Wondwosen Michago Seide
| Wondwossen Michago Seide is an adjunct lecturer at the Department of Geography and the Environment, Addis Ababa University (AAU). He earned an MSc in Water Science, Policy and Management, Oxford University and an MA in Environment and Development and BA in Political Science and International Relations from AAU. Currently he is a Consultant to the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Sussex where he is involved in two research projects: water-energy-climate change nexus and the future of pastoralism. Previously, he has worked as a Researcher at the Nile Basin Discourse Forum and as an Assistant Researcher at the Ethiopian International Institute for Peace and Development. |
Research on Land-grabbing:
The Land Deals in Ethiopia: The Changing Political Economy and Ecology Case Study: The Gambella Regional States
With many foreign investors receiving large-scale land in many countries of Africa, land grabbing has become the catchphrase of the hour in the media and in the political sphere of many countries in Africa. In countries like Ethiopia, particularly in the Gambella Regional States, where the government has given out hundreds of thousands of hectares of land for foreign and domestic investors, ‘land grabbing’ has become a very emotive issue. Although there is an expanding amount of research on this issue in other parts of Africa, land deals in the Gambella region of Ethiopia is still under researched. Hence, apart from questions on the development benefits of such deals to the society, their implications on local communities and impact on the political economy and ecology of the region is awaiting serious inquiry. Moreover, how local communities are responding to these and how these responses are handled is also wanting in explanation. This research attempts to examine the ways in which local communities adjust to these changes and critically assess how these changes impact on their lives, their development needs and their relationships with the investors and regional and national governments. It also tries to evaluate the implications to the overall political economy and ecology of the region through primary research with the hope of understanding the land deal phenomenon better.
