(Fri Jul 29, ADDIS ABABA (AFP) - Ethiopia's leasing of vast swathes of arable land to foreign and state-owned firms risks adding to the millions of people already requiring food aid in the drought-struck region, a US based think-tank warned on Friday.
Some 200,000 people are at risk of being displaced from land-grabbing, with at least 350,000 hectares of land leased since 2008 in south-west Ethiopia alone, according to the Oakland Institute.
"The impact is going to be terrible, because we can't expect this kind of development to benefit the local population," said Oakland's policy director Frederic Mousseau.
An additional 90,000 hectares are marketed as "available" in the federal land bank, Mousseau said. "They will be losing their livelihood, and just join the millions of people that are relying on food aid in Ethiopia," he said.
Driven by recent food, energy and climate crises, investors from richer nations have been acquiring rights to vast tracts of land in several African nations to meet demand for bio-fuels, crops and mining resources.
Ethiopia is among the Horn of Africa nations affected by extreme drought, that has left some 12 million people in danger of starvation and spurred a global fund-raising campaign.
Some 4.56 million people in Ethiopia are in need of emergency aid, according to the UN. But the Ethiopian government spokesman Bereket Simon rejected the report. Read the full story at Yahoo! US »
Some 200,000 people are at risk of being displaced from land-grabbing, with at least 350,000 hectares of land leased since 2008 in south-west Ethiopia alone, according to the Oakland Institute.
"The impact is going to be terrible, because we can't expect this kind of development to benefit the local population," said Oakland's policy director Frederic Mousseau.
An additional 90,000 hectares are marketed as "available" in the federal land bank, Mousseau said. "They will be losing their livelihood, and just join the millions of people that are relying on food aid in Ethiopia," he said.
Driven by recent food, energy and climate crises, investors from richer nations have been acquiring rights to vast tracts of land in several African nations to meet demand for bio-fuels, crops and mining resources.
Ethiopia is among the Horn of Africa nations affected by extreme drought, that has left some 12 million people in danger of starvation and spurred a global fund-raising campaign.
Some 4.56 million people in Ethiopia are in need of emergency aid, according to the UN. But the Ethiopian government spokesman Bereket Simon rejected the report. Read the full story at Yahoo! US »
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