Ethiopian Land Tenure from Heterogeneity to Uniformity: A Historical Perspective with Emphasis to Southern Provinces

The Ethiopian Land tenure system has shown drastic change from a tenant-landlord system to private ownership in the Imperial regime and public land ownership during the Derge and EPRDF periods. But the paper indicates the severity of the impacts of land tenure system on the peasants and pastoralists of the southern provinces particularly during the Imperial regime. In this paper it is argued that in the post liberation period the land tenure system led to lack of tenure security and inefficiency in land use in the south, south west and central Ethiopia. The Paper also points out during the Derge regime, though it changed the land tenure from heterogeneity to a uniform land tenure system in the whole of the country, there was unfairness in allocating fertile land to peasants. However, some plots of fertile land were given to some peasants favored by the local state agents such as by members of land allotting committee. As a result, the Derge regime’s land reform failed to maintain tenure security in southern provinces or elsewhere in the country. The paper suggests that in the post 1991 period though the government proclaimed that land is owned both by the people and government, there are issues of land which instigated heated debates among scholars and politicians. Two of such kinds of issues are the land policy pursued by the government and the idea of privatizing land. But the government has been making effort to address basic land tenure issues that are related to equity and efficiency in the post 1991 period. This work recommends that any insightful discussion or debate over the issue of land in the country. It needs to take into account the historical development of land tenure system in southern provinces. For this discussion, the paper relied on some primary sources like governmental proclamations, other primary documents and collections of secondary sources. In the paper pieces of information gathered from these sources are integrated into the discussion of the nature of land tenure system in some provinces of Ethiopia through the conventional historical method.

Keywords: Land tenure, land reform, debate, eviction, southern provinces and tenure insecurity.