Guest Lecture by Jonah Wedekind on “Land Grabbing in Ethiopia”

The talk introduced trajectories of property rights regimes and the particular political ecological constellations of land grabbing in Ethiopia during 2005-2017. It  highlighted the agrarian questions that were part of boom and bust dynamics of biofuel projects (2005-2017).

Jonah Wedekind holds a doctorate in political ecology and agronomy. He conducts research on agricultural transformations, environmental conflicts and the state in Ethiopia. His PhD thesis “Castor Craze & Crash” (2021) deals with large-scale land investment projects in Ethiopia. The focus is on land expropriation and labor mobilization to produce agrofuel crops and the subsequent political, environmental and territorial impacts along the border areas of the Oromia and Somali regional states.