Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

This study delves into the work of local rural brokers, representing the dynamic form of work and economic activity in the pastoral area.

Paper long abstract:

In the last decade, Ethiopia’s Oromia Regional State has implemented a large-scale irrigation project on the land inhabited by the Karrayu pastoralist group in the upper Awash Valley. The project was farmed as lifesaving, transformative, and unique in terms of shifting the dominant approach of development by dispossession to development through incorporating the local population. Numerous studies have shown that large-scale agricultural investment invites new actors and capital, altering production relationships and influencing labour organisations and working conditions. While many have emphasised the importance of large-scale investments made by private and international firms and external actors in transforming the production and labour landscape, local actors and their agencies have gotten less attention. At this junction, this study sheds light on local brokers, a very crucial yet rarely studied subject, as economic entities and actors facilitating capitalist production and resulting labour exploitation.

By taking the mentioned large-scale irrigation as its central arena for inquiry, this study delves into the work of local rural brokers, representing the dynamic form of work and economic activity in the pastoral area. Using an ethnographic approach, it examines how the brokers networked and operated in local reality as an emerging type of informal economic activity and how their actions, in turn, reinforced the expansion of capitalist production and labour commodification in the project area.

Keywords: Ethiopia, Pastoralists, Karrayu, Broker