| Abstract: | Various restrictions in Ethiopia’s urban land law have adversely affected the
availability, transferability and tenure security of land-use rights for business
premises. These legal and administrative challenges have led to urban land
lease tender price hikes that are not affordable to the majority of economic
actors in the private sector. The gaps in land information and land governance
exacerbate the challenges in the realms of availability, transferability and
tenure security. Such land-use right market imperfections are susceptible to
economic rent seeking, resource capture and land speculation. Unearned
windfall income for persons involved in resource capture, the difficulties
encountered by many businesspersons in loan repayments for land lease and
construction, urban land lease tender rates and rising business premise rental
rates corrode rather than nurture broad-based value adding economic activities.
This article examines the Ethiopian legal regime and urban land governance in
light of the challenges they create in the availability, transferability and
affordability of access to urban land for business activities. There is thus the
need to address these challenges and enhance tenure security in order to
facilitate the emergence and coalescence of a strong middle class and broadbased
private sector in lieu of a nascent oligarchy of the nouveau riche (the new
rich) which is in the course of ascending onto its dreamland, inter alia, through
resource capture attributable to various restrictions against wider access to
urban land. |
