Priceless land: valuation and compensation of expropriated farmland in the Amhara region, Ethiopia

ABSTRACT In Ethiopia, farmland belongs to ‘the people’ (the state) and cannot be sold or bought, but compensatory measures have been introduced for land expropriated for infrastructure and industry. The article analyses processes of valuation and compensation of land in Kombolcha district in the Amhara region of Ethiopia. Here numerous projects have affected highly productive farmland over the last decade. Monetary compensation to land holders whose farmland is expropriated is relatively new in Ethiopia, and we explore how peasants and authorities gradually have attained increased competence in dealing with land valuation and compensation, faced with often obscure and contradictory legislation.