Peri-Urban Land Tenure in Ethiopia

Abstract: Urban areas in Ethiopia have been growing very quickly in recent decades, which haveled to ever increasing demand for land in peri-urban areas for housing and other nonagriculturalactivities. This has had several transformative impacts on the transitionalperi-urban, areas including engulfment of local communities and conversion of landrights and use from an agricultural to a built-up property rights system. Peri-urban areasalso display all forms of competition for land among people of diverse backgrounds.Research on the challenges of urbanization in peri-urban land tenure system and theongoing changes in Ethiopia is limited, and the situations and actors interested in periurbanland are constantly changing. Therefore, the purpose of this research is toinvestigate the challenges imposed on peri-urban land rights as a result of the growingdemand for land for urbanization. The project also encompasses an attempt to discoverthe process of informal transaction and development of peri-urban land and the principalactors involved.The study comprises a summary essay and four articles which were conducted using casestudy and desk review research approaches. Following the case study tradition, acombination of different data collection instruments such as questionnaires, FGDs, keyinformant interviews (both structured and open-ended) and direct field observations wasemployed to collect research data from the case study areas. Bahir Dar CityAdministration was selected purposively as case study area at the first stage and two periurbanvillages, Weramit and Zenzelima, were selected from Bahir Dar CityAdministration at the second stage of the case study area selection process.The research has revealed that urbanization and urban development in Ethiopia areaccompanied by contentious land tenure changes which favor the urbanities above localperi-urban communities. As a result, urbanization has precipitated a wave ofdispossession and proliferation of informal settlements in peri-urban areas. Thus,addressing the challenges of urbanization and its effect on the land rights of local periurbancommunities requires the introduction of an inclusive and participatory landdevelopment tool like land readjustment, which can encourage voluntary contribution ofland for urbanization by the local peri-urban landholders themselves.