Land Reform in Ethiopia 1974-1977
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2594518 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Marina Ottaway (0000-0002-0394-5101, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1977 |
| Volume | 20 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 79 |
| Publication date | 1977-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | African Studies Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0002-0206 • E-ISSN: 1555-2462 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/523755 |
| OpenAlex | W2078766305 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 9 |
| References cited | 6 |
In March 1975, the Ethiopian ruling military council, or Derg, proclaimed a sweeping land reform, which aimed at bringing about a complete transformation in the country's complex land tenure system and in its social and political structures. More than a land reform, the measure should be called a land revolution, for there was nothing reformist in the Derg's approach. It simply opened the floodgates of rural discontent, allowing the peasants to take over the land and encouraging them to organize into “peasant associations.” The government did not seriously attempt to control the process, partly for ideological reasons, and partly because it simply could not do it. Rather, the peasant associations were allowed to decide whether to redistribute land among their members, or to enter into collective forms of land cultivation. The ambitious scope of the reform, and the suddenness with which it was announced and implemented, led most observers, including many radical Ethiopians and most diplomats from socialist countries, to forecast economic disaster and social breakdown. Such dark predictions did not come true. The economic consequences of the land reform were some increase in production, due mostly to good weather conditions (Dalton, 1975), and a tangible improvement in the peasants' living conditions. The urban population, though, suffered because of the sharp price increases that resulted from the disruption of the marketing system and an increase in on-farm consumption (Holmberg, 1976). Social turmoil undoubtedly was part of the land reform process, and thousands of people lost their lives in it
Agriculture · Communism · Development economics · Economic growth · Economics · Geography · Government (linguistics · Ideology · Land reform · Land tenure · Peasant · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Population · Socialism · Sociology · African history and culture analysis · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development · Land Rights and Reforms · Law
A History of Ethiopia
Inheritance-induced familial disputes in north-west Ethiopia
Historical Process of Socialist Policies and Peasants-Lands Relationships
African States and Agriculture
Climate discourses as barriers to rights-based adaptive social protection
Farm Labor Migrations in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia
Land Tenure, Land Reform and the Qalad System in Ethiopia, 1941-1974
State and society relations from 1974 to 1991
Ethiopia
| Unique citing works | 9 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,19 |
| Citation span | 1979 - 2023 (45) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 9 |