Ethiopia’s World Heritage Site Tribes Threatened – by Jerome
Mwanda NAIROBI (IDN) – While millions in East Africa are caught
in the cobweb of a devastating drought that has spread its
tentacles across Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia, the government in
Addis Ababa is snatching some of Ethiopia’s most productive
farmland from local tribes and leasing it to foreign companies
to grow and export food. A Survival International investigation
has uncovered shocking evidence that vast blocks of fertile land
in the Omo River area in south west Ethiopia are being leased
out to Malaysian, Italian and Korean companies. Vast stretches
of land are also being cleared for huge state-run plantations
producing export crops, even though 90,000 tribal people in the
area depend on the land to survive. The investigation shows that
the government is in fact planning to increase the amount of
land to be cleared to at least 245,000 hectares, much of it for
vast sugar cane plantations. “The region’s worst drought in 60
years has left milli