Firehiwot Guluma Tezera
DEVELOPMENT AND INVESTMENT AS A REASON FOR LAND GRABBING
IN OROMIA FROM THE FARMERS.
Potentially, Oromia is one of the richest countries in Africa. Agriculture is the means of livelihood for
more than 90% of the population. Because of favourable climate and rich soil, many types of crops
are cultivated and normally there is little need for irrigation. Oromo farmers have contributed to
world agriculture by cultivating and developing some of the world's crop plants. The main cash crops
are coffee and chat (a stimulant shrub). Coffee, a major cash earner for many countries, has its origin
in the forests of Oromia and neighbouring areas. It has remained the chief export item, representing
more than 60% of the foreign earnings of successive Ethiopian colonial regimes.
So, because of the fertile lands and resources it has, Oromia is particularly targeted by Wayne
regime to grab the land. . Ethiopian government continues forcefully evicting Oromo farmers and
other indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands and leasing them to national and transnational
investors without their consent and with no compensation. Hundreds of thousands of Oromo
farmers and other indigenous communities continue losing their farming and grazing lands they have
owned for centuries and thrown out on the streets exposing their families and extended families to
humiliation, starvation and death. In many instances family heads are given a 30 day notice to
evacuate from their land. Those who refused to comply with the short notice faced intimidation,
beatings, arrests, and in some cases death.

The current destructive land-grab policy of the regime is a continuation of the amassing of personal
wealth of the members of the ruling elite at the cost of destroying the livelihood of the families of
indigenous Oromo. It has nothing to do with investment or development as the government tries to
mislead the international community. Since 1996, the total area of agricultural land transferred to
the investors is 4 million hectares. 72000ha farm land is grabbed by foreign investor of bio-fuel crop
in 2008 to establish castor crop as out grower schemes on land used by 84000 to124000
smallholders in 240 peasant associations (PAs) in East and West Haraghe provinces. A total land
transferred to investors will be 7 million hectares of agricultural land by the end of 2015. It is
estimated all together that millions of acres of cultivable land have already been leased to foreign
investors. The tendency is to double or triple in the five Transformation plans, as the TPLF regime
recently started publicly to defend its land grab policy as economic imperative.

The weyane regime considers the Oromo land a personal toy of the authorities. Investments are
expanding at the expense of the lives of millions of households evicted from their land, their only
source of livelihood. Millions of hectares of land have been distributed to the so called investors, the
majority of whom are from the ruling tribe of Tigray, evicting the local people in Oromia. The
families of those evicted households are pulverized into daunting poverty subsequently. This is the
tragic history behind the proliferating large scale commercial estate farms, sugar factories,