Anywaa Survival Organisation (ASO) recently had an opportunity to interview affected community representatives and leaders who fled their homes in Gambela and Lower Omo because of government land grabs.

A journalist's visit to South Omo, where rights groups say police have raped women and otherwise pressured locals to leave an area tagged to become a huge sugar plantation, was quickly curtailed by authorities.

When the Ethiopian government completes the Gibe III dam on the upper Omo, as it is expected to do shortly, large-scale irrigation will follow, allowing government sugar plantations to gobble up huge swathes of their ancestral land.

Saudi Star has begun rice cultivation on 10,000ha of land in Gambella and a 10,000ha irrigation project along the already-compromised Alwero River. Only grain that does not meet export requirements will be sold locally.

There can be no denying that the Kuraz sugar plantation project has so far failed on its “development promises” made to the indigenous local communities.

Undersecretary of the Ministry of Economy says that investments in the fields of agriculture and food industries are among the prominent sectors that attract UAE investments abroad as the country currently imports about 80 per cent of its food needs.

In order to meet the increasing flow of investment in the horticulture sector, the government has identified five corridors consisting of 50,000 hectares of land.

Bank's accountability panel says complaints by Ethiopians of forced evictions in Gambella should be looked into.

“There is no villagization programme,” Sai Ramakrishna Karuturi, founder of Karuturi Global, told Mint via telephone. “This is a completely jaundiced western vision. They assume anything in Africa has to be done by the whites and the Chinese and Indians should have businesses only in their own countries.”

Karuturi has an agreement to provide 40,000 tons of rice to neighboring Djibouti.

The Ethiopian government says concerns about foreign investors exporting food are outweighed by the plantations’ capacity to bring the country foreign exchange and technology, as well as creating employment.

In the face of evidence, the UK and US continue to deny systematic human rights abuses are occurring in the Lower Omo as thousands are displaced for an irrigation scheme.

Karuturi said it will borrow "hundreds of millions" of dollars from a sovereign wealth fund to invest in farming in East Africa after development banks declined to provide assistance because of “unfair” criticism by advocacy groups

It alleges that the dealings of Karuturi Global, one of India’s largest flower growers, in the African nation do not smell as sweet as what it grows

The attack on the Saudi Star Company has served as a pretext for a hunting down of innocent civilians and a campaign of murder, torture, harassment and intimidation in the remote corners of the country, warns Anywaa Survival.

If what is going on in Gambella was happening in New Delhi, India; in Oxford, England; in Bismarck, North Dakota; in Saskatoon, Canada; this would be unthinkable.

The Indian construction company has decided to cultivate pongamia pinnata and edible oil seeds there

The Ethiopian government’s ambitious target of harvesting 28 million tonnes of cereals in the first three quarters of the 2007/2008 budget year has failed. Authorities seem determined to change this situation by leasing huge chunks of land to other sovereign states for mechanised farming.

The Bodi people have been decimated since the Gibe III dam came into operation and diverted the Omo River’s waters to large-scale irrigation schemes.

Ethiopian ambassador Mohammad Kabeera said his country has approved more than 361 investment projects to Saudi Arabia mainly in the agricultural sector.

Karuturi, like many other large-scale investors, underestimated the complexity of opening land for large-scale commercial agriculture.

The slow progress of Karuturi Global and similar projects has prompted the Ethiopian government to reassess its policy of leasing vast tracts of land to single investors.

The delegation consisted of senior business leaders from Indian companies such as Sai Ramakrishna Karuturi of Karuturi Global Ltd

The growing insecurity and violence in Gambela, seen in the recent loss of human lives and attacks on government institutions, should be seen as a clear warning to investors about the dangers involved in large scale agricultural investments, says the Anywaa Survival Organisation.

Foreign investment is being sought to develop projects on 5 million hectares of land that has been identified for sugar production.

While millions of people in the Horn of Africa suffer a terrible drought, foreign investors are harvesting tonnes of cereals to be exported to Asia and the Gulf states.

Ethiopian government has defended its plan to offer 2.7 million hectares of farmland to foreign companies despite millions of citizens who need food aid from the international community.

In recent years, the Ethiopian government has been enthusiastically renting large swathes of its territory to both local and foreign investors, regardless of who is already living there.

Ethiopian officials have revoked land leases in Addis Ababa that were held by dozens of investors, including Ethiopian-born Saudi billionaire Mohammed Hussein al-Amoudi.

The property of a Dutch agricultural company, Solagrow, was torched by hundreds of people, angered by the company having fenced off 100 hectares of prime communal grazing land, leased by the government.