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The Wonji/Shoa sugar plantation.

Ethiopian Sugar Corporation, which is under direct control of TPLF leaders, has long been distorting the livelihood of native inhabitant using ridicules pretext like ‘expansion’. Through out the year the sugar factories located in Oromia expand in thousand of hectares by displacing thousands of Oromo farmers with little or no compensation.

The present TPLF-lead Sugar Corporation, with a cover vision of executing sugar development activities in a large scale and structure, is paradoxically playing a vital role in cleansing indigenous dwellers from their ancestral land in large scale and structure.

It was at Wonji in 1951 some 110 km east of the capital Addis Ababa and 9 km south of Adama that modern sugar industry started in Ethiopia as a share company established by foreign private investors & Ethiopian government. Last week I have got a chance to pay a work visit to this giant factory on the process of illegitimate expansion. In addition to visiting the sugar factor located in Wonji, I have also got a chance to look for sugarcane cultivation land and the newly constructed factory at Awash-Melkasa area, which is some 12km on the road from Adama to Asella.

One of the Wonji/Shoa sugar factory workers who is doing on illegal expansion of the factory has told me that the factory has expand in over 4,200 hectares of land in less than 3 years. Obviously, as the area is so suitable for cultivation of vegetables and cereals, there were many Oromo farmers that inhabit and built their livelihood in the area before this illegal land grab. Significant number of Oromo farmers were displaced from this large area with no compensation, and few of them were given a compensation that cannot even sustain their lives for a year. “Their land was taken letting them for day laborer, and their children were discontinued their school to support themselves and their family” another employee at the factory who was originally from the area said.

The sugar cultivation land of the newly constructed Wonji/ Shoa covers more than half of the land between Awash- Melkasa and Adama with width of 3-6km, outskirts of Awash-Melkasa, fertile land between Dhera and Awash-Melkasa excluding Dil-Fikar park, and outskirts of Dhera town.

Farmers in the Dodota district are so concerned and worried that they are next to lose their land in this process of unrestrained illegal land grab. Some of them started to prepare themselves for inevitable conflict on the illegal expansion of the factory that will engulf their land and distort their livelihoods.

Yaada