Gadaa.com | December 1, 2009

Video: Mr. Meles Zenawi, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, discusses his government’s land grab policy, where the federal government has taken over millions of hectares of farmland from the States of Benishangul, Gambela and Oromia to distribute it to the so-called investors. The “investors” are foreign governments that outsource farming to Ethiopia.

Mr. Zenawi claims that such policy will bring new ‘technology’ and ‘development’ into Ethiopia; however, pictures (from Bako, Oromia) acquired by Stephanie McCrummen of the Washington Post reveal that the mega-farms use rudimentary methods of farming – similar to the typical Ethiopian farming; however, now the farmers-turned-’laborers’ have lost their dignity and become slaves in their own country.

In order to understand this trend of global land grab, read The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Contextualizing the Oromo Struggle.