Land
Alienation in Borana: Some land tenure issues in a pastoral context in Ethiopia
Johan Helland
Abstract:
This
paper discusses the land rights of the Borana pastoralists as an example of
pastoral land tenure in Ethiopia. Pastoral tenure rights are usually a
simplified version of much more complex tenurial arrangements found in
agricultural areas. The pre-eminence of state rights is characteristic of the
situation. Pastoral tenure rights usually involve unclear group user rights to
the resources, with poor legal protection from pastoral competitors or
agricultural expansion into the rangelands.
The land base of the Boran pastoralists has been continuously diminished over
the last century, partly because of political and military competition, more
recently because of developmental approaches which on the one hand encourage
alternative forms of land use (agriculture, land grants to ‘investors’) and
which on the other hand have ecological repercussions (bush encroachment) which
remove large parts of the remaining land resources from Borana pastoralism. This
paper argues that the Borana have inadequate protection from the land tenure
legislation which does not take the requirements of pastoralism much into
account.