Paper short abstract:

This paper will explore international large-scale land acquisitions in Ethiopia by illustrating to what extend large-scale agricultural land investments affect local populations and serve as an essential strategy to reduce poverty.

Paper long abstract:

Ethiopia suffers from food insecurity and depends on international aid. Its economy is mainly based on small-scale, rain-fed subsistence agriculture, accounting for almost 45 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) and 85 percent of total employment. Thus, agriculture is a key source of employment, growth, and revenue, as well as a long-standing source of food security. Accordingly, the Ethiopian government has stated that poverty reduction is impossible without significant diversification and commercialization of the agricultural sector and has developed several strategies and policies to achieve this aim. Here, especially, large-scale agriculture is defined as an essential key to initiate development.

Conducted studies highlight that first effects of large-scale agricultural land investments are very likely to have diverse consequences for the environment and for local populations, such as, on the one hand, agricultural intensification, forest degradation, displacement of local populations, expropriation of land, increasing local food insecurity and increasing poverty as well as, on the other hand, related investments in new technologies, roads, hospitals and schools. Moreover, large-scale agricultural land investments shall generate knowledge transfer and employment opportunities which, in turn, provide living wages.

Based on those various illustrated consequences this paper analyzes and discusses actual socio-economic effects and potential trade-offs of large-scale agricultural land investments in Ethiopia, putting special emphasis on the Oromia region. Further, the author's own empirical research findings facilitate a more detailed picture of perceptions of all stakeholders involved and thus enhance its comprehensibility.