The people pushed out of Ethiopia’s fertile farmland
By Matthew Newsome
After WAITING
several weeks for letters of permission from various Ethiopian ministries, I BEGIN
my road trip into the country’s southern lowlands.
I WANT TO
investigate the government’s controversial plan to take over vast swathes of ancestral land, home to around 100,000 indigenous pastoralists, and turn it into a major centre for commercial agriculture, where foreign agribusinesses and government plantations would raise CASH
crops such as sugar and palm oil.
After driving 800km (497 miles) over two days through Ethiopia’s lush highlands I begin my descent into the lower Omo valley. Here, where palaeontologists have discovered some of the oldest human remains on earth, some ancient ways of life cling on.
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