Paper short abstract:

Focusing on three case studies, the paper analyses the issues of foreign aid, extraversion and statehood in Ethiopia through a longue durée perspective.

Paper long abstract:

Authors have often highlighted the ability of rulers in Addis Ababa to undertake succesful strategies of extraversion for purposes of internal control. The manipulation of external assistance has historically been a crucial element in shaping patterns of accumulation and distribution of economic resources along ethnic, social and geographical lines.

In this paper, we would like to analyse the issue through a longue durée perspective, focusing on three case studies distributed along different periods of Ethiopian recent history: the FAO, UNDP and British-sponsored cotton plantations in the Awsa Sultanate in the 1960's and 1970's; the resettlement scheme in the Tana Beles area during the 1980's; the negotiations between the Ethiopian government and the Italian Cooperation over the development of the hydroelectric sector in the 2000's. Our purpose is to evaluate to what extent and in which terms foreign aid promoted or hampered political participation by ethnic constituencies and opposition groups. We will try, on one side, to de-compose the concept of African State as a monolithic subject, highlighting how different actors at times inserted themselves within the interstices of the developmental relationship in order to gain access to ideological and material resources for purposes of power consolidation. On the other side, we will apply the same analysis to the so-called "international community", highlighting the plurality of actors and the variety of their often competing and contradicting agendas.

Within this conceptual framework, foreign development projects are considered as the arena where local stakeholders experimented new forms of counterinsurgency, popular mobilisation and statehood.