Ethiopian tribes’ ancient ways threatened by UK-backed sugar project
A massive sugar plantation and up to 700,000 migrant workers will occupy almost 2,000 sq.km of Ethiopia’s Omo Valley, with the help of British aid finance. But the valley’s native inhabitants have been given no choice in the matter, and are being forced to abandon their homes, lands, cattle, and entire way of life, or go to jail.
Commercial agriculture is creating an uncertain future for tribes like the ancient Hamer. Photo: Matthew Newsome.
October 22, 2014 (The Ecologist) — In the late afternoon sun, Longoko Loktoy, positions his traditionally engraved stool on parched earth and brushes the dust off his Kalashnikov while children close-by pursue small birds with bows and arrows.
Keeping a diligent eye on the movement of his goat herd he says he is unaware of large scale infrastructure projects that will soon encroach on his life and livelihood as an agro-pastoralist. “I haven’t heard of any government plan for a dam or a sugar project. All I have heard is that we will have to move.”
Longoko is a member of the Nyangatom tribe, one of twelve ethnic groups living in Ethiopia’s Lower Omo Valley, a UNESCO World Heritage Site celebrated for being one of the most culturally diverse regions in the world.
“I am leading two lives. I have children who take care of herds and I have children who are at school. When drought comes my family will depend on my children working in the town.”
