the factory, but often also domestic duties to make up some of the costs of living and accommodation, especially when they were hosted by relatives or within their network of kin. Young workers had little incentive, and often no real alternatives, to commit themself fully to factory life. They often regarded their industrial job as one of several activities they had to perform to diversify their precarious livelihoods. This is seen for instance in the case of K.L.,³⁵ a young female who relocated from elsewhere in Tigray to seek employment in the textile industry. She contended that she and her sister had no real network in Mekelle, and that to be able to sustain themselves they had other complementary jobs side by side with their employment as textile operators. ‘The salary I get as operator is very small, it barely covers the rent for my sister and I and some food … After my shift I help my neighbour with her poultry business, and sometimes work as cleaner. My sister does the same, after her shift she works

³⁴ Informal discussions with industrial employers in the area of Mekelle in September-December 2017. ³⁵ Interview with a textile worker (female, 20 yrs.) in the area of Mekelle, December 2017.

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as attendant in a small shop … sometimes all these jobs overlap, and I have to be absent or late at the factory’. A third and connected dimension is about time management and the deeper economic, cultural, and social transformation that came with the transition to industrial life. Textile employers contended that workers struggled to work on a precise time schedule—this proving, in their view, lack of commitment and sometimes laziness. While this partly can be explained as a challenge of the transition from agriculture to factory life, where a timed schedule is more regimented, lack of punctuality and absenteeism must be regarded as social practices that were usually beyond the control of individual workers. Truancy and tardiness were often motivated by the fact that young women had to perform a number of social and economic obligations that were beyond their own individual decisions. For instance, they were expected to perform a number of domestic tasks—such as fetching water, taking care of children, preparing food, cleaning, etc.—that could not always be performed before or after work. The story of T.C.,³⁶ a female aged 29 from Qwiha, illustrates this point well. She explained how the establishment of several textile factories around Qwiha completely transformed the social texture of the area. ‘Before the coming of textile industry it was very difficult for women in Qwiha to find jobs. Women ran small businesses, like selling vegetables and other things at the market, or home business, like baking injera and making coffee … I have a poultry business myself … Now everyone can get a job, they [textile factories] always look for new people to hire … However, salaries are not good, and when I go back home now I have to do all the work in a few hours’. The story of T.C. points at how the coming of the textile industry in Mekelle altered existing social dynamics, providing new job opportunities to women, without being able, nonetheless, to extinguish their previous economic role completely. Rising costs of living forced women to seek employment, although very rarely allowed them to leave behind other income generating activities—let alone their reproductive duties within the family. It is in this sense that turnover, tardiness, and absenteeism reflected the everyday struggle to get by and to keep open as many economic opportunities as possible, while at the same time a claim to fair treatment and inclusion in the process of industrialization. Beside the economic perspective, T.C. explained that religious obligations, such as church services and funeral ceremonies, played a prominent role in the social life of people in Qwiha and they were often prioritized over work. This was another source of frustration for industrial employers, who contended that ‘the Ethiopian calendar is dense of religious festivities, almost every week there is something happening … there is then a strong obligation for people to attend ceremonies such as funerals even for

³⁶ Interview with a trainee (female, 29 yrs.) in the area of Mekelle, November 2017.

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people not closely related … all this makes it very difficult to plan human resource management’.³⁷ A fourth dimension has to do with households’ biological reproduction. One of the most common reasons for labour turnover was workers giving birth. This emerged both in interviews and was confirmed by discussion with employers. The story of Y.U.,³⁸ a young female in her early twenties, clearly illustrates this point. She explained that she started working as textile operator to complement the income of her husband, a taxi driver, because of the rapidly increasing cost of life. However, after giving birth to her first child, she was faced with a paradox. ‘We don’t have family here, we relocated when my husband managed to find employment as taxi driver … My company did not offer any form of childcare, and the cost of a full-time baby-sitter exceeds my wage. I get around 900 birr, a babysitter salary is usually 1000 birr’. While this was not necessarily a problem for local residents who could rely on their family and network to care for their infants, as the textile industry started attracting an increasing number of people from more remote localities, childcare became a very important determinant of high rates of turnover. Similar considerations apply to absenteeism and tardiness: childcare was one important reason behind these phenomena, reflecting the attempt of young mothers to retain their industrial job while performing their reproductive duties. Considering that the textile industry privileged hiring young women aged 18–25, the trade-off between economic and biological reproduction reflected how young workers often lived on their own skin the tensions generated by industrialization. The strict gender and age hiring policy of the textile industry in Tigray had social, economic, and political repercussions that future research will need to address in greater detail. While industrial actors often made of it a brand of what they considered a progressive policy, in this section I have shown that the extent to which industrial employment created margins for the social and economic enfranchisement of young women is more controversial. Young women were employed to perform poorly paid and physically distressing tasks, literally carrying the burden of the textile industry, although they remained at the bottom of the factory social and economic hierarchy. In an informal conversation, a human resource manager of an international textile factory explained that the reason why women are preferred to men for sewing operations is because ‘it is difficult to keep men sitting all day’. Factory discipline, rather than a genuine desire for women enfranchisement, seems to be a more convincing explanation behind the textile industry hiring policy. At the same time, we have seen how women could rarely afford to discontinue other income generating activities, nor were exonerated from the burden of domestic tasks, which they continued to discharge alongside industrial employment. ³⁷ Interview with a textile manager (male, 43 yrs.) in the area of Mekelle, February 2018. ³⁸ Interview with a textile worker (female, 22 yrs.) in the area of Mekelle, January 2018.

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Young women who in the late 2010s were approaching the textile industry in Mekelle did so in midst of complex transformations, including decision-making processes beyond their own individual will. Transition from agricultural to industrial life, the spiking cost of living, and new economic and social relationships with their homeplace were important issues determining their commitment to industrial work, time management, and economic diversification of risk. The new question of labour was characterized by all these complex decision-making processes in which aspirations for a better future were balanced against immediate needs and a changing reality of the local and national economy, as well as existing social and economic hierarchies. Against this complexity, turnover, absenteeism, and tardiness represent coping strategies for living alongside the social, economic, and cultural transformations and contradictions that came with industrialization.

6.7 Conclusion This chapter has addressed the new question of labour emerging as part of a rapidly growing textile industry in Tigray’s capital city Mekelle since the mid2010s. In the context of the ambitious industrialization policy of the developmental state intended to sustain export-led economic growth, reduce dependency on agriculture and services, and address pressing political problems such as rising urban unemployment, the Ethiopian government managed to attract significant foreign capital around newly established industrial poles, primarily geared towards manufacturing. Due to a number of historical, political, and geographical factors, including the trajectory of the political leadership of the TPLF, by the mid2010s Tigray was at the forefront of this development. The rapid consolidation of the textile industry in the area around Mekelle was inscribed in labour dynamics, which reflected the exploitation and subordination of young women workers at the bottom of the value chain. Empirically the chapter has discussed the stories of young workers and trainees navigating textile work against the contrast between significant expectations about industrialization and wages well below economic reproduction. Workers employed a number of practices, including absenteeism, turnover, and tardiness, to navigate material and representational challenges associated with the project of socio-economic transformation under the developmental state. Industrial workers sought ways to cope with social and economic distress and, in the process, they opened up alternatives to industrial employment which redefined their domain of interaction with the state. While some of them managed to make the most of the opportunities generated by industrialization, many others reverted to their affects and social network for their economic reproduction, reconstituting their place of origin as the stronghold of their identity.

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Two conclusions flow from the empirical discussion. The first is that agriculture, in the context of the nascent textile industry in Tigray, continued to play an important role subsidizing wages below reproduction and constituting an important welfare source for young migrant workers. This reflected the multiplicity of economic migration to industrial areas, characterized by a number of rural-urban and urban-rural fluxes of people and resources. This problematizes conventional views about uni-directional migration from rural to urban areas under industrialization. The second conclusion is that, in the course of the 2010s, the model of economic transformation from agriculture to industry under the developmental state still relied significantly on the creation of a surplus derived from the rural areas. This highlights continuities with previous models of controlled economy based on the extraction of a rural surplus, thus casting a shadow on the social, environmental, and economic costs of heightened transformation under the developmental state.

7 Conclusion: Identity Politics and the Everyday State in Ethiopia 7.1 Introduction Reinstating movement to our understanding of state formation in Africa is a question that today remains central to analysing how processes of globalization unfold across the continent and, simultaneously, how these processes are shaped by emerging African social formations. This is important for revisiting ongoing discussions around the extent of African exceptionalism considering the continent’s complex historical legacies. In this book I have proposed the notion of the everyday to study largely undetermined dynamics of state formation from the perspective of social change. The lens of the everyday interrogates state formation as both a project of the political elite and from the perspective of how subjects navigate the representational and material forces of state power in society. It relies on an empirical approach to map the mutual and yet largely undetermined constitution of state and society over time, departing from depictions of state formation in Africa based on meta-historical narrations, as well as the reification of micro-analysis that have little scope for generalization. Everyday practices of state building re-inscribe discussions about the theory of the state within the largely unfinished and openended relation between the state as a set of abstract images and representations, and the actual material practices of institutional mediation that inscribe societal subjects with state power. This pins a specific focus on conflicts in society as a lens through which to analyse state formation over time. Ethiopia under the EPRDF is an extraordinary empirical ground to scope the everyday state. In this book I have addressed how a number of flagship state policies and development programmes have articulated state-society relations over the course of the 2000s and 2010s. The case studies illustrate how the model of the developmental state emerged as a specific strategy of the EPRDF political elite to fulfil the broader re-organization of the Ethiopian state along ethnicity, i.e. ethnic federalism, in the aftermath of the Derg regime. Each case study has attended the contingent histories attached to policies of resettlement, land registration and decentralization, agriculture commercialization, small business development, and industrialization, in specific contexts. These histories, which emerged in the encounters with my fieldwork subjects, are the entry point I have used to articulate dynamics of negotiation, contestation, and re-articulation of state power over Everyday Practices of State Building in Ethiopia. Davide Chinigò, Oxford University Press. © Davide Chinigò (2022). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192869654.003.0007

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time. The main conclusion is that the project of state formation under the EPRDF has been a fiercely contested one, highlighting both continuities and discontinuities with previous regimes. The developmental state project of socio-economic transformation embarked on by the EPRDF generated significant economic transformation, social differentiation, inequalities, and selective dynamics of inclusion and exclusion. Against these profound transformations people re-attached new meanings to land, place, and work, which marked their attempts at securing reproduction by reconstituting themselves as political subjects.

7.2 Debating Exceptionalism under EPRDF: Methodological Nationalism, Descriptive Empiricism, and the Problem of Scale Altogether the five empirical chapters identified some of the most defining traits of state and nation building under the EPRDF, which highlight both continuities and discontinuities with previous regimes. The institutionalization of ethnicity as the main principle of state organization under ethnic federalism marked a radical departure from the Derg’s approach to build a single national identity under the impulse of the socialist state. However, the EPRDF retained most aspects of the Derg political economy, including a strong state control of strategic sectors of the economy and, most notably, state ownership of land. In the 1990s, the EPRDF elaborated an economic strategy relying on the idea that capital accumulation in peasant agriculture was to create the conditions for other economic sectors to take root in the long run. This strategy, known as Agriculture Development Led Industrialization (ADLI), mirrored the EPRDF ambition to retain a strong hand in the economy and, at the same time, preserve a rural social structure of peasant smallholders as the regime’s main power base. Against a context in which this strategy failed to deliver the expected results, the war with Eritrea (1998–2000) brought to the surface tensions within the ruling elite over the country’s approach to economic development, and capitalism more broadly. In chapter two, I identified in the 2001 political crisis within the TPLF’s inner circle the critical conjuncture in which the project for socio-economic transformation of Ethiopia under EPRDF was redefined. The 2001 crisis, which consolidated the leadership of late Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, marked the re-orientation of the EPRDF political economy towards a more decisive engagement with global capital, laying the foundation for what later became known as the developmental state. In the five empirical chapters of this book, I have articulated some of the defining features of the construction and institutionalization of the developmental state. Derived from experiences of socioeconomic transformation in East Asia, the developmental state encompassed an economic strategy of selective liberalization as a pathway to rapid growth and diversification. I have argued that the analytical lens of the everyday allows the

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characterization of the Ethiopian developmental state as a scalar project without fixing in space and time the scope of specific state policies and development programmes. Against the controversial history of forced relocation under the Derg, in chapter two I discussed resettlement policy in Amhara region as a form of development-induced displacement impinged on global discussions around food security, against the reorientation of the TPLF/EPRDF approach to capitalist development following the 2001 political crisis. In chapters three and four I discussed key transformations in the agricultural sector, drawing on a global discourse around the formalization of land rights and the significant reconfiguration of global capital to sustain international land investments in Arsi and Wolaita, after the EPRDF made more decisive steps to selectively liberalize agriculture after 2006–2007. In chapters five and six I discussed key features underlying the deployment of the developmental state in urban and peri-urban areas in the 2010s. These two chapters attended the topic of private sector development in the context of global discussions around entrepreneurship and manufacturing to support employment creation and economic diversification. The histories explored in these chapters take a perspective on state formation under the EPRDF as an empirical object that requires a focus on processes of rescaling to map ensuing social formations. Altogether, the case studies demonstrate that studying state formation requires interrogating a wide set of scalar dynamics beyond a geographically differentiated scope of state policies under strict centre-periphery categorizations. A focus on the contingent histories attached to the five case studies was my entry point to attend the tensions and contradictions that characterized the EPRDF project of institutionalizing power relations in the period under review. The analytical perspective of the everyday offers a privileged perspective to discuss the ways in which a wide variety of subjects negotiated state policies elaborated and implemented under the developmental state. While this strategy achieved some macro-economic results, casting Ethiopia as an example of ‘Africa rising’, a close look at the actual implementation of some flagship policies reveals a much murkier picture. The programmes analysed rarely achieved the intended objectives. However, they produced significant transformations both in urban and rural areas, generating some opportunities for those individuals who were able to turn changing structural conditions to their advantage while generating significant losses to those who were already vulnerable. Significant social differentiation, and incipient class formation, was a direct outcome of programmes and policies implemented under the developmental state, and its approach to selectively mediating global capital to induce rapid economic growth. In chapter two I discussed how a new approach to food security based on productivism in Waag Himra entailed the categorization of rural dwellers into groups of ‘better off ’, ‘food insecure’, and ‘chronically food insecure’, the latter term being targeted towards the largely unsuccessful resettlement experiment.

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In chapters three and four I discussed how the strategy of agriculture commercialization the Ethiopian government embarked on in the 2000s generated opportunities for those farmers who were more capitalized and hence resilient to shocks and able to sustain investments, and/or who had closer ties with the local party/state structures. Commercialization exposed the most vulnerable farmers to significant risks, threatening their social and economic reproduction, especially when schemes were directed through foreign capital driven by a logic of profit maximization and risk externalization, as discussed in the case of biofuel production in Wolaita. Chapters five and six have shown how small business development and labour mobilization under manufacturing, while they generated some limited opportunities in terms of access to finance and climbing the salary ladder, forced a majority of beneficiaries to seek reproduction through a variety of survival strategies at the intersection between the formal and informal economy. Scalar dynamics, including the dichotomy between large and small scale projects, define the terms within which social differentiation, inequality, and incipient class formation unfolded under the developmental state. This puts under critical scrutiny the extent to which the developmental state was indeed an inclusive project that was effective in mitigating the social, environmental, and economic costs of selective liberalization for the most vulnerable strata of an increasingly diversified society. In light of this book’s findings, the question about whether the developmental state constitutes a viable alternative to the neoliberal model appears somehow misleading. In this book I have suggested that Ethiopian political economy requires a perspective that scrutinizes the developmental state across different scales, from its imbrication with global capital and political ideas to the localized histories that determine outcomes in specific contexts. This requires a methodological approach that privileges a focus on processes over conclusive outcomes, on conflicts over general patterns of stability, and on how practices of institutional mediation simultaneously produce and undermine state power. Future research will have to attend to these issues systematically as far as a constructive discussion about the scope of state formation and nation building in Africa is at stake. Then, how does the lens of the everyday allow us to reappraise discussions around exceptionalism in state formation in Ethiopia and Africa more broadly? The case studies have highlighted that the strategy for rapid economic growth under the developmental state was driven by the concern of the EPRDF elite, in the context of post-socialist transition, over how to make the most of a selective engagement with global capital. While this marks a discontinuity with the Derg regime, the case studies analysed also highlight the significant entrenching of formal and informal institutions that emanated from previous regimes as the main driver of such process of socio-economic transformation. The modernist vision behind the developmental state justified the significant extension of state/party structures to encompass most aspects of social, economic, and political life. I have

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discussed this both in terms of institutional power devolved to the local administrative structures of kebele and woreda, as well as informal institutions at the intersection between the party and the state, such as the system of ‘models’ and development networks. While one way to read this is that state builders have been deeply influenced by practices of state governance drawing on Asian and Chinese ways of capitalism more specifically, the entrenching of local state structures established under previous regimes constitutes an important, and often overlooked, layer of continuity in state formation between the EPRDF and its predecessors. An additional layer of complexity is that local state reforms have been justified under the framework of democratic decentralization, drawing on a political repertoire dear to international financial institutions and western donors. The extent to which we can characterize state formation under EPRDF as exceptional needs to be scrutinized against these multiple layers, which I have argued require a detailed empirical focus on the scalar dynamics within which state formation itself is invested with knowledge about Ethiopian history. Decentralization as a form of power deconcentration entailing the extension of party/state structures up to the individual level is one the most defining characteristics of the scalar scope of state formation under the EPRDF. This allows us to revisit discussions about the nature and scope of authoritarian governance. The developmental state impinges on a notion about the collective, rather than individual, mobilization of people around development. This entails the political mobilization of small groups of people as the basis of development implementation and the organization of training and political sessions to instil an ethics of productivity, saving, and a form of participation forged through consensus led by a vanguard. The divide between its political and developmental scope becomes increasingly blurred the closer one gets to the ultimate beneficiaries of state policies and development programmes. This mirrors the broader ideology about revolutionary democracy as it was elaborated when the EPRDF took power and reorganized the state through ethnic federalism. Questions around authoritarian governance need to be scrutinized with these issues in mind. In particular, in this book I have argued that questions around authoritarian governance need to be revisited away from the lens of political culture. In Ethiopia this is a particularly important discussion as critical scholarship has tended, more or less explicitly, to identify the ultimate root of authoritarian governance under EPRDF as being in a consolidated Abyssinian political culture (Vaughan and Tronvoll, 2003). It is thus important to keep in mind that this discussion is not isolated to Ethiopia, but reflects a broader tendency in African studies literature to ascribe the workings of power to cultural traits pertaining to the realm of tradition, for instance the vast literature on neo-patrimonialism (for instance Médard, 1982; Bayart, 1993). Scrutinizing state power against the dichotomy between modernity and tradition is an unproductive way to capture how reflexive power relations operate in the everyday, reproducing a view of the African state as an exceptional

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research object.¹ In this book I have contended that studying state formation, and authoritarian governance, away from political culture requires a focus on the detailed empirical practices of power within which the formation of the political subject is enmeshed. This is to capture how state power constrains social life, while at the same time it creates the conditions of possibility for a radically differentiated political agency. Studying state power without resorting to culturalist interpretations requires a methodological perspective grounded in empiricism that puts into sharp focus questions around becoming over belonging in mapping social identity formation. The empirical chapters of this book have attended to this by interrogating the open-ended practices of negotiation, manoeuvring, and contestation of the EPRDF political project by a wide variety of societal subjects, including peasants, workers, and local state officials. Conceptualizing these societal manifestations without reifying and romanticizing their scope, for instance through a generalized notion of resistance—what I have termed in the introduction as the problem of descriptive empiricism—allows for a perspective on state formation as epiphenomenal to social change.

7.3 From Belonging to Becoming: Towards a Performative Understanding of Identity Formation How to conceptualize the practices of power enacted by beneficiaries of state policies and development programmes without resorting to a generalized notion of resistance (Di Nunzio, 2019), and without resorting to culturalist interpretations (Hagmann, 2006), is a question that requires a nuanced understanding of the workings of reflexive power relations in the everyday. In this book I have interrogated the problem of subjection (Butler, 1997; 2015) to study how state power forms the political subject through practices of recognition and, simultaneously, creates the conditions of possibility for a radically conditioned identity. Performativity is my entry point to discussing how beneficiaries of state policies and development programmes lived through, despite, and alongside constraining representational and material forces mobilized under the developmental state. Performativity emphasizes the relational aspect of power relations, inscribing them within the realm of reiteration. If the reiteration of power practices is central to understanding how the developmental state formed beneficiaries through practices of recognition—state power produces the effects that it names—the discontinuity of recognition is my entry point to studying how the developmental state enacted beneficiaries into being. ¹ This has thus amplified the position of marginality of African studies within the discipline of international relations. The extent to which African social formations are constructed as an exceptional research object significantly reduces the scope for generalization of the global from Africa. See, for instance, the article by Rita Abrahamsen (2016).

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The five case studies have identified a wide range of mundane practices that beneficiaries enact when confronted with the experience of failure. In broad terms development initiatives failed beneficiaries because of organizational and planning issues, top-down implementation, and practical challenges about translating ambitious policy objectives into sound initiatives. Development initiatives were designed disregarding the specific contexts of implementation and ignoring the histories within which politically sensitive issues, such as land, were enmeshed. Beneficiaries navigated constraining forces of state power through a wide variety of strategies and political repertoires that shared the practical concern of how to make the most of limited opportunities and, more often, of how to cope with the consequences of programmes threatening their social, economic, and political reproduction. In chapter two I discussed returning as a reflexive practice of power which rural dwellers in Waag Himra enacted when resettlement jeopardized their ability to make a living in poorly endowed, and largely hostile, relocation sites. Chapters three and four addressed how farmers manoeuvred the few opportunities mobilized by commercialization initiatives threatening their social and economic reproduction. Chapters five and six discussed the survival strategies that young entrepreneurs and industrial workers enacted to cope with businesses set up for failure, and wages below reproduction. In these instances of everyday life marked by inequality and profound uncertainty, state power enacted the subject into being, making visible its political potential and creativity to cope with the strains of life. These practices of power illustrate a perspective on state formation from the perspective of the ongoing social production of difference in the world. While reflecting the contested nature of state power, these mundane practices proved the most defining of identity. Through the experience of failure beneficiaries attached new and old meanings to land, place, and work, reconstituting the terms of their interaction with the state. The significant power mobilized by state policies under the developmental state defined the conditions of possibility for a radically conditioned identity. In this book I read social identification as the most structural effect of state power (Butler, 1997). Performativity locates identification within the mutually reinforcing processes through which power acts and enacts the subject into being. The case studies depict a wide set of identification dynamics. Beneficiaries reconstituted themselves as political subjects when they were forced to navigate ambitious development initiatives that ended up threatening their social and economic reproduction. In chapter two I discussed how resettlement returnees were confronted with significant challenges both when they first moved to relocation sites and then upon returning home. In the relocation site they were confronted with a largely inhospitable environment in which historical Amhara migration was regarded with suspicion by other groups, particularly Gumuz people. The material challenges of poorly designed resettlement policy triggered new and amplified existing

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ethnic tensions between groups in this borderland between Amhara, BenishangulGumuz regions, and Sudan. Beneficiaries of resettlement were also confronted by significant challenges upon returning home, where their already tenuous claims to land had been further undermined upon enrolling for resettlement. Here, they were confronted by additional challenges which included their unclear status as returnees, casting new meanings as to how they identified through land, place, and home. Chapters three and four discussed how land policy initiatives drawing on a controversial history of state-farmers relations contributed to politicize the ways in which Arsi Oromo and Wolaita farmers identified to land. Commercialization initiatives offered the opportunity for a minority of relatively wealthier farmers, who usually benefited from their close relation with the local party/state, to identify with the project of socio-economic transformation of the developmental state. However, fieldwork findings from both West Arsi and Wolaita seem to suggest that this process of formation of a class of entrepreneurial farmers remained largely incipient.² Conversely, land registration and contract farming initiatives threatened the ability of a vast majority of marginalized farmers to secure reproduction. This significantly politicized the ways in which these farmers identified with land, funnelling a generalized anti-government sentiment which is inscribed in a long history of exploitative state-farmer relations. This is also how rural resentment fulfilled the ethnonationalist categories mobilized through ethnic federalism. A finding shared by these two chapters is that land policy initiatives threatening reproduction reinforced existing dynamics of Arsi Oromo and Wolaita ethno-national identification. Chapters five and six discussed how poorly designed and exploitative entrepreneurial and industrial initiatives reconstituted place and household reproduction as the stronghold of identity. These two case studies show how young entrepreneurs and industrial workers initially embraced the socio-economic upliftment prospected by these initiatives as a potential pathway to social and economic enfranchisement. Sometimes they even emphasized the importance of their work to ‘build a better future for Ethiopia’, on this identifying with the broader vision of the developmental state. However, only in a minority of cases did industrial employment and small businesses generate opportunities for young people to achieve economic and social emancipation. For instance, while few workers managed to climb the salary ladder in the textile industry, this was never the case for basic operators. The vast majority of young workers and entrepreneurs were confronted with the material challenge of how to secure basic reproduction. They enacted a number of survival strategies of diversification which, as discussed in chapter six, usually had household reproduction at their centre. This is particularly relevant considering the gender profile of both the ² René Lefort has characterized this process as a form of kulakisation (2012).

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textile industry and small business development, which overwhelmingly targeted young female migrants. While young women often continued to work for largely unsuccessful businesses and as workers, they were forced to engage in a number of survival activities at the intersection between the formal and informal economy, and across the rural-urban divide. This had some important implications. In the case of young entrepreneurs, the time and resources that they diverted to perform other activities contributed to making small businesses unsuccessful. In the case of industrial workers, turnover, tardiness, and absenteeism generated important concerns for industrial operators, such as the problem of how to deal with low labour productivity. In both cases, young women remained dependent on household reproduction. This proved central to the reconstitution of their identity, including the reproduction of dynamics of subordination based on patriarchal and gender dynamics. The lens of performativity elucidates a perspective on the strategies that beneficiaries of state policies and development programmes enacted under EPRDF in which social identity formation is the most structural effect of state power (Butler, 1997). Performativity points at a view of social identity as lying in the ambivalent and largely indeterminate processes of formation of the political subject when invested by state power. The case studies show how reiteration of power practices, and their discontinuity, is key to studying identity formation as an ongoing and largely unstable research object. The power practices enacted by beneficiaries illustrate a view whereby questions about becoming subject assume priority over questions about belonging to definitions of social identity formation. The complex strategies that beneficiaries enacted to pursue reproduction share a concern over persistence as an enduring feature that describes their struggle to live through, alongside, and despite the material and representational forces of state power. Against significant economic and social transformation driven by the rescaling of global capital, state policies, and development priorities under the developmental state, social identities remain rooted in the indeterminacy of life and everyday concerns over how to get by.

7.4 Ethnonationalism and the Developmental State after the EPRDF While I was writing this book, Ethiopia underwent profound political transformations. Less than a year after Abiy Ahmed was nominated prime minister on April 2018, an event which marked the end of the TPLF’s control over the EPRDF, the EPRDF itself was, a year later, replaced by Abiy’s own political platform, the Prosperity Party (PP). The new prime minister’s rise to power was initially celebrated as an example of successful and peaceful power transition, fulfilling the political demands raised by nationwide anti-government protests sparked from

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Oromia in the mid-2010s. Abiy Ahmed marked the new course with important reforms which were initially intended to liberalize the political space, and signed a historical peace deal with Eritrea which was meant to pave the way to the normalization of the relations between the countries almost twenty years after the end of the 1998–2000 armed conflict. For this reason, he was also awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 2019. However, more recent events indicate that the very reasons that brought him to office, most significantly issues around the democratic representation of people and groups under ethnic federalism, brought the country into a deep political crisis. The most dramatic example is clearly the tragic conflict between the TPLF and the federal government ongoing since November 2020 which, by the time of this writing, appears to have brought the entire country to the brink of civil war.³ The deep political crisis Ethiopia is now facing has revamped discussions about the relation between ethnic federalism and ethnonationalist politics. Ethnonationalist politics appears to have become a main thread in escalating tensions and violence between different groups, and between groups and the federal government in different parts of the country.⁴ While an analysis of post-2018 Ethiopia is beyond the scope of this book, in the last pages of this conclusion I will attempt to draw some insights on what can be learnt from the case studies to map some questions for future research and engagement. In particular, I will try to unpack the question about whether, in the post-2018 political conjuncture, ethnonationalist politics is inevitable. To what extent, and under what circumstances, has ethnonationalism become the predominant form of social identification under EPRDF? What other forms of social identifications remain marginal in framing the current debate about the scope of ethnic federalism? I will engage with these questions from two different angles which draw on the findings of this book. The first way to engage with these questions is to contend that ethnonationalist politics has indeed been the most structural effect of ethnic federalism.⁵ Ethnic federalism should be indicated as the source of ethnonationalist politics because the organization of the federal infrastructure via the political mobilization of ethnic groups under EPRDF has ended up channelling social conflict along the politicization of ethnic categories. As long as the EPRDF maintained a strong grip on power, for instance through the vast and capillary state/party infrastructure described in this book, it managed, although with difficulties and contradictions, to contain

³ For instance, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/05/world/africa/ethiopia-tigray-conflictexplained.html [accessed on August 2021]. ⁴ For a review see articles published in Ethiopia Insight, such as https://www.ethiopia-insight. com/2021/04/09/ethnofederalism-fact-and-fiction/ and https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/2021/06/ 30/ethnic-federalism-a-theory-threatening-to-kill-ethiopia/ [accessed on August 2021]. ⁵ For instance, a version of this argument has been proposed by Kassahun Melesse; see https://www. ethiopia-insight.com/2021/06/30/ethnic-federalism-a-theory-threatening-to-kill-ethiopia/ [accessed on August 2021].

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the centrifugal forces of ethnonationalism. Ethno-national identification was reinforced by policies that the EPRDF put in place to organize regional and local levels units and, crucially, to allocate resources through decentralization.⁶ One example of ethnonationalist politics, which intersects with the case study of Kolfe Keranyo discussed in chapter five, is the set of contestations around the Addis Ababa master plan of 2014, a project seeking the integration of the metropolitan area of the capital city with the surrounding Oromia Regional State as part of an integrated urban development plan.⁷ After violent confrontations between Oromo protesters and security forces, including in the area of Kolfe, in January 2016 the Ethiopian government announced that it was abandoning the contested integrated master plan.⁸ Despite this, in the following months protests increased in magnitude and catalysed broader anti-government frustration. Increasing instability escalated following government violence at the Irrecha festival in Bishoftu on October, 2nd 2016,⁹ leading to the declaration of a sixmonth state of emergency. Since August 2016, protests have thus extended to various parts of Amhara region.¹⁰ Many identify in these events the culmination of the so-called Oromo protests that contributed to the power shift in 2018. Claims to self-administration articulated by specific groups is another important manifestation of ethnonationalist politics. An example from one of the case studies of this book is the politically charged debate about statehood recognition that has gained traction in Wolaita since 2018.¹¹ This followed a parallel claim by neighbouring Sidama which assumed a greater prominence in the national political debate. After a tortuous legal process culminating in a successful referendum held in November 2019,¹² the SNNPR officially transferred powers to the Sidama Regional State in June 2020, making it the tenth regional state under the Ethiopian federation. Claims to self-administration at different levels have been common throughout the EPRDF period. While the government’s general approach has been to reduce the scope of these claims as much as possible, the reconfiguration and creation of new local state units, particularly at zonal and woreda levels units, has been a common thread of everyday politics under EPRDF.

⁶ See, for instance, Yonatan Tesfaye Fessha (2017). ⁷ See, for instance, Abebe Gizachew Abate (2019). ⁸ See https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-13/ethiopia-to-abandon-developmentplan-for-capital-after-protests [accessed on August 2021]. ⁹ For a comprehensive discussion about Irreecha in the realm of politics, see the book by Serawit Debele Bekele (2019). ¹⁰ See, for instance, https://theglobalobservatory.org/2017/06/ethiopia-protests-oromo-addisababa-master-plan/ [accessed on August 2021]. ¹¹ Statehood recognition means here a claim to elevate the status of Wolaita zone to a separate regional entity, apart from the SNNPR of which it is currently part. For more information about the Wolaita claim, see https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/2020/08/28/its-time-to-respect-the-wolaytapeoples-constitutional-rights/ [accessed on August 2021]. ¹² See https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/2020/05/08/more-arrests-in-sidama-as-authoritiesrefuse-to-hand-power-to-new-region/ [accessed on August 2021].

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An example discussed in chapter three is about the 2009 local referendum that took place in West Arsi to reallocate a number of kebeles on the western regional border with SNNPR between Siraro and Alaba. These claims elucidate the broader tension of ethnic federalism as a state building experiment relying on a radical principle of self-determination regulated by ethnicity, and, as noted by Vaughan and Tronvoll (2003), the power field mobilized by the EPDRF/TPLF to identify these units from above in the aftermath of the Derg. An example discussed in chapter two is about the privileged administrative status that Waag Himra enjoyed as a ‘special zone’ within Amhara regional state, which was a reward for the particular contribution the Agew/Kamyr leadership gave to support the liberation struggle against the Derg by nurturing the Amhara National Democratic Movement (ANDM). While questions about the actual scope of these claims remain,¹³ these examples seem to suggest that the liberalization of the political space embarked on by Abiy Ahmed upon taking power has let the genie of ethnonationalist politics out of the bottle. The new course has unsettled an already delicate and fragile balance of power between local and national political elites. The conflict in Tigray is clearly the most important example here, which thus reflects even more vividly the challenges which the new political regime faces at institutionalizing power. In this book I have shown how, despite significant effort over the course of three decades, the institutionalization of political power under EPRDF/TPLF remains largely unfinished and contested. Abiy Ahmed is clearly facing even greater challenges, which in part point at the considerable expectations that the transition raised in terms of how to address the question about democratic representation of a heterogeneous federation,¹⁴ and partly at the more imminent challenge of how to institutionalize a new power structure, including the principles legitimizing state power itself. An important dimension here is about how different forms of displacement of people and groups, a theme that this book addressed in the case of resettlement programme in Amhara, have become increasingly, and dramatically, prevalent in the aftermath of the 2018 transition.¹⁵ The conflict in Tigray, besides its already dramatic human costs,¹⁶ and regardless of its outcome, will likely have a long-term impact on the ability of future leaderships to recreate the basis of legitimate power. In this book I have contended that the actual workings of state power in the everyday is key to understanding broader social and political formations, beyond a view of the state as a set of abstract images and representations. Future research will

¹³ See https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/2021/06/17/sidamas-statehood-quest-beyondrecognition/ [accessed on August 2021]. ¹⁴ Abiy Ahmed’s inaugural address, for instance, is imbued with a vision about promoting unity and democracy. See the full trascript here: https://www.opride.com/2018/04/03/english- partialtranscript-of-ethiopian-prime-minister- abiy-ahmeds-inaugural-address/ [accessed on August 2021]. ¹⁵ See, for instance, https://www.internal-displacement.org/countries/ethiopia; https://www. ethiopia-insight.com/2021/02/15/reducing-impunity-in-ethiopia-via-the-united-nations/; https:// www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/3/20/worsening-violence-western-ethiopia-forcing-civilians-to-flee [accessed on August 2021]. ¹⁶ See, for instance, Annys et al. (2021).

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have to attend to the detailed practices of power that articulate the new state infrastructure under the Prosperity Party, and other political formations that would potentially emerge out of the current crisis, emphasizing the elements of continuity and discontinuity with the EPRDF period. A second way to approach the question about the prevalence of ethnonationalist politics in post-EPRDF Ethiopia is to contend that ethnic federalism per se does not lead to ethnonationalist politics necessarily.¹⁷ The case studies of this book have illustrated that the workings of state power at the level of the everyday elicited a much wider and ambivalent set of identification processes. An important finding is that, under EPRDF, ethnonationalist identification has been only one of the structural effects of state power in the everyday. Land, place, and work are important examples discussed. By implication, limiting the discussion about the current political crisis to the prevalence of ethnonationalist politics misses important nuances about how state power operated under EPRDF. In particular, in this book I have identified in the profound transformations that took place under the developmental state strategy of state-mediated capitalism the actual empirical ground on which to discuss important identification dynamics. Each case study has addressed the nuances of how poorly designed development initiatives generated a wide set of practical problems for beneficiaries, which shared the critical concern over how to cope with material and discursive reproduction. A focus on the dramatic socio-economic transformation, including rising inequalities and social differentiation, that took place under the developmental state is the explanation that in this book I have given to a wide range of identification processes, which include ethnic identification, but in which ethnicity is not the only one. This has important implications for further unpacking the question about the prevalence of ethnonationalist politics in post-EPRDF Ethiopia. For a vast majority of Ethiopians whose reproduction was significantly strained under developmental state policies, ethnicity is only one among many possible mechanisms of identification. In this book I have demonstrated that at the level of the everyday social and political identity formation is much more unstable than it looks when taking larger scales as reference, and is rooted in the contingency of life. A main implication of this is that the significant inequality, social differentiation, and conflict that took place under the developmental state is an overlooked dimension behind the current prevalence of ethnonationalist politics. Ethnonationalist politics becomes prevalent when masses of disenfranchised Ethiopians have no alternative but to channel their frustration, and expectations about a better future, along lines of ethnic identification. The failure of developmental state policies to materialize the promise of a better and more inclusive future is an important dimension ¹⁷ A version of this argument has been proposed by Zewde Yeraswork, for example. See https:// www.ethiopia-insight.com/2021/07/07/ethiopias-social-divisions-masked-by-ethnicity/ [accessed on August 2021].

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explaining rising anti-government frustration encoded in ethnonationalist politics, particularly since the 2010s. From this perspective it seems that the words of developmental state principal ideologue and late prime minister Meles Zenawi quoted in the introduction to this book—‘I am convinced that we will cease to exist as a nation unless we grow fast and share our growth’¹⁸—were indeed accurate. While Ethiopia under the developmental state achieved some significant results in terms of economic growth, this book demonstrates that it was far less successful in sharing such growth with large parts of its population. Chapters three and four are a clear case in point. Confronted with agriculture commercialization policies threatening their social and economic reproduction, Arsi and Wolaita farmers reconstituted material and symbolic values to the land to cope with socio-economic reproduction. Against a long and controversial history of exploitative land relations, they channelled anti-government frustrations into their Arsi and Wolaita identities. While land vests a key role in the ways the claim to statehood recognition currently plays out in Wolaita, decentralization of land administration and land registration contributed to further politicize the relationship between land and identity in the case of West Arsi. West Arsi thus became the epicentre of some of the most violent confrontations between security forces and Oromo nationalists since late 2016, after the tragic events of the Irreecha festival in Bishoftu.¹⁹ While the rise to power of Abiy produced an initial de-escalation of conflict in Oromia, following the assassination of iconic singer and Oromo activist Hachalu Hundessa on 29 June 2020,²⁰ tension and unrest appeared to have sparked once again. Government resorted to the use of force, including the arrest of Bekele Gerba and Jawar Mohammed, two of the leaders of the Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC), a party in direct competition with the ruling Prosperity Party (PP) in Oromia.²¹ Formidable challenges to the new political order also come from rapidly growing urban areas. Abiy’s modernist vision has probably had the most appeal with those middle-class urbanised Ethiopians who benefited and who were the expression of the country’s economic growth miracle of the 2000s and 2010s. However, masses of unemployed and disenfranchised youth remain highly unstable politically. In chapters five and six I discussed some of the challenges that have confronted the strategy for small business and manufacturing development under EPRDF. What can be learnt from these case studies is that the developmental state strategy has inscribed the life of new urban poor within complex reproductive

¹⁸ Quoted in De Waal (2013: 154). ¹⁹ See for instance https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/AFR2550032016ENGLISH. pdf [accessed on August 2021]. ²⁰ https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/6/30/ethiopian-singer-hachalu-hundessa-shot-dead-inaddis-ababa [accessed on August 2021]. ²¹ https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/2020/09/25/ethiopian-prosecutors-charge-jawar-withtraining-terror-group-in-egypt/ [accessed on August 2021].

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dynamics at the intersection between the formal and informal economy, and the urban-rural divide. The failure of the developmental state strategy to mitigate social and economic costs of private sector development and global value chain networks is clearly a challenge that will continue to haunt Ethiopia in the years to come. As far as chapter six more specifically is concerned, the conflict in Tigray since November 2020 has had devastating effects on the textile industry. While international companies were forced to halt production, companies more or less directly connected to the TPLF underwent destruction and looting.²² An implication of this book’s findings is that the prevalence of ethnonationalist politics in Ethiopia should be regarded in terms of how different national and sub-national elites mobilize ethnic identities to compete for power and shares of political authority in a highly volatile and rapidly evolving context. The profound transformations, inequality, and uncertainty about the developmental state strategy made for an easy mobilization of disenfranchised Ethiopians along ethnonationalist politics. This is clearly a source of significant concern because, as the escalation of the conflict in Tigray demonstrates, what is at stake is not only the country’s future balance of power, but also its territorial integrity. While the current conflict in Tigray represents the most visible threat to the existing order, the complex politics which various ethnonationalist movements currently engage represents a formidable challenge for the future of the current government, and of the country more broadly. However, and this is to conclude leaving some room for hope, the findings of this book suggest that while ethnonationalism remains the most prevalent expression of politics in present day Ethiopia, it is not an inevitable outcome of ethnic federalism. In this book I have argued that a focus on the social production of difference in the world is a perspective that locates social change in the indeterminacy and open-endedness of life. There is always room to shape a different future, and a focus on difference is a necessary point of departure to capture the human potential and creativity that emergent social formations necessarily retain. Reassessing critically the developmental state experiment, as I have attempted to do in this book, will hopefully be a point of departure to futures in which Ethiopian politics will be discussed away from questions about identity politics, to more productive conversations about the value of difference and of becoming.

²² See for instance https://eritreahub.org/tigray-the-looting-of-the-almeda-textile-factory-in-adwa, and https://ethiopianmonitor.com/2020/11/17/govt-freezes-bank-account-of-34-tplf-affiliatedenterprises/ [accessed on August 2021].

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Index Aalen, L., 92, 103 n. 20, 104 Abbas Gnamo, 85, 86, 87, 88–89 Abbink, J., 23, 24 n. 17 Abebe Gizachew Abate, 125 Abiy Ahmed, 1, 12, 34, 51, 178, 224, 227 n. 14, 229 Absentee landlordism, 71, 86, 87, 90 Adama, 149, 188 Adverse incorporation, 121 Africa rising, 12, 153, 218 Ethiopian renaissance, 159, 160 Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, 11, 192 Africa’s Lions, 153 African Growth and Opportunity Act, 191 Agew/Kamyr (group), 57, 62, 226 Agrarian relations, 16 Agrarian change and transformation, 117, 120, 121, 123, 126, 127, 137, 145, 146, 177, 181, 183 Agrarian movements, 122 Agrarian question of labour, 126, 177, 183, 184, 210 Agrarian revolution, 73 Agriculture commercialization, 15, 16, 30, 34, 40, 41, 53, 69, 84, 115–117, 118, 119, 123, 129, 131, 132–133, 134, 137, 140, 143, 145–146, 216, 218, 222, 223, 229 In West Arsi, 90, 107 In Wolaita, 128, 130, 131, 132 In Tigray, 180 Agricultural Cooperative Sector Development strategy, 128 Agriculture Development Led Industrialization strategy, 15, 41, 51, 52–53, 117, 217 Agriculture Investment Support Directorate, 124 Al Amoudi, M.H., 196, 197 Alaba, 84, 103, 226 Almeda Textile, 196 Amhara (group), 55 n. 4, 57, 62, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 157, 195, 222 Arenas of negotiation, 26, 166 Arkebe Oqubay, 14 n. 16

Arsi Oromo (group), 34, 71, 75, 84, 85–86, 87–88, 89–91, 102, 103, 105, 107, 114, 223, 229 Asrat, 87 Authoritarianism, 12, 24, 25, 27, 29, 30–31, 71, 75, 76, 79, 80, 84, 88, 91, 92, 118, 137, 203, 220 Aylé, 129 Ayna gamad, 88, 100 Azule, battle of, 85 Baglioni, E., 184 Balabbats, 85, 86, 87, 89 Barret, P., 193 Becoming (identity formation), 2, 19, 20, 24, 29, 32, 34, 35, 220, 224, 230 Bernstein, H., 126, 143, 183 Bilito Sinqile farm, 90 n. 8, 91 Bind of agency, 32 Biofuels, 115–117, 128, 129, 132, 134, 135, 138, 140, 141, 142, 143–144, 145 Biofuel Development Utilization Strategy, 128 Castor beans, 117, 134, 135, 136 Jatropha, 128, 132, 144 Blattman, C., 210, 211 Block (institution), 165, 166 Block grant transfers, 18, 72, 79, 96, 103 Blue Nile river, 6 n. 5, 192 Bolt, M., 155 Boone, C., 76 Borderland studies, 9 Bryceson, D., 183 Bure, 55, 188 n. 9 Bureau of Trade, Industry and Urban Development of Tigray, 199 Bureaucratic centralism, 118, 143, 145, 146 Butler, J., 28–30, 31– 32 Capital accumulation, 16, 34, 41, 73, 90, 117, 120, 121, 126, 127, 152, 154, 155, 167, 184, 195, 217 Central Bank of Ethiopia, 205 Centre-periphery framework, 6, 7, 9, 10, 15, 71, 125, 218

INDE X Cernea, M., 44 Cerulli, E., 86 Chambers, R., 44 Cheeseman, N., 76 Chilalo Agricultural Development Unit, 89 China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation, 188, 197 Classes of labour, 183, 184 Cohen, J., 85 Collective action theory, 120 Collective participation, 30, 41, 60, 65, 69, 92, 141, 152, 161, 162, 174, 201, 220 Common Market for East and South Africa, 191 Conflicts in society, 20, 2, 26, 28, 216 Contract farming, 115, 117, 121, 123, 125, 126, 127, 128 In Wolaita, 132 Outgrower schemes, 120, 121, 125, 126 Commodification, 120, 121 Comparative advantage, 179, 185, 186, 187 n. 4, 190, 192 Compulsory saving, 30, 167 Culturalist approach to power, 20, 23, 26, 28, 31, 34, 220, 221 Political culture critique, 6, 20, 23, 24, 25, 29, 220 Dangla, 54– 55 Daniel Mulugeta, 10 n. 7, 21 Dar Ager, 87 DBL Industries PLC, 196, 198 De-agrarianization, 183 De Herdt, T., 22 De Soto, H., 74 n. 1 Deconcentration (as a form of decentralization), 18, 71, 72, 76, 77, 79, 91, 95, 98, 111, 220 Deininger, K., 74, 101 Demnelemen, 101, 103 Democratic centralism, 5, 50, 51 Demographic dividend, 154 Department for International Development, United Kingdom, 98 Dercon, S., 210, 211 Descriptive empiricism, 1, 2, 220 Dessalegn Rahmato, 63, 78, 82, 131, 146 Development agents, 30, 74, 93–94, 97 Development Bank of Ethiopia, 187 Development group (organisation), 19, 30, 165, 166 Development induced displacement, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 65, 68, 217 Devolution (as a form of decentralization), 18, 72, 76, 80

253

Di Nunzio, M., 31 Dire Dawa, 149, 188 n. 9, 188, 189 Dolan, C., 154, 155 Dom, C., 93 Door-to-door model, 164, 165 East African Community, 191 Eastern Industrial Zone, 188 n. 9, 188 Easton-Calabria, E., 46 Ekul, 87 Endowment Fund for the Rehabilitation of Tigray (EFFORT), 195–197 Engel, U., 9 Enset, 128, 131 Environmental Protection and Land Use Authority, 83, 94, 99, 101 Ethiopian Investment Commission, 178, 187 Ethiopian Sugar Corporation, 127 Ethiopian Textile and Garment Manufacturers’ Association, 191 Ethiopian Textile Industry Development Institute, 191, 194 Ethnonationalism, 14, 34, 225, 230 Everything But Arms, 191 Exceptionalism, 7, 8 n. 6, 216, 217, 219 Federal Land Bank, 124 Federal Micro and Small Enterprises Development Agency, 150 Feminist theory, 28, 184 Food and Agriculture Organization, 119, 125 Food security strategy, 47, 48, 53, 55, 59, 62, 69 Food Security Programme, 42, 49, 58, 163 Food Security Office, 83, 94 Household Asset Building Programme, 49, 60, 93, 94 Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP), 49, 60 n. 9, 69, 93, 94 Formalization of land rights, 71, 74, 107, 114, 217 Fouad Makki, 16, 124 Gabbar system, 87 Gadaa-Qaalluu, 71, 85 n. 7, 86 Gamo (group), 157 Gamo Goffa, 117, 129 Garee, 81 n. 3, 98, 112 Gasha, 88 Gingema, 30, 50 Global land rush, 115, 119 Foreign land investments, 115, 119, 137 Land grabbing, 125 Large scale land investments, 45, 115, 120, 126

254

INDE X

Global production networks, 177, 180, 182, 183, 184 Global value chains, 121, 123, 153, 154, 177, 181, 182 Good governance, 52, 165 Gosa, 85, 86, 88 Goqa, 129 Gott, 81, 96, 97 Graduation (from development initiatives), 30, 49, 60, 164, 169, 174 Green revolution, 119 Group collateral, 30, 162, 167, 171 Group first/work, 30, 152, 162, 163, 167, 168, 170 Growth and Transformation Plans (GTP I and II), 150, 159– 161, 178, 185, 186, 187 n. 4, 188, 190 Guji Oromo (group), 75, 113 n. 25 Gult rights, 130 Gumuz (group), 54, 62, 63, 64, 137, 222 Gurage (group), 157 Hadiya, 84, 99 n. 17 Hagmann, T., 12 n. 10, 23 n. 17, 25, 26, 82, 158 Hailemariam Dessalegn, 36, 115 Hall, R., 123 Hawassa, 149, 188 n. 9, 193, 197 Hawassa Agricultural Development Enterprise, 90 High modernism, 12 Holden, S.T., 100 Image of the state, 21, 24, 27, 216, 227 Import substitution strategy, 13, 14, 134, 160, 186, 190 Incipient class formation, 3, 17, 33, 34, 113, 140, 143, 203, 218, 219, 223 Industrial policy, 14, 177, 199 Industrial cluster approach, 177, 187 Industrial Development Strategy, 150 Ethiopian Industrial Parks Development Corporation, 186, 188 Industrial parks/zones, 11, 177, 178, 180, 186, 188, 189 Mekelle Industrial Park, 178, 197 Informality, 154, 153, 154, 185, 158, 181, 193 Informal-formal intersection, 38, 46, 149, 153, 155, 199, 218, 223, 229 Internally displaced people, 44, 46, 55 International financial institutions, 13, 219 International Labour Organization, 153 Irbo, 88 ITACA Textile, Calzedonia group, 196, 198

Jawi, 55 Jerba Yohannes, 57 Jimma, 149, 188 n. 9 Kaisen, 162 Kawo, 129 Kolfe Keranyo, 156 Kombolcha, 149, 188 KPR Exports PLC, 198 Kulakisation, 111, 223 n. 2 Land Investment for Transformation, 98 n. 15, 99 n. 16. Land proclamations, Expropriation of Landholdings for Public Purposes and Payment of Compensation (EoLPP), 82–83 The 1997 Federal Rural Land Administration Proclamation, 79 The 2005 Rural Land Administration and Use Proclamation, 82 Land to the tillers, 90 Landless/landlessness, 3, 15, 41, 48, 58, 62, 75, 100, 127, 132, 144, 194, 200 Larder, N., 123 Lavers, T., 123 Lefort, R., 80, 92, 97, 111, 223 n. 2 Levine, D., 20 Lideta Vegetable Producers’ Cooperative, 157 Local interface, 19, 46, 92, 133, 141, 144, 145 Lund, C., 26 MAA Garment and Textiles, 196 Mamdani, M., 87 Markakis, J., 6 n. 5, 7, 9, 20, 78, 125 Mass political mobilization, 4, 19 Mayza-Maiya Gadya, 130 Meagher, K., 153, 154, 155 Medhane Tadesse, 50 Meles Zenawi, 5, 14, 36, 49–51, 79, 82, 217, 228 Melkenya, 85, 86, 130 Mender, 165, 166 Menelik II, 4, 71, 85, 130 Mengist, 92, 93 Merera Gudina, 80 Metemma, 54, 62–63, 65 Methodological nationalism, 1, 2, 8, 9, 10, 24, 217 Micro and Small Enterprise promotion office, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 172, 174 Microfinance, 112, 113, 148, 150, 152, 161 Addis Saving and Credit Institution, 167 MIDROC, 196 n. 18, 197 Migdal, J., 21, 22, 26

INDE X

255

Migration studies, 43, 44, 45 Minimal state, 5, 13, 74, 181 Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, 73, 93, 133 Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, 52 Ministry of Industry, 190, 191 Mitchell, T., 25 Model farmers, 19, 30, 96, 97, 112, 140, 166

Resistance, 7, 26, 31, 71, 85–86, 120, 121, 122, 123, 125, 129, 170, 220, 221 Revolutionary democracy, 4, 5, 50, 51, 79, 92, 220. Rift Valley, 84, 88, 130, 132 Rist system, 130 Rural modernization strategy, 65, 66, 69, 74, 80, 107, 115, 119, 127, 133, 143, 145, 146 Rural Saving and Credit Cooperative, 97, 112

National Election Board, 81 National food self-sufficiency, 34, 41, 49, 53 Nationalities question, 14 Neftenya, 85, 86, 130 Negotiating statehood, 25, 26 Neo-patrimonialism, 7, 220 New Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Policy, 58, 59 Nugent, P., 9

Scalar dynamics, 15, 16, 19, 71, 114, 118, 123, 186, 218, 219 Schaefer, C., 80, 81 SCM Garment Knit textile PLC, 198 Scott, J., 12, 28 n. 18, 122, 135 Selective liberalization, 15, 111, 217, 219 Self-determination, 23, 51, 57, 132, 227 Self-reliance, 46 Shala, 99, 103 Shashemene, 88, 149 Sidama, 84, 118, 132, 226 Siso, 87 Social movement theory, 120 Social production of difference, 2, 22, 35, 222, 230 Sociological reading of the state, 1, 21, 22 Sodo, 117, 132 Soramba Vegetable Producers’ Cooperative, 157 Southern African Development Community, 191 Spatial turn in African studies, 9 State-in-society approach, 21, 22, 26 Strathmore Apparel Manufacturing PLC, 198 Structural adjustment, 13, 183 Washington Consensus, 5, 52 Sun Biofuels PLC, 117, 129, 132, 143, 144 Sustainable Development Poverty Reduction Programme, 48, 51, 54, 60, 159 Sutton, J., 197

O’Laughlin, B., 184. Olivier-De Sardan, J.P., 22 Omata, N., 46 One-to-five networks, 19, 30, 96, 110, 165, 166 Open-endedness, 2, 19, 26, 31, 35, 220, 230 Oya, C., 200 Pankhurst, A., 40, 47, 48, 54, 55 Parsons, T., 21 Peasant Associations, 90, 100, 127, 131 Péclard, D., 25–26, 158 Performativity theory, 28, 29, 30, 34, 35, 221, 222, 224 Petty commodity production, 126, 143 Piguet, F., 40 Plan for Accelerated Development to End Poverty, 49, 51, 52, 54, 69, 150, 159 Political subject, 27–29, 33, 34, 35, 37, 42, 119, 122, 123, 146, 151, 216, 220, 221, 222, 224 Subjection, 28–30, 31, 32, 221 Practical norms, 22 Practices of institutional mediation, 10, 14, 19, 21, 24, 27, 161, 216, 219 Productivism, 37, 41, 42, 51, 68, 69, 95, 218 Public Sector Capacity Building Program, 79 n. 2 Qalad, 88, 89, 100 Qwara, 54 Qwiha, 196, 204, 212 Real governance, 22 Rent seeking elites, 73, 101, 194

Technical Vocational and Educational Training, 150, 189, 194, 211 Teff, 84, 209 Tehadso, 50 Tenure security, 101, 107, 112 Territorialization, 9, 18, 152 Tesfaye Tafesse, 55 The 1975 land reform, 5 n. 3, 40, 72, 78, 90, 98, 115, 131, 132, 146 The 1995 Ethiopian Constitution, 18, 72, 76, 78, 124 The 2001 political crisis, 36, 49, 60, 68, 115, 217 The 2005 elections, 52, 55, 79–82, 83, 92, 96, 98, 103, 105, 107, 163

256

INDE X

The 2018 political crisis, 12, 34, 118, 224 Tigrigna (group), 57, 62 Timmer, P., 182 Tirf meret, 89 Top-Down Pulling Strategy, 190 TPLF Central Committee, 49, 50, 51, 195 Tronvoll, K., 20– 21, 23, 82, 92, 104 n. 20, 226 Tsegaye Moreda, 137 Tsegedie Armachio, 54 Turton, D., 4 United States Agency for International Development, 98 n. 15 Vaughan, S., 20– 21, 23, 57, 226 Velocity PLC, 198 Villagization, 91, 131 Vocational training, 30, 162, 163, 164 Voluntary Resettlement Programme, 47, 49, 61, 62, 63, 66, 69

Wellega, 55 n. 4 West Arsi, 84 Ropi, 93 n. 10, 96 n. 12, 101, 103, 106 n. 22 Siraro, 84 Wirsh, 87 Wolaita, 128 Damot Woyde, 129, 135, 136 Kindo Koysha, 129 Offa, 129, 135, 136, 140, 144, 145 Wolaita (group), 34, 38, 118, 123, 128, 129– 132, 134, 136, 143, 144, 223, 226, 229 Wolaita Agricultural Development Unit, 130 Wolpe, H., 208 Women and Youth Affairs Office, 170 Wonji-Shoa outgrower schemes, 127, 132 Woreda-level decentralization, 18, 72 World Bank, 44, 52, 79, 98, 125, 130, 149, 188 World Trade Organization, 153 Weyane development strategy, 51 Young, J., 50, 195, 196

Waag Himra special zone, 56 Sekota, 40, 42, 56, 57, 59, 60, 61, 65, 67, 68

Zemecha, 100