An agrarian reading of the Ethiopian civil war: entanglements of agriculture, investment, party politics, and ethnicity (Majang, Mettekel, Wolqayt; 2013-2021)

Mehdi Labzaé

13. December 2022, 18:00

In this presentation, I propose an agrarian understanding of the current Ethiopian civil war. I argue that in the context of discourses of ethnic federalism, agricultural policies implemented by the EPRDF and subsequent PP regimes have taken part in framing contentious politics on the lines of ethnicity. Since the mid 2000s, agricultural policies aiming at extending cultivated surfaces have led to a rush for land in lowland peripheries. In such places, connection with the local branch of the EPRDF became a prerequisite for investors to access land. Local élites reacted diversely, by both encouraging and complaining about land transactions and work migration they entailed. As ethnicity provided the basis for party structuration and political representation, local land tensions espoused the same ethnic lines – although past agricultural practices were often more inclusive and allowed more fluidity, solidarity, and transactions between groups. Agricultural workers from other regions tried to access land, sometimes concluding transactions with groups which within the policies of ethnic federalism had been recognized as “locals”. Several policy items, including land registration programs implemented between 2014 and 2018, triggered local political violence. As the political crisis was deepening at the federal level, political parties and state institutions provided channels for local land conflicts to scale up. Meanwhile, agricultural investors played a prominent role in the creation of armed groups that are now active on the war’s frontlines.

This presentation brings together elements from ethnographic fieldwork carried out in several agricultural intensive areas, namely the Mettekel zone of Benishangul-Gumuz (from 2013 to 2019), Gambella’s coffee producing Majang zone (2014-2016), and Nothern Gonder and Wolqayt (2016-2021). 

Registration by email
(vortrag@wakhva.de)

Mehdi Labzaé is a sociologist and political scientist, specialist in the sociology of the state at the CEDEJ in Cairo.

Development finance and the right to participate in environmental decision making in an authoritarian context: lessons from Gibe III hydro dam project in Ethiopia

Abduletif Kedir Idris

23. November 2022, 18:00

Ethiopia is lauded for achieving the most carbon free GDP growth in last two decades. The economy has expanded by a factor of five, while on a per capita basis, CO2 emissions from energy were the fourth-lowest in the world. Granted, the emission from these pumps may be minuscule in comparison but the absence of democratic accountability in how these green credentials have been achieved should be a cause for concern. With much of the funding for the infrastructure projects, such as the Gibe III dam, coming from non-domestic sources, data indicate that the Ethiopia government is more accountable to these funding sources than to the people more directly affected by such projects. This PhD project presentation aims to discuss how this inverted accountability impact rights to participate in environmental governance in Ethiopia.

Abduletif Kedir Idris is a PhD Candidate at the Max Plank Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Saale.

Registration by email

3rd round of our Online Lecture Series „New Perspectives on the Horn of Africa“

Our series of online lectures continues with a 3rd round in the winter 2022-23. The series presents a multidisciplinary scholarly engagement with and about the Horn of Africa region to a broader audience.
The series starts on November 23 and will be held via Zoom meetings. Registration takes place via email: vortrag@wakhva.de.

23. November 2022, 18:00
Abduletif Kedir Idris
Development finance and the right to participate in environmental decision making in an authoritarian context: lessons from Gibe III hydro dam project in Ethiopia.
Email registration
Abstract

13. December 2022, 18:00
Mehdi Labzaé
An agrarian reading of the Ethiopian civil war: entanglements of agriculture, investment, party politics, and ethnicity (Majang, Mettekel, Wolqayt; 2013-2021) 
Email registration
Abstract

17. January 2023, 18:00
Robert Kluijver
Self-Governance and Political Order in Somalia
Email registration
Abstract

31. January 2023, 18:00
Alfredo Gonzáles-Ruibal
Resisting the state in the Horn of Africa. A long-term perspective
Email registration
Abstract

14. February 2023, 18:00
Marie Huber
Book presentation:
„Developing Heritage–Developing Countries: Ethiopian Nation-Building and the Origins of UNESCO World Heritage, 1960–1980“
Email registration
Abstract

Video Online-Presentation: „Why old maps of Northeastern Africa are not old: Cartographic collections as a repository of local territorial knowledge and practice“

Online-Presentation by Wolbert G.C. Smidt on 14 April 2022:
Why old maps of Northeastern Africa are not old:
Cartographic collections as a repository of local territorial knowledge and practice

Islamic Scholarship and literary traditions in Wollo

Andreas Wetter

Abstract of the Online-Presentation on 18 May 2022, 18:00

Since late 18th century Wollo has become a hot spot of Islamic scholarship in Ethiopia marked by a network of lslamic learning centers and highly respected scholars. The centers in Wollo became the main destination for Muslims from central and southern Ethiopia to conduct higher Islamic learning since the 19th century. 

Although the crucial role of local Muslim scholars played in the “development of Islam and an indigenous Muslim culture“ particularly during the 19th and early 20th century has been stressed in historical research (cf. Ahmed 2001, etc.) the actual products of their activities, i.e. their literary works and their intellectual contributions to the development of local Islamic thought have largely remained unstudied until this day.
In the presentation I try to give a a concise overview of historical dimension and background of Islamic scholarship in Wollo, based on available literature and my own research and, thus giving an outline of the context in which Islamic literature in Wollo was produced and used. 

Amharic manuscript in Arabic-based orthography
Amharic manuscript in Arabic-based orthography, Hijira 2004.

The Islamic literature of Wollo consists of works in Arabic as well as in local languages. While my focus lies on Islamic literature written in Amharic and Argobba, I had the opportunity to conduct some digitization work on Islamic manuscripts in Arabic as well (for the project IslHornAfr). Based on this work I will present a preliminary overview of the type of manuscripts and the genres represented in the digitized corpus and outline the chronological development of the literature from copying classical Arabic works in the earlier periods to the creation of locally authored works. 

Coming to the focus of my own research I will briefly describe the development of Islamic literature in local languages, describe some features of this literature and its linguistic relevance as well as the repercussions of linguistic analysis for the understanding of the local society.

References:
Ahmed, Hussein. 2001. Islam in nineteenth-century Wallo, Ethiopia. Revival, reform and reaction. Leiden: Brill.
IslHornAfr: Islam in the Horn of Africa, A Comparative Literary Approacho. ERC project based in Copenhagen.

Registration by email.

„Muslim by Day and Christian by Dawn“: The Religious Experience of Ethiopian Migrants to Sudan

Kiya Gezahegne

Abstract of the Online-Presentation on 4 May 2022, 18:00

The border is recognized as a fundamental space that captures the social process of identity construction and deconstruction. Through cross border mobility, different recognition of identities within the different cultural contexts takes place, unfolding through and with the border. One such identity is religion. Situated between two countries that is dominated by two different religions, Orthodox Christianity and Islam, the Metema-Gallabat border between Ethiopia and Sudan is a fertile thinking ground to study religious identity (re)construction. Recognizing the need to study religion and people on the move along and across the borders, this dissertation explores the practicalities of dealing with religious differences between the two countries.

This study mainly tried to investigate religious identity construction and re-construction of Metema Yohannes residents and Ethiopian Christian migrants as they move along the Ethiopia-Sudan border towns of Metema Yohannes and Gallabat and further to other parts of the Sudan (for Ethiopian migrants). The main objective, hence, was to explore the dynamics between gender and religious identities as they play out in the process of migration and borderlands. The study found out religious identification goes beyond its metaphysical value and puts into network social, cultural, economic, political and historical elements. Through social and economic interaction, for the borderland people, religious divide seems to be insignificant compared to the socio-economic interaction across the border. The importance of religion, however, sometimes outweighs other factors. 

For Christian female migrants, fluid religious identity, fitting to the context, is preferred. This is achieved through conversion, improvisation (role play), and adoption of transcultural religious identity. These processes of identity (re)construction are mostly noticeable among women who are more visible and ‘most likely to adapt’. Further, the data shows, for both cases of borderland residents and migrants, religious identity negotiation is not a process that is limited to times of interaction with ‘others’. The process continues among their own communities through reintegration of individuals into the religious community in a ritual of cleansing such as baptism. The issue of impurity and recognition resulting from conversion or improvisation of change in religious affiliation is mentioned in this study. What is more important is the religious identity (re)construction process affects and is affected by gender, economic interdependence, generational divide, historical narratives, and state politics, among others.

Kiya Gezahegne is an assistant Professor of social anthropology at Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia. She researched her PhD on migration and religion along the borderlands of Ethiopia and Sudan. Her research so far has focused on migrants and refugees from and to Ethiopia, focusing on gender, religious identity, conflict, social integration, and migration management. Kiya has done extensive fieldwork in different parts of Ethiopia, Sudan and Spain.

Registration by email.

Transitional Justice and Legal Pluralism in Somalia: Which Role for Shari’a?

Markus Virgil Hoehne

Abstract of the Online-Presentation on 13 July 2022, 18:00

The overwhelming majority of Somalis are Sunni Muslims. Simultaneously, Somalis belong to patrilineal descent groups among and between which customary law is relevant. Decades of (civil) war have weakened the state as centralized political institution and with it, the statutory legal system. Recently, some Somali elites and donors initiated reflections on transitional justice in Somalia. A pilot research has been undertaken into this direction, on which this presentation is based. To come to terms with the complex layers of past violence in Somalia means also to think about how to integrate the various normative orders existing on the ground. Customary, religious, statutory law can be described as ‘semi-autonomous legal fields’ in the sense of Sally Falk Moore, influencing each other a situation of non-hierarchical legal pluralism. A comprehensive approach to transitional justice in Somalia thus would have to accommodate elements of these different relevant legal systems. While no legal system effectively dominates, empirical research has shown that Shari’a is accepted by the vast majority of Somalis as the ‘ideal’ order.  Transitional justice frameworks elsewhere, e.g., in Rwanda and Liberia, merged statutory and customary law. But there are only very few cases in which Shari’a has been added to complex, typically legally ‘hybrid’ transitional justice arrangements.  This presentation reflects the role of Islamic law in the context of dealing with the violent past in Somalia and in which regard Shari’a complements or collides with other relevant normative orders and established modes of transitional justice. 

Registration by email.

“All that nonsense that comes with a life insurance is not there” – Insurance associations in the Ethiopian diaspora in southern California

Sophia Thubauville

Update: The Online-Presentation on 29 June 2022, 18:00, will be postponed.

Abstract

Southern California has an Ethiopian diaspora population that goes back to the socialist revolution in Ethiopia in the early 1970s. Because of political and economic reasons, this population increased immensely around the turn of the millennium. With around 50,000 members, this is one of the largest diaspora communities in the US, the country that hosts with 500,000 the largest Ethiopian diaspora worldwide.

One of the central and most celebrated life rituals in Ethiopia, is the funeral service. For most members of the community it is important to hold this important celebration in the USA according to cultural norms or to repatriate the deceased to their home country. Both options are very expensive and require the help of others in implementation (be it in the preparation of Ethiopian food or knowledge of American export laws).

From the beginning of their settlement in southern California, Ethiopians organized their own insurance associations. At that early time they were few in numbers and in size, more informal and intimate. Around ten years ago, once many members of the population became more settled, many new insurance associations were established to give a culturally appropriate farewell to deceased members of the community. Apart from being more formalized, these new organizations are much larger and therefore more anonymous. In my presentation, I would like to trace the development of these informal associations and their adaption to their host society.

Weiterlesen →