Why is the Ethiopian government so committed to handing the country’s farmland over to foreign investors?
One of the main reasons why the government is inviting investors to come in is to show a good face to donors, to show that it is doing something in the face of recurrent famine. Plus, the Ethiopian government is part of the international community’s fight against terror, and so the donor countries are unwilling to criticise the Ethiopian government, as the Horn of Africa is a volatile region and Ethiopia is the only relatively stable country. The government has a lot of enemies within and outside the government, and since 2001 anyone opposing the government is treated as a terrorist. The Ethiopian government is in fact playing a more sinister game, and the international community is either ignoring it or going along with it to satisfy its own interests. This government uses every means to control political power in the country, and creating a class society, getting more money from investors, allows it to buy off economic power. The land grabs are also a pretext to create a vacuum in th
