From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Fri Jan 29 2010 - 07:48:49 EST
The new way of Bio-Colonialism in Ethiopia
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By Zekarias Ezra
Posted to the web on January 29, 2010
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Land is finite. There is so much of it and that is it. So, food-importing
countries with scarce arable land but lots of cash, mainly in Asia and the
Middle East, are increasingly looking overseas to secure food supplies after
the prices of staple foods rocketed last year.
http://www.anyuakmedia.com/india.jpg
They are scouring Africa as a kind of 3rd wave of outsourcing, i.e.
agriculture outsourcing. Critics are rightly crying that such schemes hark
back to colonial-era “plantation agriculture” where rich outsiders force
subsistence farmers off fertile land to grow export crops.
Jacques Diouf, the head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture
Organization, has reportedly called the land deals a type of
“neo-colonialism”. Bless his heart! But, some argue including the learned
Prime Minister of Ethiopia that the investments have the potential to
increase local food availability and create badly needed jobs. May be if a
government of the people, by the people, for the people negotiated such
give-away contracts. Otherwise such deals prove disastrous. Example:
Madagascar´s deal with South Korean firm Daewoo.
There is even a fundamental human right issue in play here. Does the present
generation (Meles and co) even have the legal right to mortgage the peoples´
land for 50+ years? How could Meles know the legitimate owners of the land
(namely the future generation of Ethiopians) may not need the land say 20
years from now?
On many grounds, the Ethiopian government action in fact is blatantly
immoral. It is a rape of a nation and its people, pure and simple. Read the
following and judge for yourself.
“The Bangalore-based company, which is the world’s largest grower of roses,
has negotiated an extraordinarily good deal with the government. For its
farm in Bako, Karuturi is paying no rent for six years and then only 135
birr (£6.50) per hectare per year for the remainder of the 50-year lease. In
Gambella, a remote and sparsely populated region close to Sudan, the rent is
only 15 birr per hectare.”
Does receiving 135 birr per year for each 10000 square meter of arable land
seem to you a good deal for the people of Ethiopia? I don´t think so. What
is more, like all the foreign land investors in Ethiopia, the company is
free to export as much of its produce as it likes. How is it having such a
clause in the contract help Ethiopia? In entering to such an unconscionable
contractual agreement, the Meles government turns the Bako people into
indebted servitude for a long 50+ years.
Land is not an infinite resource. The buyers are coming to Ethiopia not
because of compassion but because it makes an absolute good business sense.
However, the politicians of the country not only betrayed the people but
also proved that the un-attended ´street dogs´ would have been better than
the present day ministers to rule the country.
Prior to the 1974 popular Ethiopian Revolution, which the Mengistu gang
hijacked, land was exclusively owned by the nobility and other members of
the few highly-privileged feudal landlords under a system known as serfdom
(Gebbar). Under this land management system, everything that the farmer
produced on the farm was the property of the feudal landlords, who would
then redistribute grains to “their” farmers. The farmers (tenants) were
totally under the control of the feudal landlord and would face eviction
from the land if they failed to pay taxes in the form of farm products. The
1974 revolution” (let it be noted Meles and his friends were proponents)
with its main slogan of “Land to the Tiller” ended the serfdom.
Three decades later, EPRDF has turned the clock back and is busy handing out
farm land under the slogan “land to the land-grabbers´. The poor Ethiopian
peasants are now losing their farmland to the “land grabbers” through
coercion of the corrupt governments; the poor African farmers will then toil
on the farmland day and night to only see the grains exported out elsewhere
– little to none will be spared for domestic markets. As laborers on the
farmland, they will be paid bare minimum wages under deplorable living
standards.
Mafa Chipeta, FAO´s representative in Ethiopia, told the Washington Post:
“I can´t believe Ethiopia or any other government would allow their country
to be used like an empty womb. The human spirit would not allow it.”
Every body knows that so-called leaders were camouflaged robbers, whose only
one objective is to loot the country in various pretexts, deceive their
cadres, fool the citizen and speak lies, and talk nonsense most of the time
and never do any things good for the nation and people.
Just when colonialism was considered dead and buried, along come
neo-colonialism in its latest guise with the collaboration of corrupt
leaders. Allied with its close relatives globalisation, free marketeering
and lack of transparency, it is currently launching a new offensive on the
disempowered population of poor nation such as Ethiopia.
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