Agrarian Reform in Ethiopia

Dessalegn Rahmato is the leading scholar of land issues in Ethiopia, a subject he has been researching for decades. He has published a large number of works, including The Peasant and the State (2008). One of his earlier books, Agrarian Reform in Ethiopia (1985) covers the land reform of 1975, when Ethiopia made the most significant change to land tenure in its history. The book briefly covers the land tenure system before the reform, details the reform itself, and the peasant associations that were created and critical to the implementation of the reform. This is an excellent resource for anyone interested in the history of land tenure in Ethiopia, and a particularly rich resource on the land reform of 1975.

Dessalegn Rahmato opens the book with the following: "In content and implementation, Ethiopia's agrarian reform can be considered as a thorough and radical one. It accomplished its purpose, namely the elimination of landlordism, quite speedily - a remarkable achievement considering that at the time the reform was promulgated the new government had not yet firmly established its presence in the countryside. The reform is undoubtedly the most important and the most far-reaching social measure of the Provisional Military Government of Ethiopia, and its impact on the fabric of rural society is far more profound than any of the reforms carried out since the overthrow of the absolute monarchy. In brief, it provides for the distribution of land to peasant households, and abolishes peasant dependence on the landlord, along with the landlord himself. All rural land is under 'public ownership', and tenancy and the hiring of labour have been done away with." (p. 9)