Goverment of Ethiopia webpage on land lease contracts (in Amharic)

The terms of farmland deals are hardly made public. Although a theoretical possibility exists in a few cases for some transfer of technology for agricultural development, risk also exists to peasant farmers who cannot compete with well-resourced commercial farms. Take, for instance, the case of barley and oilseeds producers in Ethiopia.

The approach taken by Ethiopia and India to reaching development goals and fulfilling environmental promises by leasing or buying large tracts of fertile land affects land, water and indigenous people.

In Ethiopia, resentments over land grab have already started claiming lives. The TPLF regime has already killed 10 protesting ethnic Anuak farmers and has sent thousands more to concentration camps.

Land has been the play-thing of centralising authoritarians throughout Ethiopia's recent history.

The World Food Program intends to buy some of the grain produced in Ethiopia by foreign investors in order to assist hungry people. Ironically, this group of intended food aid recipients will include those working to produce it in the first place. Ethiopia's government is calling this sustainable development.

What we are witnessing in countries like Ethiopia today is an extreme form of the banana republic syndrome.

Numerous ethnic women living inside Ethiopia today are attempting to work toward peace in the northern and southern regions of Ethiopia as they continue to witness the destructive crackdown of the government against rural farming communities.

Human rights advocates criticize the bank for failing to speak up about the jailing of a former employee in Ethiopia and two other environmental defenders

Ethiopia’s effort to resettle local farmers into main villages while also leasing land to foreign corporations or wealthy Ethiopians has put Gambella under scrutiny for charges of violent forced relocations.

The Ethiopian Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development recently released the Land Rent Contractual Agreements for land leases between the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (FDRE) and twenty-four companies or individuals.

The people of Ethiopia have a question for you and the government of Ethiopia you represent, “Why are you giving away our land to foreigners?”

Countries that have recently invited India, through the ministry of agriculture, to lease land for farming include Egypt, Ethiopia, Mongolia, Senegal, Sudan, Trinidad and Tobago and Tunisia.

Karuturi, which has 300,000 ha in Ethiopia, is now targeting the DRC, Tanzania, Mozambique, Senegal and Sierra Leone.

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.

Birhanu Fikade of "The Reporter" sat down with Atkyelesh G.M. Persson (PhD) to learn about her findings on large scale FDI that failed to deliver the desired results in Ethiopia

In India, Karuturi is being accused of sexual harassment while in Africa his struggling flower business in Kenya and Ethiopia has withered – first over tax arrears and debts and later over land deals gone wrong.

Authorities have attributed the growth of a saline lake to irrigation runoff, including that from a company bought this year from the government by Horizon Plantations, a venture majority owned by Mohamed al- Amoudi, the largest single investor in Ethiopia.

Investment by Indian-owned Karuturi Global has raised questions about whether Ethiopia is literally giving away the farm, or conversely, launching a 'green revolution' to help Ethiopia feed itself.

Mr. Meles Zenawi, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, will make scheduled appearances at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday, January 27

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel will support Ethiopia to develop its water resources by enhancing its agriculture systems.

One can only speculate why the secretive government of Ethiopia is giving away the country’s fertile land to foreign agribusinesses.

All this talk about people being displaced for the purpose of land lease is unfounded at best and even deliberately contrived at worst, says Minister Counsellor at the Embassy of Ethiopia in New Delhi

Sai Ramakrishna Karuturi tells Reuters that the governments of India and Ethiopia are working to “amicably resolve outstanding Karuturi issues”.

Director of agricultural investment at Ethiopia's Ministry of Agriculture says Karuturi is on the verge of collapsing in Ethiopia and that the company "has gone bankrupt following internal management crisis”

A delegation of the Confederation of Indian Industry is in Ethiopia to meet with the Agriculture Investment and Land Administration Agency and other government agencies to discuss business opportunities.

The U.S. should reassess its support for the government of Ethiopia, amid concern that more than half a million people are being evicted to make land available for foreign investment in agriculture, advocacy groups say.

Ethiopia slashed the size of Karuturi’s land concession that was larger than Luxembourg on concern it was too big for a single company to manage and to enable an annual migration of antelope, the government said.

The two months we spent in the Amhara and Oromia regions of Ethiopia, surveying smallholders and profiling large-scale commercial farms, left us with a different impression.

Karuturi Global Ltd, the Indian multinational that made its name in the global cut flower industry and recently acquired more than 300,000 ha in Ethiopia to produce food, is continuing its painful and massive decline.