Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-h6jzd Total loading time: 0.001 Render date: 2025-02-16T22:16:12.315Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Food security and social protection in highland Ethiopia: linking the Productive Safety Net to the land question*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 August 2013

Tom Lavers
Tom Lavers*
Affiliation:
Department of Social and Policy Sciences, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY, United Kingdom
*
Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

While much recent research has focused on the Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP), this is by no means the only social protection policy in rural Ethiopia. Drawing on a very different rationale to the PSNP, the Ethiopian government also justifies state land ownership as a form of social protection for smallholders. This paper examines the links between these policies through a case study of an extremely food-insecure site. The paper concludes that while the PSNP and land policy together provide minimal security for landholders, land shortages and the problematic nature of agricultural production are such that there is little chance that the PSNP and its complementary programmes can achieve food security. As a result, the PSNP is used to support failing agricultural policies, limiting urban migration in the interests of political stability. These findings highlight the importance of situating safety net programmes within the socioeconomic context which generates insecurity.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 51 , Issue 3 , September 2013 , pp. 459 - 485
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

This research was carried out as part of a PhD supported by an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) studentship. I would like to thank Addis Ababa University for facilitating my fieldwork, Meressa Tsehaye for interpretation, and Shea McClanahan, Joe Devine and two anonymous reviewers for comments on previous drafts.

References

REFERENCES

Ayalew Ali, D., Dercon, S. & Gautam, M.. 2007. ‘Property rights in a very poor country: tenure insecurity and investment in Ethiopia’, Agricultural Economics 42, 1: 75–86.Google Scholar
Belay, K. & Abebaw, D.. 2004. ‘Challenges facing agricultural extension agents: a case study from south-western Ethiopia’, African Development Review 16, 1: 139–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berhane, G., Hoddinott, J., Kumar, N., Taffesse, A. S., Diressie, M., Yohannes, Y., Sabates-Wheeler, R., Handino, M., Lind, J., Tefera, M. & Sima, F.. 2011. Evaluation of Ethiopia's Food Security Program: Documenting Progress in the Implementation of the Productive Safety Nets Programme and the Household Asset Building Programme. Washington, DC: IFPRI, IDS, Dadimos.Google Scholar
Bevan, P., Dom, C. & Pankhurst, A.. 2009. Long Term Perspectives on Development Impacts in Rural Ethiopia: Stage 1. Concept Note. Oxford: Mokoro.Google Scholar
Bishop, C. & Hilhorst, D.. 2010. ‘From food aid to food security: the case of the safety net policy in Ethiopia’, Journal of Modern African Studies 48, 2: 181–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, T. & Teshome, A.. 2007. Implementing policies for chronic poverty in Ethiopia. Background paper for the Chronic Poverty Report 2008/09.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Central Statistical Agency (CSA) 2009. ‘Agricultural Sample Survey 2008/09 (2001 EC). Volume IV – Report on land utilization’, Central Statistical Agency Statistical Bulletin 446.Google Scholar
Cook, S. 2002. ‘From rice bowl to safety net: insecurity and social protection during China's transition’, Development Policy Review 20, 5: 615–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deininger, K. & Jin, S.. 2006. ‘Tenure security and land-related investment: evidence from Ethiopia’, European Economic Review 50, 5: 1245–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Devereux, S. & Sabates-Wheeler, R.. 2004. ‘Transformative social protection’, IDS Working Paper 232.Google Scholar
Devereux, S., Teshome, A. & Sabates-Wheeler, R.. 2005. ‘Too much inequality or too little? Inequality and stagnation in Ethiopian agriculture’, IDS Bulletin 36, 2: 121–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Devereux, S., Sabates-Wheeler, R., Tefera, M. & Taye, H.. 2006. Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP). Trends in PSNP transfers within targeted households. Brighton: Institute of Development Studies.Google Scholar
Dorward, A., Sabates-Wheeler, R., MacAuslan, I., Penrose-Buckley, C., Kydd, J. & Chirwa, E.. 2006. ‘Promoting agriculture for social protection or social protection for agriculture: strategic policy and research issues’, Future Agricultures Consortium Discussion Paper 4.Google Scholar
Gilligan, D. O., Hoddinott, J. & Taffesse, A. S.. 2009. ‘The impact of Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Programme and its linkages’, Journal of Development Studies 45, 10: 1684–706.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Habtu, Y. 1997. ‘Farmers without land: the return of landlessness to rural Ethiopia’, in Bryceson, D. F. & Jamal, V., eds. Farewell to Farms: de-agrarianisation and employment in Africa. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 41–59.Google Scholar
IDL Group 2010. Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP): Assessment of Graduation Report. Bristol: The IDL Group.Google Scholar
Kebede, E. 2006. ‘Moving from emergency food aid to predictable cash transfers: recent experience in Ethiopia’, Development Policy Review 24, 5: 579–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lavers, T. 2012a. ‘Patterns of agrarian transformation in Ethiopia: state-mediated commercialisation and the “land grab”’, Journal of Peasant Studies 39, 3–4: 795–822.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lavers, T. 2012b. ‘“Land grab” as development strategy? The political economy of agricultural investment in Ethiopia’, Journal of Peasant Studies 39, 1: 105–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lefort, R. 2012. ‘Free market economy, “developmental state” and party-state hegemony in Ethiopia: the case of the “model farmers”’, Journal of Modern African Studies 50, 4: 681–706.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maxwell, D. & Wiebe, K.. 1999. ‘Land tenure and food security: exploring dynamic linkages’, Development and Change 30, 4: 825–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mellor, J. W. & Dorosh, P.. 2010. ‘Agriculture and the economic transformation of Ethiopia’, ESSP II Working Paper 010.Google Scholar
Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MoARD). 2009. Food Security Programme, 2010–2014. Addis Ababa: MoARD.Google Scholar
Ministry of Finance and Economic Development (MoFED). 2002. Ethiopia: Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction Program. Addis Ababa: MoFED.Google Scholar
Ministry of Finance and Economic Development (MoFED). 2003. Rural development policy and strategies. Addis Ababa: MoFED.Google Scholar
Ministry of Finance and Economic Development (MoFED). 2005. Ethiopia: building on progress. A Plan for Accelerated and Sustained Development to End Poverty (PASDEP). Addis Ababa: MoFED.Google Scholar
Nega, B., Adenew, B. & Gebreselassie, S.. 2002. Land Tenure and Agricultural Development in Ethiopia. Addis Ababa: Ethiopian Economics Association/Ethiopian Economic Policy Research Institute.Google Scholar
Planel, S. 2007. ‘Densité, pauvreté et politique. Une approche du surpeuplement rural en Éthiopie’, Annales de géographie 656: 418–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ragin, C. C. 2000. Fuzzy-Set Social Science. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Rahmato, D. 2003. ‘Poverty and agricultural involution’, in Rahmato, D., ed. Some Aspects of Poverty in Ethiopia. Addis Ababa: Forum for Social Studies, 1–15.Google Scholar
Rahmato, D. 2009. The Peasant and the State: studies in agrarian change in Ethiopia 1950s–2000s. Addis Ababa: Addis Ababa University Press.Google Scholar
Sabates-Wheeler, R. & Devereux, S.. 2010. ‘Cash transfers and high food prices: explaining outcomes on Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Programme’, Food Policy 35, 4: 274–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sabates-Wheeler, R., Devereux, S. & Guenther, B.. 2009. ‘Building synergies between social protection and smallholder agricultural policies’, Future Agricultures Consortium Working Paper SP01.Google Scholar
Segers, K., Dessein, J., Hagberg, S., Develtere, P., Haile, M. & Deckers, J.. 2009. ‘Be like bees – the politics of mobilizing farmers for development in Tigray, Ethiopia’, African Affairs 108, 430: 91–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Serneels, P. 2007. ‘The nature of unemployment among young men in urban Ethiopia’, Review of Development Economics 11, 1: 170–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sharp, K., Brown, T. & Teshome, A.. 2006. Targeting Ethiopia's Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP). London: Overseas Development Institute.Google Scholar
Slater, R., Ashley, S., Tefera, M., Buta, M. & Esubalew, D.. 2006. Ethiopia Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP). PSNP Policy, Programme and Institutional Linkages. London: Overseas Development Institute.Google Scholar
Tigray National Regional Government (TNRG). 1998 (Ethiopian Calendar). ‘Rural land administration and use proclamation’, Negarit Gazeta of Tigray, proclamation no. 97/1998.Google Scholar
Vaughan, S. & Rafanell, I.. 2012. ‘Interaction, consensus and unpredictability in development policy “transfer” and practice’, Critical Policy Studies 6, 1: 66–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williamson, V. 2011. ‘So near and yet so far: values and mental models along the aid chain in Ethiopia’, Journal of International Development 23, 6: 823–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, J. 1997. Peasant Revolution in Ethiopia: The Tigray People's Liberation Front, 1975–1991. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

LIST OF INTERVIEW RESPONDENTS

Representatives of foreign donors

FD5, head of food security, Development Assistance Group, Addis Ababa, 22.11.2009.

Female residents

GF4, young married woman, Geblen, 15.04.2010.

GF5, married woman, Geblen, 09.04.2010.

GF9, female shopkeeper, Geblen, 10.04.2010.

GF10, landless, female household head, Geblen, 09.04.2010.

Male residents

GM2, male shopkeeper, Geblen, 10.04.2010.

GM4, young single man, Geblen, 09.04.2010.

GM8, urban resident with land in Geblen, Adigrat, 13.04.2010.

GM15, middle-aged man, Geblen, 08.04.2010.

GM16, middle-aged man, Geblen, 12.04.2010.

GM21, elderly PSNP participant, Geblen, 10.04.2010.

GM22, elderly man, Geblen, 08.04.2010.

GM23, elder in dispute resolution, Geblen, 14.04.2010.

GM27, middle-aged man, Geblen, 12.04.2010.

NGO representatives

GN1, Emergency Programmes Coordinator, Catholic Mission, Adigrat, 13.04.2010.

Tabiya officials

GT1, chairman, tabiya administration, Geblen, 07.04.2010.

GT4, development agent, Geblen, 08.04.2010.

GT5, development agent, Geblen, 08.04.2010.

GT7, member of the LAC, Geblen, 15.04.2010.

GT11, head, FSTF, Geblen, 07.04.2010.

Wereda officials

GW1, head, wereda Land Administration desk, Freweyni, 06.04.2010.

GW2, expert, wereda PSNP desk, Freweyni, 06.04.2010.

GW3, expert, wereda Youth and Social Affairs desk, Freweyni, 06.04.2010.

GW4, extension expert, wereda Agriculture and Rural Development desk, Freweyni, 15.04.2010.

Regional government officials

IR1, head, Tigray EPLAUA, Mekelle, 01.04.2010.