Despite opposition from Ethiopia's President and environmental authorities, a rainforest area providing livelihood to an indigenous people has been leased out to make tea plantations.
In recent years sixteen investors, from Israel, Ethiopia and the Netherlands, have opened large-scale farms nearby the village of Hidi, south of Addis Ababa.
Documentaire sur l'accacparement de terres en Ethiopie
Land grabbing poses no harm on the environment or on the local community, says Saudi billionaire Sheik Mohammed Hussein Al-Amoudi who is seeking to expand his farmland in Ethiopia from 10,000 hectares to 250,000 hectares.
A top official at UN agencies seeks to allay apprehensions among people of African countries that propose to lease farmland to investors from countries like India.
The suffering of farmers in Ethiopia is going from worse to the worst as a result of inequitable land acquisitions, better called “neo-colonial land grabbing”, by foreign investors.
L’Italia non è estranea al fenomeno del land grabbing, anche se gli investimenti in terreni riguardano soprattutto aziende cinesi, indiane o saudite.E i gruppi italiani hanno messo le mani su oltre 1,5 milioni di ettari
Ato Tamiru, chairman of the Gumare Kebele in Gambella, western Ethiopia, and people in his kebele have been protesting the leasing of a large tract of land to an Indian company to be used for tea farming even though there is a severe food shortage in the country.
Ethiopian President Girma Woldegiorgis and the country’s environmental regulator have both written to the Agriculture Ministry expressing concern over the sale of forestry land to foreign agricultural companies.
Ethiopia has offered 1.8 million hectares of its farmland to Indian investors that equals nearly 40 percent of the total area of the principal grain-growing state of Punjab.
'Indian farmers can avail the opportunity of vast farming land set aside by Ethiopia,' says Ethiopian Agriculture Minister.
Report provides legal analysis of twelve land deals from different parts of Africa, and discusses the contractual issues for which public scrutiny is most needed.
