Agrarian Development, Famine and Foreign Aid: The Ethiopian Experience

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Periodical article

Title:	Agrarian Development, Famine and Foreign Aid: The Ethiopian Experience
Author:	Brüne, Stefan
Year:	1988
Periodical:	Afrika Spectrum
Volume:	23
Issue:	3
Pages:	255-271
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Ethiopia
Subjects:	villagization agricultural policy famine Agriculture, Natural Resources and the Environment Development and Technology Economics and Trade international relations Health and Nutrition
Abstract:	This article reviews the nature and scope of agrarian change in postrevolutionary Ethiopia. By summarizing Ethiopian economic growth and the performance of the agricultural sector since 1974, the author contends that the policies of the Ethiopian government made a decisive contribution to famine and civil unrest. The recent droughts exacerbated, but did not cause the adverse trends that were evident before the drought. Low investment in agriculture, the neglect of small-scale producers, the overhasty organization of resettlement schemes, the absence of effective price incentives, the emphasis on unprofitable State farms, and overambitious villagization operations are among the factors that accounted for the failure of the government's agricultural policy. The author further argues that neither the Marxist-Leninist rhetoric of the Ethiopian government nor the neoliberal strategies proposed by some Western commentators address the central problems faced by Ethiopia's underdeveloped agrarian society. App., bibliogr., notes, sum. in German and French.