African Affairs Advance Access originally published online on November 26, 2008
African Affairs 2009 108(430):91-109; doi:10.1093/afraf/adn067
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Be like bees – the politics of mobilizing farmers for development in Tigray, Ethiopia
Kaatje Segers (kaatje.segers{at}ees.kuleuven.be) and Jozef Deckers are at the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. Joost Dessein is at the Social Sciences Unit, Institute for Agricultural and Fisheries Research (ILVO), Belgium. Sten Hagberg is at the Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology, Uppsala University, Sweden. Patrick Develtere is at the Higher Institute of Labour Studies (HIVA), Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Mitiku Haile is at the Department of Land Resources Management and Environmental Protection, Mekelle University, Ethiopia. The authors acknowledge the assistance of Jan Nyssen. They are grateful to the Flemish Interuniversity Council (VLIR) for funding Kaatje Segers’ PhD research and to Mekelle University (MU) and the VLIR MU Institutional Cooperation Programme for hosting it. Thanks are also due to the anonymous reviewer and editors of African Affairs. The authors warmly thank all informants in Tigray regional and Degua Temben district government agencies, and the case study sub-district's front-line government staff and farmers for their contributions. Special thanks to Girmay Haylemariam and Yikunoamlak Teklebirhan for their dedication during fieldwork.
Based on long-term ethnographic research, this article analyses the relations between local politics and farmers’ participation in rural development in Tigray (Ethiopia). It takes an actor-oriented approach and focuses on local government officials and farmer representatives, who mediate between the government agencies that undertake rural development programmes and the farmers whom they address. To reach the target numbers of programme beneficiaries, these local development brokers ‘mobilize’ farmers to participate. They capitalize upon the historical legitimacy of the 1975–91 revolution against the military Derg dictatorship in which the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), now heading the national government, and Tigray's rural population successfully joined forces. They revitalize farmers’ collective memory of this alliance and reinvent the revolutionary grassroots institutions through which it was realized. The effects of mobilization on participation in development are most evident among farmers who are members of the TPLF. A TPLF-development nexus arises, structuring local political career opportunities along the lines of development. The case study attempts to contribute to an empirical understanding of the entanglement of local politics and local development brokerage in rural African societies.