Fewer jobs and more migrants: Large scale agricultural investment and internal migration in Ethiopia: A case of Saudi Star and Merti Agricultural Development Farms

Abstract

Large scale agricultural investments offer huge potential in creating employment opportunities, which, in turn, are expected to cause substantial migration. In Ethiopia, whereas extant ample literature shows substantial in-migration of people triggered by employment opportunities in scattered commercial farms and plantations established from 1950s to 1970s in the Awash Valley and other areas of the country, the literature on the link between large scale commercial farms recently leased to investors and migration is very limited. Using cross-sectional survey, this paper analyzed this link in the context of Saudi Star and Merti Agricultural Development farms, respectively in Abobo and Merti woredas. Results show that 34.4% of the respondents were migrants overall (45.1% for Abobo and 23.5% for Merti). Proportionally, more migrants than non-migrants were working in the commercial farms. However, this proportion (of employed migrants) was lower when compared to the total number of migrant respondents, suggesting that more migrants were not employed in the farms. The association between employment in commercial farms and a respondent's migration status in the regression analysis is positive. Although the association is only statistically weakly significant or not significant at all, these results may suggest that migration to employment areas is not necessarily informed by actual employment but rather by migrants' expectations encouraged by lowered costs of migration, a result in line with existing literature regarding labor migration and employment.