Farmland Conversion and the Compensation Question in Mekelle (Ethiopia)

Abstract

The city of Mekelle has been growing fast and infringing its statutory limits. This growth, in recent times, has required the conversion of agricultural land into non-agricultural, urban use; and now the number of expropriated farmers as a result of rural land conversion is on the increase: between 2005 and 2008, about 9883 farmer-households were expropriated totally or partially from their farmlands. This paper focuses on the post-acquisition welfare of farmers by critically evaluating the overall process of compensation: method of valuation, amount of compensation, and negative fallouts. The method of determining the value of expropriated farms is unscientific, not timely updated, and the compensation is not associated with rehabilitation support. The materials used in this paper are taken from an ongoing doctoral research by the same author, and all data was obtained from a survey of 250 expropriated farmers. Findings show that as the city advances towards the agricultural hinterland fringe farmers feel threatened of losing their livelihood, and are not happy because of the knowledge that the compensation process is unfair in terms of amount and absence of rehabilitation support for their losses. The paper is organized into five sections: the introduction deals with the background, the problem and the objective, followed by review of relevant literature, then the methodology, the findings, and finally the conclusion.

Keywords: expropriation, valuation, compensation, rehabilitation, perception