Ethopia’s Gambella Region Farmland "Deal of the Century"
It’s the deal of the century: £150 a week to lease more than 2,500 sq km (1,000 sq miles) of virgin, fertile land – an area the size of Dorset – for 50 years. … Gambella has offered investors 1.1 million hectares, nearly a quarter of its best farmland, and 896 companies have come to the region in the last three years. They range from Saudi billionaire Al Amoudi, who is constructing a 20-mile canal to irrigate 10,000 hectares to grow rice, to Ethiopian businessmen who have plots of less than 200 hectares. This month the concessions are being worked at a breakneck pace, with giant tractors and heavy machinery clearing trees, draining swamps and ploughing the land in time to catch the next growing season. Forests across hundreds of square km are being clear-felled and burned to the dismay of locals and environmentalists concerned about the fate of the region’s rich wildlife. (UK Guardian)
Your conclusion is unfounded and is not from concern and genuine mined set. First of all, the Ethiopian people and the Ethiopian Government are not back-worded as you have perceived. They don’t give simply give away their property without getting benefit out of it as your likewise your government and people most probably do. Ethiopians will not give their land for nothing, you have to learn the history of Ethiopians. The investors that come to Ethiopia should and must comply to the agreement they have done with the Ethiopian investment authorities. Your conclusion has simple came from jealousy; this is most probably the case that brought you to such conclusion. If still there are no western investors as the Indians and Chines, what you have to advice your nation is to go to Ethiopia and invest there for mutual benefit. There is no need to to be burn up from jealousy when a country is developing and making other friends outside the Western countries. It is really a pity while you have heard from many the people whom you have interviewed, they told you that they have moved willingly, due to one persons whom you have interviewed you gave such conclusion; this is not ethical for journalist such as you. If you want to invest in Ethiopia, go there, invest like the others; don’t try to cover your jealousy with sympathy for the locale people whom you have never given an attention when they were living for centuries in poverty, disease, isolation due to luck of education, health facilities. What the government is doing is fighting poverty, the enemy of our people, creating a job opportunity, getting red of the so-called help organization form your continent, who come to the developing countries for their political and economical advantages (the fathers of poverty as Graham mentioned it in his book. Your comment will never bring us back even a millimeter, Ethiopian people and the government will pursue to develop their country, which is their birth right, no body’s negative comment will hinder them from doing this.