Coffee may be grown all around the tropics, writes Fiona Hesselden, but it originates in just one place: the 'coffee rainforests' of the Ethiopian highlands. We depend on the wild plants for new genes and varieties, yet the forests are falling fast to the advance of farmers. To preserve the forests and all their biodiversity, the original people of the forest must receive their just rewards.
USAID, the UK's DFID and the World Bank are among those covering up for severe human rights abuses against indigenous peoples in Ethiopia's Omo Valley, inflicted during forced evictions to make way for huge plantations, writes Will Hurd. Their complicity in these crimes appears to be rooted in US and UK partnership with Ethiopia in the 'war on terror'.
It's not just western corporations that are moving into large-scale agribusiness in Ethiopia, writes Mohammad Amir Anwar. Indian investors have acquired rights to some 6,000 sq.km of land much of it in the ecologically sensitive Gambela region, where unconsulted Nuer and Anuak peoples are suffering from forest clearance.
The Kwegu people of Ethiopia's Lower Omo Valley are facing starvation because of the loss of their land to a huge sugar plantation, the destruction of their forest and the damming of the Omo river - supported by a UK, EU and World Bank funded 'aid' program.
A land grab twice the size of France is under way in Ethiopia, as the government pursues the wholesale seizure if indigenous lands to turn them over to dams and plantations for sugar, palm oil, cotton and biofuels run by foreign corporations, destroying ancient cultures and turning Lake Turkana, the world's largest desert lake, into a new Aral Sea.
A massive sugar plantation and up to 700,000 migrant workers will occupy almost 2,000 sq.km of Ethiopia's Omo Valley, with the help of British aid finance. But the valley's native inhabitants have been given no choice in the matter, and are being forced to abandon their homes, lands, cattle, and entire way of life, or go to jail.
Ethiopia leads the way in preserving crop seeds by engaging farming communities in the effort, and making the exchange of seeds part of village life and culture, reports Claire Provost. But now it's all at risk from a G8 plan to open Africa to corporate agriculture.
A 'slow genocide' is unfolding in Ethiopia - one driven by greed rather than hatred. With Chinese and World Bank finance, massive dams and plantations are robbing the Omo Valley's 500,000 indigenous people of their land and water. The UK 'sees no evil'.
The US Congress has outlawed the use of aid to Ethiopia to evict tribal peoples in the SW of the country - where violent expulsions are under way to clear land for cash-crop farming.
Pastoralism is in crisis across Africa. But it could yet survive as the best available defence against climate change and famine. Tom Levitt reports from southern Ethiopia
A hydroelectric dam Gibe III in south-west Ethiopia threatens the livelihood of the ancient tribes of the Lower Omo River, say the campaign group Survival
With rich, resource-poor nations increasingly outsourcing their food production to less developed nations, a new website aims to expose the extent of the agricultural land-grab epidemic
Working alongside the people of Ethiopia, WaterAid is helping bring clean water and safe sanitation to drought-hit areas, as Leonora Oppenheim discovers
Ravaged for decades by famine and war, Ethiopia is trying to eliminate hunger for good with organic farming. Robin Maynard met the man spearheading the campaign
The millions of people in Niger who died during the recent famines, did so because the IMF pressured its government to tax food and the poor simply couldn't afford to save themselves
MPs will be given a private screening today of the highly-acclaimed film ‘Black Gold’, a documentary which charts the exploitation of coffee growers in Ethiopia.
