Meles Zenawi says: No land grab in Ethiopia—Not
today, not tomorrow— Why then could he not succeed
in refuting evidences of displacements & abuses?
10 August, 2011 | By Keffyalew Gebremedhin
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Speaking to a visitor he brought to Gambela, Western Ethiopia, and
pointing into the vast horizon of his 300,000-hectare agricultural
empire that he got on lease for 99 years. He has now purchased two
tugboats for the purpose.
Food and water drive Africa land grab, Reuters, 21 January 2010;
29 April 2010, UPI, Le Monde Diplomatique.
ITMN television on 26 June 2011 in Addis Abeba
neighbors, speaking to John Vidal, the Guardian’s environment editor,
March 2011.
A project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
(African farmland deals need rules, grass-roots warn, Reuters, 30
Mar 2010).
PART I
What is the difference between loathing transparency and
telling lies?
LANDGRAB. We have heard all the arguments about it, for and
against. To date, numerous audio and video materials have surfaced,
documenting displacements mistreatments of Ethiopians, i.e., beatings,
torched villages, some of them heart-rending and enraging. It has now
reached a stage where it has become impossible to ignore or discount
the persistent allegations of stories of removal under armed guards of
individuals from villages, beatings, imprisonments and even some
disappearances.
It appears the government of Ethiopia has not so far presented
satisfactory and truthful explanations about its actions, let alone
credible defense of its role as agency and facilitator of the abominable
practices of farmland grabbing, as shown by evidences here: Ethiopia
at centre of global farmland rush; Land grab uproots indigenous
farmers; Land grab fears for Ethiopian rural communities; Claims of
African Land Grab Spark Controversy; planet-for-sale-the-new-
world-agricultural-order-documentary, etc.
The latest high-level attempts to undo once and for all these
allegations and charges against Ethiopia were led by Prime Minister
Meles Zenawi and Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister
Hailemariam Dessalegn on Indian television in June 2011 and
December 2010, respectively. It is unfortunate that they have not
managed to do what they have wanted because of their failure to
properly and honestly read the reality on the ground.
For reasons I would explain in a moment, let me say I watched with
as great interest as ambivalence the nearly half hour long 26 June
2011 interview of the prime minister with Vickram Bahl, Editor and
CEO of India’s ITMN television. The interview was current since it
strictly dealt with the land grab issue, although its singular focus was
how Ethiopia could safeguard the interests of Indian investors, instead
of its own.
I seriously weighed the interview, because at the same time my mind
was still processing message of the 27th McDougall Memorial
Lecture on food security by Kofi Annan, Chairman of the Alliance for
a Green Revolution in Africa and former UN Secretary General and
Nobel Peace Prize winner, which he delivered from Rome the night
before the premier’s interview. How I liked Annan’s emphasis on the
untold problem of the growing and ominous global retreat from the
idea of a common purpose, based on shared values (http://www.fao.
org/news/story/en/item/80646/icode/). Surprisingly, that is one issue
the mention of which is seen these days as awkward, even as indecent
as ideological.
Nevertheless, the former United Nations Secretary-General’s stand
was unequivocal in its conviction. He was emphatic in stating, “It is
neither just nor sustainable for farmlands to be taken away from
communities in this way [land grab], nor for food to be exported when
there is hunger on the doorstep. Local people will not stand for this
abuse – and neither should we.” He warned, “If countries cannot
come together successfully to deliver food security – this most basic
of human needs – our hopes for wider international co-operation look
doomed…” This ties well with the words of the former Brazilian
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2010), who in 2010 made
it his mission to remind especially Africa from Dakar, Senegal, that in
today’s world food sovereignty is not a matter of convenience. He
knew what he was talking about. Because he is a man who has
proven records in pulling millions of poor Brazilians out of generational
poverty and exploitation within eight years.
The basis for my above-mentioned ambivalence was the prime
minister’s demeanor, which from the outset clearly was apologetic to
his clients, as he attacked his own people—those he referred to as
“people who should know better”—merely for telling the truth. In so
doing, one could even sense from his body language he was
uncomfortable listening to himself. This is not to imply that his usual
hominess with the media was lost. In fact, he had done well especially
compared with the insufficiency his lieutenant exhibited in December
2010 during a similar encounter with the same journalist in Delhi,
shortly after his anointment as Ethiopia’s deputy prime minister and
foreign minister. He spoiled it with uncalled-for echoing and needless
repetition of every word his boss has been uttering.
In recalling that infamous encounter, my intention here is not to
awaken those unhappy memories of Ethiopians that from December
2010 through the following January pervaded the webpages, the
underlying causes of which, I guess, must be disgust with the
prevalence of loyalty over merit in the Federal Democratic Republic
of Ethiopia (FDRE). In this piece, therefore, I am trying to explore
Vickram Bahl’s rationale in coming to Ethiopia in June 2011 to ask
the prime minister the same set of questions he had already served the
DPM/FM seven months earlier. In the absence of any plausible
explanation, to my mind, it suggests that either the December
interview did not satisfy Bahl or, it was his judgment that the
interviewee had lacked sufficient authority to calm concerns of ITMN’
s Indian audiences.
Mr Vickram Bahl hardly needs any introduction. He has effectively
utilized the ITMN as his propeller that in turn, with him as editor-in-
chief, has turned itself—by its claim—into content provider to other
domestic and foreign broadcasters. For instance, programs such as
Insight – with Vickram Bahl and Opportunities Overseas have already
made him one of the most recognizable presences on the Indian
economic and political airwaves. In India, he has somewhat gained
fame and respectability as media savvy and guru of international
politics, who is determined to open up the world for the rising India.
It was, thus, this that brought him to the attention of Indian businesses,
which since the 1990s have shown that they have a good feel for what
is sellable and acquirable—through purchase or acquisition—the
shrewdness and vision that have propelled India onto its path to
greatness. First order marketable on the Indian end is education,
technologies and services and soft window loans to Ethiopia. On the
Ethiopian side, there is export of agricultural commodities, which over
the years has hardly helped to improve the trade balance that has
consistently been heavily weighted in favour of India. This would
assuredly worsen now, a thing that had worried the visiting Indian
prime minister in May 2011, who politely expressed to his host his
hope that Ethiopia’s balance of trade would gradually equalize India’s,
as the economy grew.
Instead of taking note of the sentiments, concern and the caution with
appreciation from an experienced leader who as finance minister in the
early 1990s had made his mark on India’s rise today by overcoming
its persistent economic sluggishness, caused partly by the balance of
payments problems, his host ran outside to the press to play down the
remarks. The Ethiopian prime minister told the Indian media, “Our
bilateral trade is $660 million, which is peanuts compared to our
overall trade. I am less concerned about the contents of the peanuts
than about the fact that these are peanuts. It is the capacity to trade
that we lack and this is what India is helping Ethiopia to develop
through its investments.”
As a matter of fact, the meaning of this had not escaped those laser-
mind Indian journalists from The Hindu, who picked up the balance of
trade comment (Come and farm our virgin lands, Ethiopia tells India).
The former Indian finance minister, who kindly shared his mind, is
remembered, among others, as the person who in the early 1990s
initiated India’s far reaching economic reforms, accompanied by the
largest ever sale of Indian gold holdings to the IMF.
In a way, what is left for Ethiopia is to sale, packaged as a special
form of service — leasing farms—a lot of it, probably half of the
country, were it not for the government’s fear of the rising international
criticisms, with the publication in May 2009 of International Land
Deals in Africa. Also recall that, after the publication of this report,
Ethiopia half-heartedly came out a week later to announce that it had
rent out three million hectares of land. Anyways, this issue is
something that leaves anyone wondering if there is any difference
between farmland leasing and surrogate motherhood, both of which
are governed by the same principles of the weak and the unfortunate
losing all the time.
If it were not a broad generalization, I would say, surrogate
motherhood is the case of desperate women in either poverty or debts
choosing to carry a baby for someone for $10 or $15 thousands in
the US. I am not sure about the latest rate in other countries. Once the
baby is born, whatever ties a mother would have with the baby are
severed with the umbilical cord. She would never get to care for the
baby or help it grow, fend for him with her maternal instincts voice
and contact with her breasts, as nature has wanted it. After delivery,
she would be barred from coming nearby the baby’s adopted
parents’ residence. As standard practice, a surrogate mother would
never claim the child is hers, despite she being responsible for the
carrying, delivering and the genetic markers she has imprinted the
baby with.
Similarly, farmland leasing imposes enormous obligations on the land
renting Ethiopian state, mainly in:
that the Ethiopian government had cut down the 300,000 hectares
given to Karuturi Global Ltd (KARG) to 100,000 hectares. Rumor
has it that some from the Indian Embassy in Addis Abeba immediately
raised concern at a reception. Undoubtedly, there must have been
interest on the Ethiopian side to reduce the abominable size of
Karuturi’s holdings, which the media dubbed as ‘the deal of the
century.’ It has Karmjeet Sekhon, KARG’s project manager, who
recalls “we never saw the land; they gave it to us and we took it”, The
Guardian, Ethiopia at centre of global farmland rush, 21 March 2011.
The desire to cut Karuturi to size was also confirmed first by Esayas
Kebede, the former director of agricultural support services of the
ministry of agriculture, and later retreated. At that point, there was
also talk of conditions on food exports. Immediately, Karuturi hit
back putting on his webpage his lease agreements and stating that he
was free to sale his food products wherever in the world, no
conditions to build anything in Gambela—no schools or anything—
unless it was a goodwill gesture. As if suddenly waking up, before the
arrival of the Indian prime minister on a visit to Ethiopia, things had to
solved without any delay, lest it clog the loan pipeline Ethiopian
anticipates for railway construction or other forms of cooperation with
India.
There is no doubt that the country must have woken up to the reality it
finds itself in; its options are limited. This issue had also surprised
Africa Updates, which on 19 June observed:
“The question here is, why this public spectacle of this dispute
between the FDRE and Karuturi when it all apparently came to
nothing? Was it to please critics of the land deals? Was it to intimidate
Karuturi in some way by using misleading information to influence
stock prices—which could be considered a crime under securities law
in most countries? Was it meant to give an open door to any
opportunistic “insiders” to make some lucrative investments at the time
the stock reached its lows? Whatever the motivation, it makes one
wonder!”
Consequently, as in the case of a surrogate mother without any
options, the blankness in that two-page 99 years lease that was a
heavily guarded secret until recently showed that the fundamental
interests of our nation have been pushed into the hands of foreign
investors in Ethiopian agriculture, the backing of their wealthy
countries behind them.
So, what is Vickram Bahl’s motive?
Central to Vickram Bahl’s mission in Ethiopia was, as mentioned
above, the concerns of Indians for the safety and security of their
investments in Ethiopian agriculture. That is why I found the prime
minister’s interview sort of political drama. At the encounter between
the two persons, Vickram Bahl initially delicately treated the rise of
the guerilla-fighter-turned-statesman-prime minister. Even in a matter
of fact manner, relations between Ethiopia and India, en passé touch
aside, were left to sort out each other. The conversation, therefore,
was mostly dominated by the unyielding uncertainties of Indians in
Ethiopia, presumably, according to Bahl, the negative experiences of
Indians in East Africa in the 1970s influencing today’s attitudes.
Soon after, he effectively worked his way into plucking out
information on the degrees of land security and insecurity in Ethiopia,
as his way of assessing the security of the investments. Experienced
and mild mannered, as he appears, his questions offered a peep into
the personal side of the interviewee’s life, perhaps intended to grease
him gently to speak out a little more openly. After brief ambience-
setting introductory exchanges on the usual staff: education, career
and achievements of the prime minister, Vickram Bahl delved into his
main preoccupation on behalf Indian investors.
After all, India being the largest investor in Ethiopia, with already $ 5
billion at work, of which 70 percent is in agriculture, the primary
concern was what would happen in the event of political crisis, since
land development means pouring money into immovable assets. He
thus shot the first set of questsions, as follows:
*“There is also the question of farming for Indians in Ethiopia, where
you are getting out land to Indian farmers who wish to come here,
corporates as well as individuals, who wish to come here and set up
large farms. This of course has also brought about a debate in your
country about the issue of giving land to foreigners; especially in view
of the fact privatization of land in Ethiopia is also being debated.
Currently all the land is held by the government. Do you think that this
would in some way dampen the initiative that you have taken on
leasing land to farmers from India who can come here develop the
farming and sell the crops in an open market?”
This then was followed by another question vital to the journalist and
ITMN’s mission to Ethiopia:
* “At the same time Indians have suffered in the past in some
countries in Africa, where they have been asked to leave when a
regime changes. In this case, there will be a concern that if your
government is giving land on long lease, which could be fifty years,
subsequent government may reverse this policy. Is there any risk of
that?”
(On this point, I must assume that as a reasonably well-equipped
journalist Vickram Bahl must have heard how Karuturi has pulled off
300,000 hectares for 99 years in Gambela. But surely, he must have
felt it was abominable even to mention it in his own words).
For the last time, for now, he tried again to poke through the land
privatization angle since that holds the key to his preoccupation on
behalf of Indian investors:
*“There is also a debate on privatization, I believe, in your country.
Do you plan in the future at some time to privatize landholding for
your Ethiopian population?”
(http://transformingethiopia.wordpress.com/)
To be continued…
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The writer was a former civil servant and diplomat in the Ethiopian
government. Later he served as International Staff with the United Nations
and is currently in retirement, devoting his time for research and writing.
He can be reached at kef730@gmail.com.
today, not tomorrow— Why then could he not succeed
in refuting evidences of displacements & abuses?
10 August, 2011 | By Keffyalew Gebremedhin
--------------------------------------------------------------------
“All of it is our land. Come here; you will get a lovely shot
from here! Look at that river taking a gentle turn. What we
need to export we would put on a small boat to South
Sudan, North Sudan, and go to port Sudan…We are
creating history here! This is what is happening here! This
is land that has never been tilled from the time God made
us! This is virgin land! It is green gold, if you know what
green gold is! This is green gold!”
Speaking to a visitor he brought to Gambela, Western Ethiopia, and
pointing into the vast horizon of his 300,000-hectare agricultural
empire that he got on lease for 99 years. He has now purchased two
tugboats for the purpose.
- “When food becomes scarce, the investor needs a weak
state that does not force him to abide by any rules…” With
risk, you have to look at risk and reward together — this is
why we pick our areas very carefully…There’s always an
issue of instability. There’s no perfect scenario. We’re not
investing in the U.S. This [Southern Sudan] is more
frontier land. It’s also extremely fertile land.”
Food and water drive Africa land grab, Reuters, 21 January 2010;
29 April 2010, UPI, Le Monde Diplomatique.
- “What we are doing is putting all unutilized land in this
country and we have a lot of unutilized land in the
lowlands…What we have done is to build infrastructures in
those areas and therefore open up the area for investments
both by domestic and foreign private sector on the basis of
a clearly set out lease arrangement. That is a win-win
arrangement. It is not a land grab. And, therefore, we are
very comfortable with the fact that we have put in place all
the necessary guidelines, environmental and otherwise, to
make sure that everyone benefits from this exercise.”
ITMN television on 26 June 2011 in Addis Abeba
- “Nobody consulted us; our lands are taken by force. Our
government did not even call a meeting of villagers to
discuss the matter. I have eleven-member family. And I no
more have land. Even my livestock have no grazing lands.
This is a situation that forces us to pick arms.”
neighbors, speaking to John Vidal, the Guardian’s environment editor,
March 2011.
- “The real issue in Africa is that a lot of these deals are
done in secret…The small-holder farmers who stand to lose
their land are not consulted. No one is sure the amount of
money declared is the real amount.”
A project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
(African farmland deals need rules, grass-roots warn, Reuters, 30
Mar 2010).
PART I
What is the difference between loathing transparency and
telling lies?
LANDGRAB. We have heard all the arguments about it, for and
against. To date, numerous audio and video materials have surfaced,
documenting displacements mistreatments of Ethiopians, i.e., beatings,
torched villages, some of them heart-rending and enraging. It has now
reached a stage where it has become impossible to ignore or discount
the persistent allegations of stories of removal under armed guards of
individuals from villages, beatings, imprisonments and even some
disappearances.
It appears the government of Ethiopia has not so far presented
satisfactory and truthful explanations about its actions, let alone
credible defense of its role as agency and facilitator of the abominable
practices of farmland grabbing, as shown by evidences here: Ethiopia
at centre of global farmland rush; Land grab uproots indigenous
farmers; Land grab fears for Ethiopian rural communities; Claims of
African Land Grab Spark Controversy; planet-for-sale-the-new-
world-agricultural-order-documentary, etc.
The latest high-level attempts to undo once and for all these
allegations and charges against Ethiopia were led by Prime Minister
Meles Zenawi and Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister
Hailemariam Dessalegn on Indian television in June 2011 and
December 2010, respectively. It is unfortunate that they have not
managed to do what they have wanted because of their failure to
properly and honestly read the reality on the ground.
For reasons I would explain in a moment, let me say I watched with
as great interest as ambivalence the nearly half hour long 26 June
2011 interview of the prime minister with Vickram Bahl, Editor and
CEO of India’s ITMN television. The interview was current since it
strictly dealt with the land grab issue, although its singular focus was
how Ethiopia could safeguard the interests of Indian investors, instead
of its own.
I seriously weighed the interview, because at the same time my mind
was still processing message of the 27th McDougall Memorial
Lecture on food security by Kofi Annan, Chairman of the Alliance for
a Green Revolution in Africa and former UN Secretary General and
Nobel Peace Prize winner, which he delivered from Rome the night
before the premier’s interview. How I liked Annan’s emphasis on the
untold problem of the growing and ominous global retreat from the
idea of a common purpose, based on shared values (http://www.fao.
org/news/story/en/item/80646/icode/). Surprisingly, that is one issue
the mention of which is seen these days as awkward, even as indecent
as ideological.
Nevertheless, the former United Nations Secretary-General’s stand
was unequivocal in its conviction. He was emphatic in stating, “It is
neither just nor sustainable for farmlands to be taken away from
communities in this way [land grab], nor for food to be exported when
there is hunger on the doorstep. Local people will not stand for this
abuse – and neither should we.” He warned, “If countries cannot
come together successfully to deliver food security – this most basic
of human needs – our hopes for wider international co-operation look
doomed…” This ties well with the words of the former Brazilian
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2010), who in 2010 made
it his mission to remind especially Africa from Dakar, Senegal, that in
today’s world food sovereignty is not a matter of convenience. He
knew what he was talking about. Because he is a man who has
proven records in pulling millions of poor Brazilians out of generational
poverty and exploitation within eight years.
The basis for my above-mentioned ambivalence was the prime
minister’s demeanor, which from the outset clearly was apologetic to
his clients, as he attacked his own people—those he referred to as
“people who should know better”—merely for telling the truth. In so
doing, one could even sense from his body language he was
uncomfortable listening to himself. This is not to imply that his usual
hominess with the media was lost. In fact, he had done well especially
compared with the insufficiency his lieutenant exhibited in December
2010 during a similar encounter with the same journalist in Delhi,
shortly after his anointment as Ethiopia’s deputy prime minister and
foreign minister. He spoiled it with uncalled-for echoing and needless
repetition of every word his boss has been uttering.
In recalling that infamous encounter, my intention here is not to
awaken those unhappy memories of Ethiopians that from December
2010 through the following January pervaded the webpages, the
underlying causes of which, I guess, must be disgust with the
prevalence of loyalty over merit in the Federal Democratic Republic
of Ethiopia (FDRE). In this piece, therefore, I am trying to explore
Vickram Bahl’s rationale in coming to Ethiopia in June 2011 to ask
the prime minister the same set of questions he had already served the
DPM/FM seven months earlier. In the absence of any plausible
explanation, to my mind, it suggests that either the December
interview did not satisfy Bahl or, it was his judgment that the
interviewee had lacked sufficient authority to calm concerns of ITMN’
s Indian audiences.
Mr Vickram Bahl hardly needs any introduction. He has effectively
utilized the ITMN as his propeller that in turn, with him as editor-in-
chief, has turned itself—by its claim—into content provider to other
domestic and foreign broadcasters. For instance, programs such as
Insight – with Vickram Bahl and Opportunities Overseas have already
made him one of the most recognizable presences on the Indian
economic and political airwaves. In India, he has somewhat gained
fame and respectability as media savvy and guru of international
politics, who is determined to open up the world for the rising India.
It was, thus, this that brought him to the attention of Indian businesses,
which since the 1990s have shown that they have a good feel for what
is sellable and acquirable—through purchase or acquisition—the
shrewdness and vision that have propelled India onto its path to
greatness. First order marketable on the Indian end is education,
technologies and services and soft window loans to Ethiopia. On the
Ethiopian side, there is export of agricultural commodities, which over
the years has hardly helped to improve the trade balance that has
consistently been heavily weighted in favour of India. This would
assuredly worsen now, a thing that had worried the visiting Indian
prime minister in May 2011, who politely expressed to his host his
hope that Ethiopia’s balance of trade would gradually equalize India’s,
as the economy grew.
Instead of taking note of the sentiments, concern and the caution with
appreciation from an experienced leader who as finance minister in the
early 1990s had made his mark on India’s rise today by overcoming
its persistent economic sluggishness, caused partly by the balance of
payments problems, his host ran outside to the press to play down the
remarks. The Ethiopian prime minister told the Indian media, “Our
bilateral trade is $660 million, which is peanuts compared to our
overall trade. I am less concerned about the contents of the peanuts
than about the fact that these are peanuts. It is the capacity to trade
that we lack and this is what India is helping Ethiopia to develop
through its investments.”
As a matter of fact, the meaning of this had not escaped those laser-
mind Indian journalists from The Hindu, who picked up the balance of
trade comment (Come and farm our virgin lands, Ethiopia tells India).
The former Indian finance minister, who kindly shared his mind, is
remembered, among others, as the person who in the early 1990s
initiated India’s far reaching economic reforms, accompanied by the
largest ever sale of Indian gold holdings to the IMF.
In a way, what is left for Ethiopia is to sale, packaged as a special
form of service — leasing farms—a lot of it, probably half of the
country, were it not for the government’s fear of the rising international
criticisms, with the publication in May 2009 of International Land
Deals in Africa. Also recall that, after the publication of this report,
Ethiopia half-heartedly came out a week later to announce that it had
rent out three million hectares of land. Anyways, this issue is
something that leaves anyone wondering if there is any difference
between farmland leasing and surrogate motherhood, both of which
are governed by the same principles of the weak and the unfortunate
losing all the time.
If it were not a broad generalization, I would say, surrogate
motherhood is the case of desperate women in either poverty or debts
choosing to carry a baby for someone for $10 or $15 thousands in
the US. I am not sure about the latest rate in other countries. Once the
baby is born, whatever ties a mother would have with the baby are
severed with the umbilical cord. She would never get to care for the
baby or help it grow, fend for him with her maternal instincts voice
and contact with her breasts, as nature has wanted it. After delivery,
she would be barred from coming nearby the baby’s adopted
parents’ residence. As standard practice, a surrogate mother would
never claim the child is hers, despite she being responsible for the
carrying, delivering and the genetic markers she has imprinted the
baby with.
Similarly, farmland leasing imposes enormous obligations on the land
renting Ethiopian state, mainly in:
- Delivering the specified size lands on a given date, often larger
in Ethiopia’s case than what the lease agreement says, because
of lack of capacity to measure properly area sizes; - Building roads and other infrastructures with the country’s
meager resources; - Severely dealing with ‘trouble makers’, the new title of farmers
thrown out of their ancestral lands and villages; and - Preventing trespassing into company properties, including by
livestock that can no longer graze around the vast lands now
taken by the foreign-owned farms. It is reported that in 2009,
many displaced farmers had to sell their livestock at throw
away prices, unable to take care of them because of which
many took a hit on prices, according to an account on Addis
Fortune, entitled Stranger coms to town, 23 August 2009 that
led the Indian Embassy to feisty protest. - The leasing country is often subject to political pressures from
the capital exporting countries that the Karuturis of this world
are especially gifted in taking advantage of to get anything they
want.
that the Ethiopian government had cut down the 300,000 hectares
given to Karuturi Global Ltd (KARG) to 100,000 hectares. Rumor
has it that some from the Indian Embassy in Addis Abeba immediately
raised concern at a reception. Undoubtedly, there must have been
interest on the Ethiopian side to reduce the abominable size of
Karuturi’s holdings, which the media dubbed as ‘the deal of the
century.’ It has Karmjeet Sekhon, KARG’s project manager, who
recalls “we never saw the land; they gave it to us and we took it”, The
Guardian, Ethiopia at centre of global farmland rush, 21 March 2011.
The desire to cut Karuturi to size was also confirmed first by Esayas
Kebede, the former director of agricultural support services of the
ministry of agriculture, and later retreated. At that point, there was
also talk of conditions on food exports. Immediately, Karuturi hit
back putting on his webpage his lease agreements and stating that he
was free to sale his food products wherever in the world, no
conditions to build anything in Gambela—no schools or anything—
unless it was a goodwill gesture. As if suddenly waking up, before the
arrival of the Indian prime minister on a visit to Ethiopia, things had to
solved without any delay, lest it clog the loan pipeline Ethiopian
anticipates for railway construction or other forms of cooperation with
India.
There is no doubt that the country must have woken up to the reality it
finds itself in; its options are limited. This issue had also surprised
Africa Updates, which on 19 June observed:
“The question here is, why this public spectacle of this dispute
between the FDRE and Karuturi when it all apparently came to
nothing? Was it to please critics of the land deals? Was it to intimidate
Karuturi in some way by using misleading information to influence
stock prices—which could be considered a crime under securities law
in most countries? Was it meant to give an open door to any
opportunistic “insiders” to make some lucrative investments at the time
the stock reached its lows? Whatever the motivation, it makes one
wonder!”
Consequently, as in the case of a surrogate mother without any
options, the blankness in that two-page 99 years lease that was a
heavily guarded secret until recently showed that the fundamental
interests of our nation have been pushed into the hands of foreign
investors in Ethiopian agriculture, the backing of their wealthy
countries behind them.
So, what is Vickram Bahl’s motive?
Central to Vickram Bahl’s mission in Ethiopia was, as mentioned
above, the concerns of Indians for the safety and security of their
investments in Ethiopian agriculture. That is why I found the prime
minister’s interview sort of political drama. At the encounter between
the two persons, Vickram Bahl initially delicately treated the rise of
the guerilla-fighter-turned-statesman-prime minister. Even in a matter
of fact manner, relations between Ethiopia and India, en passé touch
aside, were left to sort out each other. The conversation, therefore,
was mostly dominated by the unyielding uncertainties of Indians in
Ethiopia, presumably, according to Bahl, the negative experiences of
Indians in East Africa in the 1970s influencing today’s attitudes.
Soon after, he effectively worked his way into plucking out
information on the degrees of land security and insecurity in Ethiopia,
as his way of assessing the security of the investments. Experienced
and mild mannered, as he appears, his questions offered a peep into
the personal side of the interviewee’s life, perhaps intended to grease
him gently to speak out a little more openly. After brief ambience-
setting introductory exchanges on the usual staff: education, career
and achievements of the prime minister, Vickram Bahl delved into his
main preoccupation on behalf Indian investors.
After all, India being the largest investor in Ethiopia, with already $ 5
billion at work, of which 70 percent is in agriculture, the primary
concern was what would happen in the event of political crisis, since
land development means pouring money into immovable assets. He
thus shot the first set of questsions, as follows:
*“There is also the question of farming for Indians in Ethiopia, where
you are getting out land to Indian farmers who wish to come here,
corporates as well as individuals, who wish to come here and set up
large farms. This of course has also brought about a debate in your
country about the issue of giving land to foreigners; especially in view
of the fact privatization of land in Ethiopia is also being debated.
Currently all the land is held by the government. Do you think that this
would in some way dampen the initiative that you have taken on
leasing land to farmers from India who can come here develop the
farming and sell the crops in an open market?”
This then was followed by another question vital to the journalist and
ITMN’s mission to Ethiopia:
* “At the same time Indians have suffered in the past in some
countries in Africa, where they have been asked to leave when a
regime changes. In this case, there will be a concern that if your
government is giving land on long lease, which could be fifty years,
subsequent government may reverse this policy. Is there any risk of
that?”
(On this point, I must assume that as a reasonably well-equipped
journalist Vickram Bahl must have heard how Karuturi has pulled off
300,000 hectares for 99 years in Gambela. But surely, he must have
felt it was abominable even to mention it in his own words).
For the last time, for now, he tried again to poke through the land
privatization angle since that holds the key to his preoccupation on
behalf of Indian investors:
*“There is also a debate on privatization, I believe, in your country.
Do you plan in the future at some time to privatize landholding for
your Ethiopian population?”
(http://transformingethiopia.wordpress.com/)
To be continued…
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The writer was a former civil servant and diplomat in the Ethiopian
government. Later he served as International Staff with the United Nations
and is currently in retirement, devoting his time for research and writing.
He can be reached at kef730@gmail.com.
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