Leaf of Allah: Khat and Agricultural Transformation in Harerge, Ethiopia 1875-1991
2005; Boston University; Volume: 38; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2326-3016
Autores Tópico(s)Land Rights and Reforms
ResumoLeaf of Allah: Khat and Agricultural Transformation in Harerge, Ethiopia 1875-1991. By Ezakiel Gebissa. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2004. Pp. vii, 210; 14 illustrations. $44.95 cloth, $24.95 paper. Ezakiel Gebissa's book is a fresh contribution to Ethiopian agrarian studies and opens a new chapter on commercialization and rural development debates. The author, a historian, attempts to map the ways in which commercialization of khat in the Horn of Africa transformed the agrarian economy of the Harar region in eastern Ethiopia. ' It triangulates the effects of four agents in explaining Harar's relatively successful agrarian commercialization and economic growth at a time when most rural producers in other regions became progressively impoverished. These actors are the peasants, khat, state, and market. This historical account elucidates how the peasants of Harar region turned sand into gold in the language of the late Nobel laureate and agricultural economist T. W. Schultz.2 The author concludes that khat might not solve the region's underdevelopment, despite the ingenious efforts of peasants to partially escape Ethiopia's rural decline in the 1970-198Os and the growth of agriculture-driven commercial enterprises in the region. The Leaf of Allah consists of ten chapters. The introductory chapter provides an essential historical context and a preface to regional culture focused on khat consumption. It is one of the best introductions to khat and agrarian political economy in the Harar region. Although the chapter claims to link khatinduced development to the larger agrarian question, it provides very little discussion of the pertinent theoretical issues. The human geography of the country is briefly described in Chapter 2 and the discussion of the physical geography is too general to be a useful introduction to the region's agroecology. Finally, the treatment of Oromo culture in the essay is too superficial to be of much use. Chapter 3 sketches the different land tenure forms that prevailed in the region and the spread of khat from the immediate surrounding of the old city to the Oromo-dominated Harar hinterland. The author asserts that the spread of Islam among the Oromo coincided with their adoption of khat cultivation, and he demonstrates that khat production and trade flourished once the old regime's land tenure impediments were cleared and the road and railroad transport established. Chapter 4 advances the analysis by explaining why khat displaced coffee as the region's premier cash and export crop. The key factors that induced this shift were growing population pressure on the land, the progressive land reform of 1974, farmers' entrepreneurial search for ways to sustain their livelihood, and the growth of markets in Djibouti, Yemen, and British Somaliland. This is one of the most informative chapters and the author carefully draws out the links between the various factors using secondary data. More detailed field data would have made the analysis more current. Although the previous two chapters illustrated the commercialization of khat, a full discussion of the development of the regional market is presented in Chapter 5. The analysis is most fascinating, as the author demonstrates how the perishable nature of khat, the Ethiopian government's security concerns, and transport development shaped market relation in the region. One of the key issues that Chapter 6 deals with is the conflict between Ethiopian authorities and khat traders. In the end state regulatory projects failed, as they were based on guesswork. Ethiopian officialdom would be well served to digest this analysis. Despite the impressive analysis of relations between traders and the state, the chapter has several analytical and factual lapses. It does not capture the interstate politics that khat generated and omits any examination of khat's impact on importing countries such as Djibouti and Somalia. Moreover, the material dealing with Somalia's involvement in the trade is simply wrong or misinterpreted. …
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