Review of Landholding Systems and Policies in Ethiopia under the Different Regimes

Yigremew Adal

December 2002

EEA/Ethiopian Economic Policy Research Institute

Working Paper No 5/2002

CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION

2. LAND TENURE UNDER THE IMPERIAL REGIME 2.1. Major types of land tenure 2.1.1. Rist /kinship tenure 2.1.2. Private tenure 2.1.3. Church tenure 2.1.4. Government tenure 2.2. Land tenure problems 2.2.1. Tenancy 2.2.2. Tenure insecurity 2.2.3. Diminution and fragmentation of holdings. 2.2.4. Land concentration and underutilization. 2.3. Summary 3. LAND TENURE UNDER THE DERG REGIME 3.1. The 1975 land reform and abolition of diverse tenure 3.2. Land tenure problems 3.2.1. Diminution and fragmentation of holdings. 3.2.2. Tenure insecurity and its impact. 3.2.3. Inefficient allocation of land. 3.2.4. Inadequate land administration. 4. THE CURRENT LAND TENURE SYSTEM AND THE LAND DEBATE 4.1. The current land tenure system 4.2. The current debate on land tenure 4.2.1. The debate 4.2.2. Some queries about the debate 4.3. The case of rural women 4.2. Summary of the current land tenure situation 5. SUMMARY ANALYSIS OF THE LAND TENURE SYSTEMS UNDER

THE DIFFERENT REGIMES 5.1. Access to land. 5.2. Tenure insecurity. 5.3. Diminution and fragmentation of holdings. 5.4. Inefficient allocation of land. 5.5. Problems in land administration. 5.6. Rural women. 5.7. The land debate and international experience. 6. CONCLUSION 7. ISSUES FOR INVESTIGATION REFERENCES

1. INTRODUCTION A thorough analysis and evaluation of the past performance of Ethiopian agriculture recently undertaken by the Ethiopian Economic Association (Befekadu and Berhanu 2000) reveals that, despite the numerous commendable initiatives and measures undertaken by the government, the performance of the agriculture sector remained poor. Many elements of the existing land tenure system, such as declining farm size, tenure insecurity, and subsistence farming practices, are identified as part of those causes of the poor performance of the sector. It was also underlined that the sector needs fundamental transformation at the center of which lies the issues in the land tenure system. The Ethiopian Economic Association/ Ethiopian Economic Policy Research Institute considers that the rural land tenure system is an important factor in shaping the socio-economic structure of the rural sector. It also believes that, one way or another, the land tenure system defines how individuals, communities, and government relate to land and its administration and the social and economic values and benefits associated with it. It is also believed that the land tenure system is more critical among those problems of the agricultural sector because it provides the fundamental ground rule under which all economic agents operate regarding land. As a result, the land tenure issue has attracted widespread attention and debate among policymakers, government and non-government sections, the private sector, researchers and the community at large. It also remained to be a challenge that needs to be addressed based on a comprehensive and thorough research and analysis. It was with such understanding that the EEA/EEPRI decided to launch research on “the current land tenure systems and its implications on the overall performance of the agriculture sector in the country”. The overall objective of the research is to undertake a thorough and comprehensive study on issues that are related to the land policy and its implications on agricultural performance and thereby contribute towards policy debate, processes and policy formulation in the country. One such study being undertaken is on “Review of Theories on Land Tenure and Country Experience”, which is published in Working Paper No. 4/2002 of EEA/EEPRI. This study explores land tenure issues- theories, country experiences, and the Ethiopian case during the period pre-1975 to present and raises fundamental issues for further investigation. This part (Part II) deals with the review of landholding systems and policies in Ethiopia under the different regimes and the current debate on rural land tenure. The major objective of this part of the study is to review the existing literature on land tenure and identify the gaps that should be addressed by the proposed study.

The report is organized as follows. Following an Introduction, Ethiopian land tenure under the Imperial regime is discussed. Section Three deals with the land tenure issues during the Derg era. Section Four discusses the present land tenure system. Section Five is about rural women and Section Six discusses the current debate on the prevailing land tenure system. This is followed by Section Seven, which is a summary analysis of the whole land tenure issues relevant to the proposed study and gaps are identified for further research. Section Eight is the conclusion while Section Nine provides a brief list of those outstanding issues of the whole discussion that need further investigation for better understanding and clarity and this is the fundamental objective of the whole exercise in this part of the report. 2. LAND TENURE UNDER THE IMPERIAL REGIME 2.1. Major types of land tenure It is generally acknowledged that the pre-1975 land tenure system in Ethiopia had been one of the most complex tenure systems in the world and had not been thoroughly studied (Dessalegn 1984; Cohen and Weintraub 1975; Gilkes 1975; Dejene 1999)[1]. The country’s geographical, ethnic and cultural diversity and its historical background were mentioned among those factors that produced highly differential forms of land utilization and ownership. Such complex nature of that tenure is also noted as playing a major part in hindering any serious progress towards a reform of the system. These difficulties might have also resulted in a variety of classifications and approaches used to describe the then land tenure system of the country. Among others, rist/kinship, communal, diessa/village, private, state, church, and other land tenure designations were used. For reasons of simplicity and to make the discussion congruent to the most common classification system, rist/kinship, private, church, and state holding systems are used here. 2.1.1. Rist /kinship tenure With some differences, the most prevalent tenure in the northern part of the country (Eritrea, Tigre, Begemidir, Gojjam, and some parts of Shoa and Wollo) was the rist/ communal or kinship tenure. Within this tenure system there were two variants of land rights – rist and gult. According to Cohen and Weintraub (1975), rist is the right to claim a share of land based on kinship to a historical ancestor held in common with other rist holders. Briefly, the land in rist areas is divided into a multiplicity of geographical units originally held by a founding father. Those who can establish kinship through either parent may enter a claim to a share of the land in a unit from elders controlling the allocation of land held by what is in effect a descent corporation. That is, a person can inherit rist rights from either parent because ambilineal descent principles prevail in rist areas. Moreover, customary laws require that rist rights be honored if proof of kinship can be established. In theory and generally in practice rist rights are use rights and land under rist rights cannot be owned or alienated.

Hoben (1973) explains that gult rights over land were given to members of the ruling elite as a reward to loyal service to their lord and to religious institutions as endowments. The individual or institution that held land as gult had the right to collect taxes from those who tilled it. They also had judicial and administrative authority over those who lived on it. Rist and gult do not refer to different types of land but distinct and complementary types of land rights. Normally they are found over the same land. A single estate of gult land comprising a few square miles includes within its boundaries tracts of fields held as rist by a number of farmers. The gult holder might also hold some fields as rist within his estate of gult land (and outside it as well). Although ristholders were not tenants, their hereditary right to use the land was conditional on meeting taxes and service obligations associated with those rights. Failure to meet such obligations might lead to displacement of the ristholders. Mesfin (1991:79-80) also noted that gult refers to the right to taxes on land and not rights to land per se. Gult right does not extend to ownership of land but is limited only to taxes. When gult right is hereditary it is called riste-gult. Although hereditary on ambilineal basis, the rist system could not guarantee equal access to land to all dwellers of the area. Individuals’ access to land was highly determined by their social status (Hoben, 1973). Practical issues of politics and status enter into the recognition of the rights keeping the whole process workable. Specifically, they influence the allocation process in such a way that a claimant is likely to succeed only where he has close kinship to the descent corporation and lives near the land he is claiming. The rist system did not also guarantee access to land to some people. Hoben, (1973) for instance, mentioned that in Gojjam this category of people includes smiths, weavers, and tanners. 2.1.2. Private tenure To some extent this landholding pattern was recognized as the most dominant pattern affecting over 60% of Ethiopia’s peasants (Kidane, 1990) and prevailing in the area where 65 percent of the Ethiopian population lived (Cohen and Weintraub, 1975). This tenure system was generally found in the southern and southwestern parts of the country. According to (Cohen and Weintraub, 1975: p. 35) the private tenures were created when the crown confiscated land conquered by its armies and granted vast blocks to a wide range of people and institutions. Grants were made to soldiers, northern civil servants who came to administer the new areas, peasants moving south because of land pressure in the north, local tribes that did not resist the conquest, local village and clan chiefs to gain their support, church officials and institutions to facilitate the expansion of the Coptic religion, and a host of central and provincial elites close to the crown. On the whole, these large blocks of territory were located in the provinces of Arussi, Bale, Gemu-Gofa, Illubabor, Keffa, Wellega, and some parts of Shoa and Wollo. Dessalegn (1984) also notes that lands under private tenures were originally expropriated from peasants of the crown. All unoccupied land in these areas was also considered to be state property and it was distributed to men of influence and power in the state apparatus. Much of the land thus acquired was subsequently converted into

private tenure, and Haile Selassie’s government accelerated this process by its policy of imperial land grants and by encouraging holders of state tenures to convert them into freehold. According to the above sources, land under private ownership could be sold or exchanged without any restrictions except those provided by law. However, it has been noted that the Ethiopian ‘private tenure’ was different from what the term generally signifies. According to (Dessalegn, 1984) lands under private tenures were private not in the strictly capitalist but in the specifically Ethiopian sense of the term. What the state had granted (and virtually all land under private tenures was originally state property) the state could take away, and in so far as the authority of the state was concerned, the sanctity of private property was not recognized in principle or in fact. Cohen and Weintraub (1975) also stated that “The use of the term freehold is justified by the fact that occupants’ rights of permanent possession are nearly absolute.” But they pointed out that still it was “important to note that in general Ethiopians view land in terms of rights in the holder rather than possession of physical territory.” 2.1.3. Church tenure The Ethiopian Orthodox Church used to be an important landholding entity during the pre-revolution period. However, the extent of church holdings was not clearly known (see Dessalegn, 1984; Cohen and Weintraub, 1975; Kidane, 1990; Aba Gebre-Egziabher, 1970). Kidane (1990:51) noted, “The exact amount of church lands was never really determined”. He suggested that the complexity of the forms of church ownership, the decentralized nature of ownership of church lands and also the secrecy of the church's central treasury were factors responsible for the lack of information about the amount of church holdings. Although church holdings were found both in the south and northern parts of the country, much of the lands were in the south. Estimates of the amount of land held by the church varied from 50 % (Aba Gebre-Egziabher, 1970, mentioning foreign sources) to 5% (Cohen and Weintraub, 1975) of the total land area of the country. Dessalegn (1984) doubted those figures and put his estimate as not exceeding 10-12%. For the most part church land had been obtained through grants from the crown. However, aristocrats and provincial gentry had also transferred land to local institutions and officials. In general, land was held by the church, by individuals obligated to provide clerical services for the community, or by peasants who paid tribute to the church rather than taxes to the state. Church lands were held as semon land and gult land. According to Aba Gebre-Egziabher (1970:248), semon lands were those lands whose use was placed at the disposal of the functionaries of the church by the church herself in lieu of giving them cash salaries and in appreciation of their services to the church in their respective region, while gult lands of the church were those lands the use of which was given to the administrators of churches and the high priests. In addition to renting land, the church used to collect tribute or taxes. Regardless of such large possessions, however, what the church had over those holdings was usufruct rights.

2.1.4. Government tenure Like the other holding cases, the amount of government land had never been determined with precision. MLRA (1971:11, 13) estimate shows that government land in ten non-communal provinces has a share of 28.4% and 22.4% measured and unmeasured lands respectively. Cohen and Weintraub (1975:45) stated that 46.6% of the total land of Ethiopia and 11.8% of its agricultural land was held as government land. It was also stated that (Kidane, 1990) the government used to assume that all nomadic lands belonged to it and had largely appropriated nomadic pasture lands. Kidane pointed out that the local people bitterly opposed the granting of these lands to settlers and commercial farmers from outside the areas and claimed large parts of the government holdings, especially in the nomadic areas of the Awash valley and in the Setit Humera regions. Palace land, gibretel land, maderia land, and mengist land were those commonly cited arrangements under government tenure ( Dessalegn, 1984; Cohen and Weintraub, 1975; Kidane, 1990; Gilkes, 1975). These government lands included arid range lands in the lowlands of eastern and southeastern Ethiopia with grazing potential only and occupied by nomads; arable land to some extent occupied by nomads, generally found in remote areas with poor precipitation and a high incidence of animal and human disease; and those unoccupied arable lands distributed all over the country. 2.2. Land tenure problems The major problems of the pre-1975 land tenure in Ethiopia cited by different studies include exploitative tenancy, land concentration and underutilization, tenure insecurity, diminution and fragmentation of holdings. Fesseha (1970:135-140), for instance, concluded that the presence of large idle lands reinforced by high rate of absentee ownership, high rate of tenancy, insecurity of tenure, operation of sub-economic sizes of farms and lack of relevant supporting institutions constituted principal bottlenecks that kept agriculture in a subsistence and generally retarded state. 2.2.1. Tenancy In a seminar where the land tenure issues were seriously discussed around the eve of the 1974 revolution it was concluded that: “It was observed that the problems of agricultural tenancy are so acute that a remedy must be provided promptly. In this connection it was indicated that a large proportion of the farming population works and lives on the land of landlords paying high rents and receiving low yields. Similarly it was pointed out that tenants under the existing landlord-tenant agreements have no security of tenure” (Tamirat, 1970:480). It can be argued that thought there were some differences among writers on the scope and nature of tenancy at that time it seems that there is general agreement that tenancy existed in both the south ad the north but it was much more widespread in the south than in the north. As per the findings of the 1974/75 survey by MoA (1975a:60) out of the total holdings 36.4% were totally cultivated by tenants while they partly owned another

15.3%. The report stated that the condition of the tenants was “the most prominent problem of the land question in the country”. Tenancy was also found more widespread in the central, western and southwestern regions where private tenure was most prevalent. In these provinces, the size of tenant population as percentage of total rural population was 46% with wholly rented land, 9% with partly owned and partly rented land making a total of 55%. Tenancy was not a major problem in the north where communal tenure prevailed. There were, for instance in Gojjam, an area of highest pure tenant holdings, only 13% of the whole holdings were under pure tenancy (Imperial Ethiopian Government (IEG), 1972). Cohen and Weintraub (1975) noted that tenancy was not a major problem in the north because there the peasantry had been associated with kinship and village tenure systems which allowed most peasants access to land, prevented its alienation and hence the emergence of a landless class. Tenancy in this area was associated with submerged caste groups, religious minorities, or young ristholders who sought more land. It was given that out of the Amhara and Tigrean peasants living in the north, fewer than 5% spent their lives as tenant farmers, In fact, many farmers used to begin their farming as tenants with the expectation that they will ultimately hold rist rights over enough land to support their families. The other major pattern of northern tenancy occurred where the major rist holders rented additional land to acquire more wealth. This was interpreted to show that in the north tenancies were not a hindrance but a means for moving toward more production and ultimately higher status. Cohen and Weintraub (1975) also underlined that the view that tenancy was the major constraint to increased peasant production had not been supported by substantial and empirical findings. They argued that assumptions that tenants having no ownership incentives would not innovate or improve the land beyond their minimum subsistence needs and that innovation would not occur where rents were excessive and placed the risk of extra output solely on the tenant were based on comparative international experience. However, some experts noted that the economic impact of the tenancy system was negative. For instance, after results of rigorous studies on the major features of the then tenure system, it was shown (IEG 1972) that tenancy was characterized by such features as: payment of fees as a precondition for leasehold; 90% of all lease agreements were verbal making dispute settlement arbitrary, largely equal division of produces between tenants and landlords; payment of tithe or land tax by tenants; and no compensation for tenants’ investments in land. It was underlined that “Under such conditions the almost 50% of southern Ethiopia’s peasants who operate fully rented holdings can scarcely be expected to take part in the technological revolution which Ethiopian agriculture is now moving” (p.9). Of course, care could have been taken in showing tenancy figures across the nation, as all those who rented out their plots were not necessarily landlords. For instance it was reported that the number of landlords and tenants in Arussi (1961 E.C) was 105,689 and 128,001 respectively (Jami Mavi, 1970:475). This means that the landlord/tenant ratio was 1:1.2 implying that the general picture does not seem the prevalence of big landlords.

Shiferaw (1992) also cautioned that the whole idea of tenancy was rather slippery. He asked “How many of the tenants were tenants of landlords and tenants of other peasants?” He noted that there was a difference between being a tenant to a landlord and a tenant to another peasant. With the peasant, eviction and other exactions and services would not be a major problem. But with landlords eviction increasingly became a threat particularly in those provinces where capitalist agriculture was introduced. 2.2.2. Tenure insecurity Tenure insecurity has been cited as one of the limitations of the pre-revolution land tenure system. It had different forms from endless litigations over land rights to complete eviction from holdings. Arbitrary peasant evictions were among such sources of insecurity. For instance, it was reported that only as a result of the CADU project in Arsi, 20 to 25% of all those farmers living in the area in the mid 1960s had been evicted by the end of 1970, most of them leaving Arussi in search of new land (IEG 1972:19). Endless litigations have also been mentioned as one of the feature of the rist tenure. A study report by Alem-Ante (1970:218 ) on legal aspects of agricultural land disputes pointed out that it was generally believed that land in Ethiopia was the subject of numerous disputes and endless litigation. It was mentioned that an estimate made at the number of land cases in relation to the total number of civil cases has put the figure for all land disputes filed in the ordinary courts at 75 %. (This applied for the whole country and for all levels of courts, and it appears quite evident that court cases involving land more than anything else are a basic feature of the Ethiopian legal system). Civil disputes over land included cases such as failure of the tenant to pay rent, mismanagement of farms collection of crops before assessment, eviction, claims of inheritance, trespass, boundary, and ownership. Criminal cases were not uncommon. For instance, it was mentioned that in the study of court files conducted in Kuni wereda (Hararghe) for the period between Tahisas 1, 1958 and Hidar 30, 1959 (E.C.), it was found that 20% of the criminal cases involved land. Tenure insecurity has increased the burdens placed on the tenant by extractive rental arrangements. As mentioned above, (IEG 1972) 90% of all lease agreements were verbal, making dispute settlement arbitrary, and there was no compensation for tenants’ investments in land when evicted. Dessalegn (1984) has also argued that for all tenants, the major factor for their dependency, and the chief obstacle to improved production was the lack of security of tenure. Each sharecropper was never certain how long he would cultivate his holding, or when he would be told to give it up. He added that evictions were not common but the threat of eviction, rather than the act itself, was the potent weapon in the hands of landlords, and the tenant over whom the danger of unemployment and destitution hung like the sword of Damocles had no alternative but to accommodate all the demands of his landlord, however onerous they were. Shiferaw (1992) also noted the arbitrary nature of eviction by landlords saying that the kind of eviction that was dangerous to the peasant

population was the eviction simply because the landlord wanted to do it for one or another reason. Landlords had full power to evict their tenants though tradition very often militated against it. But the fact remained that the tenant was under certain insecurity as a result of this. This fact was fully recognized by critics as well as by the government. 2.2.3. Diminution and fragmentation of holdings It is quite interesting that diminution of holdings and fragmentation of parcels existed even in the south where there was concentration of land under few landlords. Fesseha (1970) noted that operation of sub-economic holdings and land fragmentation had been among those principal setbacks to agricultural production during the pre-revolution period. It was estimated that out of the estimated 4 million farming families about 90% operated farms of less than 5 hectares and of those two-thirds operated farms of less than one and half hectares. This was interpreted as essentially constituting subsistence living in the agricultural sector with a production level limited to home consumption only. In 1972 it was reported that (IEG 1972) in 12 provinces where a survey was conducted two-thirds of all peasant holdings comprised no more than one hectare under crops and forty-two % of all peasant holdings comprised half a hectare or less under crops. Dessalegn (1984) pointed out that rural Ethiopia before the land reform was a land of smallholding peasants and of petty production. The reason for the co-existence of big landlords and smallholding peasantry was that the Ethiopian landed classes had for the most part parcelled up their properties and leased them out to small holding cultivators. The MoA (1975a) survey report shows that in the country as a whole 57.6 % of the holdings had a size of less than one hectare, 38.6 % one up to five hectares, and 3.8% holdings of five and more hectares. Corrected average area of holdings was estimated to be 1.85 hectares. Table 1. Percentage distribution of number and area of holdings by size for the

whole country

Holdings Holdings by size of total area (in ha)

Under 0.10 0.11-0.50 0.51-1.00 1.00-2.00 2.01-5.00 5.01-10.00 10.01 &

above

Number Cumulative percentage of total3.5 31.1 57.6 81.0 96.2 99.0 100

Area 0.2 6.0 18.4 40.7 70.7 82.8 100Source: MoA (1975a: 54). Cohen and Weintraub (1975:49-50) noted that particular attention of critics in kinship/rist areas was focused on fragmentation and diminution of holdings. It was stated that in many parts of the country, population pressure on cultivated land has become serious. It was also argued that the problem has in part been aggravated by the tendency of

Ethiopian land tenure patterns to promote diminution and fragmentation of plots. In one way or another there has been a general parcelling out of the holdings so that the average unit is small, and the actually cultivated area is smaller still. Such smallholdings were often found fragmented into several plots. Gilkes (1975:121) has also argued that the Ethiopian farmer, whether a tenant or a small freeholder, suffered from the size and fragmentation of his holdings. The MoA (1975a: 58-59) agricultural sample survey (1974/75) puts fragmentation “as a very serious problem in some regions of Ethiopia.” However, the survey results indicate that for the country, as a whole average parcel of holdings was 2.46. Forty percent of the holdings consist of one parcel while 19.6% of the total holdings consist of 4 and more parcels. The general argument forwarded towards the negative impact of such holding patterns on production was that fragmentation of land had high costs as time is wasted travelling from plot to plot, and it was not possible for the farmer to take advantage of even the smallest economies of scale. And, where total holdings were smaller than the optimum, the already pressing underemployment problem would be increased. It was also argued that smallholdings reduced access to credit that was needed to improve land or to obtain agro-technology. Table 2. Holdings by number of parcels

Holdings Total holdings (000 ha)

Number of parcels 1 2 3 4-5 6-9 10 and

aboveHoldings 4127 1650 1003 664 545 252 13% 100 40 24.3 16.1 13.2 6.1 0.3

MoA, 1975a: 59. 2.2.4. Land concentration and underutilization Studies also show that given the existence of many landlords, particularly in the south, there was concentration of land in few hands while there were many land-starved and landless at the same time. It was also found that given the nature of landlordism that existed, many of those big holdings were not utilized. Among the important measure, cited that led to land concentration was government land grants. The maximum size of holdings in gasha for the southern provinces of Illubabor, Sidamo, Shoa, and Keffa were 405, 180, 149, 135 respectively (MLRA, 1971) and in those communal areas average percentage of absentee owners was 26 and their land to total privately-owned area was 36. A study report on such idle lands pointed out many issues associated with the concentration and underutilization of land (Fesseha, 1970). It was found that available estimates on the proportions of actual cultivated to uncultivated arable land showed that by far a large percent of the country’s arable land had remained idle. It was mentioned that by far a higher percent (ranging from 74 to 83.4%) of the total arable land of the

country had remained uncultivated. The most important reason cited for such large idle lands was concentration of land under non-farming elites. Moreover it was argued that the presence of a high rate of absentee ownership was one of the reasons for such underutilization of land. This was the case especially in the central, south, and southwestern provinces where absentee owners constitute as high as 41.8% of all land owners in Illubabor ( Fesseha 1970:139). It was noted that in those areas held by absentee landlords, production in most instances, was nil or, at best, less than optimum. Moreover, absentee landlords were found reluctant to undertake capital investment on the lands, their major objective being one sided, mainly acquisition of the land. It was also argued that government land grant system was largely responsible for such concentration of land. Negatu (1970: 215) stated that among the problems associated with government land grants was that land was given as reward for its own sake and that some grantees used it, others sold it, and some others retained it for speculative purposes. He concluded that considerable areas of granted land had remained idle. It was found that land grants were made to patriots, exiles, patriot’s wives and their children, ex-civil servants, armed forces and police forces. Grants were made in such amounts as 5 gashas for captains; 5 gashas for lieutenants; 3 gashas for sergeants, and 2 gashas for officers of lower ranks. Cohen and Weintraub (1975) also indicated that out of all grants approximately 95% of the registered land grants and 75% of the unregistered land grants had gone to members of civil service, military and police, and national or provincial elites, whereas only 5% of the registered land grants and 25% of the unregistered land grants had gone to landless or unemployed citizens. Dessalegn (1984:34) explained that the landed aristocracy was one of the important social classes in the pre-revolution Ethiopia. He described members of this class as powerful, often absentee landlords, who held positions of high authority in the state apparatus, who owned vast tracts of land and engaged a vast “army” of tenants throughout the country. He noted that though a few among them had began to show interest in the more dynamic and more profitable mechanized agriculture towards the end of the 1960s, most of them were content to lease out their property to share-cropping cultivators, or to let them lie unused. At the same time Dessalegn mentioned that the most deprived sector of the rural population were the landless and cited an estimated figure of slightly over 400,000 such households in rural areas. Mesfin (1991) argued that there was inequity in the land tenure system under the Imperial regime. He stated that “In the whole country the proportion of peasants who owned some land was slightly more than 49% while nearly 39% were landless peasants” (p.82). He added that “the fundamental inequity of the land tenure system under the ancient regime was not only a problem of tenancy. That more than 61% of the peasant households cultivated only 26% of the land while only 18% of the landholds (sic) had 53% of the land was painful for most. That is the larger problem” (p.83). Fesseha (1970), for instance, suggested the following as the possible reasons as to why private owners (and these were largely those grantees) kept such lands

idle: incompatibility of the individual’s financial position with the size of the land, lack of technical capacity, lack of interest to be engaged in agriculture (as they might have other important sources of income), hoarding land for social prestige rather than economic importance, and holding land for speculative purposes. He also added that lack of mechanisms like progressive taxation to encourage full utilization of land had contributed to such concentration and underutilization. As a result, among other measures recommended after the land tenure study of MLRA in the late 1960s was the need for progressive taxation on those lands kept idle. 2.3. Summary The pre-1975 period land tenure had diversified forms throughout the country and this is noted as one if the causes that hindered any serious progress towards reforming the system. Rist/kinship, private, church, and government tenures are used in this study for the purpose of avoiding complications and making the discussion congruent with most literature on the subject. The rist/kinship tenure system was most prevalent in the northern part of the country while the private tenure was found in the rest of the country. At the same time government tenure was most prevalent in the lowland and pastoral areas of the country. Church tenure was associated with the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. The amount of land under each of those tenure systems was never known with a reasonable degree of precision. A good example is that church lands were estimated to constitute from 50 to mere 5 % of all lands. Rist system was characterized by the principle of acknowledging access to land (use rights and transfer rights without land alienation) by all those descendants of people from a common ancestor and in an ambilineal way. Reduced landlessness and tenancy was among the positive attributes of this system compared to the private tenure while diminution of holdings, land fragmentation and persistent litigation over land access were among its serious problems cited in the literature. With its Gult rights over those landholders, rist system had also been an important element mediating the control of the peasantry by the regime through those elites holding such rights. The private tenure was recognized as the most dominant system during the last days of the Imperial regime affecting some 60 % of peasants and 65 % of the country’s population. It was largely created by way of land granting by the crown to those members of the army who went from the north and those who were loyal to the regime in the conquered areas. Under this system land was sold and exchanged, but given that all the land was originally state property and that private holders had no absolute rights, it was different from the western concept of freehold system. Serious land concentration, exploitative tenancy, and insecurity have characterized the private tenure system. Government tenure reflected the predatory nature of the regime as it was established on those lands snatched from people in the pastoral and other areas of the country. Though not known with precision, it is indicated that nearly 47 % of all the land of the country and about 12 % of its agricultural land were held under this title. Under this tenure, land was used as a principal spoil of the then regime given as a reward to its political supporters. The land tenure system of the Imperial regime was largely considered as a hindrance to the country’s development in general. It was made the most important cause of political

grievances that led to the overthrow of the regime. Institutional inadequacy- lack of necessary legal framework, absolute arbitrary control of the land rights, and lack of land administration organizations- had characterized the Imperial Ethiopian Government’s land tenure system. Land concentration for political reasons in the hands of absentee land lords and its underutilization, unchecked and exploitative tenancy, tenure insecurity including arbitrary eviction, diminution and fragmentation of farm holdings, and other problems are noted as features of the Ethiopian land tenure system that hindered the development of agriculture in general and the economy as a whole. 3. LAND TENURE UNDER THE DERG REGIME 3.1. The 1975 land reform and abolition of diverse tenure The 1975 land reform of the Derg has been considered by many as a radical measure that has abolished the tenant-landlord relations in Ethiopia. The rural land reform proclamation (“Proclamation to Provide for the Public Ownership of Rural Lands”, No. 31/1975) stated that feudal lords had exploited the peasantry. It aimed at fundamentally altering the then agrarian relations and liberating the peasantry and making it owner of the fruits of its work; increasing agricultural production; creating employment; distributing land and increase rural income; and laying down the basis for the expansion of industry. The basic provisions of the proclamation include: public ownership of all rural lands; distribution of land to the tiller in provinces with privately owned rural land (art 4); prohibitions on transfer of use rights by sale, exchange, succession, mortgage or lease, except upon death and then only to the wife, husband, or minor children of the deceased or in their absence the children of the deceased who have achieved majority; and, in the case of communal lands, possessory rights over the land the peasants till at the time of the reform ( Art. 19). The power of administering land was vested in the Ministry of Land Reform and Administration (MLRA) through Peasant Associations at the grassroots level. The law provided ten hectare of land as maximum a family can possess. No able adult person was allowed to use hired labor to cultivate his holdings. There is a general consensus among many writers and observers that the land reform law was radical in its nature and content and that it was an appropriate measure to take. Teketel (1998) has concluded that there was no doubt that the Ethiopian land reform has basically abolished the legal, political, and economic power of the landed classes as a whole. On the other hand, it is not adequately known to what extent the reform has restructured (say for instance the average farm size peasants worked both as a tenant and as landholder) landholding among the peasantry itself at a country- wide level. Bruce et al (1993) also noted that the reform had a positive side. It abolished landlordism and the exploitation of the peasantry by the landed classes and redistributed available assets to the peasantry on a relatively equitable basis. They added that the reform has given rise to a uniformity of tenure throughout the country (with the exception of the areas in the periphery), thus doing away with the complexity of tenure

arrangements that in the past made rural development work difficult and time-consuming. All peasants were assigned usufruct rights over the land they cultivated. In addition some suggest that the land reform improved the standard of living (level of income) of the former tenants by the amount of the rent and other dues that they had to pay their landlords before the redistribution of land. In the former private land tenure areas, it is also asserted that land redistribution has eliminated rural unemployment by safeguarding the right of the former tenants to a source of income (Kidane, 1990). However many shortcomings of the land reform are also cited, though it seems that they could be related more to the general agrarian policies of the Derg than the land reform per se. Teketel (1998), for instance, argued that unlike in the tenancy areas, the land reform had not brought any immediate material benefit to the majority of the peasantry in the northern areas. Moreover, he added that the rigidities attached to the land reform such as the immobility of land and labor had important bearings on the peasantry in these famine-prone areas. Kidane (1990:114) in his analysis of a time series data concluded that no clear improvement of the country's agriculture has materialized as a result of the redistribution of land. He concluded that there was no general improvement of agricultural production attributable to the redistribution of land. Ethiopia's agriculture has continued to stagnate since the land redistribution. Then, regardless of the general assertion on the appropriateness of the initial (1975) land reform, many scholars argue that the land tenure system since then has badly affected the country’s agricultural production and sustainable land use (see Yigremew, 1999). According to Bruce, et al. (1993:2) the main shortcomings of the reform were the following: that the land reform forced peasants to engage in periodic redistribution of land to accommodate new claimants and new members of peasant associations with the net effect of leveling down and diminution of individual possessions; repeated redistribution gave rise to and exacerbated tenure insecurity among peasant households, which was perhaps the most damaging aspect of the reform; the socialization policies of the Derg, pursued with great haste and without peasant consent, further heightened peasant insecurity, and led to loss of incentives for land improvements or increased effort; and that the extractive programs of the Derg impoverished peasant households and extended and deepened rural poverty. Similar conclusions were made by the Ministry of Agriculture (1987) Achefer-Shebedino Study. The study noted that the growing population represented a severe pressure on land resources, with serious ecological consequences, including soil erosion and deteriorating standard of living. The explanations associated with the then land tenure problems were that in order to accommodate the ever-growing farming population, redistribution and allocation of farmland were being carried out in a desperate and hazardous way. The fragmentation and diminution of land as a result of redistribution and growing population had created a sense of insecurity among peasants. And as there were no limits to the scale of redistribution, and no minimum landholding size was set, redistributions had led to excessive diminution of plots.

Survey of the literature on the land tenure during the Derg regime (1975-1990) generally shows that diminution and fragmentation of holdings, tenure insecurity and all its consequences, land degradation, and inefficient allocation of land by way of restrictions on land transfer and to some extent lack of appropriate land use and administration are the most commonly cited problems. Many case studies and some large-scale ones illustrate these situations. The most important reason given for such problems was the continuous land redistribution practice of the government. 3.2. Land tenure problems 3.2.1. Diminution and fragmentation of holdings The Ministry of Agriculture (1987) Achefer-Shebedino study, carried out during 1984-1985 in two weredas, in Gojjam and Sidamo tried to demonstrate such a diminution process. The study seriously noted the problem of continuous redistributions which resulted in diminution of holdings. For instance the study mentioned that holding size of respondents from Achefer had dropped by almost 50% over a period of 10 years because of redistributions. The admonition made was that in the foreseeable future redistribution would, if unchecked, reduce peasant plots to uneconomic size. Table 3. Landholding by size Achefer, 1974 and 1984 Holding size in timad*

1974 1984 % of total holdings

% of respondents

% of total holdings

% of respondents

0 - 10.31 - -1-5 1.08 5.01 4.61 15.886-10 5.24 11.81 27.76 36.7011-15 9.94 13.48 35.61 30.0816-20 12.47 12.65 18.78 11.4921-25 17.00 14.00 8.00 3.9026-30 17.10 18.48 3.56 1.3931-35 10.00 4.85 1.68 0.5636-40 9.82 4.01 - -40-45 2.40 1.11 - -0ver 45 14.95 4.29 - -

Source: Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) (1987:67). * 1 timad is equivalent to 0.252 hectare. Those figures from the table were taken to clearly show the levelling down of holdings. In the process, the largest holdings and the landless have disappeared. A more exact measurement of the equity of landholding, the Gini coefficient, was noted to be 0.383 in 1974 and 0.288 in 1984 in Achefer showing that the redistribution had been

effective in fostering equity of holdings (a substantial reduction of inequality). The study also showed that in Achefer, both those who owned and those who rented their land in 1974 and earlier, had much less land during the study time than they ploughed before the land reform. It pointed out that there were feelings of insecurity among the majority of peasants. The major reason for insecurity in Achefer was fear of redistribution. In Achefer, since 1980 an average of five redistributions were carried out, and average holdings of the respondents have been reduced by as much as roughly 50% after the land reform. Some similar studies show that the average size of peasant holdings has diminished by far. Teketel (1998) has produced data showing nation-wide changes for a period of fourteen years (1974/75-1988/89). Table 4. Percentage Distribution of Number and Area of Operational Holdings

(1974/75 and 1988/890)

Size (hectares) 1974/75 1988/89 ChangesNumber Area Number Area Number Area

Up to 0.10 3.50 0.20 10.51 0.65 7.01 0.450.11-0.50 27.60 5.80 36.19 13.12 8.59 7.320.51-1.00 26.50 12.40 25.40 23.12 -1.10 10.721.01-2.00 23.40 22.30 20.16 35.22 -3.24 12.922.01-5.00 15.20 30.00 7.43 25.43 -7.77 -4.575.01-10.00 2.80 12.10 0.29 2.21 -2.51 -9.8910.0 & above 1.00 17.20 0.02 0.25 -0.98 -16.95Total 100 100 100 100

Source: Adapted from Teketel, 1998:160. The Table clearly shows that the majority of peasant households both in the pre-reform (57%) and in the post-reform period (72%), operated holdings of one hectare and less. The total number of this group of “mini-plot” holders increased substantially after the reform. On the other hand, the middle category (1.01-5.0) and holdings of 2 to 5 hectares together appear to have been strengthened after the land reform. A substantial change has occurred in the size category of above 5 hectares. In the pre-reform period (1974/75) households operating above 5 hectares constituted 3.8 % of households but held 29.3 percent of the total area. After the reform (1988/89) however this group of households constituted 0.31 percent of households and held only 2.6 percent of the total area. It is in this group therefore that a significant change has occurred indicating the levelling down effect of the land redistribution. It is also interesting to note that there were households in the post-reform period with holdings of above 10 hectares apparently “in contravention of the law”. (But it is insignificant, 0.02 and 0.25 % of households and operated area). Gizachew (1994) cited some instances that in some areas the average holding size was found much smaller like in the case of the previous Sidamo province where the average holding was reported to be 0.32 hectares.

Dessalegn (1994) stressed that farm plots were becoming too small throughout the country. In his words (P. 3): “ In the enset zone, for example, many family holdings are now too small to farm, while in parts of Northeast individuals work what may be termed ‘starvation plots’ ”. In his other work (1997) he also seriously underlined that Ethiopia’s agricultural system since the last three decades is a shift from a smallholder to a micro-agriculture. In micro-agriculture systems, he explains, households have insufficient basic capital assets and they are trapped in production for survival. Such systems are also not to progress anywhere but deteriorate as they do not produce wealth but survive by consuming their meager assets. These systems are also fragile as they collapse easily under minor pressures such as mild rainfall variability or moderate environmental stress. Dessalegn also argued that this “negative transformation” has been accelerated since the Revolution and mainly as a result of the post-Revolution land policy. The periodic redistribution of holdings was mentioned to be the main reason for such problems. Many researchers have indicated that diminution of holdings has many implications for agricultural development. One serious concern with this phenomenon is that given the level of farming technology in this country, peasants with such small holdings will not be able to produce enough food surplus for the market or even for their families. For example, Gizachew (1994) pointed out that a rough crude estimation of viable minimum economic holding size per household under low and moderate input levels of technologies was estimated to range from 6.50 hectares to 5.37 hectares respectively. Another group of six researchers (Mulat et al. 1998:5), after analyzing data from different surveys and field research, concluded that the average farm size of about one hectare for a family with approximately 5 persons was, at best, barely adequate for feeding household members. Another impact of smallholdings is related to the adoption of new agricultural technology. Low level of agricultural technology is one of the reasons frequently mentioned for low level of agricultural production and productivity in this country. Although sometimes “reluctance” of peasants is given as an excuse for not adopting new technologies, it is more associated with resource endowment than attitude. Here are some examples: Mulat et al. (1998) in their study on the determinants of fertilizer use concluded the most important factor explaining the quantity of fertilizer used per hectare is average farm size. As farm size increases, so does the intensity of fertilizer use. Small farms need help in intensifying their use of fertilizer in order to make broad based improvements in farm productivity. Frew and Shilema (1997) in their study on agricultural technology argued that tractors are uneconomical in fields that are less than two hectares and a field length of less than 200 meters and animal draught technology is recommended for a plot size of up to three hectares. They noted that animal power technology would be more efficient provided that it is supplemented with improved and efficient implements. The researchers’ analysis of results in experimenting with an improved plough shows that the main reason for peasants not accepting the improved plough was the small size of land which could easily be handled with the traditional maresha.

Fragmentation is also cited in the literature as a serious problem constraining agriculture in all periods under review. There are no national studies after the 1975 reform but around that time studies show some 23% of holdings with five and above number of plots in a province with the highest scale of fragmentation. However, the national average number of parcels (MoA 1975b:12) was reported to be 2.46. It was also noted in some case studies that fragmentation has been aggravated as a result of land redistribution mechanisms (Fassil, 1980; Mengistu and Sjoberg, 1994). Fassil (1980) in his study in Welmera wereda (1978), and in Ada wereda (1979), both in Shewa province, notes that there was fragmentation. The average number of parcels in Welmera wereda were 2.8. For Ada wereda the figures were 2.8 in 1975-76 and 3.0 in 1977-78. The average distances of those fragmented parcels from dwellings was 1.05 km for Ada and 1.06 km for Welmera wereda. The main reason for increasing fragmentation was additional allocation of land to an increasing family size. It was noted that fragmentation has created difficulties for farmers in terms of travel times and transportation of farm equipment and harvest. Mengistu and Sjoberg (1994) report findings from 1983-84 studies in Dejen wereda (Gojjam) and Welmera wereda (Shewa). They found that in general fragmentation has increased after the 1975 land reform. For example in Dejen wereda the percentage of those sampled households (200) having 3-4 parcels was 36.5 prior to the land reform and 62.5 after the reform. But at the same time the number of households having more than 4 parcels has decreased from 16.5% in the pre-reform time to 10.5% after the reform. A similar trend was also reported for Welmera wereda. The major causes of fragmentation mentioned include: the characteristic of the physical environment, livestock, population dynamism and implementation of land redistribution, the impact of agricultural producer cooperatives, and the settlement pattern. There are many causes for this but the one more associated with the redistribution is that peasants were allotted different plots from different areas for the sake of balancing soil fertility and agro-ecology of household holdings. Bruce et al. 1993 noted that land redistributions by peasant associations after 1975 did not do away with fragmentation. Often, lands with different quality were distributed by the peasant association (PA). The rigorously egalitarian ethos of the time usually required that the land of the peasant association be divided into several blocks of different quality, and each family receive some land within each block. As we will see later, this phenomenon was more fostered by a more radical type of land redistribution practice such as that carried out for implementing the land reform. Other reallocations since then generally did not reshuffle holdings in such manner. 3.2.2. Tenure insecurity and its impact In the literature, there are not many empirical studies on the impact of tenure insecurity on agricultural production and productivity as well as on land degradation. In his 1997 paper Dessalegn argued that peasants had little incentive to invest on the land and manage it properly since ones holdings could be transferred to others at any time. He added that security of tenure and efficient land use were sacrificed on the misguided

belief that redistribution would promote egalitarianism. Aklilu and Tadesse (1994: 15) concluded in the same way saying, “In relation to the land policy, we believe that the issue of tenure security is a critical one. We have learnt that the peasants tend to produce more if they assured, in no ambiguous way, not only the right of possession but also the right of ownership, with all its implications therein.” The MoA’s Achefer-Shebedino study noted that among respondents 82.7% in Achefer feel insecure of their present holdings. The major reason for insecurity in Achefer was fear of redistribution. The study noted that in Achefer an average of five redistributions were carried out within the time period following the 1975 land reform to that of 1984/85. Tenure insecurity was not a result of only a continuous redistribution of land. There was land eviction in many parts of the country in the name of villagization, resettlement, establishment of agricultural producers cooperatives, establishment of state farms and other policies. Although the government has succeeded in none of these policies, they had a tremendous effect on peasants’ production and lives. One single important large-scale study on causes of frequent re-allotments and sub-division of holdings was that conducted by the Ministry of Agriculture (1989). The study sample included 30 Awrajas, 87 weredas, and 171 rural kebeles of dega and woina dega areas. The study findings show that there were many reasons for subdivision and fragmentation of land during the Derg period. Villagization, cooperativization, expansion of state farms, land requirements for training and office construction by many government agencies and others are reported in the study. The amount of land used for such purposes was 2,043,023 ha, and the number of peasants made to change their plots (partially or wholly) was 1,967,944 (P.157). In addition, the study shows that the problem in the case of production cooperatives was not only peasant eviction but underutilization of land as well. Among the problems associated with this were that production cooperatives had been granted lands beyond their operational capacity and this has led to underutilization and unutilization of scarce lands. For instance the average holding of a member of agricultural producers cooperatives (APCs) was 1.61 ha exceeding the average peasant holding by 0.63 ha. According the 1989 MoA study, the major causes of land re-allotment (shigshig) included: expansion of state farms, establishment of APCs, establishment of different institutions and projects, villagization, expansion of towns, schools and adult training centers. And the major causes of land sub-division (shinshena) were land redistribution (dilldil), land re-allotment (shigshig), allocation of land to new households and other applicants, and peasants’ interest to cultivate different crops at different locations. Additional causes of shigshig and shinshena included absence of land use and land administration policies, absence of population policy, absence of livestock policy, absence of detailed guidelines for the implementation of land related legislations, and multiplicity of decision-making bodies on landholding issues (for instance PA, MoA, political cadres, administrators, plan offices). The study mentioned that those negative impacts of shigshig and shinshena included: increasing litigations over land, lack of tenure security, diminution of holdings (in 1977

E.C. average peasant holding was 0.98 ha but the required size of holdings for subsistence of a family was found to be 1.53 ha (MoA 1989:47)), lack of interest in growing perennial crops, lack of interest in keeping land fertility, inefficient use of working time, difficulties in looking after crops, cultivation of marginal lands, unemployment, decrease in livestock holdings, difficulties in conducting extension services, lack of investment on land, and loss of arable land because of increased boundaries between plots. Regarding the impacts of such insecurity, it is argued in the literature that the redistributive land policy, which is blamed for diminution of holdings and farm plots and all their consequences, is also found contributing to the phenomenon of land degradation. In the process of attempting to accommodate new claimants for land, communal grazing lands were redistributed for farming, and in the face of large number of livestock, this has again led to overgrazing and other mismanagement of the already minimal grazing lands. It was also mentioned that the process has resulted in overusing the steep degraded lands, and abandoning some of the traditional soil management practices (Gizachew 1994). Yared (1995) observed in his fieldwork that the process of redistribution has resulted in changes in land use in that a fair amount of fallow land has been brought under cultivation. Many farmers have also abandoned the practice of periodic fallowing of land. Teferi (1995) has also noted the same observations from field research in North Shewa and Southern Wollo. He reports the views of his informants that repeated redistribution has made individuals take less interest in investing on land. One important manifestation of this impact was observed in crop rotation. Peasants’ decision on what to plant on a peace of land was determined by what they would plant in the next four years. Anticipating production of more valued crops like teff and wheat in the future on a potentially fertile plot, farmers in a given year plant less valued but nitrogen-fixing plants such as peas, chickpeas, and beans. He observed (p. 29) that “When they are not sure of keeping the same plot for the coming crop years, however, they focus only on immediate returns. ... No farmer wants to take the risk of losing his plot in redistribution before earning the maximum possible. The harmful effect of uncertainty is even more pronounced in respect of manuring, tree planting, terracing, and other similar conservation measures.” 3.2.3. Inefficient allocation of land It is noted that as transfers of rights on land were largely blocked, (such as transfer by way of sale, mortgage, lease, and other rental arrangements), land could not be allocated where it was most efficiently utilized. Redistributive policies were partially based on equity considerations and this has hampered productivity and production, as many of those new possessors may not properly utilize land. It is well known that poor farmers may not have the necessary means of production like traction power and even inputs like seeds and labor. Those industrious and enterprising peasants may then be denied access to land which otherwise would have utilized it more efficiently. Surplus food production could not be achieved with such technological conditions and size of holdings and

without mechanism of transferring land for better production and productivity. The MoA Achefer Shebadino (1987) study mentions such kind of complaints made by peasants in Achefer wereda. In his 1997 paper Dessalegn argued that security of tenure and efficient land use were sacrificed on the misguided belief that redistribution would promote egalitarianism and that the legal prohibition of land transfers had meant that the consolidation of plots and the more efficient use could not be undertaken. 3.2.4. Inadequate land administration Under the 1975 land reform the power of administering land was vested in the Ministry of Land Reform and Administration (MLRA) through peasant associations at the grassroots level. However, later on some of the land administration responsibilities were given to the Ministry of Agriculture. Peasant associations were established by the same land reform law and had played decisive role in implementing the land reform. They were at first democratic and important institutions. However, later on, they were striped off their autonomy and effectively incorporated in the government machinery. What followed was that land administration, especially the practice of land redistribution, was more abused by the local politicized forces including Peasant Association officials. Land laws were not adequately provided which could have resulted in ensuring peasant rights by ways of regulating land rights. Different land administration guidelines, coupled with absence of competent and able government agency responsible for land issues, have resulted in arbitrary and high-handed land administration by local authorities and even political cadres. Peasants were evicted from their possessions in the name of redistribution or other government interventions arbitrarily and without adequate compensation. The MoA (1989) study showed that lack of policies on land use and administration was among causes of subdivision and continuous reallocation of holdings. There was no land use policy, no policy on obligations of land users, and no minimum limit of holdings for a household. Lack of an institution vested with land administration duties resulted in mis-utilization of land for different purposes and by different organizations, lack of policy and incentives to encourage the development of land in less favorable agro-ecological zones leading to concentration of agricultural activities in dega and woina dega agro-ecologies (88% of the rapidly-growing population living in these areas). Lack of policy on livestock development which has led to overgrazing and less productivity of animal products. Bruce et al. (1993) also noted the issue of local politics indicating that one of the most common complaints concerning access to land, aside from the absolute shortage of land, was that land was not divided "fairly" under the Derg. That "unfair" division was attributed to the fact that peasant association officials favored their friends and kinsmen and those who gave them bribes with more or better quality land. The case of production cooperatives taking the best land for their members was also mentioned.

Discussions with previous Peasant Association leadership and review of archives in West Gojjam on the allocation of land for different purposes by different authorities shows the same case of snatching peasant possessions by different authorities (Yigremew, 2000). The case study shows that kebele land was arbitrarily snatched from peasants for different purposes. The farm and grazing lands of the kebele measuring approximately 155 ha were taken from the community and individual possessors and allocated to different purposes including construction of offices, training centers, stores, churches; revenue generation for mass organizations and churches; and villagization, conservation, and nursery sites. However this does not include huge amount of land taken from the individual peasants and given to a production cooperative society. Interestingly, it was found that there were many authorities involved in the decision-making process on land in the study kebele mentioned above. For instance, wereda administration, wereda peasant association, kebele administration, political cadres, wereda villagization task force were among such decision-makers. In some cases like allocation of land for church revenue, some elected elders were also involved and the issue had to be approved by the community at large. There was no consultation with the rural kebele leadership in confiscating land for urban-related activities like construction of offices. The wereda administration simply informs the kebele about its decisions and instructs it to compensate those peasants whose land was taken by giving land in other places. However, many of those peasants were not compensated, as there was not enough land to do so. The processes of villagization, establishment of agricultural production cooperatives, afforestation and other conservation measures have shown that no specific organization was entrusted with land use regulations and administration and land allocation decisions were made by local political cadres and administrators without due regard to the rights of peasants and the economic implications of such decisions. 3.3. Summary Given the appreciation of problems that existed in the land tenure system under the Imperial regime, changes were not unexpected to accompany the political upheaval of the 1974 Revolution. Since the 1960s, it was felt that the tenure system had serious problems that needed specific measures. Land reform laws including in areas of tenancy, taxation, administration, and other important tenure issues were already under consideration. The Revolution expectedly brought about the 1975 land reform. That reform was considered radical, by way of it all lands were made state property and individuals were given free access to land in the form of usufruct rights but not alienable by ways of sale, exchange, or mortgage. It abolished the landlord-tenant relations and the political as well as economic power of the landed class. However, the reform law was also restrictive in such a way that the pillars of property rights-transferability and security were constrained. It provided the monopoly of land ownership to the state and limited rights to use only. Even use rights were not permanently transferable, as they could not be sold, exchanged, mortgaged and even not leased except in particular circumstances. Limited number of those rights and lack of detailed provisions about their enforcement and administration also meant that the reform law had not adequately addressed the issue of insecurity.

Inappropriateness of land tenure under the Derg was, however, much more exacerbated by many of its policies and administration following the already constrained land rights under the land reform law. Lack of adequate institutional framework (both in terms of necessary legislations and organizations), periodic land redistributions, peasant arbitrary evictions in the name of rural development programs (such as villagization, establishment of agricultural production cooperatives, environmental conservation, and others), among others, have resulted in perpetuating many of those critical economic problems of the Imperial land tenure system. Land laws were not adequately provided and different land administration guidelines coupled with absence of competent and able government agency responsible for land issues, have resulted in arbitrary and high-handed land administration by local authorities and even political cadres. As a result, peasants could not had a feeling of tenure security in their holdings. This is noted by some people as resulting in lack of incentive by peasants in investing in land and managing land properly. Periodic and unplanned land redistributions are also mentioned among the causes of diminution and fragmentation of holdings. In the literature the results of such a process have been noted as exacerbating peasant poverty and vulnerability, hindering adoption of modern technologies and land degradation. Moreover, legal and practical restrictions in land transfer rights to better-off hands, anti-smallholder attitude of the government that favored state farms and production cooperatives, coupled with other rural policies and activities that exacerbated tenure insecurity had resulted in misallocation and underutilization of land and other resources. For instance, it was found that regardless of all priorities and privileges given to production cooperatives (mostly at the cost of peasant holders) they were found largely less productive than peasant farms. On the other hand, like what happened during the Imperial regime, access to land used to be a mechanism of reward to those supporters of the regime and its arbitrary administration has led to corruption and favoritism at the local level. As a result of all this, land tenure issues remained one of the causes of the country’s development problems in general, and food insecurity and land degradation in particular. 4. THE CURRENT LAND TENURE SYSTEM AND THE LAND DEBATE 4.1. The current land tenure system Immediately after the downfall of the Derg, nobody was certain what course the new government would take regarding land tenure. The Transitional Government itself had declared that the issue of private versus public ownership would be settled in the process of developing the new federal constitution. When the new federal constitution came out, the issue was settled in favor of public ownership of land. Then, like the Derg, the present government maintained the state ownership of land. In the 1995 constitution Art 40 (which is about property rights) it is provided that “The right to ownership of rural land and urban land, as well as of all natural resources is

exclusively vested in the state and in the Peoples of Ethiopia. Land is a common property of the Nations, Nationalities and peoples of Ethiopia and shall not be subject to sale or other means of exchange” (Sub. Art. 3). Sub Art. 4 also states that “Ethiopian peasants have right to obtain land without payment and the protection against eviction from their possession.” Another important provision about property rights (Sub Art. 7) says that “Every Ethiopian shall have the full right to the immovable property he builds and to the permanent improvements he brings about on the land by his labor or capital. This right shall include the right to alienate, to bequeath, and, where the right of use expires, to remove his property, transfer his title, or claim compensation for it.” The constitution also states (Art. 51) that the Federal Government shall enact laws for the utilization and conservation of land and other natural resources. Art. 52 also states that Regional Governments have the duty to administer land and other natural resources according to federal laws. Such law was enacted in July 1997 - “ Rural Land Administration Proclamation, No. 89/1997.” This law vested Regional Governments with the power of land administration (defined as “the assignment of holding rights and the execution of distribution of holdings” (Art. 2 Sub Art. 6). Holding rights were also defined as “the right any peasant shall have to use rural land for agricultural purposes as well as to lease and, while the right remains in effect, bequeath it to his family member; and includes the right to acquire property thereon, by his labor or capital, and to sell, exchange and bequeath same” (Art 2 Sub Art. 3). The rural land law has also provisions on distribution of holdings: Art. 2, Sub Art. 4 defines distribution of holdings as “a rural land allocation measure taken at intervals, upon decision of the community, with a view to assigning holding rights in a fair and proportionate manner as well as to demarcating land for communal use by peasants.” Art 6 Sub Art. 1 also provides that distribution of holdings is the only way through which peasants lose their holdings. According to this law, a land administration law enacted by each regional council shall, among other things, “ensure free assignment of holdings, without differentiation of the sexes; as well as secure against eviction and displacement from holdings against any grounds other than total or partial distribution of holdings, etc.”. It can be argued that at least up to now, there are no fundamental differences between the legal framework of the Derg and the present government on rural land issues. Moreover, if those policy changes made by the Derg following its mixed economy version are taken into consideration, there is more continuity than change. Land leases, commercial farms, temporary halt regarding land redistribution, villagization, production cooperatives, and other similar changes were already introduced by the Derg. Not only officially stated policies but also what has been taking place on the ground is also more important. In practical aspects as well, there are more similarities in land administration between the two regimes than differences (see Dessalegn, 1997; Yigremew, 1997, 1999; Mekonnen, 1999; Ege, 1997; Hoben, 2000). However, land administration has now been a de-concentrated function of regional governments and its control has become more directly under political bodies than

technical ministries. Land redistribution practices which were halted by the Derg since 1989 have been started under the present government. Land laws have also provisions on it also in some regions it seems that no more redistributions are anticipated (for instance in Tigray). As per the delegation of the authority of land administration to the regions, regional governments enact different laws on land administration, land utilization, taxation, and other related policies. Two cases are in point. Tigray Regional government has promulgated Rural Land Use Law in 1997 (Proclamation No. 23/89). This law asserts that land redistributions done by the local administration prior to the proclamation are final. It allows land rentals by the holders with a maximum period of two years for traditional farming and ten years for farming using non-traditional technologies, but prohibits land rentals for indefinite period of time. Land administration is vested in the councils throughout the hierarchy and will be done according to the guidelines provided by the Executive Committee of the Regional Council. Use rights are life-long and can be transferred through inheritance to children and to parents. Sub-divisions below one-fourth of a hectare are prohibited. Holding rights also depend on residence in the kebele in that those who have abandoned their kebele for more than two years will lose their holdings. Such lands will be allotted to those who did not get land before. Exception to this are those who have received rural land during the last redistribution though they now live in towns and those ex-fighters under Tigrian Peoples Liberation Front / TPLF who are currently members of the armed forces, are engaged in other activities, or are deceased. Similarly the Amhara Regional government has passed two land laws since 1996. One is on land redistribution (Proclamation on the Re-allotment of the Possession of Rural Land No. 16, 1996 and its amendment), which was implemented in some areas of the region and the other is the law on “Rural Land Administration and Use” provided in 2000. The 1996 land redistribution law (“Re-allotment of the Possession of Rural Land”) and its implementation has been the subject of some detailed case studies (Yigremew, 1997, 2000b; Ege, 1997, Teferi 1997). As per what was stated in the law, the rationale was readjusting the unbalanced possession of rural land created as a result of grabbing land by officials of the Derg in the rural areas. It was also noted as part of the measures taken to do away with oppressions by the Derg regime, and to make the peasants beneficiaries of the region’s rapid economic change. The scope of application of the policy was limited to those areas of the Amhara Region which were not under the control of EPRDF before the fall of the Derg. The proclamation also prohibited land possession by peasants outside their residential kebele. As per the proclamation, the regional council was vested with the power of issuing policies and directives necessary for the implementation of the proclamation. Accordingly, plans, policies, and guideline, have been prepared by the council and were disseminated throughout the administrative hierarchy. The proclamation also provided for the payment of compensation for the fruits of land to the previous possessors by the new possessors of the land. Later on, a guideline was provided from the Regional Council on how to effect the compensation and payments

and all those alleged bureaucrats and feudal remnants were not entitled to such compensation. In the case of the 1996 land redistribution of the Amhara Region, social equity consideration of the land redistribution with the head count as a basic criterion had not been most important and was replaced by a political criterion. According to the land reallocation policy, peasants were stratified into five social categories: “bureaucrats”, “remnant feudal”, rich peasants, middle peasants, and poor peasants. Redistribution was then carried out using such political criteria in such a way that regardless of their family size, all those so-called “bureaucrats” and “remnant feudal” were allowed to hold a maximum of only one hectare of land while the other categories were allowed to have up to three hectares. Many points were raised regarding the policy and its implementations. It was known that it has preceded the 1997 Federal land law (which was to guide regional land policies according to the constitutional provisions), it had political objectives rather than social and economic ones, its implementation was secretive and the whole process was highly politicized. From preliminary studies it was also found that the results of the policy were largely tenure insecurity, land degradation, holding diminution, and negative results on production and land utilization (Mekonnen, 1999; Yigremew, 1997, 2000b; Hoben, 2000).

The Amhara region land law on “Rural Land Administration and Use” provided in 2000 is an example of the new regional issues on land policy. The proclamation acknowledges three types of holding arrangements, viz. private, communal, and state. Any person living in rural areas of the region whose age is 18 and above years is said to have access to the necessary agricultural land freely. Land can be transferred to family members by ways of inheritance or gift. In addition to farm households, the law provides the right to use land to mass organizations, religious institutions, governmental organizations, non-governmental organizations, and as well as private investors. It also provides landholders’ with the right to rent out their holdings, and to transfer land by way of inheritance to those who are caring for the holder. It is stated that people who will lose their holdings for public purposes will be compensated. The law does not rule out redistribution but provides conditions for it. It is provided that land redistribution will not be carried out unless it is proved it will not hamper productivity; it is supported by the society, supported by study and decided by law. However, it states that land without legitimate claimant will be allotted to those landless and those with smaller holdings. A group of land tenure specialists from universities (local and abroad), had made an assessment of rural land tenure issues in Ethiopia after the fall of the Derg (Bruce, et al. 1993). The major issues indicated in the study include: that there were many people considered as landless by their community; inheritance, sharecropping, cash rentals, disguised land sales, and possessory mortgage (antichresis) have also been important means of having access to land; the land rights of ethnic and religious minorities as well as those of re-settlers have become a problem; in areas where there were no recent land redistributions many were anticipating it; land fragmentation and subdivision had not

been tackled by the land policies of the Derg; and that there was commitment by the government to promoting large-scale private investment in agriculture.

Many others also seem to conclude that there are problems with the current land tenure system. From his recent studies in Amhara, Oromia and Tigray regions,Tekie (2000a) found that there is an insecurity problem in the current rural land tenure system. In his conclusion (p.103) he noted that “ … the government is faced with only one imperative policy option: a movement away from the existing insecure tenure system towards a more stable and secured one.” Tekie (2000b) also pointed out that tenure, “defined in terms of years that the farming household had user rights on a given plot, is positively and significantly related to farmers’ probability of participating in soil conservation activity…” (p.26). He concluded that tenure and insecurity variables are very important in determining the decision to invest or not to invest on soil conservation. “Thus, a policy environment that guarantees the security of land occupancy by farmers, viz, reduces future uncertainty in holdings, could help in generating the right incentives for combating the threats of soil erosion” (p. 30). In a symposium organized by Inter-Africa Group (1992: 6-7)it was concluded: “There was a consensus that the current system, because it does not guarantee security of tenure and undermines incentives, has detrimental effects on agricultural productivity and natural resource conservation.” Another scholar also concluded that “… current land policy does not give farmers secure rights over the land they use, does not maintain equitable access to land over time, does not provide incentives for investment in improvements or conservation, and does not encourage farmers’ entrepreneurial and experimental efforts to better their lot. From a policy perspective, it does not foster agricultural intensification, improved environmental management, accretional capital formation, or rural development” (Hoben, 2000:7). 4.2. The current debate on land tenure 4.2.1. The debate Rural land policy has remained one of the sources of disagreement and focus of debate among politicians, academicians and other concerned parties in Ethiopia. This is not surprising given the agrarian nature of the economy and the role of land even in the social and political history of the country. The rural land tenure system has been considered as one of the critical elements in Ethiopia’s development during the Imperial and the Derg times and now as well. During the transition period of the current regime, when the government had not yet defined its policy on rural land, much concern was shown by different sections of the society as well as by international agencies and the issue had been the focus of debate. Later on, the ruling party made it clear that the policy on land was to continue more or less on the same lines to that of the Derg’s policies: land ownership remained vested in the state and this was enshrined in the 1995 constitution and peasants and pastoralists have been granted usufruct rights. Moreover, the government stipulated in its major policy documents that rural land redistribution will continue as deemed necessary.

An assessment of such land debate in present day Ethiopia (Yigremew, 2001a) shows that there is a focus on ownership issues and a dichotomy of views on state versus private ownership. Political parties, the press, scholars, donors, and other parties are involved in such debate. There is not yet a thorough study made on this issue though there are some attempts made (Dessalegn, 1992; 1994; Gebru, 1998; Yigremew, 2001a; Inter-Africa Group, 1992).

As indicated in the introduction, the current debate on the land issue focuses on ownership and on private-state dichotomy. State ownership of land has been strongly advocated by the ruling party and some other students in the field while private ownership is favored by western economic advisors, international organizations like The World Bank (WB 1992), many opposition political parties and some scholars as well.

Generally, the arguments towards those positions are well-established elsewhere and not peculiar to Ethiopia. Those pro-state ownership (mainly the ruling party) argue that private ownership will lead to concentration of land in the hands of a few who have the ability to buy, to eviction of the poor peasants, landlessness, and rural-urban migration of the same peasants who are left without any alternative means of livelihood. In some cases the issue becomes part of the political ideology and an issue of “class alliance”, at times it is given an ethnic dimension, and some cite the pre-revolution situation of landlord-tenant relations and warn that privatization will bring such an order back. Here are few examples of such arguments forwarded: Gebru (1998:9), argues against privatization saying:

... privatization of land will create a massive eviction of peasants and the displacement of pastoralists. Landless and poor peasants, who comprise the overwhelming majority of the rural population, will be the first victims of that policy. Moreover, the pre-reform landlords, who battened on the meager ‘surplus’ produced by the peasants, mostly tenants, will now be replaced by ‘capitalist’ farmers who will alienate small peasants from their land.

Gebru cited empirical evidence where a limited penetration of capital in the central and southern parts of the country caused massive misery to peasants and tenants. His worries also have a nationality dimension in that in the experience mentioned above, “The victims of the onslaught of the penetration of capital were peasants and pastoralists from the oppressed nationalities. It gave rise to the exacerbation of the oppression and exploitation of peasants and pastoralists of those nationalities.” With that horror in mind, he expressed his fear saying: “Should the same thing be allowed to happen again because capital covets to swallow their plots of land?” (p. 10). Fantu (1994: 139-40) is another scholar who argues on the same lines. His argument is that given the country’s meager industrial base and limited opportunities for non-agricultural pursuits, land is the only productive asset available to the majority of the rural population and stresses the utmost importance of its equitable distribution. He also warns “the commoditization of land would turn the clock back to the situation before the 1974 revolution. It would bring back the former landlords, open up the possibility of

large-scale peasant evictions and thus create a massive influx of pauperized and destitute migrants into the towns”. He even notes that measures should be included in the legislation to prevent future inequalities emerging. On the other hand, many of those political parties that are in opposition to the current ruling party have opted for private ownership of land. There are also some scholars supporting this position. One issue commonly noted by those political parties is the issue of peasants’ unrestricted economic rights on land including the right to sell. Those who scholarly argue towards this anti-state land ownership position do, implicitly or explicitly, also support this argument. The issues of tenure insecurity and all its economic consequences are also emphasized. However, their argument is more informed by the past experience of the country in state ownership of land than other normative theoretical issues. They stress the need for constraining the controlling power of the government on the peasantry by way of land ownership and all its other consequences. In this line, there are arguments, for instance, that since the 1975 land reform, Ethiopian peasants have become “tenants of the state” (see for instance Teketel, 1998; Mesfin, 1999; Dessalegn, 1992). There are arguments that the 1975 land reform has “...replaced the landlord with the state, providing the latter direct and unencumbered access to the peasantry” (Dessalegn, 1992:47). Another scholar also contended that the Derg made itself the owner of the land transforming Ethiopia from a country of semi-ristholder [and semi-tenant] to a country of all tenants (Mesfin, 1999:12).

Economic concerns have also been reflected in such arguments. The most pronounced problem of such a system is noted as tenure insecurity and all its consequences and has led commentators to suggest the following. It is argued that the government needs to re-instate the principle of private ownership of land, and affirm the right of peasants to hold their plots as private property with clear title deeds. “The only way peasant confidence will be restored, and insecurity of tenure abolished thus enabling peasants to take their land as their assets and to work it with great effort, is if peasants are assured that no one can take their land from them.” This was noted as particularly important in the light of the experience of the last fifteen years. (Dessalegn, 1992:53). Elsewhere he underlined that “ … freehold is the best means of ensuring absolute tenure security. Security of holding and pride of possession will restore peasant confidence which has been shattered by fifteen years of state ownership and socialist agrarian policies under the Derg. Freehold will provide strong incentives to peasants to invest on their land, and will make land transactions easier and more efficient.” (Dessalegn 1994:12). Mesfin (1999) has also pointed out that the economic impact of such state ownership was making it difficult to the peasant to develop the productivity of the land and his labor as he has seen the land does not belong to him and that it can be taken away by the state whenever necessary.

In a symposium on The Ethiopian economy it was reported that there was a consensus that the current system, because it does not guarantee security of tenure and undermines incentives, has detrimental effects on agricultural productivity and natural resource conservation. But, no consensus was reached as to whether or not the solution was to be found in the privatization of land. Those who argued for privatization maintained that: i) only private ownership will ensure security of tenure and provide the peasant

with the incentives necessary to make investments and long-term improvements on the land and, ii) one cannot move towards a market economy while keeping land-the most vital means of production in an agricultural economy-outside the operation of the market (Inter-Africa Group, 1992:6-7).

The ruling party’s and other people’s argument that if peasants are given unrestricted land rights, then they will sell their lands and they will become landless is judged as unfounded and if it happens in extraordinary situations, it is not considered as disastrous as has been argued by those who are against it (Dessalegn, 1992:53; 1999:10; Mesfin 1999:13). Dejene (1999:45) has noted:

The view that the state will prevent excessive concentration of land amongst the rich and prevent the dispossession of the poor by imposing restrictions on the ownership or transfer of land has been challenged … The equity concerns of governments could, if they are genuine, be met through appropriate policy instruments such as the specification of farm-size ceilings without inhibiting land market. Unnecessary restrictions may deny efficient farmer access to farmland and would contribute to underutilization of available land.

As mentioned above, Dessalegn (1997) has seriously noted that the country’s land tenure system has long been the major cause of problems of Ethiopia’s agriculture. Inappropriate land policy, mainly through its element of continuous land redistribution, has changed the country’s agricultural system towards production for survival, vulnerability, deterioration, and a fragile system. 4.2.2. Some queries about the debate In his study on the current land debate Yigremew (2001a) has raised some queries on the issues raised above. He noted that it was somewhat ironical, particularly for an external observer, that first, regardless of a market economy policy of the new regime land remained under state ownership, and second, that the “constitutionally resolved” issue of land ownership has continued to be a source of hot debate even among political parties. Then he pointed out some of the issues not well addressed by the “debate” on the land issue: (i) there was a total absence of the opinions and interests of the peasants and nomadic pastoralists in the discussions on rural land tenure; (ii) could the form of ownership serve as a guarantee of having respected land rights (as argued by supporters of each type of ownership)? (iii) why a fight over a single tenure arrangement? Would it not be rather important to have a combination of different tenure arrangements wherever necessary? (iv) given the economic situation of the peasantry and experiences in some countries, is not there a potential danger of dispossession of peasants by way of land transactions? (v) could the horror of land sale justify state ownership, i.e., are not there other administrative mechanisms of constraining dispossession? (vi) are food production and long-term growth given due consideration in the argument towards large-scale/modern farm production by those proponents of individualized land rights? (vii) are

implications for long term social and political stability considered in those suggested options? and (viii) are there adequate explanations as to the proper functioning of the market in the Ethiopian situation? 4.3. The case of rural women* Though rural women in general constitute half of the population and the labor required, and manage about 35-40 % of the land in Ethiopia (Addis, 2000:15-16), they are found at a disadvantageous position in many respects. Some studies and government documents show that rural women in general and female-headed households in particular have less access to and less control over land and other productive resources (see, for example, Dejene, 1994, 1999; Bruce et. al. 1993; Yigremew, 1997, 1999, 2001; Etenesh, 1999; Yared, 1997; Frank, 1999; Hadera, 1999; Addis, et. al. 1998; Zenebework and Yared, 2000; TGE, 1993; Ali, 2000;). Rural women in general, and female-headed households in particular are found to have less access to such a crucial productive resource. Aspen’s (1993) study showed that, regardless of their smaller proportion, female-headed households accounted for 50 percent of the total landless peasant households. Another study (Etenesh, 1999) conducted in Ada wereda shows that the average farm size of male and female-headed households was 2.35 and 1.6 hectares respectively. Dejene’s (1994) findings in his study in east and west Shewa show the same pattern of holdings. Among 1,415 rural households where 313 (22 %) were women, mean size of holdings was 0.7 and 0.55 hectares for male and female-headed households respectively. Bruce, Hoben, and Dessalegn (1994) in their observation on the land policies of the country since the 1975 land reform concluded that . . . “ it does not appear that land reform improved women’s access to land ” and that “ women remained disadvantaged in regard to using their land”. It was also Yared’s (1994) finding in North Shewa that female-headed households had less land and as they did not possess other necessary resources, they did not cultivate the land themselves but rented it out to others. A World Bank (1998:24-25) study mentions that in the Amhara Region while 80 % of the female heads of household had less than 2 hectares of land and 5 % had between 2 and 4 hectares, 57 percent of men have less than 2 hectares and 31% have between 2 and 4 hectares. In South Wello, in two communities it was found that 51.7 % of female-headed households had holdings of 0.25 to 0.5 hectares while only 10% of male-headed households had this size of holdings. But, in the largest holding category of 1.0 -1.25 hectare, the proportion was 5 % and 30 % for female and male-headed households respectively (Ali, 2000). The existing literature indicates that the disadvantages experienced by rural women in Ethiopia in terms of access and control of land are varied and complex. These include, among others, the gender division of labor, patriarchal systems working against women, limited membership in peasant associations, smaller size of women’s households, gender biases of local officials’, and lack of access to critical resources and services. Though ambilineal patterns are the norm in grain-producing highland communities of Ethiopia the real access to family resources and residential and other practices

resembles more of a patriarchal system. Such a practice prevailing in the grain-producing highland regions of Ethiopia is noted as one cause of women’s limited access to land. Land in general is allocated to the family jointly but registered in the name of the household head. But men are household heads in a household of married couples (and this was not only traditional but also statutory as it was institutionalised by the legal provision in the Civil Code of the country since 1960s). The common practice of household residential location is also a patrilocal system where wives go to the residential areas of their husbands. But at the same time land policies still now dictate that access to land depends on ones residential area This situation has many implications for women’s access to land. First, the fact that land is registered in the name of the husband and not the wife weakens women’s claim in general and in the case of divorce in particular. Second, as access to rural land by peasants depends on one’s residence in a given territorial jurisdiction (peasant association and now kebele Administration), women forfeit their chances of having access to land whenever they go to their husbands’ locations or leave their previous residence after they divorce or become widow. Moreover, as they are expected to go to their husbands’ residence, unlike sons, daughters usually miss out from the allocation of land by the family as well. In general, young women, divorced women and even sometimes widowed women without children are considered as transients and not permanent dwellers of a given area as a result of which they are not given due attention in land allocation. Another disadvantage of rural women occurs for the reason that they had limited membership in Peasant Associations (kebele administrations). Since 1975, and now land policies in Ethiopia have stipulated that access to rural land depends on ones residence within the territorial jurisdiction of a given peasant association as well as membership in such association. In practice, the head was registered as a member representing the household. Women become members of peasant associations in their own names only when they become heads of households. In addition, it is necessary to possess land in order to get the attention of peasant association orkebele officials. As a result the participation of women in membership to rural kebeles was weak and this has affected their claim to land. Women were also disadvantaged because they usually had smaller family size as female-headed households. During the Derg regime family size was one important criterion for reallocating land to peasants. It was then found that peasants with larger family size used to have better access to farmland. Generally, female-headed households were found having fewer members in resulting in a disadvantageous position in the allocation of land. Given a great deal of similarities and continuity of land tenure policy and practices between the Derg and the present regime, it does not seem that women are better-off now than before. Of course, nowadays, in this country, the issue of women’s equality has become the language of the day more than ever before. All important government documents from the constitution to environmental policy have given special attention to women. By 1993, the government has even provided the first national policy on Ethiopian women. There is also an effort towards establishment of many women’s affairs offices throughout the government structure. Donor agencies, NGOs, and other

development partners as well have shown a heightened interest in this respect. The 1995 Federal Constitution (Art. 7) provides that “ Women have the right to acquire, administer, control, use and transfer property. In particular, they have equal rights with men with respect to use, transfer, administration and control of land. They shall also enjoy equal treatment in the inheritance of property.” More claims are also made by those officials that women have been beneficiaries in land redistributions done after the Derg (see Yigremew (1997) for the case of the 1997 land redistribution of the Amhara Region). However, it does not seem that women’s access and control of land has been improved much. In the case of the 1997 land redistribution micro-level studies (for instance, Yigremew 1997, 1999) found that women (and these are largely household heads) had been given land in more or less equal shares to that of men. For example, it was found that in one Kebele out of those 306 women who applied for land 199 (65 %) got some while the rest 107 (35 %) did not get any. The percentage for men is 69 and 31 respectively. The male-female ratio of applicants in percentage was 62 to 38 and those who got land was 60 to 40. On the average women were allotted 0.52 hectares while men got 0.49 hectare of land. In another study of two rural kebeles, the outcomes of the redistribution were that on the average men were given 0.41 hectare while women were given 0.47 hectares of land.

However, access to land and its utilization are not limited to and guaranteed by land redistribution practice alone. As a result, it was found that after two years of land redistribution (in July-August 1999), the male-headed households have augmented their holdings while female-headed ones had even lost some of their allotted plots. Table 5 shows that although women had, on the average, received relatively larger size of land during the land redistribution in the final analysis, after two years, they were found having less holdings (about 56% of men’s holdings). Table 5. Total average landholding (hectare) in 1999 and means of acquisition

Means of acquisition Men WomenAcquired by way of the 1996/97 redistribution 0.41 0.47Acquired after the redistribution & by other means 0.48 0.03Total average holding 0.89 0.5

Source: Figures taken from Yigremew (2001:27) The reason why women had smaller holdings than men despite better treatment of women than men during the initial redistribution was that men had better access to land in the form of inheritance, gifts, rental and other mechanisms than women. Moreover, it was found that some women had lost their plots given during the redistribution either by way of denial by previous holders or other mechanisms.

This shows that redistribution is only one means of having access to land and access to land is a more dynamic phenomenon than what is assumed in the official thinking. This has also found in other areas of the country. In Ada wereda, central Ethiopia, it was found

(Etenesh, 1999) that land acquiring mechanisms of purchase, inheritance, gifts by family, allocation by government and rental, were used by male-headed households while only the last two- government allocation and rentals - were used by female-headed households. An important conclusion which could be drawn from such situations is that women generally have less access to land than men and this could not be totally addressed by way of land redistribution alone. 4.2. Summary of the current land tenure situation The above discussions on the land issues under the current regime show that there is more continuity than change in the areas of rural land policy and administration. As those micro-level studies and arguments by many show, those major land tenure and administration problems that existed during the Derg are prevailing. As a result land issues remained a focus of debate and differences among those concerned about the country’s development. This is ironical in that major principles of land issues were said to be “resolved” by the 1995 constitution and yet many political parties oppose such provisions and that state ownership was maintained regardless of the free-market economy policy of the regime. It is also interesting to observe that the government on the one hand appreciates, in many of its development policies, those serious tenure-related problems that existed under its predecessors (such as diminution of holdings, tenure insecurity and its result of disincentives to production and land management, maladministration of land, etc.) and on the other, repeats those things that perpetuated those problems. Arbitrary and political land redistribution resulting in serious negative repercussions in tenure security and land management is the most compelling event that has exacerbated preoccupations about the future of land tenure in this country. Except those already mentioned standard arguments made by the government, there are no explicitly stated or thoroughly investigated causes for such government behavior on land issues. One scholar familiar with the political economy of Ethiopian land tenure pointed out additional and unofficial reasons of cultural beliefs, ideological orientation, and the strategic advantage of state ownership of land for political stability and agricultural development (Hoben 2001:16). It was also Dessalegn’s (1994:ix) apprehension before land issues were enshrined in the 1995 constitution that there were indications “that land policy may be sacrificed for political and doctrinal purposes”. The political primacy in land administration has been demonstrated by the 1996 land redistribution of the Amhara Region where access to land was based primarily on political criteria of participation or not in the Derg local administrative structures. Neither social equity nor economic considerations were given enough attention in such politically motivated redistribution. As a result of such problems in the land tenure system, land policy issues remained the focus of debate and source of differences. This “debate” is however devoid of participation of peasants and pastoralists, civil societies and other concerned parties. It also focuses narrowly on ownership issues and is not based on the Ethiopian and international experiences and theories. Such features of the land debate in this country have also diminished the possibility of influencing future policy making on land matters.

5. SUMMARY ANALYSIS OF THE LAND TENURE SYSTEMS UNDER

THE DIFFERENT REGIMES The above survey of literature on the Ethiopian land tenure systems particularly since the Derg period shows that, among other things, research work on land tenure has not been done at a national level and rigorously; there is concentration on food crop-producing and central and northern areas and lack of attention to other (cash crop producing, nomadic pastoral) areas and other regions; there is total neglect of urban and peri-urban land issues; there is focus on de jure issues (like legislations) and lack of enough empirical studies on de facto situations at the local level; absence of studies made on the current regionalized land policy and administration, and there are no studies that draw lessons from relevant international experiences. Therefore, it should be noted that those previous discussions are based on such literature, and an attempt has been made in this section to briefly examine those arguments and views and try to pinpoint those areas where more research is needed. Careful observations and understanding of the current Ethiopian situation based on empirical micro-level studies, the economic theory of land tenure, international experience, - all play their part in the following discussions. The focus will however be on the situation of the rural land tenure system after the 1975 period as this is the timeframe directly relevant to the existing situations. As per the literature, from the point of view of their economic features, the above discussions of the Ethiopian rural land tenure systems under the three regimes have shown a substantial degree of continuity rather than change. Of course, the 1975 land reform was a break through as it has brought about changes in the land tenure system. Complex tenure patterns of the pre-1975 period (private, rist, church, government) have been abolished by the 1975 land reform that assigned land ownership rights to the state and allowed use rights by other actors. Landlordism with all its exploitative production relations was abolished. Land was distributed to peasants doing away with land concentration and providing access to those landless. Other problems such as inadequate access, tenure insecurity, diminution and fragmentation of holdings, lack of proper institutional framework are, for instance, among those frequently cited problems in the literature under those three different regimes. Moreover, those differences in social and political aspects of the land tenure systems are exhibited between the pre-1975 and post-1975 periods rather than among the different political regimes. The current land tenure policy and practices are continuations of those found under the Derg regime and changes introduced since 1989. But many queries can be raised about some of the generalizations found in the literature. 5.1. Access to land Although largely mitigated by the 1975 reform, access problems were not settled in the long run. It has been mentioned that there are many landless peasants currently. It is

noted that in some communities such landless people reach up to some 50% of the total households in the area. Rural women and young people are also indicated disadvantaged groups in terms of access to land. Some ethnic and religious minorities are also mentioned as having problems in access to land. In addition, there are many in a situation of having very minuscule holdings (near-landlessness). However, the causes are not land concentration in the hands of landlords. Increasing population pressure on those already densely populated areas is commonly mentioned as the cause of the problem. However, it is also felt that in those areas where there were not many land redistributions, there is a kind of skewed landholding pattern that might have contributed to the problem of landlessness. At times it is also argued that the tenure rule that restricts access to land to continuous residence in a given kebele discouraged peasants going out of the rural areas and contributed to population pressure. Studies also show that since 1975 mechanisms of access to land, except through government allocation, have been largely constrained by those restrictive policies on transfer. Many questions can be raised regarding the above generalizations. For instance, landlessness is not clearly understood though it is noted as an increasing phenomenon. Who are said to be landless? Those people who are not officially assigned land by the government? Those who are not taxpayers because they work the land registered under the name of other members of the household? Or who else? What is the extent of landlessness? What are its causes? Is it a result of unchecked population increase or problems in the land tenure system? What are the views and opinions of the peasants, politicians, experts, and others about landlessness, its causes and ways of tackling it? Do peasants have better options than staying on the land? In relation to restrictions on land transfer some case studies show that the informal/traditional mechanisms of access, and land markets have been in practice regardless of those legal sanctions. Sharecropping has been the most common practice while rental arrangements are also mentioned. Though these markets include transfer through sales and other “illegal” mechanisms, there have been not enough studies on the nature and degree of such informal land markets. Conditions of tenancy, mentioned as serious problems in the pre-1975 period, are also not studied after the reform. However, problems of insecure and informal arrangements and high rents seem, for instance, to continue up to the present time. 5.2. Tenure insecurity Though rist and landlordism were abolished by the 1975 land reform, insecurity continued to be cited as the most serious problems of the rural land tenure. The most important cause mentioned is frequent land redistributions carried out for the case of balancing holdings within peasant associations. There are also some problems mentioned in relation to arbitrary and high-handed land administration practices by local officials resulting in tenure insecurity. Eviction of peasants by governments has continued in the name of establishment of production cooperatives, villagization, conservation, and other projects. While state farms were one source of peasant eviction during the Derg, there

are hints that commercial farms are becoming sources of such problems after 1991. This may not be necessarily related to the policy but the way the policy is implemented. According to Place et al. (1993:19-20) land tenure security can be defined to exist “when an individual perceives that he or she has rights to a piece of land on a continuous basis, free from imposition or interference from outside sources, as well as ability to reap benefits of labor and capital invested in the land, either in use or upon transfer of another holder”. It is assumed that breadth or robustness of those rights (such as rights of use, transfer and exclusion), duration of such rights, and assurance of such rights are important components of land security. Based on such concepts, a consensus could be easily reached that there is tenure insecurity in the existing tenure system. Generally it is also argued that the relationship existing between land tenure systems and agricultural production and sustainable land use is that secure rights provide an incentive to invest on land which contributes both to the increase in production and to sustainable use of the land. Secure individual rights increase the value of land for the possessors and enable them to have access to credit and other inputs. At large, secure individual rights on land can also facilitate transfer of assets, which will result in allocative efficiency of resources (Feder and Feeney 1993, Downs and Reyna 1988). However, there are serious methodological problems in examining situations of tenure insecurity in general and its impacts in particular. Tenure security and its effectshave not been studied systematically. While the cause and extent of insecurity is not well established, it is also important that tenure security is not sufficient condition for investing in land. It is highly improbable, for instance, that short-term productivity enhancing investments, like application of fertilizer, are affected by lack of tenure security and empirical studies show that there are even long term investments like terracing done by peasants in different parts of the country (see Yigremew 2000c). Studies on experiences of many African countries also show (Reij et al. 1996) that tenure security is a necessary but not sufficient condition for successful soil and water conservation systems. Returns to investments in conservation, population pressure and land scarcity, which lead to intensification, markets and infrastructure, and access to information and technology were also found relevant. Therefore it is important to ask questions like what kind of investments and land management practices are affected by lack of tenure security? And to what extent? 5.3. Diminution and fragmentation of holdings After the land reform and presently as well, persistent redistributions are cited as the major cause of diminution and fragmentation. The egalitarian principle of granting “equal” access to all those rural dwellers is said to result in ever diminution of holdings. Both equity considerations of allocating land of different quality to peasants, and peasants’ rational actions of having lands of different soils and different agro-ecologies are mentioned as causing fragmentation. Regarding diminution of holdings, observation of holding patterns at the national level does not show substantial differences in the case of size. The general trend exhibited

from the statistics is that there is more a levelling down process in that larger holdings are disappearing while smaller holdings are becoming more prevalent. The impacts of this phenomenon are among others noted as challenging production of enough food for family and surplus, resource degradation, and vulnerability. The average national farm holdings are estimated less than one hectare while the minimum size even for subsistence is suggested well above that. Given the level of productivity, the case of diminution of holdings could be understood as a serious problem. However, it has to be qualified as it is not all the same for different cropping patterns (double, single, etc) and type of crops (root, cash, etc.) as well as for type of farming system (such as irrigation or rain-fed). In addition, there seems to be not enough knowledge in the causes and impacts of diminution of holdings. Redistribution seems exaggerated as causing diminution and fragmentation. Micro-level studies show that transfer mechanisms other than official land allocation are important in transferring land particularly within families (Yigremew 2000a). In a case study in Gojjam where there was frequent land redistribution it was found that out of the sample young household heads, 78.6% have indicated that at the time of establishing their households they got land only from their families. In another case study in Ankober, North Shoa, with minimal degree of land redistribution, 18.6% of the respondents indicated that they have acquired all of their plots through inheritance and gift (Yigremew 2000c). This shows that land redistribution is not the only mechanism by which holdings are subdivided. So, population pressure might have been the underlying cause for diminution of holdings rather than redistribution. The issue of diminution of holdings should also not be thought to be addressed through land tenure measures. Fragmentation is also cited in the literature as a serious problem constraining agriculture in all reviewed periods. Before 1975 it has been noted as more serious in the north. There are no national studies after the 1975 reform but around that time studies show some 23% of holdings with five and above number of plots in a province with the highest scale of fragmentation. However, the national average number of parcels (MoA 1975) was reported to be 2.46. The stated arguments towards the negative impacts of fragmentation include that it has incurred high costs in terms of travelling time, acted as hindrance for taking advantage of economies of scale of some technologies, and it made difficult taking closer care of farms. Some specific case studies after the land reform show an increasing trend of fragmentation although the figures were not significantly high (on the average 3 to 4 parcels per holding). But the problem is stated with more seriousness. It is important to note that the major objective of this part (Part II) of the study is to examine land tenure issues affecting the growth of Ethiopian agriculture and identifies areas that need further investigation. Although there were not enough studies, it is somewhat difficult to accept those generalizations about the seriousness of fragmentation in this country. First of all, no criteria were used as to what fragmentation really meant in a given context. Secondly, it seems that our cases are much less by international comparison. For example in some parts of Spain in the 1970s, the average number of plots was 14.52 with an average size of 0.34 ha per plot; around 1984 China had about

200 million small and fragmented farms with a peasant household on the average contracting 0.56 ha of land fragmented into 9.7 plots with an average size of 0.06 ha each (Dong 1995. Thirdly, the issue of risk aversion (under which fragmentation should partly be explained), and other advantages (say, production of different crops for household subsistence) are not discussed in the Ethiopian context. Dessalegn (1994:10) stated that Ethiopian peasants prefer dispersed plots for reasons of minimizing or avoiding risk of crop failure, to be able to exploit the different micro-ecologies and to grow wider variety of crops, to smoothen out the flow of food and income during a year, and ease of practicing multiple cropping on scattered plots. Alemneh (1985) in his study in three Awrajas in Arssi province found no significant differences between degree of fragmentation in 1966 and 1984 and only 5% of the respondents indicated fragmentation as among the most serious problems. Fourthly, if what is implied in those arguments about fragmentation is the need for consolidation, it is important to ask what would be the merits of land consolidation to an Ethiopian highland peasant? Therefore, a more comprehensive theoretical arguments and empirical studies are needed in this respect. 5.4. Inefficient allocation of land In the pre-1975 period the problem was there has been unutilized, or underutilized agricultural land in the country as a result of land concentration under non-farming elites and absentee landlords. After 1975, restrictions on transfer and egalitarian land allocation practices were mentioned as sources of misallocation. Though it was not known to what extent legal restrictions have affected land transfer mechanisms (like rental, swapping, sharecropping, mortgaging, sales, etc.) it was claimed that the 1975 land reform has restricted land transfers. On the other hand, in the process of egalitarian land redistribution, very poor individuals without the necessary resources to work the land were given land. This, it is mentioned, coupled with those restrictions on land transfer, has made some plots to be underutilized or totally unused. Some also argue that state farms and agricultural production cooperatives were not efficient enough in using land and other resources. Given the level of investment on such production systems, their productivity was, in some cases, lower than private peasant farms. Currently, both constraints- restrictions on transfer and large-scale farming- are existing and there are some indications of underutilization of land. There are, for instance, complaints that those commercial farms are not productive as expected and even some are not operational. It is however important to note that those legal restrictions of governments have not been effective enough in restricting land transfers. Empirical micro-level studies suggest that many of those land transfers were “informally” existing and sharecropping is the commonest type (Abebe 2000, Fafchamps 2000, Yigremew 2000a, 2000c, Yohannes 1994, Gavian and Amare 1996, Bereket and Croppenstedt 1995). For example, in 7 of their study sites Bereket and Croppenstedt (1995) found that 45.8% of the respondents were involved in land transactions. In some of their study sites (like Yetmen in Gojjam) they found that 41.7% of households were engaged in the transaction of renting-in land. Yohannes (1994) also found that in Northern Showa, central Ethiopia 37.6% of those households with their own possessions were involved in land transactions.

Yigremew (2000a) found that among those sampled young households in Gojjam 73.8% of the informants reported that they have sharecropped other people’s plots during the 2000/2001 crop season. Gavian and Amare’s (1996) study in Arssi shows that 65.22% of their landholder sample households were engaged in land contracts in addition to their government allotted plots. They indicated that in 1994 in the study wereda 24% of the fields were farmed under some sort of informal contract between the farmers. These studies show the prevalence of land transactions regardless of legal restrictions. Nevertheless, these studies have also found one or other form of restrictions on land transfer. Therefore, it is important to study the conditions and constraints of such land transfer mechanisms. This is crucial for any future policy decisions as well. 5.5. Problems in land administration Land administration, a very fundamental factor in land tenure discussions, is not directly addressed by many of those cited studies. However, though not explicitly stated in many of those studies, land administration problems have existed in all those land tenure systems. Watterland (1970) pointed out that the general objective of land administration is the establishment of a system of adequate land utilization which includes provision of security on land possessions, land protection, development-oriented land use planning with knowledge of land resources, land classification system, and appropriate system of land distribution. What can be observed is that there were no policies, established systems and practices dealing with proper allocation and utilization of land resources to the benefit of the country and the majority of the people. Distribution of land, establishment and registration of land rights, administration and protection of those rights, establishment and regulation of land use practices, and other similar activities were not properly conducted. First of all, with few exceptions throughout decades, there were no government institutions principally dealing with land cases. The short-lived Ministry of Land Reform and Administration around the last days of the Imperial regime was an exception. Other times, land cases were handled by many organizations without proper delimitation of powers and duties. For instance, during the Derg Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Interior, political cadres, mass organizations, and local administrative units were involved in land administration matters. Nowadays as well, there is no national land use policy yet and no specific government agency dealing with land issues. Technical issues of land administration are assigned to the administration and the political structures. Land distribution issues are decided and carried out mainly by politicians. Assignment and protection of land rights is left to administrators and politicians and not to technical personnel and institutions, etc. As a result, land administration has been done arbitrarily, negatively affecting both the rights of citizens and the use of resources. Moreover, this problem seems becoming more serious at present under a regionalized and politicized framework where there is no federal government agency responsible for it and line ministries like Ministry of Agriculture are more marginalized regarding land tenure issues. For instance, regardless of the constitutional provisions and the federal land

administration law, many regions have not yet promulgated land administration laws. But there have not been systematic and rigorous studies on the impact of such administrative malaise on land access, utilization and management (litigations, ambiguities, overrides of rights, etc.). Such studies may contribute to the understanding of the regional dimensions of the current land administration. 5.6. Rural women Rural development policies in this country during the Derg time and now seem to extol the role of land redistribution in bringing about rural development, social equity and in addressing women’s gender-specific constraints. However, in reality this was not the case. First of all, women have no land in their name unless they are heads of households. Secondly, very often the land that female-headed households get is very small. Given the low productivity and the family size of those households, it is difficult to produce adequate food for survival. Thirdly, given the dynamic and diversified mechanisms of having access to land, land redistribution done at times could not bring about social equity in land possession in the long run and could not even guarantee continuous access to the allotted land and its utilization. This is because first, land redistribution is only one means of having access to land, and second and more importantly, it cannot even guarantee the continuous possession and use of the land allotted. The case study showed that while men augmented their holdings using a number of supplementary mechanisms, women could not even control and utilize those plots allocated to them during land redistribution. Women also have not the same access to social institutions that would allow them to augment their landholdings outside of official redistribution. Rural women’s disadvantage in Ethiopia particularly in relation to access, utilization and control of land is caused by a complex set of interactive factors. In the case of access to and control over land, legal, economic, social, and cultural constraints need to be addressed. Women’s rights to land could be better enhanced if women have land rights registered in their own names which would make it possible for women to retain such rights in the case of marital breakdown. It could be suggested that even co-registration of land rights, for instance, rather than heads of a household alone may foster more effective recognition of women’s rights to land. This is largely because women forfeit their rights to land when they are separated from their husbands by divorce or other means and become heads of households. In addition, the law should allow some flexibility in terms of residential criteria of land rights as social norms sometimes prohibit divorced or widowed women to remain in their ex-husband’s locality. However, there are no comprehensive studies done on the extent and causes of women’s disadvantage in terms of land rights and possible measures necessary to improve the situation. 5.7. The land debate and international experience The above discussions on the land issues under the current regime show that there is more continuity than change in the areas of rural land policy and administration. As those micro-level studies and arguments show, those major land tenure and administration

problems that existed during the Derg are still prevailing. As a result land issues remained a focus of debate and differences among those concerned about the country’s development. This is ironical in that major principles of land issues were said to be “resolved” by the 1995 constitution and that state ownership was maintained regardless of the free-market economy policy of the regime. It is also interesting to observe that the government on the one hand appreciates, in many of its development policies, those serious tenure-related problems under its predecessors (such as diminution of holdings, tenure insecurity and its result of disincentives to production and land management, and mal-administration of land) and on the other, repeats those things that made those problems to perpetuate. Arbitrary and political land redistribution resulting in serious negative repercussions in tenure security and land management is the most compelling event that has exacerbated preoccupations about the future of land tenure in this country. Except those already mentioned standard arguments made by the government, there are no explicitly stated or thoroughly investigated causes for such government behavior on land issues. It was also Dessalegn’s (1994: ix) apprehension before land issues were enshrined in the 1995 constitution that there were indications “ that land policy may be sacrificed for political and doctrinal purposes”. The political primacy in land administration has been demonstrated by the 1996 land redistribution of the Amhara Region where access to land was based primarily on political criteria, that is participation in the Derg local administrative structures. Neither social equity nor economic considerations were given enough attention in such politically motivated redistribution. It seems that it is as a result of such problems in the land tenure system that land policy issues remained the focus of debate and a source of differences. This “debate” is however devoid of participation of peasants and pastoralists, civil societies and other concerned parties (and in this respect, it is different from what happens in many African countries, such as Uganda and Tanzania, where there are many actors involved in land issues). It also focuses narrowly on ownership issues and is not based on the Ethiopian and international experiences and theories. Such features of the land debate in this country have also diminished the possibility of influencing future policy making on land matters. As pointed out in the discussions, there are issues not well addressed by the “debate” on the land issue. These include a total absence of the opinions and interests of the peasants and nomadic pastoralists, whether a given form of ownership serves as a guarantee of secure tenure, the wisdom of restricting alternative tenure possibilities to single choice, the implications to peasant livelihoods, rationales for state ownership, implications on food production and long-term growth as well as stability, and the behaviour of the market. Equity, security and transferability should be the focus of such discussions on land tenure. Currently, for instance, there is no conclusive evidence that shows a direct relationship between the type of land ownership in a given tenure and the economic and social merits it has. Following are two examples that do not fit to the standard arguments in relation to type of land ownership and its impacts on equity and development.

A bird's eye view of literature indicates that there are no conclusive evidences showing the relationship between land ownership and those positive social and economic attributes of tenure. For example, a World Bank study on the market versus administrative reallocation of agricultural land noted that considerable controversy surrounds the relative merits of market-based mechanisms versus administrative mechanisms of land allocation in responding to social and economic forces and empirical evidence of how they function is also scarce (Carter and Yao, 1999). The cases of China and Kenya may serve the purpose of illustrating such controversy. Within the general framework of state ownership of land, China has long experience and has made extraordinary economic development while countries like Kenya can be cited as examples where individualization of land rights did not achieve many of those theoretical attributes of a freehold system. China: Until the Communist takeover and the land reform of 1950, China had unequal landholdings with only 10 percent of the rural population owning 70 percent of the total arable land. This has served as an important background to the change of the then political regime. In 1950 land was confiscated from landlords and redistributed to the peasants freely and with full right of individual ownership. However, within less than ten years of time individual ownership and management was changed into cooperatives, then to collectives and communes that abolished all types of private property in land. Not only ownership of land, transfer of land use rights also was not allowed and all other rights on land and work were transferred to collectives. However, such a centralized ownership and management system largely failed. Difficulties in labor monitoring, the state's extractive policy, and the anti-incentive ideology were among the factors. This situation led to incremental reforms since the 1960s with the reinstatement of the small private plots and liberalization of farm management decision making. Since 1978 moderate progressive elements in the political leadership started the de-collectivization process giving land use and managerial rights to households while keeping ownership within the state through cooperative administration (the household responsibility system/HRS). In the new system, agricultural land was distributed more or less evenly among peasant households on the basis of family size and sometimes in proportion to labor available as well; decisions regarding use of the land were devolved to the household, land use rights were given to farm households. In 1988 transfers of land use rights were officially allowed. Land contracts for farmland, which were started with three years of period, expanded to 15 and in 1994 to 30 years of period. To a large extent, landholding adjustments were continuously made by cooperatives in response to demographic changes. A great deal of flexibility and decentralization has also accompanied such changes since the abolition of communes- land tenure practices were experimented with a given degree of discretion and differences at the regional and even village levels. In the late 1990s, with the development of non-agricultural work opportunities, some farmers pooled their land and received dividends from their shares; in others farmers contributed their land to organize production in partnership with others who contributed other factors of

production. Compensations were paid for farmers whenever their holdings were taken away (including by the government) for adjustment or other purposes. These changes (combined with other favorable conditions) have resulted in an extraordinary increase in productivity and farmers' income, as well as the development of the economy as a whole. Within the period 1980-1990 the country's gross agricultural output value increased by 86 %; the rural total production rose by 163 % from 1980 to 1989; the average per capita income of peasants jumped 64 % from 1980 to 1985; etc. These results were achieved with an average household farmland size of 0.6 hectares. Half of such development is attributed to the change in the land tenure and agricultural organization through the household responsibility system, which was an incentive to farmers (Prosterman 1994, Lin 1998, Johnson 1998, Dong 1995). Kenya. Prior to and during much of the colonial period, land tenure in Kenya was governed at a community level. White settlers who arrived during the early part of the twentieth century were provided with large tracts of Kenya’s best lands under Crown grants, in freehold. Meanwhile, indigenous populations were moved onto reserves of poorer lands. The poor economic conditions of the crowded reserves coupled with the stripping of their land and political rights led to the Mau Mau rebellion of 1953. In response to the crisis, the British devised a plan to remove the former restrictions on African farmers and launched a campaign to register their land under individual titles. This strategy of creating politically stable “yeoman farmers” was outlined in the Swynnerton Plan of 1954 and was subsequently incorporated into law. Initially opposed by African nationalists, they embraced the program after independence. It continues to be the cornerstone of Kenya land policy today, making Kenya unique in the scope of its conversion to freehold. One of the overriding interests in the then land reform was increasing Kenya’s agricultural production and ensuring political stability. It was purported that the conversion to individualized property would foster the emergence of land markets whereby more efficient farmers would accumulate large tracts of land from less efficient farmers and cultivate the land more productively. Other arguments towards individualization included: increased tenure security, facilitating access to credit through land mortgage thereby fostering investment in improvements, reducing land fragmentation and subdivision, and mitigating the incidence of land disputes. According to a World Bank study (Migot-Adholla et al. 1994:120) there were not enough empirical attempts to establish the relationship among land tenure, agricultural investment, and farm productivity in Kenya. Bruce (1996) has also indicated “The success or failure of Kenya’s land tenure reform is hotly contested, though most studies tend to conclude it has failed to meet expectations”. However, others (see, for instance, Quan 2000) mention that for those direct beneficiaries, land titling has provided very secure tenurial rights, and the early phases of the land reform program were accompanied by increases in farm income for recipients of title. However, it was found difficult to single out the effects of land titling and registration and many of the objectives of the reform were not largely achieved and land registration has been accompanied by: increased concentration of land ownership, (where in the 1990s, 5% Kenyan landowners own almost 70% of agricultural lands and 90% of the farms exceeding three hectares

have absentee owners); the weakening of customary rights, resulting in diminished security of tenure for non-titleholders, notably wives, children and landless farmers (especially widows, those without off-farm incomes, and those with no male heirs); heightened inequalities in land ownership and agricultural incomes, leading to increased landlessness through land sales, and growing rural-urban migration; rising rural unemployment, caused by reduced opportunities for share-cropping and tenancy opportunities; diminished food security and increased vulnerability to drought amongst groups whose access to land has been diminished by the titling process; increased level of disputes resulting from individual rights being imposed on pre-existing systems of multiple rights; and the inability of poorer farmers to acquire title, since the costs are often greater than the benefits. Then it is concluded that while debate about the effects of land registration and titling continued, the policy implications of Kenya’s long experience with titling showed that the process of registration has been very costly, and the net benefits ambiguous; tenure reform alone is not likely to enhance small holder production without a range of associated measures; and land titling tends to generate damaging impacts on the position of the poor (Bruce 1996, Quan 2000). If the ultimate goal of agricultural productivity is economic growth, different economic analyses have now shown that unequal distribution of resources leads to poor levels of economic growth and it was observed that “… a clear relationship has been found between more equal distribution of land holdings and other assets, and higher level of economic growth.” It was also indicated that “Analysis of data from 21 developing countries which have undertaken land reform also indicates that while agricultural growth can cut poverty levels by 50% over 60 years, a 30% reduction in land concentration, combined with the same levels of growth, could achieve the same results in just 15 years…” (Quan, 2000:40). The above cases show that land ownership, by itself, is not a determining factor for an effective land tenure system that fosters equity and development. Moreover, privatization in an African context may not bring about those theoretical attributes of greater security, incentives, and efficiency. To the contrary, it can bring about social injustice and poverty (see Plateau 1992). One of the economic arguments against private land ownership is that, if it leads to land concentration and large-scale farming, the relative efficiency of farm production will decrease as a result of the so-called inverse relationship between farm size and productivity (Quan, 2000). Moreover, empirical studies show that at least in Africa, privatization of land could not bring about those attributes (such as access to credit, efficient allocation of land, tenure security) which lead to increased agricultural productivity as the classical economic theory explains. 6. CONCLUSION The above discussions show that despite the 1975 radical land reform, many features of the land tenure have persisted since decades. Inadequate access, tenure insecurity, diminution and fragmentation of holdings, inefficient allocation of land, and inappropriateness or lack of land administration policies and institutions are among those frequently cited problems in the literature. However, many of those generalizations in

the literature could be questioned given lack of adequate methodologies (such as lack of consideration of the views and opinions of the peasants and pastoralists), lack of adequate and contemporary theoretical arguments, and lack of comprehensive empirical studies done on such problems. The meanings, extent and causes of landlessness; the nature, extent and impacts of tenure insecurity; the degree, causes, and impacts of diminution and fragmentation of holdings; the impact of those policy constraints on actual land transfer and allocation; the legal and institutional problems in land administration and their impact; the underlying causes of women’s disadvantage in terms of land rights; and the nature, contents and problems of the current debate on land tenure are among those areas where there are no adequate and conclusive findings and where there is a critical need to do research.

7. ISSUES FOR INVESTIGATION Based on the above discussions and analyses, it is imperative that the following issues should be investigated thoroughly for both better understanding of the existing situations and searching for policy alternatives if necessary.

1. What does landlessness mean in the Ethiopian context? What is the degree of landlessness and who are more affected? What are its underlying causes? How could it be mitigated?

2. What is the pattern of landholding distribution? Is it skewed? If so, what are the causes? How could it be addressed?

3. What is tenure insecurity? What is its extent? What are its underlying causes? What are its impacts? How can it be mitigated?

4. How small are the average holdings of peasants and by what standard? What are the underlying causes if they are so small? How could this problem be addressed?

5. What is land fragmentation and what are the criteria used to define it? Is land fragmentation a problem in Ethiopia? What have been its impacts? Should land consolidation be sought? Why?

6. To what extent are land resources utilized efficiently? What are the available mechanisms (formal and informal) of access to land and what are the problems in relation to land transfer? Is there allocative efficiency? What are its causes? What could be done to mitigate this problem if need be?

7. What is the situation of women in terms of land rights? If they are disadvantaged, why? What could be done to redress such disadvantages?

8. What is the situation of land use and administration? Are there policies on land use and administration at the federal and regional levels of government? If there are, are they appropriate? If not, how are land use and administration practiced and regulated? What has been the impacts of such gaps? What could be done to tackle the problem?

9. What are the nature, content and flaws of the current debate on land tenure? What could be done to make it contribute more to better understand the situation and look for alternative solutions?

10. What are the views and opinions of peasants, pastoralists, experts, academics, politicians and other sections of the society on the existing land tenure inEthiopia? What alternative land tenure system/s is/are envisaged by those different sections of the society and what are their rationales?

11. If need be, what feasible alternative policy options are available for consideration to the existing land tenure system?

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[1] Sources like Dessalegn 1984, Cohen and Weintraub 1975, Gilkes 1975 are very important in understanding the pre-1975 land tenure in Ethiopia because they have extensively referred to, summarized, and analyzed previous studies. For instance, the numerous volumes of the reports of the Ministry of Land Reform and Administration conducted in twelve provinces (1967-70) are summarized and analyzed in the work by Cohen and Weintraub 1975 (these are more than thirty different reports). * * This section heavily draws on a recent work that has examined situations of rural female-headed households in terms of access, utilization and control of land and other resources (Yigremew 2001).