Paper short abstract:

State-sponsored modernist projects in Ethiopia's lower Omo valley embody and privilege one idea of progress. We explore the impact of these projects on local people, some of whom have very different understandings of well-being and prosperity.

Paper long abstract:

In Ethiopia's lower Omo valley competing ideas of well-being, growth and prosperity collide as state-sponsored agro-industrial sugar plantations and hydro-engineering projects turn a once marginalised periphery into a bustling capitalist frontier. The government presents these projects as essential for national growth and the elimination of poverty and food insecurity. In this paper, we explore the differential impacts of recent development projects in the region, showing how they affect the multiple and competing dimensions of wealth (in people, in farm produce, in livestock, and in money) that are important to different actors in this setting. Focusing on one district in area, our data come from ethnographic studies of local conceptions of wealth and poverty and from a retrospective household survey tailored to reflect these locally relevant measures of prosperity. Among the indigenous agro-pastoralists, ideas of prosperity reflect the prevailing pastoralist ideology, with livestock and family size of greatest importance. Their educated relatives, the indigenous elite, now also value access to monetary income, consumer goods and education as indispensable aspects of well-being and prosperity. They speculate in land and aspire to rental income in the district capital, a once insignificant administrative outpost rapidly being transformed into a standard Ethiopian municipality. Finally, an influx of migrants from the highlands of Ethiopia constitute a third group: young people without families seeking business opportunities on the expanding frontier. For each of these groups, we trace the impact of recent development and infrastructure projects through their own understanding of progress.