The politics of land registration in Ethiopia: territorialising state power in the rural milieu

Contemporary policies of land titling and registration are central to the negotiation of the rights of access to resources and constitute a main facet of the territorialisation of the state in the rural milieu. In Ethiopia, the distribution of land use certificates started in the 1990s with the support of international donors. This paper examines land registration in rural Oromiya and discusses how it reconfigures the exercise of political authority and the peasant–state interface. The paper concludes that land registration, being legitimated through a complex discursive repertoire, strengthens the capacity of the local administrative structures to exercise political authority and thereby serves to further extend the power of the state in the rural milieu. While the question of security of tenure is strongly influenced by such hierarchical state– peasant relations, the case analysed shows that the political project behind land registration is also contested and resisted, although not openly, by the farmers.